Beyond the Palin Speech

(I just can’t help myself.)

So hey, good speech. After three days locked away with the best speechwriting talent that Republican money can buy, with a crowd primed and ready to cheer her on, Sarah Palin succeeded … maybe not surprisingly, but admirably.

I didn’t watch the whole speech, I’ll admit. My wife and I have been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD lately, so we switched between butt-kickin’ heroines. And I don’t have a problem with saying Palin kicked a little butt last night. She had a great line about Obama’s foolish “bitter” comment. She had a slightly less great line about community organizers—actually pretty snide and unfair, but the crowd Luuuved it. And she got in a dig at Michelle Obama by saying how small town Americans “always” are proud of their country.

OK, so we know from this speech that she can attack the Obamas and media. And we know that John McCain is a great man. What else ya got?

At some point the R ticket really has to answer with something beside “Obama stinks.” They have to talk about the economy, about health care, about home foreclosures. They have to address education and energy—something beyond “we’ve got plenty of oil and gas on the North Range”—which, environmental concerns aside, simply isn’t true.

As they noted last night, great speeches aren’t enough. Vision is also required. And Sarah Palin’s Christianist, anti-choice, social Darwinist, anti-science vision of America is not a vision of this country’s future. It’s a vision of the past.

Speaking of a vision of the past, it was hard not to notice the Unbearable Whiteness of Being Republican last night when the cameras panned around the convention center. I mean, I expect to see fewer minorities at the RNC, but come on. I could count the number of African Americans I saw on one hand.

Now, how should the Obama camp respond to Palin’s speech? I’m thinking: the less said, the better. Let the R’s have their moment. Don’t come down like a ton of bricks on Palin and make her an even more sympathetic figure. Let McCain’s public nap, I mean, speech tonight pop the balloon all by itself. Or, if by chance he actually can match Palin (pretty unlikely, don’t you think?), give a lot of attention to the media’s fact checking.

For Palin,
it wasn’t pretty:

PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."

PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate."

THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."

THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.

(see the AP story for much more.)