In a great Dayton Daily News commentary this morning, Martin Gottlieb suggests that "John McCain made an amateurish mistake last Friday in Dayton."
McCain failed to use the opportunity to put forth a rebuttal to Obama's acceptance speech the night before. This undoubtedly shows how panicked McCain had really become and that it was truly an 11th-hour pick. It gives insight into his decision-making process (or lack of one) and how unprepared he was after having all spring and summer to work out a plan. Instead, he chose to try a "surge" because he had no plan contingencies worked out. Sound like Iraq?
At the Dayton event, McCain looked like he was up all night playing craps, or he was up all night cramming for that final exam. Maybe it's an improvement over all the times he stayed up partying and chasing exotic dancers as a pilot and hob-nobbing with lobbyists in Washington after marrying Cindy got him far enough up the ladder.
The subject here is not his selection of a running mate. Whatever one thinks about that, he did something else that speaks of a certain frazzlement: He hardly spoke.
Thousands of people had come to hear a speech by the next president of the United States.
Gottlieb asks his readers if Obama would have done something similar. After seeing how he handled the primaries and run his campaign, you and I know the answer to that. McCain, just like Hillary, was in the driver's seat early against Obama. Hillary ran a tough campaign, certainly much more organized than McCain. She didn't ignore her supporters like McCain did in Dayton. McCain is still trying to recover. He may not at this point. His "maverick" image has morphed into a "loose cannon" one. And some have also seen it as confirmation of his "appeaser" status to Bush/Cheney. More of the same seems to be an increasingly fitting attack point on McCain as the election clock ticks down.
The promise inherent in these things is a speech by the presidential candidate, a speech that allows people to say they had heard his pitch in person. Indeed, the Nutter Center event was to be McCain's first real speech after the Democratic convention that had relentlessly portrayed him as a carbon copy of the the current unpopular President and a flip-flopper extraordinaire. The rebuttal promised to be juicy.
It never happened.
McCain had a three-month head start on Obama and ended up with this panic-driven VP pick to appease the Bush/Cheney version of the Republican Party. Where's the "maverick" in this? I can't see anything other than more of the same from John McCain. Can you?
McCain, by contrast, let some videos do his talking. Screens around the Nutter before he talked kept showing him giving his serial number when he was a POW and later when he was recovering from his war injuries.
You have to understand how long these rallies are. The Nutter gates opened at 9 a.m. By the time McCain showed up after noon, thousands of people had been sitting there for two hours or more. They'd been subjected to speeches by local politicians — which, let's face it, thousands of people do not go out of their way to see — plus musical interludes, local high school cheerleaders and the videos.
After all that, they had some red meat coming.
The only red meat John McCain has coming has been scripted by Bush/Cheney. Endless videos and stories about his POW experience have been played out. He has nothing left to tell us, except how he's going to appease Bush/Cheney. Now his VP pick appears to be nothing but more of the same in order to appease the Bush/Cheney version of the Republican Party. Maybe that's why McCain skipped a speech. As Gottlieb pointed out, there were even international news organizations in Dayton that day, including CBC and Al Jazeera English out of London. McCain skipped class that day, just like he skips important Senate votes when it's time to take a stand.
McCain followed his lifelong character trait - he is a user of people and blows in whatever direction suits his ambition best, dumping to waste whatever he promised up to that point. He was only a "maverick" when his Republican majority could cover for him.
His supporters at the Dayton event went home with nothing. Many of them on buses all the way back to Kentucky. Let's hope the American voters don't swallow the "Country First" BS on November 4. If he wins, you know where that slogan will end up on January 21, 2009. Bush/Cheney will still be the masters, not the American public.