John McCain, as Uninspiring as his Running Mate Was Electric
I have to say that, thus far, I’m terribly unimpressed with John McCain’s speech. He’s a good enough speaker, but it seems like he’s giving a speech to an audience that simply isn’t there.
He’s also spending way too much time on bipartisanship. Way, way too much time. This is a political pet peeve of mine and perhaps I’ll go into it more later, but there is a reason our Founders set up an adversarial political system. It’s a very bad thing when a country decides to unify behind one leader. History is crystal clear on that.
I’m also very unimpressed with the new government programs McCain wants to roll out. Barack Obama is right in small part when he says that McCain will be like eight more years of Bush. Unfortunately for him, the similarities are in an area where he’d agree with both of them: more big maternal-government programs. Conservatives should not forget that they’re going to have to fight hard against McCain’s big government impulses.
Conservatives should also remember that his being a Maverick has not been a good thing. It’s led to the biggest infringement of our First Amendment rights seen in my lifetime. It’s led to a decade of John McCain giving conservatives the finger on a number of issues including tax cuts, earmark reform, and immigration.
And let’s also remember that for all his talking about how he’s going to cut the size of government, he has absolutely no track record of doing so. He’s been in Congress since the 1983 (I believe) and I still can’t point to a moment where he’s put so much as a sliver of political capital at risk to shrink the size of government. I’m still waiting for anyone to show me where he has.
He’s much stronger when he talks about national defense. It is easily his strong suit. Outside of that, he’s pedestrian veering heavily toward uninspiring. He should stick to his strengths and let his running mate handle the domestic policy stuff on the campaign trail.
Good finish, though, even though the crowd wasn’t paying a darned bit of attention to what he was saying. It was a good touch for him to keep on going even through the applause. That was a good conclusion to what was, mostly, a mediocre speech.
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- Rudy on Freaking Fire!
- Did Sarah Palin Just Make Conservatism Incredibly Cool Again?
- If You Thought the Left Was Panicking Before…
Category: 2008 Republican National Convention
I'm with you. I'm not crazy about McCain. I think he's making a _big_ mistake thinking he can work in a bipartisan way. I think they've manipulated him in the bills where he _has_ worked with Dems. I'm afraid he'll find that he can no more trust them than Bush learned he was able to. The best he'll be able to do is hold them off.
I hope he doesn't make the same mistake Bush did, and not refuse to veto bad bills sponsored by Repubs just because they're his party. That's a big mistake. Bush should have thumped them hard when they got out of line…if he had, Repubs might still be in the majority. Maybe.
[...] politician who knows how to fire up a crowd? That would be a huge change from the supremely uninspiring John McCain. If you look at Perry’s career, it seems that fate is always arranging the universe so that its [...]