Last night was a better night for the Republicans than tonight.
Let’s see if I can criticize McCain’s constant invocation of his POW experience without driving an angry mob to chant “USA! USA!” outside my window: Might we agree that by having every single surrogate tell the tale of McCain’s imprisonment, torture and resistance in hushed, dramatic tones, he has allowed the story to be robbed of some of its power?
I wish I could offer more specific observations, but I’m going to have to read the text in the morning. I will confess that I fell dead asleep twice and probably missed about 10 minutes. It wasn’t entirely my fault.
Anyway, it’s over. He’ll get his bounce. And on we go.
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ogre
You’re not the only sleeper.My wife, who is a cynic who only leans Democratic because of party issues, sat through Palin and the rest last night and stayed awake and had comments.She fell asleep twice that I noticed, and admitted dozing off once for McCain. Better content, I thought, than Palin’s speech, but he’s a marginal speaker at his best, and that’s all he managed. Now I understand why Cindy McCain’s rather flat introduction was what it was. Had someone fired the crowd up, it would have really shown him up.I was impressed that he didn’t speak about being a POW as qualification… and then at the end he did. You’re right–what you said is precisely what my wife said. Since everyone else had already told the same story, it wasn’t what it could have been; it could have been a remarkable moment. Had they restrained all others to merely mentioning it tangentially, if at all, his story would have had power (even though by now, everyone’s heard it anyway). But this? It was like having one’s doddering father-in-law telling the same story again for the 157th time as if no one had ever heard the anecdote. They stole its power from him.
Matthew Harris
I thought tonight’s coverage of McCain’s speech was interesting. http://www.mtnewsblog.blogspot.com Why did the media keep focusing on the protestors during the speech? Was it an important part of the story tonight?
mike_b1
matthew, “media focus” overstates it.
Dot Lane
After all the aircraft imagery last night, all I can think about is the movie Top Gun. Tom Cruise plays Maverick, so I suppose McCain gets that role by default, but what do we call Palin? Goose? Icewoman?The one thing that really left me cold about last night was the narration in the video preceding McCain’s speech. After saying McCain somehow survived the tragedy on the Forrestal, the narrator intones something like “Perhaps he had more to do”, as if McCain were spared to fulfill a destiny. And people claim Obama has a messiah complex?
Peter Porcupine
Personally, I am curious as to why the claim by Code Pink protestors that the MEDIA gave them credential for the floor to create the disturbance is such a non-story…