Palin's Speech

Palin gave a good speech tonight. Not an excellent one, but a good one. Unfortunately for her, the media are raving about it. This can only mean that she's going to get hammered by the press over the next 60 days. "Hey, she was wonderful! (Psst. Sharpen the axe)."

A few thoughts after watching the first female Republican nominee for VP.

1) The Republican delegates in the hall still love Bush, but that doesn't mean the McCain camp thinks it's a good idea to mention him during the convention. Bush gave his address the other night, and that was all you're going to hear from or about the President. Tonight, Bush's name was not mentioned once. There were over half-a-dozen speakers, capped off by Palin, and not one of them said Bush's name even in passing. In a funny way, this election is almost like watching the Republican McCain and the Democrat Obama running to succeed the Other Party Bush.

2) It has been a weird, weird, weird week. McCain has thrown the election on its head. A week ago today, no one outside of politics had heard of Palin. Two days later, she's accused of covering up the true identity of her son. The next day, it's announced that her daughter is pregnant, so the slander about her son is false. Two days after that, Palin is giving a speech to accept her nomination.

3) During her speech, Palin gave as good as she got. She knocked the media, took a run at Obama, and didn't twirl her hair even once. Lefty bloggers are shocked. "My God. She can string a sentence together."

4) The speech wasn't excellent, because it should have ended off with another story of her small town roots. Instead, it ended with more stuff about McCain. They should have bookended the speech with another story from Alaska, maybe how she managed her and her husband's business while juggling family life, found the American dream, so forth. That kind of stuff will play in the heartland. Ending on the McCain deal seemed anti-climactic.

5) Speaking of anti-climactic, if McCain doesn't give a good speech, people might think Palin's the presidential nominee. Then again, maybe McCain doesn't mind that.

6) The foreign policy stuff in the speech sounded a little too pat, as if to prove she can pronounce words like "Caucasus," as in the Caucasus Mountains. These statements were no doubt used to get people off her back about a lack of foreign policy experience, but it sounded tin-eared next to the life story stuff. More life story, less Caucasus would have been the way to go.

7) Her duty now is to head out and start talking to blue collar workers, single moms, rural Americans, and family coalitions (especially any that involve kids with special needs; this was probably the most poignant part of her speech, and it came early on).

8) If anything, this is the most interesting presidential race in my lifetime. Nothing even comes close. This also had to be the first time in history that people were excited to hear a VP nominee accept the nomination.