Into The Mild: Palin’s Debut Takes A Turn For The Dull
Last night, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin took the stage at the Republican National Convention to accept her nomination as John McCain’s running mate.
Here’s what we learned:
Palin talks pretty. Palin is pretty. And though she hasn’t spent her life in Washington, she rambles and fibs like she’s been there for years.
Palin got off to a strong start with lots of applause and few funny one-liners. She spent lots of time talking about her family, including her four-month-old special needs son, Trig, and her pregnant daughter, Bristol, whose boyfriend accompanied her to the arena.
After throwing a few ‘bows at Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Palin seemed to lose her mojo. You could tell they were trying to shore up her image on foreign affairs by dropping in the names of a few international problem children, and she spent a long time talking about energy, once again invoking the creepy “drill, baby, drill” cheers that had erupted earlier when former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani took the stage. (For the record, Giuliani and fellow failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney stole the night away from Palin with their hard-hitting, entertaining speeches. In my opinion, either would have been a better veep pick/attack dog than Palin.)
It was at this point that most of America probably started to nod off. Palin’s speech extended a good three-quarters of an hour, drifting past the start of the 11 o’clock news on the East Coast.
She’d have been better off keeping it short and resisting the temptation to augment her thin CV with romantic tales of fighting for ethics reform (she’s currently under investigation for canning her public safety commissioner for failing to get involved in an ugly family situation), taking on the good ol’ boys (who gave money to her mayoral campaign and worked in her gubernatorial administration) and standing up to special interests (as Mayor, she hired a lobbyist to go fetch her more earmarks in Washington and she was for the “Bridge to Nowhere” before she was against it).
Overall, it wasn’t a bad speech. There are no bad acceptance speeches. But I think they left Palin out in the sun a little too long for her debut performance. Just as they did springing the pregnant daughter story on the public without thinking it through, Team McCain seemed to want to cram every rebuttal to criticism of Palin’s selection into one long, drawn out speech.
As a Republican friend of mine texted me, “It felt like a book report…by the naughty librarian!”
In the end, I’m not sure it makes any difference. The bad ol’ liberal media are still going to dig through records and try to find out more about McCain’s Mystery Pick, and I have a feeling less-than-flattering things are going to continue to trickle out. Die-hard Republicans will praise the speech for its brilliant honesty; Dems like me will fact check it for accuracy.
Real people probably tuned in for the first 10 minutes and then flipped over to catch “The Daily Show” or the evening news.
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And some of us, knowing we could read the text in the morning, chose to get a good night’s sleep. The speech was just what I’d expected. She clearly doesn’t realize that she’s running for VP not Mrs. America. She might as well have paraded in swimsuits and evening gowns followed by the little “my dream for America” speech.
I do have to wonder why, when she and the GOP, are so adamant about not focusing on her family, she chose to spend over a third of her speech doing just that. I’m happy she has a nice family, but really who cares? They’re not running for office, she is. The more she centers on them, the more we’re going to think she’s not focused on the reality of the challenges America faces in the 21st century.
And how as an American, paying enormous gas and oil prices, am I to feel that she thought it was ok for Alaskans should get OUR money?
Here’s hoping the Fourth Estate does their homework and we get to see just exactly what a power-hungry self-seeking candidate whose more interested in the profits of big business than the lives of the American people.
Interesting post Jen. While I am all for the fact checking I was somewhat surprised at the public speaking skills you took aim at. As you know from your first TV episode it’s not that easy.
Peace
One would assume that with all this vast executive experience the GOP is touting Palin has that this was not her first time to make a speech. Besides, it’s pretty apparent that she’s one of those people who has no lack of self-esteem. But then she should be right at home with a presidential candidate who seldom, if ever, thinks he’s wrong.
Since you seem to be all about facts: Just roughly 100,000 fewer viewers watched Gov. Palin than did Obama.
The ‘Great Orator’ needed a telepompter for his few short sentences after Biden’s speech. Palin did a great deal of hers by memory due to teleprompter difficulty. Perhaps your small-minded, catty self can be objective for once.
Overnight ratings showed 37 million watched Palin’s speech. Pretty good for a convention, to put it mildly. McCain has to seal the deal tonight, obviously, since Palin is only the undercard, but like most Dems you are grossly underestimating the Palin effect. You’re seeing what you want to see here. Obama’s got a real problem now, and we might see the ineffective Biden dumped as his VP candidate to counter Palin.
Jen,
I wanted to reply to one of your first posts about Gov. Palin but this post will have to suffice. You are one of a handful of bloggers, reporters, etc. who even mentioned Palin’s irresponsible decision to accept McCain’s offer without thinking about the inevitable limelight into which her 17-year-old pregnant daughter would be thrust. She was either incredibly naive to believe nobody would learn about it or too arrogant for her family’s good. It seems the only voters bothered by her actions happen to be moms…
Rico,
Go back and check your math. BO had more than 38.4 million viewers. Sarah had 37.2 million; a 1.2 million difference.
Please… keep talking and underestimating. Whjat we envy, we often try to destroy.
25or624,
Are you saying Sarah Palin should give up her career and stay at home with her children? Would you even think of saying this about a male candidate? Do you know that Palin actually has a husband who can care for the children while Palin works? And are you actually blaming Palin for the media abuse heaped on her?
Abdul, the original story said Palin had 37 million viewers for a speech shown on 6 networks, Obama had 38 million for a speech shown on 10 networks. However, AP just reported that Palin actually had 40 million. The difference might be PBS.
37, 38, 40 mil - Who cares? The only numbers that count are the ones that pull the lever in November.
For a candidate who offers nothing or is lightweight or any other of the pejoratives I have seen ascribed for Palin, I notice that most Democratic oriented bloggers kill a forest of gigabytes about her. If she truly was not worthy of notice or comment…why bother?
Unless..the bloviating is masking a real sense of worry about the chances of St Barry NOT becoming President?
Obama, following in the footsteps of his white ancestors, is also part of the Democratic Party that: (1) fought to keep blacks in slavery; (2) started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize Republicans—black and white; (3) passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws; (4) fought every piece of civil rights legislation from the 1860’s to the 1960’s; and (5) attacked Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights protesters with skin-burning fire hoses and vicious dogs. While hiding the racist past of the Democratic Party, Obama refuses to give credit to the Republican Party that: (1) started in 1854 as the anti-slavery party and fought to free blacks from slavery; (2) amended the Constitution to grant blacks freedom, citizenship and the right to vote; (3) started the NAACP to stop the Democrats from lynching blacks; (4) passed the civil rights laws of the 1860’s that were overturned by the Democrats when they took over Congress in 1892;
(5) founded the HBCUs; (6) started affirmative action enforcement in 1969 to help blacks get jobs and contracts based on merit; and (7) fought the Democrats for over six decades until Republicans finally achieved passage of the civil rights laws of the 1950’s and 1960’s under the leadership of Republican Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois. it defies logic for Democrats to claim that, after Republicans spent over 100 years fighting the Democrats on behalf of blacks and finally won, all the racist Democrats suddenly rushed into the Republican Party. In fact, those racist Democrats declared that that they would rather vote for a “yellow dog” than a Republican because the Republican Party was known as the party for blacks. Facts about the racist past of the Democratic Party can be found in such books as A Short History of Reconstruction by Dr. Eric Foner, Unfounded Loyalty by Rev. Wayne Perryman, Bamboozled by Angela McGlowan, and Wrong on Race by Bruce Bartlett.