Palin: a curveball to the Democrats on shattering the glass ceiling
It occurs to me that McCain’s choice of Palin puts Democrats in a remarkably uncomfortable position regarding that glass ceiling. Not only are they perceived as having dissed women in their choice of Obama plus Biden and their rejection of Hillary, but now it’s necessary for them to criticize the person who has just become only the second woman nominated for Vice President by a major party.
And all this after they’ve already thrown the first one—Democrat Geraldine Ferraro—under the bus for daring to say an inconvenient but non-PC truth about candidate Obama.
[ADDENDUM: I just heard an interview with Ferraro on Fox News. She rightly points out that people vote for President and not Vice President. She also called the choice “exciting,” and said it will appeal to PUMAs who had been disaffected by the Obama campaign. Did I detect a small note of glee in her voice?]
McCain/Palin: young at heart
John McCain has announced the stunning choice of Sarah Palin for Vice President.
It’s stunning not only because she’s gorgeous. It’s stunning because it shows that John McCain isn’t quite as predictable and stuck in an old-white-guy rut as the opposition might want to paint him. Continue reading →
Sarah Palin: sent from Central Casting?
[NOTE: I wrote this post a couple of days ago but had kept it as a draft. Now that McCain has stunned me by picking Palin as his VP choice—I didn’t see that coming—I will publish it just as I wrote it.]
Now that Obama has anointed Biden as his VP pick, it’s time to speculate whom it might be for McCain.
I don’t know. How’s that for candor? But I understand why so many people wish it would be Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
Here are my reasons, not in order of importance. Continue reading →
The big yawn of political oratory
I’ve said before that I’m not an auditory learner. Although dialogue is fine, and I never had a problem listening intently to clients, the prepared speech has always been an enormous bore to me.
This was a big problem when I was growing up. Continue reading →
Shorter Democrat campaign: “Vote for me because I’m not George Bush, and he is”
If you wanted to condense the Democrats’ campaign into a simple sentence, this would be it: “Vote for me because I’m not George Bush, and he is.” And, as campaign slogans go, it’s not half bad. Continue reading →
Ayers and his revolutionary educational gameplan for America
Bill Ayers has been getting a lot of press lately for his connection to Obama and his status as “unrepentant terrorist” from the 60s.
But forget about that for a while, and take a good look instead at the “rehabilitated” Ayers—the “respectable” and “mainstream” professor of education rather than the terrorist. It appears that the Ayers brand of education is the attaining of the same Leftist revolutionary ends by more peaceful and more subtle means.
Read the whole thing. Remember it was written in 2006, without any anti-Obama tie-in.
Obama: champion of freedom of speech—except if that speech is against him
Obama is protesting an ad that targets his association with domestic 60s terrorist Bill Ayres. Here’s the ad:
Obama is asking his supporters to threaten to boycott stations running the ad. Continue reading →
Clinton’s speech did bring us together—on one topic, at least
Instapundit links to this Washington Post article entitled “Many Clinton Supporters Say Speech Didn’t Heal Divisions.”
I beg to differ. Continue reading →
Dowd gets stranger—and less limpid
Maureen Dowd’s latest on the Democratic Convention has two especially odd and ignorant moments, even for her. Continue reading →
Hillary: vote for Obama cause he’s not McCain (who is actually Bush in disguise)
I don’t usually watch much of the convention action, since I’m not a big one for speeches and infomercials. But I decided to tune in for the Hillary moment tonight.
Here are my impressions, not all of them especially deep: Continue reading →
Judgment and war: Obama and the Democratic party
It’s ironic that the surge’s success has made the issue of the Iraq War less central rather than more in this campaign. “Ironic,” because the passage of time has made it clearer that, no matter what one thinks of the wisdom of the war’s genesis, those who counseled that the surge was a failure even before it began (and that includes both nominee Obama and most of the Democratic Party leadership) were wrong. If we had followed their leadership, Iraq would have been an even worse failure—and tragedy—than Vietnam was decades ago.
Fortunately, they did not prevail this time. But how is it that this party and these leaders can ask us to trust their judgment and elect them to make decisions about military matters in the future? Continue reading →