Tomorrow's NY Times column by Frank Rich, full of links, gets every aspect of the convention and Palin right.
I warn you, it doesn't end on an optimistic note:
By hurling charges of sexism and elitism at any easily cowed journalist who raises a question about Palin, McCain operatives are hoping to ensure that whatever happened in Alaska with Sarah Palin stays in Alaska. Given how little vetting McCain himself has received this year — and that only 58 days remain until Nov. 4 — they just might pull it off.
But if you're looking for one place that details exactly the issue with McCain and gives links to every Palin controversy, this is the place to be.
Frank Rich is an outstanding columnist. His past as a theater critic I think gives him a real way with words as well as a dramatist's sense of building stories. And we certainly haven't seen a drama like this election in a long time. If for some reason you're only discovering Rich now, it's well worth going back and reading his past columns. He's one of the good guys and thoroughly eviserates McCain on several occasions.
For this column, he first compliments McCain for at least not being as nasty as Palin and Giuliani, but then cuts right to the heart of the biggest problem McCain faced in his speech - the truth:
As is nakedly evident, the speech’s central argument, that the 72-year-old McCain will magically morph into a powerful change agent as president, is a non sequitur. In his 26 years in Washington, most of it with a Republican in the White House and roughly half of it with Republicans in charge of Congress, he was better at lecturing his party about reform than leading a reform movement.
He then calls into question McCain's personal credibility as well. While he doesn't touch the hot rod of McCain's P.O.W. trumpeting, he does call McCain out on his blatant, um, inaccuracy of claiming to be a maverick while not acting as one:
Even more fraudulent, if that’s possible, is the contrast between McCain’s platonic presentation of his personal code of honor and the man he has become. He always puts his country first, he told us: "I’ve been called a maverick." If there was any doubt that that McCain has fled, confirmation arrived with his last-minute embrace of Sarah Palin.
In the interests of fair use, I won't quote his magnificent central paragraph slamming Sarah Palin on every misleading fact she has stated so far. But I urge you to read it and book mark the article. In that one 10-line paragraph, I counted 9 links that back up the facts, calling her out on the bridge to nowhere, the earmarks, troopergate, and her role as head of the Alaska National Guard. He ends saying "How long before we learn she never shot a moose?"
He calls out McCain on his non-maverick move of not picking Lieberman, refers to his "vetting" of Palin as "speed-dating", and calls McCain's hasty decision making a "dangerous personality tic." He calls McCain out on a whole bunch of other hastily made (and wrong) beliefs and decisions.
It's a powerful column, made more so perhaps by the fact that to me, it lacked some of Rich's usual fire and humor. I usually find myself gasping with awe and delight at his turns of phrase and how cleanly he slices the knife into his subject. This column didn't do that for me; frankly, it scared me. It was sobering and deeply disturbing. Read it, remember it, quote it, link it, cite it, send it.
And let's not let McCain win it.