Thursday, September 04, 2008

McCain's speech

I am uninspired. Details tomorrow.

Update:

So here's the transcript. I found it boring, formulaic and populist. It is now perfectly obvious that Palin is going to be the attack dog while McCain will try to act above the fray. The whole bit about "I work for you" was trite and the laundry list of people he has "fought" against recalled Al Gore's ridiculous "let me fight for you" speech of 8 years ago. Then he pulled out a list of supposedly struggling Americans to show just how much he relates to ordinary people. This wasn't a breath of fresh air, it was stale political theater.

In parts I found the speech to be incoherent. McCain said, correctly, that "We believe in a government that unleashes the creativity and initiative of Americans. Government that doesn't make your choices for you, but works to make sure you have more choices to make for yourself."

Fine, except it was followed up in short order by this:

"My fellow Americans, when I'm President, we're going to embark on the most ambitious national project in decades. We are going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us very much. We will attack the problem on every front. We will produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells offshore, and we'll drill them now. We will build more nuclear power plants. We will develop clean coal technology. We will increase the use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas. We will encourage the development and use of flex fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles."

If you truly believe in letting Americans make their own choices then you should let Americans decide what kind of energy they prefer to use. Also, this notion that we are going to stop buying $700 billion in Middle Eastern oil after a McCain Administration is sheer fantasy. Four years from now people are still going to be driving gas-powered cars that will require lots of oil from the Middle East. That's reality.

Basically, it just struck me, with precious few exceptions, as boilerplate. I wasn't expecting a whole lot and I didn't get a whole lot. Imagine how much enthusiasm this ticket would be generating if McCain had picked Romney or Tom Ridge as his running mate -- yikes.

Another update: I agree with this take.

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