Joe Conason

Lacking McCain's own compelling personality and affecting presence, his convention speech would have been an utter disaster. His staff owed him a better text and a better stage.  Repeating the same old material that has been recycled so often this past week and over the past ten years does not create a convincing image of change. Or so I argue here.

Ad libbing as he warmed up the Republican convention crowd for their vice presidential nominee, Rudolph Giuliani quipped: “She got an 80 percent approval rating. You don’t get those kinds of numbers in New York!”

Of course, getting those numbers would be just as easy for a New York mayor or any other mayor or governor if they were able – like the charming hockey mom -- to send $1200 to every man, woman and child in their jurisdiction thanks to a windfall profits tax on the oil industry.

But wait a second. Didn’t Rudy tell us that she had reduced taxes and cut government spending?

Actually, for all her boilerplate conservative rhetoric about the wonders of freedom and the evils of taxation and government, her career reflects a penchant for raising taxes and redistributing wealth.  read more »

Republicans hate nothing more than nosy, enterprising reporters who dismiss whatever piffle the party bosses hand out and insist on…well, reporting. Yesterday Steve Schmidt whined piteously to Howie Kurtz about the “frenzied” coverage of Sarah Palin, as journalists around the country attempt to discover who she is and what she has done (besides hunt and fish) before she gets any closer to running what is still the world’s most powerful government.

Having failed to vet her properly, Schmidt deeply resents the reporters who are now trying to perform the task that he and his posse punted. But somebody has to do it, and it does get messy – especially when the presidential nominee picks a politician whose brief resume features her service as mayor of a town with a population under 15,000.  read more »

Families deserve privacy about family matters, but families that want absolute privacy should probably stay out of politics. Sooner or later someone would have noticed the pregnancy of Bristol Palin, 17-year-old daughter of John McCain’s vice presidential pick, especially since everyone in her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, seemed to know already. The question that remains is what, if anything, her plight may portend for the rest of us.

With all due respect to this young woman, her future husband and the rest of the family—and best wishes to all of them for a successful birth—let us first stop pretending that this is good news.  read more »

My old friend Sidney Blumenthal, whose Republican friends sometimes tell him more than they should, has an intriguing
] post up at Arianna's place. Sid says Mc Cain's choice of Palin was motivated largely by continued feuding with Karl Rove. Which speaks well of McCain, I suppose, but is still a poor way to pick a vice president. McCain wanted Lieberman but Karl had hi own ideas. Read it.
Joe Conason

The strength of Barack Obama's acceptance speech lay not in its eloquence but in the candidate's determination to answer, methodically and clearly, the remaining doubts about him.

Woven into the theme of America's promise, Obama methodically answered the hard questions. Is he an exotic elitist, remote from the concerns and values of the sinking American middle class? No, he was raised by middle-class Americans who had their own ups and downs and taught him those same values. Is he too diffident to fight for victory in a harsh election? No, he told the Republicans to bring it. He directly confronted insinuations about his patriotism, then refuted their claims about John McCain's judgment, experience, and independence (and hung Bush around McCain's neck).  read more »

To follow Bill Clinton as a speaker is almost impossible on any occasion, let alone after a speech as strong and stunning as his endorsement of Barack Obama.

But the speech delivered so doggedly by John Kerry—as the cable anchors talked over him—was analytically sharp and politically compelling. He gave himself the satisfaction of denouncing Karl Rove by name for the Swiftboat smears. More important, however, was his enunciation of the failures of Republican foreign and security policies—and how the Bush administration has tardily come round to the use of diplomacy with North Korea and Iran. Which happens to be the same approach favored by Obama. That photo op of Michelle with Obama's World War II uncle, who looks like he came straight from the VFW hall, wasn't bad either. Nice of the Obama team to give Kerry that moment.

The cliché question of the day is whether Bill Clinton's speech this evening will somehow overshadow Hillary's uplifting call to unity last night.

But that question misunderstands the his-and-hers moment. Their speeches will follow a pattern, logical if not seamless.

She spoke about the imperative to elect a Democratic president; he will talk about what a Democratic president can do.

The latter is a topic that permits him to discuss the achievements of his eight years in office as well as the promise of an Obama administration. The idea is to lend sinew and substance to what many Clintonites worried—until Senator Clinton spoke—would be a wispy, issue-free convention.

What was missing from Hillary Clinton's otherwise boffo speech last night? She neglected to mention much of anything about the nominee, including why he is ready for the job and will do it well.

Her husband is even less likely to make the case for Obama because they scarcely know each other. And aside from a few perfunctory phone conversations, Obama has done little to improve their relationship.

Indeed, friends of the former president say that the Illinois Senator made matters worse when he rebuffed an invitation to visit Clinton in Chappaqua. It seems obvious that Obama will need his help, between now and November and even more if and when he wins.

Perhaps Obama has realized that pushing Clinton away is the same mistake Al Gore made, for very different reasons. The two sides are now discussing a visit to Clinton's Harlem office sometime soon.

''We're not going to take that crap!'' cried Susan Rice, the Obama foreign policy adviser and former Clinton White House national security staffer.

What they won't take are those Republican insinuations about Obama's fortitude and patriotism.

Instead, she vowed that the Democratic campaign will force the G.O.P. to answer for ''John McCain's bad judgment.''

Her promise drew an appreciative roar from a big, very patriotic crowd listening to Rice at the Vote Vets/National Security Network reception at the Denver Athletic Club this afternoon, which attracted former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn.).