Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Sarah Palin and John McCain

It stands to be seen if Palin will create a bump for the McCain campaign...

...I've watched her speech and she had a couple of good moments, for example where she said parents of special needs children would have a friend in her. That was well played. And she initially hit on her "I'm just a regular gal" theme, also well played.

But she dropped the ball on a couple of occasions. She said she would talk about her responsibilities as Alaskan Governor...the crowd cheered. When they stopped cheering she started talking about Obama's experience as a community organizer and never picked up the thread about her duties as governor. That was her chance to clear up any speculation about her experience. In fact, rather than inform us about her own experience, she hit on Obama's inexperience...McCain's same talking points. She didn't address any of the abuse of power scandals, any of the Ted Stevens associations, or her hiring of lobbiests to secure earmarks for her town.

Mostly she shot a lot of one liners at Obama.

The post of VP is generally an Attack Dog role. From what I saw tonight, she's not going to be an effective attack dog. She's just there to prop up McCain among evangelicals and the Far Right base.

It seems like a lot of missed opportunities. Though it's not her place to lay out policy.

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