<...>
But, a poor orator who has made few - if any - memorable speeches in the past, he failed to match either the rhetoric of Obama in Denver last week or even the feisty, sarcastic delivery of his own running mate, Sarah Palin.
Some of the loudest cheers of the night were when Palin, the new darling of the Republican party, joined him at the end.
Although the organisers said the theme of the day was "peace," the tone of videos shown earlier in the night as well as in his speech and those of others was heavily militaristic. McCain devoted a large part of his speech to one of his biggest selling points, the period that turned him into an American hero, his five years in a Hanoi jail after his plane crashed on a bombing mission. As an admiral's son, he was offered the chance of early release but turned it down, refusing preferential treatment.
The passage on his prison years, which seldom fails to resonate with Americans, earned him four standing ovations, to chants of "USA, USA".
<...>
McCain, aware of his limitations as a speaker, attempted to recreate the intimacy of the townhall meetings with which he is more comfortable by placing the podium in the middle of the audience, but it was a failed experiment, with his delivery as deadening as ever.
moreBut what would that change entail -- what new programs or policies or ideas? That was left to the audience's imagination. On CNN, Jeffrey Toobin called McCain's address one of the worst convention speeches he'd ever heard. Yet even he had to admit that it was kind of exciting to watch. Maybe McCain understands television better than people think.
He used the word "change" at least 10 times in his bombastic speech -- the convention's emotional climax -- but since the Republicans have controlled the White House for the past eight years, what does McCain want to change from? And to? It really is an audacious ploy, to tell people that the country's got to correct the mistakes made by a political party when that's the very party you represent.
It's like staging a revolution against yourself -- saying that the Republicans have got to go so the Republicans can move in and clean up the mess.
<...>
A few protesters began shouting unintelligibly during the early portions of McCain's speech, suggesting deplorable security operations at the convention. The crowd drowned out the screams of the demonstrators by chanting "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" As the ruckus died down, McCain ad-libbed: "Americans want us to stop yelling at each other, okay?" The speech, which Anderson Cooper of CNN characterized as "back to the future," ended with McCain stirring up the crowd with a refrain of "Stand up, stand up and fight!" as the cheers grew louder, louder and finally deafening. What were they cheering? Some nice thoughts about patriotism and a pledge to bring "change" to Washington from a man who's been serving in Washington for decades.
No, it didn't make sense, but darned if it didn't make for good TV.
linkFor all the hullabaloo about whether John McCain would match Sarah Palin's performance at the Republican convention, it wasn't even close. Where was the tropic thunder? McCain may have ended his speech with a Knute Rockne-like cry for Americans to fight and fight some more -- for what he never really said -- but most of his speech was a snooze, delivered in the tone of a kindly old uncle reminiscing about World War II before fretting about how how those pesky Russians are stirring up trouble again.
McCain's answer to America's woes seems to be a program of self-improvement -- "serve a goal greater than yourself," he suggested. But he never really explained what that goal might be. After eight years of the Bush administration running two wars without demanding an iota of sacrifice, indeed passing lavish tax cuts, McCain's exhortations could hardly have sounded more empty. In fact, to judge by McCain's talk, the only problem America seems to suffer from is that "some Republicans" -- once again, no names here -- succumbed to the temptation of "corruption." Well, yes. But it was the Bush administration's disdain for government that turned the Iraq War, among other things, into a free-for-all for contractors.
America's economic troubles barely even merited a nod, apart from vague promises to somehow emancipate America from Middle East oil. No doubt Sarah Palin will be offering some pointers in coming days about how Alaska can single-handedly solve that conundrum.
McCain clearly implied that he would like to resurrect the GOP in his own image. But so far, the only thing he has been resurrecting is the religious right by selecting Palin as his sidekick. He tried to make a virtue out of her ignorance, depicting her as a kind of freedom-fighter ignorant of Washington's corrupt ways who would help cleanse it. But for the most part, it hardly seemed like McCain's heart was even in his speech. Was tonight's more moderate version the real McCain? Maybe even he can't tell any longer.
linkThe RW trying to sell McCain's speech:
Don't focus on the oratory. If Mark Salter wanted to, he could have written prose for the ages, but it wouldn't have seemed true to McCain. Don't focus on the delivery. The election isn't going to be decided on speech-making ability. Focus on the theme—a populist fighter for you...
linkThis was not an address. It was a talk. John McCain told his story, explained what he intended to change, and stated his first principles—principles that proved comprehensively conservative, from restraining spending and cutting taxes to advancing "a culture of life."
When he delivered a beautifully-wrought address at the convention of 2004, McCain proved earnest and well-intentioned, but awkward, like a teenaged boy offering a bouquet to his date, and the speech read better in print the next morning than it sounded live that evening...
The idiotic title says it all.
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