OBAMA’S SPEECH….That was a helluva speech, wasn’t it? Damn. Here were my two favorite parts. First this:
It’s not because John McCain doesn’t care. It’s because John McCain doesn’t get it.
For over two decades, he’s subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy — give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is — you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps — even if you don’t have boots. You’re on your own.
Well it’s time for them to own their failure. It’s time for us to change America.
Yes, yes, yes. Thank you. Don’t just tie McCain to George Bush, tie him to Republican policies. And then explain, in direct, simple terms, why those policies have been failures. More like this, please.
Then there was this:
But what I will not do is suggest that the Senator takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other’s character and patriotism.
The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America — they have served the United States of America.
So I’ve got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.
This is an iron fist in a velvet glove. Or is it a velvet fist in an iron glove? Whichever it is, he’s calling out McCain in plain language not just for running a nasty, Rovian campaign, but for running a fundamentally unserious campaign. By tackling this head on, Obama has put a serious dent in McCain’s ability to continue campaigning with dumb soundbites and too-cute-by-half innuendo. This isn’t a teenager’s campaign for junior high school student council, he was saying, it’s a campaign for president of the United States and you’re old enough to know that you should damn well treat it that way.
And then, there was the conclusion. I’ve always been pretty immune to that kind of soaring, but relatively content-free, oratory, but I was just spellbound. I honestly can’t remember the last time that’s happened. And I don’t care what the talking heads insisted on jabbering about all day, the setting was perfect, the stage was perfect, Obama’s cadences were perfect, and it was just about as good a political rallying cry as I’ve ever heard. John McCain looks very, very small right about now.
