I’ve been wondering about this phrase from McCain’s speech: “We have to catch up to history.” So much was going on tonight at the office that I didn’t get a chance to really focus on it. In the back of my mind, though, I was thinking, what does he even mean?
But is this really a catch phrase you want to be using if you’re an older guy who doesn’t use email and hasn’t learned how to log on to your own website?
I mean, John, we’re already here, speak for yourself.
Congressman Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) says there was nothing racially derogatory about him calling Barack Obama “uppity.” That and other political news in today’s Election Central Morning Roundup.
As noted below, it seems like we may have solved the mystery of the bizarre mansion they had up behind John McCain last night on the big TV screen that on TV made it look like a green screen. We’re digging in to confirm. Click for the whole story.
From TPM Reader TH …
I think there’s a connection between the mansion-cum-middle school picture and the lousy speech prepared for McCain. It has to do with the stress that Palin’s nomination puts on the GOP ticket, on the resources she necessarily diverts from McCain. Whatever you think of the Palin speech, whether it was cynical or alienating to anyone outside the base, it was solidly written. I’d even say well written. McCain’s wasn’t. It was decidedly second rate, not just badly delivered but clumsily written (except for the part about his POW experience, which I assume he has on file: that worked). How did that happen? Everyone knows McCain is a bad public speaker, so one would assume his campaign would it least give him a rock solid text to work from. But I suspect the campaign only has so many first-rate people on hand, and all of those people in the McCain campaign were tasked with taking care of Palin, leaving the top of the ticket to the second-stringers.
So it seems that that school in North Hollywood that the McCain campaign accidentally used as a speech backdrop instead of a picture of Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital is about to release a statement.
The big papers and cable networks in the lower 48 states may be cowed. But Alaska’s biggest newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News apparently isn’t. They’re asking Sarah Palin to stop stonewalling the ethics investigation probing her firing of the state’s Commissioner of Public Safety.
You would never know it from the media coverage but John McCain is not one of America’s greatest war heroes. He is a former POW who survived, heroically. He deserves to be honored for that heroism.
But one thing distinguishes McCain from other war heroes, the kind whose heroism changes history rather than their life stories.
America’s two greatest war heroes were Ulysses Grant and Dwight Eisenhower. Grant saved the union. And Ike saved civilization.
And neither one ever bragged about their experience. (Can you imagine Ike smacking down Adlai Stevenson by saying that while Adlai ran a nice medium-sized state, he was the Supreme Allied Commander who ran D-Day, defeated Hitler, and liberated Europe?).
Impossible. Like Grant, Eisenhower did not brag.
Okay, seems like the finger-pointing is breaking out in the McCain campaign over the green screen / Walter Reed / McCain McMansion goof in last night’s McCain speech.
Last night at the Google/Vanity Fair party celebrating the last night of the RNC, McCain chief Rick Davis was telling people the whole thing was the fault of McCain ad man Fred Davis.
From Ambinder …
A senior McCain campaign official advises that, despite the gaggle of requests and pressure from the media, Gov. Sarah Palin won’t submit to a formal interview anytime soon. She may take some questions from local news entities in Alaska, but until she’s ready — and until she’s comfortable — which might not be for a long while — the media will have to wait. The campaign believes it can effectively deal with the media’s complaints, and their on-the-record response to all this will be: “Sarah Palin needs to spend time with the voters.”
Not out of the question are appearances on lighter, fluffier television shows. But — not for a while.
The investigators up in Alaska have come out with their press release announcing how they plan to deal with Gov. Palin’s stonewalling of the trooper-gate investigation. It seems Palin has now gotten seven others to also refuse to speak to the investigators (they all signaled their refusal to testify post-Palin announcement). And they’ve now decided to meet on September 12th to decide whether or not to issue subpoenas to compel testimony. However, they will not issue a subpoena for Palin herself. Why? The press release from the investigators says it’s because: “She has told the public that she intends to cooperate with the investigation, indeed, she has told the public that she welcomes the investigation and I have every faith that she means it.”
Now, this is a bit artful since just two days ago Gov. Palin made clear that she will not cooperate with the investigation. She is insisting that she will only provide testimony once the committee closes down its investigation and allows the probe to be taken over by the State Personnel Board made up of three members appointed by the governor. So she’s saying she’s not going to cooperate but they’re insisting on taking her at her earlier promises to cooperate.
Now, there’s some backstory here that’s critical to understand. The point-man for the committee which voted to start the probe is Democrat Hollis French. However, the committee, that voted unanimously to begin the probe has a Republican majority.
So what if Palin just absolutely refuses to testify and continues to stonewall?
TPMmuckraker’s Zack Roth just spoke to GOP Rep Jay Ramras, also a member of the committee. And he says no, that even if Palin refuses to cooperate, compelling her to testify would be “inappropriate conduct given the unique political circumstances” and “disrespectful.”