Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more cynical (say than Palin), McCain gives an even more shockingly cynical speech. His plea for bipartianship is marked by portraying Democrats as elitists (what Paul Krugman calls McCain’s “Resentment Strategy“). Next he vows to fight the elitists in Washington who are running the show, but here he forgets to mention that it is McCain himself and his Republican clan who are and have been running the show for the last eigh years in the presidency and the last twelve in Congress.
Then McCain defines himself as a maverick who believes in country before party, but this comes after he has just negotiated the official GOP platform where he has yielded on almost every position dear to him, thus giving in to his party’s most vested interests.
After telling us how much of a hero he was, still is, and how he, and no other person in the country, will fight for the country that saved him, he does not believe himself to be “blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need.” Then what was the entire speech about, John?
Finally, our hero cries out, “Americans want us to stop yelling at each other.” Did he hear Rudy’s or Palin’s speeches? As the New York Times properly asks today in its editorial,
Americans have a right to ask which John McCain would be president. We hope Mr. McCain starts to answer that by halting the attacks on Mr. Obama’s patriotism and beginning a serious, civil debate.
Don’t count on it.
Grave Error 