What Stood Out This Week - 8/24-8/30

Democrats, Democrats, Democrats, Democrats, Democrats... Hey! Look at the pretty lady! Let's see What Stood Out This Week.

The Democrat

The convention was good political theater, with some genuine "making history" thrown in. I don't particularly need to review any of it here, since I wrote about it all week. My memory stays with Michelle Obama, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Brian Schweitzer, and Barack Obama. According to most liberal pundits, I should also have John Kerry on that list, but I think expectations are in general so low for him people are impressed if he comes off anything but snoozy.

The Republican

John McCain was mostly missing from the week, until he announced his running mate on Friday, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. She's like the Xavier Nady of politics: "Who?" Although these days that's perhaps unfair to Xady.

It's a choice that comes with its strengths and weakness. Strengths:

- It's now a historical election no matter what happens.

- She neutralizes one of Joe Biden's greatest assets: his ability to make people look really stupid. If he gets condescending and intolerant of her during their debate, he'll just look like a bully. But if he were to bully Mitt Romney, it would be funny and awesome.

- Because she's totally unknown, people can project whatever they want onto her (sort of like the early days of Barack Obama).

Weaknesses:

- She has way less experience than Obama, which would seemingly undercut McCain's whole argument for running against him, now that she's next in line behind a really old guy.

- She makes McCain look older. She makes him look a lot older. Look at them standing next to each other. He looks old enough to be her grandfather.

- She reminds me of McCain's penchant for younger, attractive women, including his McCaining of his first wife for his second and that lobbyist story from a few months ago that sort of went away. I think McCain is a dirty, old man.

- She's actually going through a bit of a scandal in her home state. Although she claims to have known nothing about it, her office (that would be the Alaska Governor's office) tried to get her sister's ex-husband fired from his state trooper job.

- The campaign is overestimating the PUMA vote. My hunch is that the disaffected Hillary voters who won't vote for Obama are a) already voting McCain; b) very loud but very small.

Finally, we won't know how the choice is until we see her on the trail, in the debate. She has a lot less time to convince voters that she's ready to be president than Obama has.

Overall, though? It won't make a big difference either way. Quayle didn't sink Bush 1, Cheney didn't sink Bush 2, Bentzen didn't help Dukakis, and Edwards didn't help Kerry. So why should Biden or Palin make any difference either?

And that's What Stood Out This Week...