GUEST BLOGGER: I Loved Palin's Speech - Too Bad It Was a Disaster

[Sometimes I run across original research or information that is exactly the kind of stuff I live for - well thought out, well written, well researched commentary, the kind that your media experts get by the pound but think is too much for you to understand. The author, like many bloggers, has a need to keep his avocation under the radar for professional reasons. As he explains below, he goes by the name thereisnospoon at the progressive political website DailyKos, where we are both active members of the community. He has given me permission to publish his comments in their entirety. Enjoy]


I loved Sarah Palin's speech last night. No, really, I did. As a student of rhetoric, I couldn't help but admire the poise, the confident delivery of cutting lines read with a smile, the deft moves from pulling the heartstrings with family stories to clever jokes about hockey moms and pitbulls to biting invective at political opponents.

It was a speech in the best Ciceronian tradition, delivered not with stentorian bombast but with the charm of your small-town neighbor and the visual appeal of a celebrity actress.

And it was an utter, unqualified failure. As with so much else in her life, Palin may have gained greatly from her performance, leaving her a force to be reckoned with for years to come (assuming her myriad personal and political scandals don't sink her first), but she probably just hurt McCain's chances in 2008 as surely as she hurts everything else she touches.

Already the results of two focus group projects in different places (Nevada and Michigan) already strongly suggest that Palin did not sway the independents or the Clinton supporters that she needed to in order to overcome their concerns about her experience. Thing is, that shouldn't have come as any surprise to anyone who has ever done a political focus group this election season.

You see, I moderate focus groups for a living--mostly on the corporate side, but with some political work thrown in. I've done a couple of projects for non-partisan 527s and NGOs who are nonetheless on the progressive side, talking about what matters this election season. I was a precinct captain for the Obama campaign, talking to conservative Dems and independents. I also live in a Republican district, and don't miss an opportunity to talk to regular voters about what's on their minds. And anybody with half a brain who does this for a living could have told you that Palin's speech wouldn't work to persuade the independents and Clinton supporters McCain needs.

Without revealing too much (my clients' research results are proprietary), what I can tell you without hesitation are four universal factors:

1. Most importantly, times are too tough and the public too worried about their economic security to sweat the small stuff.

2. Issues trump personality this year. I know we say this every election cycle, but it really is true this year. People are apprehensive about the issues, and they're paying more attention than ever. Allow me to give you a quote from a Republican I talked to in a focus group setting:

"I like McCain personally. He's a war hero. I would have voted for him eight years ago, four years ago. But the issues are way too important now. People are in trouble."

3. Voters have very low tolerance for partisan red meat this year. This cuts both ways: voters no more want to hear about the reasons we got into Iraq (though many acknowledge it was for oil) than they want to hear about God, guns or gays. They want solutions.

4. Economics trumps all. Only in the Midwest Mountain West does Iraq play even a close second fiddle to economic concerns. Voters want solutions to stagnant wages, massive debts, gas prices, healthcare and a host of other economic concerns. They're sinking, and they want the government to do something.

By all four of those measures, Sarah Palin's speech was an absolute disaster.


1. In an election where the voters find "small" unappealing and want big, bold solutions to weighty problems, Palin's speech did little but extol the virtues of small: small towns, small government, small-scale issues and small-ball politics. She gave voters nothing profound, no inventive solutions or even inventive perspectives. At the end of the day, voters still had no idea what she would do to solve their problems.

In fact, she did spend an inordinate amount of time criticizing Democrats for wanting to increase the size of government. In an environment where voters are worried that politicians are selling out government infrastructure and not paying attention to job losses, and where "high taxes" don't even break the top five issues, selling the governor's plane on eBay and firing the governor's cook aren't exactly selling points.

2. As a personality on stage, she was terrific. Too bad voters aren't really that interested in personality this year. They want problems solved, they want change and they want answers. Sarah Palin talked a lot about her family and her values, but she provided no answers and talked very little about the issues that matter most to Americans.

3. It was a great piece of Ciceronian oratory--but like most Ciceronian oratory, it was nasty, cutting, vicious and full of divisive red meat. It was exactly the sort of grating partisan rhetoric that voters have said repeatedly they are turned off by.

4. Outside of oil drilling, there was almost nothing about core economic issues in her speech. In fact, they were so assiduously avoided that I can't help but wonder if independent voters felt almost insulted by the nonchalance of it all. Coupled with Rudy 9/11's rhetoric about "giving workers the right to work", Republicans clearly have no understanding what the problem is. It's not that workers can't necessarily find jobs (though that can be a problem depending on the community): it's that the jobs they can find don't pay enough to cover the bills.

What she did manage to do without a doubt is motivate and mobilize to a certain degree the evangelical base. But Republicans must take that for granted, else Obama will win in a devastating landslide. What the Palin pick was designed to do was appeal to independents and to Hillary's voters. By that measure, I'm almost certain that she flopped terribly. I could be horribly wrong, of course, but already the data are appearing to bear me out.

Of course, insofar as the speech was written for her she may escape much of the blame for this debacle. But that doesn't matter now: she gave the speech. She owns it.

And now the GOP will get to pay the price.

