Golly, gee, David Brooks is having a regular snit fit about my guy’s speech last night. Even Pat Buchannan sounded like a Democrat as he parsed the Obama acceptance speech on MSNBC, but David Brooks, on the Newshour’s coverage, first said he was underwhelmed and then criticized all the speech’s successes as failures. I wonder if he had already written today’s column, a parody that reads for all the world like the essay part of an application to be a McCain staffer. Here’s just part of it:
My fellow Americans, it is an honor to address the Democratic National Convention at this defining moment in history. We stand at a crossroads at a pivot point, near a fork in the road on the edge of a precipice in the midst of the most consequential election since last year’s “American Idol.”
One path before us leads to the past, and the extinction of the human race. The other path leads to the future, when we will all be dead. We must choose wisely.
We must close the book on the bleeding wounds of the old politics of division and sail our ship up a mountain of hope and plant our flag on the sunrise of a thousand tomorrows with an American promise that will never die! For this election isn’t about the past or the present, or even the pluperfect conditional. It’s about the future, and Barack Obama loves the future because that’s where all his accomplishments are.
We meet today to pass the torch to a new generation of Americans, a generation that came of age amidst iced chais and mocha strawberry Frappuccinos®, a generation with a historical memory that doesn’t extend back past Coke Zero.
My-oh-my! The David is not amused. And he doesn’t like all those vote-wielding teenagers, either. I love it — my guy is a pop cilture hero!
Sarah Palin, I don’t know. She was a beauty queen, wasn’t she? Dangerous ground if the Republicans intend to make pop culture an enemy. Maybe she’ll be another Anita Bryant. With the media frenzy starting over McCain’s choice of a running mate, it will be interesting to see whether this choice turns out to match Palin’s rock-star reputation in her own state, to which Andrea Mitchell just alluded, or whether the McCain/Palin ticket will come to seem like more Republican snarkiness, a cynical effort to court disaffected Clinton supporters with a woman candidate while at the same time shoring up McCain’s credentials with the religious and economic rights. Of course, at the moment she’s helping McCain affect the news cycle and take some shine away from Obama the day after.
P. S. Well, she made a pitch for the Clinton vote and claimed that McCain is the real, true, candidate of change. She also projected a good deal of hero worship. Clearly she will be a cheerleader for McCain in a way that others who were rumored as his vice presidential choice couldn’t be. She’s also a big surprise. The sheer novelty of her selection will increase attention to the RNC. This morning’s Gallup polling results showed Obama ahead of McCain 48% to 42%. That’s now stretched to 49% to 41%. But McCain is a canny competitor. Someone on MSNBC was just saying that this choice reflects McCain’s understanding that he cannot win with the experience argument and needs “a piece of the change argument.” Of course the Obama folks will try to deny him that, but McCain may now have done as much as Obama did to make the political conventions fun this year. If that’s true, he’ll deserve whatever bounce he gets from the RNC.
