Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin on the "Patriot" Act:
Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America [and] he's worried that someone won't read them their rights?
I'm stretching her meaning, but to me, this as good as saying, "Let's support freedom in the abstract, BUT let's make sure that no undesirables have access to the same legal rights that apply to you and me."
I seem to recall--oh yes--something about people being innocent until proven guilty? And locking suspicious people away for years without any rights is a great way to in fact breed terrorism, not prevent it. Acting like people don't have rights makes them more rebellious and prone to violence.
I have to give her credit for a spectacular application of the second person, "you." It was rhetorically beautiful, especially this part:
And though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they are always, quote, "fighting for you," let us face the matter squarely. There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you . . . and that man is John McCain. Very moving: I mean this sincerely. I'm the last person in the world to belittle the real value behind good rhetoric. Good rhetoric means good execution, and I have no doubt that this was a well executed speech. I assume that the Republicans will love her after this.
Her entire argument against the nameless "opponent," Barack Obama, was rhetorically brilliant. Obama has his own brilliant rhetoric, so it's interesting that Palin may be able to challenge his subtle rhetorical style with her own, equally subtle rhetoric.
The strategy: she combates the Obama cult of personality with a cult of personality of her own. She erases the content behind his name, leaving the empty husk, "Barack Obama," to stand alone. At one point even the husk vanishes, and he is simply "our opponent." It's polite, suave, and just the right amount of sneaky. (Hey, I actually admire this quality in her speech!) She exercises her own cult of personality, while critiquing Obama for doing the same thing. But it's brilliant because it differentiates her cult of personality from his. If "Obama" is all surface and no depth, it frees "Palin" to become all depth and no surface. We forget that she was nothing but a name to us a week ago. She's no longer an empty name because she's passed that hot potato back to Obama.
This was a staged unveiling of the mystery woman formerly known as Sarah Palin. She unveils herself, saying, "I'm the real deal." I'd find it very depressing to unveil before the public in this way.
childminerva notes that at the RNC, the crowd is composed entirely of well dressed white people. Wish I'd looked more carefully at the crowd. Mainly, though, I wasn't watching but listening to them. And it certainly sounds like Palin can't pull off the Hillary Clinton punch line that appeals to working class citizens struggling to pay the bills. This line, delivered by Clinton, would have had a DNC audience roaring: And families cannot throw away more and more of their paychecks on gas and heating oil. Sarah Palin pauses, but the audience is deafeningly silent. She's trying to channel Hillary Clinton, and it's not working.