No More Rope-A-Dope For Barack Obama

I sat in the basement Thursday night, the remote control in my lap, fidgeting as I watched the cable news pundits interrupt the speakers at the Democratic National Convention to tell us the same things they had been telling us all week. Even though the contests had been over for weeks, it was as if it was a primary night, with me waiting for Barack Obama’s results to come in.

I’d seen the stock photos of Invesco Field in Denver for the past few weeks. Had heard all the talk, both for and against the idea of Obama using such a massive setting to give his acceptance speech. But it wasn’t until I turned on the TV when I got home and saw all the people milling around the field that I began to get a true sense of the enormity of the space.

I couldn’t sit still. It was nowhere near ten o’clock.

So I pushed the RECORD button. Put on some jeans and my Obama ’08 shirt. Clicked aimlessly on a few internet sites. Sharpened my hedge clippers. Opened a beer. Finally, I went outside with a Perdomo maduro, clipped the end of it, and fired up my triple flame torch.

Odd images from the primary season came back to me as I puffed – the mole at the base of Obama’s left nostril that seemed to grow larger whenever he stared at the camera, the heightened pitch of his voice whenever he came to the “this is the moment, this is the time” part of his stump speech, the strained smile he was always able to muster when congratulating his opponent on a victory – these were some of the many things I had come to know about Barack Obama over the last eight months.

He wouldn’t be pacing right now, I said to myself. He will be practicing the delivery of this speech the way Tiger Woods works on his putting before the final round of a golf tournament, reeling off the phrases of his big speech the way Tiger’s practice putts roll, one after another, straight into the cup.

After that thought, the last half of the cigar is enjoyable. I begin to think of my more politically aware buddies – one in Chattanooga, and one who lives two miles away. My buddy in Chattanooga is the kind of political junkie who is apt to answer his phone “I’m in the stadium! Did you see me? I’m four rows behind the Clintons.” But today he is in Tennessee. There is so much to say, we could talk for hours, but tonight…tonight is for listening. We will catch up later.

My buddy here answered his home phone on the first ring. “Yo, man,” he said, a greeting that was out of character for him. “R. says it must be you calling.” I’d known him since the first day of college, twenty five years ago. We had contemplated going to the Million Man March together. Watched the verdict of the O.J. trial being read together. Become exasperated over the “hanging chads” together. Commiserated over the September 11th tragedies together.

“What are you doing? Eisenhower’s daughter is on now.”

“Finishing a cigar.”

“Maybe I’ll come over later and smoke one with you. After the speech.”

When Barack Obama stepped out onto the stage, you could feel the tension in the air release all the way from Denver. Maybe it was the makeup, maybe it was the sleep he was finally getting, maybe it was the knowledge that he was finally in there – whatever it was, it was making him look like new money. His eyes were different, with a harder edged glint in them, exuding an aggressive confidence that almost matched the feeling I had in my chest.

The rope-a-dope was over.

There was no woodenness, no air of detachment, no non-threatening penitence – this was the genuine article, the electric half of the Obama personality he had been keeping under wraps this last eighteen months.

I felt the same way my father and his friends must have felt when they were watching Muhammad Ali fight – like they were watching themselves.

I became the most active listener in the history of listening for the next 45 minutes, listening with my ears, with my eyes, with the tips of my fingers, with the tips of my toes – if there was an Olympic gold medal for active listening, I would have been a contender.

Transform is not a big enough word for what we all saw last night – “transmogrified” is a more accurate way to describe the metamorphosis from the vague, idealistic version of Barack Obama into a forceful, insistent proponent of his message of change.

My buddy showed up after the speech, a fresh batch of cigars in hand. We clasped each other, the way Obama clasped Biden after the speech, and just looked each other in the eye, the word “unbelievable” written all over our faces.

We sat just outside the basement, watching the Republican response to Barack Obama’s acceptance speech on the big screen through the French doors. “What do you think the Republicans are gonna do now?” he said.

“There’s nothing left,” I said. “Rev. Wright, the flag pin, the muslim thing…you know they’re looking, but what else could there be to find?”

The talk of politics gave way to a moment of personal introspection. “Obama has done all this…he’s done all this, from state senate to D.C. to the White House in four years,” my buddy said. “When you think about, you have to ask yourself – what am I doing?”

My buddy can be considered a success by almost any measure. He has accomplished a lot in his legal career, with a burgeoning practice and a great family. But now, with the advent of this new height that has been reached in our society by a man only four years older than him, who shares his same brown skin, it looks like he is about to raise the bar for himself another couple of notches.

I have been silent as my buddy mused, for I am wrestling with transitioning from one industry to another, a process which causes you to have to think more critically about the choices you’ve made, the mistakes you’ve made, the opportunities you’ve turned away. But I am not despairing, because I have made a commitment to raise my own bar a few notches, to look up, not down, and to more fully embrace the new direction my life is about to take.

I would imagine that similar scenes played out in backyards and patios and decks and driveways and stoops around the country, other brown skinned men from all walks of live who saw a little bit of themselves in the fiery oratory of Barack Obama.


A rising tide, they say, lifts all boats.