Jaimee put this together earlier today for the DemConWatch Green Screen Challenge. It's a little rough around a few edges, but it makes the point...

The audacity of narcissism.

At one point in his speech last night, taking a shot at Barack Obama, Republican nominee John McCain assured Americans that "I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need."

Which makes the following statistic kind of interesting. In a 50-minute speech, McCain used the word "I," or variations like "me" or "my" or "myself," more than 200 times.

That's about twice as many references to personal self-greatness as Obama used in Denver.

Yep.

Stephen Colbert is stealing all my best material: two-thirds of my YouTube portfolio wound up on the Colbert Report last night.



Officially, of course, we can't be certain that someone from the Report saw the Lieberman clip as I tried to disseminate it all around the Internets. Officially. Unofficially, it's clear that Stephen Colbert personally reads this blog.

Jeffrey Toobin on the McCain speech: "I thought it was the worst speech by a nominee that I've heard since Jimmy Carter in 1980. I thought it was disorganized, I thought it was it was theme-less, I thought it was very, very boring...I personally cannot remember a single policy proposal that he made because they had nothing connecting them. I found it shockingly bad."

Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson: "The policy in the speech was rather typical for a Republican. Pretty disappointing. It didn't do a lot of outreach to moderates and independents on issues that they care about. It talked, about issues like drilling and school choice which was really speaking to the converted. I think that was a missed opportunity. Many Americans needed to hear from this speech something they have never heard from Republicans before. And in reality, a lot of the policy they've heard from Republicans before."

Al Giordano: "A. Total. Disaster."

Wishful thinking, or will it bomb with undecideds and independents?

UPDATE: More at HuffPo, almost universally negative. Looks like I may be closer to the mainstream than I thought.

The second John McCain Green Screen Challenge has already begun.



(via Cynical-C)

The only moment of McCain's speech I connected with: When that kid in the audience yawned.

What to say about McCain's speech? That it seemed to come from a highlight reel of Republican conventions from the 1980s? That it might have been nice to include some content alongside the platitudes? That it's pretty mavericky to punctuate an hour-long love letter to oneself with a jab at other people's arrogance and self-obsession?

I'm torn.

But this speech wasn't for me. It was for other people, and I have no idea how those people will react to a speech that I found terminally devoid of interest. Yes, serve your country, yes, serve principles and causes bigger than yourself, yes, please, fight for us—but how? in what way? to what ends? John McCain didn't tell us anything tonight except that he thinks John McCain is pretty awesome.

Did Giuliani sink Palin's speech? Apparently Rudy was having so much fun he started improvising, going long and forcing the Republicans to cut Palin's video biography. As Kevin Drum writes, the video bios are kitschy, sappy, and highly effective—and most importantly Palin's fiery speech was written to be delivered after a hagiographic video that established her as a sympathetic and impressive figure of national stature. Without the video to bolster her, the speech came across quite differently; perhaps this, more than anything else, is why independents weren't buying.

In other words, is it possible that Rudy Giuliani's ego just saved the world?

UPDATE: TPM has the video as released to Fox News, describing it as "a glimpse into how the Republicans were planning to sell a soft-focus version of Palin's life as a soft-peddled intro into the harsh, partisan, and undeniably successful speech that followed."

Shankar D: "This Is What A Culture War Looks Like."

After Wednesday night’s RNC proceedings, the contrast between Senator Obama’s calls to unity and the GOP’s calls to cultural warfare couldn’t be clearer.

Just a few more politics links. Sorry if this isn't your thing—I get caught up in this stuff.

* Chris at Cynical-C links to a clip of Chris Matthews demolishing Republican congressman Adam Putnam on the Palin selection. I saw him do this yesterday—and like a lot of things I see Matthews do lately it makes me think he really does want that Senate seat in Pennsylvania.

* He's also got news that Palin has never actually issued an order to the Alaskan National Guard. georgia10 has the rest of your real vetting round-up.

* Via Srinivas, Dan Froomkin says what so few outside the blogosphere will admit:

One of the problems with modern political journalism is that when something manifestly absurd takes place, as long as there are people willing to argue both sides, our top reporters feel obliged to treat it as deserving of serious debate.

Case in point: John McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

* And David Plouffe has a nice rejoinder to the "community organizer, ha ha" stuff:

Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.

