9.03.2008

Out of Hiding and on to Primetime

Get ready now for an adequate and vague speech by Palin that will, per the expectations game, be hailed as a triumph.

My guess is it just doesn't matter. There are several aspects of the last few days' coverage that will stick in the long term, even if the media coverage swings away from onslaught in the near term.

In fact, a short term boon for McCain in this might be a long term loss. Their best bet for damage control is a backlash to an ad nauseum media onslaught on Palin. The sooner that onslaught declines from its frenzied peak, the less likely a backlash is. In other words, they might benefit most from the pot boiling over. If it stays on at a steady simmer, they're basically fucked.

Of course I'd prefer that she totally screw the pooch tonight. But the dimensions of the pick are pretty much the same as they are now even if she doesn't.

6 comments:

cj said...

I wonder if she thinks that McCain was tortured in Vietnam. Apparently neither George Bush nor Fred Thompson thinks so.

Grendel said...

Her voice is like donkeys tied to anvils falling down a glass staircase. The more people hear it, the more they will want to tear out their own jugular veins. Speak, Sarah! Speak on!

SER said...

Did you see the stuff in the media today that the speechwriters were having to rework her speech since it was too masculine? In other words, they wrote it before they knew the nominee. I wouldn't expect anything surprising from a speech like that.

cj said...

Memo to McCain: posing with young people is *not* a good idea.

Grendel said...

Also she's not going anywhere. She's in to the end. Most states require 60 days' notice to change the ballots, and we're very close to 60 days away from the election.

HGF said...

I watched the last ten or fifteen minutes of Palin's speech with an eye simply to her casting and the image she projects: forget the politics, can she do a Chorus Line? Jackie O. outfit and hair, combined with Police Chief Marge Gunderson's accent, pistol shooting, and backhanded insults, combined with Ann Coulter sex appeal and message discipline: one could see Palin's potential as a substance-scrubbed, talking-point issuing icon.

I also wonder about the power of the Republican ticket to now mirror and invert Obama-Biden. I will be interested to see if there is an effort from the right to criss-cross references, making it somehow a choice between the young, relatively inexperienced, history-making presences, Obama and Palin; and between the experienced foreign policy guys McCain and Biden--with a goal of making the Democratic ticket seem upside-down: the young, self-serving smooth-talker doesn't know his place, like Palin.