So didja watch the debate? I’m not a huge fan of ‘debates’ (they’re not real debates, of course), but I watched some of Biden-Palin (enough to see that she was doing much better than I’d expected or wanted) and I watched most of last night’s. I thought McCain was godawful. Awkward, stumbling, unconvincing, unimpressive – and nasty with it. ‘That one’ – it’s all over the place now, but why shouldn’t it be? His hostility and contempt are creepy. Of course, this is the guy who called his (second) wife a cunt in front of a reporter.
Anyway – this ‘Not Presidential’ thing really makes me sick. What is that supposed to mean? Too smart? Too poised? Too calm? Too knowledgeable? Too good at thinking on his feet? Too skilled at talking without a script? Too thoughtful? No, he can’t mean any of that, can he? So what does he mean? It’s very hard not to suspect that he means just what he appears to mean. It’s very hard not to conclude that there is no low too low – so hard that I have no intention of trying. I think he’s stopping as low as he possibly can, and that that’s very low.
The idea itself is completely stupid, you know. How many US presidents have been ‘presidential’? Very damn few. Truman? Nixon? Bush? Come on. Even some of the better ones haven’t been ‘presidential.’ Johnson was widely considered an embarrassing hick in the wake of the prince of Camelot, but actually he was a good one domestically – but he warn’t ‘presidential.’ Obama in fact strikes me as being more ‘presidential’ than anyone since Roosevelt. McCain, on the other hand, strikes me as a snake.
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18 responses to “Local gossip”
Have you read the Orcinus blog? The people who run it do a bang-up job chronicling the covert (and occasionally overt) bigotry of the McCain campaign and its fellow travelers.
Although apparently even the bigots have begun reconsidering their votes in the light of the impending collapse of “free market” conservatism.
Oh, I forgot to post the address.
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/
Good stuff.
The “meme” going around is that Palin “exceeded expectations” during the debate. Huh? Am I the only one who thought she was terrible? She never answered a single question, spewed irrelevant half-understood talking points, mangled her syntax, uttered unconvincing cornball folksy catch-phrases, and winked at the audience several times like a waffle-house waitress hoping for a big tip. I found her performance insulting to me as a woman. Compare her to someone like Kay Hutchinson or Christine Whitman or Olympia Snowe, who know what they’re talking about and conduct themselves with dignity.
Well, “expectations” were that she was going to fall silent or make a truly stupid mistake (which she did do a couple days later with ‘Our neighbor Afghanistan’). Apparently logorrhea is considered a better outcome.
It just goes to show how degraded American political discourse is that a potential President of the United States can stand up there on stage and declare straight out that she isn’t going to answer the moderator’s questions. More and more people appear to be waking up to it, though.
Well, even we RWDBs feared she would screw up on stage. As a Toastmaster, I often tell learner public speakers that the basic measure of success is to have got up, spoken, shut up, and sit down without injuring yourself.
She seems to have acheived that.
McCain strikes me as doddering. Particularly when he says “my fellow prisoners” when he means to say, presumably, “my fellow Americans”. It’s not even the mistake so much as that vapid micro-smirk on his face afterwards. It’s as if he knows he’s said something tremendously clever, and if only he could remember what it was…
After those bizarre interviews with Couric, it’s not easy to imagine what Palin would have had to do in order not to meet or exceed expectations. Drool visibly? Throw her shoes at the moderator? Ask about the swimsuit and talent portions of the evening? I mean, the bar has been set pretty low here. She’s no Jennifer Dunn.
I agree, he has the air of power that you expect to see in a president!
I guess the point is that he looks too damned Presidential to be President.
That is certainly be consistent with a choice for Palin as running mate.
I am sure McCain firmly believes that a next President should be everything but Presidential and fully like a General – in combat boots.
Same for Vice-President, with the small difference that traditional differences need to be heeded so – with combat high heels.
—Camille Paglia
Yes, Camille Paglia is absurd, but I already knew that – why quote her at such length here? (She’s still blathering about Madonna; honestly…)
“Apparently logorrhea is considered a better outcome.”
Apparently. I can take logorrhea as long as it’s coherent and on point. But rambling, unintelligible, off-point logorrhea is, in my book, worse than falling silent or making dumb mistakes.
“It just goes to show how degraded American political discourse is…”
Indeed. Take, for example, ChrisPer’s remark, which constitutes a splendid demonstration of the soft bigotry of low expectations:
“Well, even we RWDBs feared she would screw up on stage. As a Toastmaster, I often tell learner public speakers that the basic measure of success is to have got up, spoken, shut up, and sit down without injuring yourself. She seems to have acheived that.”
If this is the best defense that even her fans can come up with….
LBJ may (and I mean may)have been good domestically, but I have one word for you…Vietnam.
(Ooo. Meme again, this time in between quotation marks, as if to highlight the incorrect use of a strange concept)
Sorry if I spoke too harshly about your candidate, DFG, but you can’t honestly believe she did a good job in the “debate” (this time between quotation marks, as if to highlight the incorrect use of the term to describe what took place at Washington University on Oct. 2, 2008) or that she is even remotely qualified for any sort of national office.
In fairness DFG L.B.J didnt start the Vietnam war he inhereted it from J.F.K who took it over from Ike before him, he probably could have done a better job with the hand he was dealt but I dont think it fair to dismiss him. The civil rights bill would have never passed without his tireless eforts or the great society programs?
Thats a horrible comment from him but also an unnecessary distinction from you. She is his wife, no reason or need to put the second in front of it. She is not devalued because of this.
I didn’t mean that she was! On the other hand, if one knows a little about the circumstances of McCain’s divorce of his first wife, he is devalued because of it. (I’m not sure that’s why I said it though. Don’t remember. I think it may have been just by way of accuracy, and that that was the point of the parenthesis. Just ‘wife’ could have been confusing; I think that was all.)
dzd intresting link although I am at a loss to understand how what would seem to be normal political diagreements can be catagorised as bigotory or dog whistle racism? Or is disagreeing with a person of colour automaticly racist?
Palinex: A New Morning After Pill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCZcrK6J9Xk