Tape-Blogging the McCain/Palin Event

I'm looking at the YouTube video of the roll-out for Sarah Palin in Dayton, Ohio on Friday. Well, McCain certainly looks a lot better hugging Palin than he looked hugging George Bush.

But Palin's speech isn't that great. It wasn't bad or terrible either. It was just ok. Palin delivered the lines that McCain's team wrote for her in a workmanlike fashion. But she talked as though she had just heard a couple of days ago that McCain's theme for her would be "shaking up Washington."

Actually, she probably did hear that for the first time a couple of days ago.

Palin might be geeked up to be McCain's vice-presidential candidate, but her heart didn't seem to be particularly in that speech.

So what's Palin about. According to the Dayton speech, she's about:

Marriage--it's Palin and her husband Todd's 20th wedding anniversary. Todd's a working class guy who's a commercial fisherman, member of the Steelworkers, and a championship snow "machine" worker.

Lots of kids--Palin has five kids, including a baby with Downs Syndrome.

Military--Palin's oldest son, Track, is in the army, serving in an infantry brigade, and is headed for Iraq.

The crowd of 12,000 is cheering and chanting "USA, USA." No surprise there. It's all identity politics among whites. The core of liberal political identity lies in the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King and opposition to racism, misogyny, and homophobia they associate with conservatives. The right identifies with the male-headed household, the military, and other traditional institutions they view liberals as rejecting.

Given that white identity politics is about rejecting the opposing side as immoral, offfensive, and repugnant, cheering the military service of Palin's son is mostly a way for white conservatives in the crowd to stick it to white liberals.

"Hockey Mom Politician"--Sarah Palin began her political career in the PTA before getting elected mayor on an agenda of cutting property taxes. She stood up to "politics as usual"--the special interests and lobbies, and the "good old boy network."

Taking risks--"A ship in harbor is safe. The people of America expect us to seek public office and serve for the right reason. And the right reason is to challenge the status quo and serve the common good."

Testimonial to McCain--She's posing McCain as a threat to "business as usual in Washington. This is a moment when principles and political independence matters not just the party line."

This is the core of Palin's "message" in this speech, that John McCain and her will be ready, willing, and eager to take risks to "shake up the status quo" in Washington. This, instead of her foreign policy inexperience, is where the Democrats should challenge McCain and Palin. It's not the "status quo in general" that needs to be changed, it's the status quo created by George Bush, Karl Rove, and the Republican establishment. John McCain might have been an "agent of change" in 2000, but he failed to get tobacco, immigration, and other reform legislation passed. In other words, John McCain is largely a failed reformer. Now McCain hews so closely to the right-wing line that he's become an agent of the GOP status quo.

And that's much of what McCain's nomination of Sarah Palin says, that McCain is now a fully enlisted soldier on the Republican side of the culture wars.

This is where it becomes evident that Sarah Palin is pretty much of a downer as a public speaker. She's not as bad as McCain himself and she's actually doing a decent job of reading the teleprompter. But it's slow, mechanical, and has very little emotional force. Democrats complained pretty vociferously about Mark Warner's speech. But Palin's not even on Warner's level, let alone Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama.

Progress? Now Palin is moving on to women's issues by citing the 19th amendment, Geraldine Ferraro, and Hillary Clinton. This is shaky ground for a conservative like Palin. Much of the reason Palin was nominated was that Palin was a "woman" who could embrace many aspects of women rights without being a feminist or abandoning traditionalism. Palin has been both a star athlete and a beauty queen, a female office-holder and a mother of five children, an avid hunter and fisherwoman and a traditional wife.

The McCain campaign is eager for Palin to embrace both the post-feminist and traditional sides of her life. This is how they want to appeal to disappointed Hillary voters.

But this is where it gets dicey. Palin was booed today in Washington, PA when she gave a little tribute to Hillary Clinton. Conservatives are still enormously hostile to feminism and Hillary Clinton is the most important symbol of "pushy feminists" to conservatives.

I wouldn't be surprised if Palin didn't give up this kind of token nod to feminism and concentrate on stoking the conservative base as a lifelong NRA member, virulent opponent of abortion, and eager promoter of oil drilling.

A woman can only be so many things to so many people.