Winner of Political Conventions?

One of my Ohio Republican friends asked me this morning which of the two political conventions was the most successful.

Obama's supporters were already united in support of their candidate. The result was an unprecedented crowd of 84,000+ in the stadium to show him and us that they are ready for a change in leadership in America. No politician in American history had ever gathered that many people in one spot to hear a political speech!

The Democratic convention must be considered a great success.

McCain's supporters, on the other hand, gathered as a disjointed amalgamation of individuals seeking a leader for THEIR causes. McCain was not their guy but they were there, nonetheless, to go through the motions. What happens? McCain picks Sarah Palin to be his running mate, someone totally unknown to the American people and barely known among Republicans. However, because she is a believer in all things the Republican base holds dear, she is able to energize the crowd, unite them, and send them stampeding out the doors ready to vote McCain/Palin into office. Indeed, some of them thought the order of the ticket ought to be reversed!

The Republican convention must be considered the more successful because it accomplished a miracle.

In Alaska, people are still decompressing. One of her Republican competitors said today, "She is not ready to be governor; she is certainly not ready to be Vice President." While some people in Alaska are quite proud of her selection, others are stunned, in disbelief that the national party would pick such an unqualified person.

Conservative Jim Wooten, writing in the Atlanta papers, said she is "one of us." Again, as I have written before, we should not be looking for someone who is "one of us." The job is complex and difficult. It calls for an extraordinary person possessed of uncommon judgment and leadership abilities, broad knowledge of the world today, an even broader and deeper understanding of world history. She barely graduated from the sixth college she attended (I'm counting the one she attended twice).

If you witnessed how the Rs salivated over her, someone they had not met before last week, someone they knew nothing about, someone who simply told them what they wanted to hear....you begin to understand how easily dictators gain control of their countries.

The Rs will tell you quickly they are in favor of "less government in their lives" even as they demand government enforce their view on a few parochial issues that are important to them but which pale in comparison to the overriding issues on which all the people need true leadership -- fiscal responsibility, energy independence, health care, rebuilding US infrastructure, global warming, national security, including threats of nuclear, chemical and biological terrorism.

For the moment, the national political playing field has been leveled. The two candidates are nearly tied in the polls. As we go forward I pray the American people will not succumb to McCain's transparent pandering. He is using Ms. Palin as he has nearly every attractive woman who has crossed his path -- for his own selfish purposes. If he should get elected, he will forget about her entirely until he needs her. She can live in Alaska, as far as he is concerned (or in one of his seven houses), until he needs her.

Why would you pick someone who is under a cloud of suspicion in her own state, the subject of an ethics investigation, someone who billed the taxpayers of her own state for 312 nights she spent in her own home (WPost-9/9/08), someone who says her daughter had a choice of whether or not to keep the baby and yet stands ready to tell the rest of America's women they won't have such a choice if she is elected.

Why would you pick someone who is so totally out of step with mainstream America -- favors teaching creationism, favors earmarks (even though McCain opposes them), hired lobbyists to obtain $27 million in earmarks for her small town (the same lobbyists whose influence McCain says he wants to expel from corridors of power). She is anathema to all that McCain has been saying through his "Straight Talk" political philosophy, except that she is attractive, can read well from a teleprompter and has the right stance on all of the extreme right wing issues the base of his party holds dear.

If this is not political expediency at its core, I've never seen it. Karl Rove hit it on the head when someone asked him whether or not Obama should pick Tim Kaine, former mayor of Richmond and now governor of Virginia as his running mate: "If you pick Governor Kaine, you make an intensely political choice which says, you know, that ‘I’m not really first and foremost concerned with – is this person capable of being President of the United States.” Last time I check Richmond was larger than Wasilla, AK (200,000 compared to 7,000) and Virginia has 7.6 million citizens compared to Alaska's 700,000. Why shouldn’t the Rove rationale apply to Ms. Palin?

What I see is a base that doesn't care about governing, only about winning and making sure their issues are taken care of. Is that what we're about? I hope not. I have been watching the HBO series on John Adams (via Netflix) and it is terrific...but I wondered how sad it would make Adams and the other founders if they could see the sorry state into which we have devolved as a nation.

If the McCain/Palin ticket wins, I fear there is little chance America will arrest its current steep decline in power and influence on the world stage!