And it's no surprise that, after eight years of George Bush, millions of people have found that by coming together in their local communities they can change the course of history. That promise is what our campaign has been about from the beginning.

Viewing numbers for the second night of the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., are out and it’s not particularly good news for the party.

Some 21.5 million people watched the Republican convention Tuesday night, Nielsen reported this afternoon, down slightly from the 22.1 million who watched second night coverage four years ago.

By comparison, almost 26 million people watched the second night of the Democratic convention last week, when Hillary Clinton addressed the crowd.

Via notorious liberal hate site Daily Kos.

UPDATE: Live by ratings, die by ratings:
37,244,000 WATCHED PALIN SPEECH ... [24,029,000 WATCHED BIDEN; 38,379,000 WATCHED OBAMA]

How many will watch McCain tonight?

Has the liberal pushback against biased AP bureau chief Ron Fournier actually gotten results? The AP is out with a review of last night's Republican National Convention that is essentially a catalog of its many lies and mistruths.

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.

Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.

He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest.

To be fair, that's who she was talking to.

There's still more lies at the link.

His rise is remarkable in its own right - it's the kind of thing that could happen only in America. [laughter]

I have to echo Andrew Sullivan: why is this funny? What exactly is it about the nomination of Barack Obama that makes "only in America" a laugh line?

I'd really like to know.

Surprise visit from John McCain! My word, how unexpected. This is actually a place where Palin's vigor (and popularity with the base) hurts McCain significantly—the charisma gap is painfully, painfully stark.

It must be said that Palin gave a very good speech tonight. Her speech came from a parallel universe that bears no relation to the one in which you and I actually live, but as I expected, the presentation was strong. It's her night, and pretty clearly her entire convention. These people adore her.

Now, when's she going to talk to a reporter?

The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one's neck. The Hate had started.

As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even -- so it was occasionally rumoured -- in some hiding-place in Oceania itself...

Ah, Rudy. Who in public life has better mastered the art of being an asshole? To me this angry trivialization of Barack Obama's accomplishments won't work—it's too much, too mean and too ugly—but I've certainly been wrong about American political tastes before.

Whoops! Someone left the mics on. Great clip from Talking Points Memo.

This is what prominent Republicans really think about McCain/Palin, when they're not spinning.



Chuck Todd: Mike Murphy, lots of free advice, we'll see if Steve Schmidt and the boys were watching. We'll find out on your blackberry. Tonight voters will get their chance to hear from Sarah Palin and she will get the chance to show voters she's the right woman for the job Up next, one man who's already convinced and he'll us why Gov. Jon Huntsman.

(cut away)

Peggy Noonan: Yeah.

Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys -- this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it's not gonna work. And --

PN: It's over.

MM: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

CT: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.

PN: Saw Kay this morning.

CT: Yeah, she's never looked comfortable about this --

MM: They're all bummed out.

CT: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

PN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this -- excuse me-- political bullshit about narratives --

CT: Yeah they went to a narrative.

MM: I totally agree.

PN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it.

MM: You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.

CT: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.

MM: Yeah.

Big ups to Shankar: Rudy's speaking tonight. I'm breaking the embargo on this excerpt:

...but I know another person who was mayor on 9/11, and that's Sarah Palin. [applause]

I've been pleasantly surprised by the seriousness with which the mainstream media has handled John McCain's veepstakes roll of the dice: there's negative pieces on the poorly vetted, poorly thought-out selection in the New York Times, Washington Post, and L.A. Times today. However, I'm not hopeful this attitude of diligence and responsibility will last past tonight—Palin's ability to read a speech to an adoring crowd will be taken as "proof" that she's ready to take over as president if something happens to John McCain. (And yes, thank you, I'm already fully aware of the irony.)

I had high hopes the caught-flat-footed Lieberman video I uploaded last night would go viral and destroy McCain's credibility for all time. That hasn't happened (yet!), but so far it has been picked up by Washington Monthly / CBS Online, Cynical-C, and Crooks and Liars. Alongside the Daily Kos diary I hope that means it's catching some eyes. It's an incredibly revealing, damning, and best of all self-inflicted indictment of McCain's gamble from one of his top supporters; I can't say enough good things about it. Show it to anyone you can.