McCain Jumps the Maverick
There is nothing that is so inherently moving that it can't be beaten to death by endless repetition.
The effectiveness of John McCain's biography reached the tipping point a couple of nights ago. And then it just kept going. And going. McCain has jumped the Hanoi shark. Fred, Rudi, Sarah, Lindsay, Joe, on and on and on, the drumbeat: he was a POW, he's a maverick, and . . . and now? Now what, exactly?
What will McCain do to make a better future for the American people? He won't give in to the North Vietnamese. Plus he'll veto marginal chickenshit projects that added together amount to the national government's popcorn money. Fight the Cong, veto the small stuff and . . . and . . .
And nothing.
Boil the speech down and it amounted to "Screw the Republican party and all it's leadership: I'm going to give them exactly what they want."
GOP boilerplate interrupted by loud assertions of maverickhood and marinated in ancient history.
A semi-serious question: is McCain trying to throw this race?
(As always, my Tuscan caveat: I'm six hours off EST and watching these events later, on-line, over morning coffee. So my TV experience may not match yours.)
This entry was posted by Michael Reynolds, on
Friday, September 05, 2008.
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4:45 PM
You're seeing all of the inherent weaknesses in McCain's candidacy. They have always been there and by stepping away from the respect that McCain does deserve for his remarkable service, you're trying to focus on policy. The GOP convention was, as a whole, remarkably thin on policy. Policy wasn't the message, by design. And it's not necessarily that the GOP has no policies it can talk about, but rather, the convention was intended to be an almost purely emotional appeal for votes and support.