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A pitiful showing at McCain/Palin GOP convention

Les Payne

September 8, 2008

Upstaging the GOP presidential candidate who can't read a speech, the exuberant Gov. Sarah Palin exposed the nominee as a listless, 72-year-old senior citizen taking a tricky handoff from the nation's most unpopular commander-in-chief and likely its most incompetent.

John McCain's GOP convention, lest we forget, was blessed at the outset with Hurricane Gustav offering a handy excuse for President George W. Bush to steer clear of St. Paul. The titular head of the party and his fearsome vice president had formed a Category 5 storm taking dead-aim at the Republican National Convention. The McCain-Palin team took to the attic, armed with their hatchets, in case the Bush-Cheney storm surge forced them to hack through the Xcel Center roof.

Under cover of Gustav, the White House duo diverted from the Twin Cities and the GOP Convention was spared last week.

The maneuvering was staged because McCain needed to free himself as a prisoner of Bush's disastrous policy after embracing the president to get the nomination. So the Gulf hurricanes, with the news media in tow, churned up just in time to bail out the convention, sparing the embarrassment of another set of arm-in-arm photos with Bush. Instead, he accepted the handoff from the president safely in the White House, some 1,100 miles away.

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The delegates were thus left to endure four days of sweet uttering from McCain's vanquished primary rivals - and the nominee had to debut Gov. Palin, his vice-presidential ringer.

Fred Thompson spoke early and while removing any doubt as to why he lost the primary, the actor gave no clue as to how he could possibly have gotten elected to the U.S. Senate. Damning Sen. Barack Obama down dale, the "Law & Order" star interrupted his keynote speech to clear his throat, by one count, an irritating 70 times.

Other primary losers walking the convention plank for McCain included the insouciant Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and the hair-trigger Rudolph Giuliani. The self-righteous, nobody-tells-me-what-to-do, former prosecutor-mayor hogged so much TV prime time that a video salute to the veep nominee had to be scrapped until the next day.

Sarah Palin made it to the GOP stage and walked off a star. It didn't take much at this convention.

The lone merit badge McCain brought to the convention - and to his campaign for president, really - was his 5 1/2 years as a POW. Discussing his 23rd mission that landed him in North Vietnamese hands, the former Navy pilot didn't tell delegates about the damage his bombs wrecked; the lives they destroyed.

When McCain was shot down, I happened to have been serving as an Army Ranger captain on the staff of Gen. William Westmoreland, the commander of all U.S. forces. I don't pretend to know McCain. But the war itself was an ill-advised effort to extend European colonialism over a resisting Asian people. Some of those who served may in some instances be considered heroes - but the Vietnam War was not heroic. Delegates would have guessed otherwise listening to McCain. Furthermore, our side lost ignominiously, another fact McCain avoided in discussing wise use of U.S. military power.

If his POW record is mainly what McCain brings to the table as a potential commander-in-chief, then he's a problematic candidate at best. This may account for the excitement in the halls of the St. Paul convention when delegates got a look at a fresh civilian face whose behavior has not been modified by torture.

And what exactly did Palin add? "Energy" was a word heard often, highlighting the dimness of McCain's bulbs. Palin read effectively from the teleprompter; another skill the nominee lacks. Then there was the Alaska mayor-governor's management performance, exaggerated as it turns out, but still it contrasted with the absence of such electoral experience in the Arizona senator's resume. It did not escape delegates' notice that she is 44 with a young family, while McCain is a decade beyond early retirement and well into Social Security.

The clear message of the GOP convention, as with the Democratic primary, is that the future of the nation should not be trusted to the same senior citizens who drove us off the road into this dismal swamp.

The torch must indeed be passed to a new generation of Americans.