Yeah, well, it ain't happening. My desktop PC is lying in little pieces down in the basement, awaiting an emergency CPU transplant from Crazy Eddie's CPU Barn, and Moira's entering her 15th month of blogger's block. (Well, not exactly. What she actually said was more like, "If I write what I think, then everyone will assume I'm crazy." Join the club, dear.) History will have to trundle along without our commentary for the moment.
I could somewhat see her point, not being particularly thrilled with either of the major parties or their offerings at the moment. But I felt I knew about the three other main players, and Palin was completely unknown to me. As a responsible citizen and all that, should I not familiarize myself? Besides, it isn't often you get to see such a ... a... (searching for proper astronomical metaphors here – comets? meteors? novas? ah, yes, de stella nova, that's it) a rapid and explosive rise to prominence in the political universe, accompanied by tremendous blasts of hot gas. I was assured by right-sided commentators that Gov. Palin was a great speechmaker, what with all the sportscaster and beauty-pageant training, and besides, she's so effin' hawt!!! Meanwhile, the leftosphere was doing its best to make Palin into a combination of Daisy Mae Scragg and Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. Either way, it was clear that this would be an important moment in the whole campaign.
Reaction? My first thought was, Hey, she sounds just like the school secretary in 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' (not that there's anything wrong with that). Then she introduced the family, which seemed to go on for a long time, but I guess that's fair, since nobody knew anything about them less than a week before. Then she got into the meat of things, and it was a pretty good speech, by modern political standards, which is to say it wasn't really very good, but it was better than most. To be fair, I think the convention can take some of the blame for that, because the audience was so pumped up on adrenaline and MSM-hatin' that they cheered practically every sentance, whether it formed a whole thought or not. The basic pattern seemed to be: {bumper-sticker political thought} wild cheering and applause {bumper-sticker political thought} wild cheering and applause {bumper-sticker political thought} etc....
Again, I didn't catch any other speech at either convention, so evaluating this one out of its context may not be fair, and certainly most people seem to agree that it was a good speech. It just didn't make me sit up on the couch and say, "Damn, that was a good speech". (Full disclosure: the last time I did have that reaction was to Bill Clinton's acceptance of the nomination in 1992.) She's a good public speaker, with a relaxed and conversational tone. I thought the line about Obama's styrofoam columns was pretty good, as was the "community organizer" jab. "Too sarcastic?" Right. Whine some more, I'm sure America really finds that attractive in a candidate.
A visitor from Mars, listening to the speech and its railling against the Washington status quo, would probably think that no Republican had had a hand in the federal government for the past decade or so, and I suppose that goes hand-in-glove with McCain's "I'm an outsider! Really!!" schtick. But it's not really a schtick in Palin's case, is it? At the moment, she really does appear to be a truly novel thing on the political landscape, a genuine non-establishment, non-elite outsider.
What does all this mean for me as a voter? I don't know. Probably not much, as Palin's not running for President, despite the efforts of the D's to convince me that McCain is going to keel over dead on the afternoon of Jan. 20th, 2009. As I noted some time ago, I disagree considerably with McCain, Obama, and Biden on most policy issues, and Palin at the moment looks like a younger Phyllis Schlafly*. Perhaps if someone can convince me that she's really Margaret Thatcher with a hunting license, it might cause me to view McCain less disfavorably.**
*Not a good thing.
**Do. Not. Like.
