They left out the part about how John was married when they started dating.
My God, John McCain’s never become a Washington Insider? My God. Hero, war hero, Maverick, any of them I could buy before that one. You could only say that if you’ve never lived in DC.
From the Boston Globe blog …
One of the most enduring taboos in American politics, the airing of graphic images from the September 11 attacks in a partisan context, died today. It was nearly seven years old.
The informal prohibition, which had been occasionally threatened by political ads in recent years, was pronounced dead at approximately 7:40 CST, when a video aired before delegates at the Republican National Convention included slow-motion footage of a plane striking the World Trade Center, the towers’ subsequent collapse, and smoke emerging from the Pentagon.
The September 11 precedent was one of the few surviving campaign-season taboos. It is survived by direct comparisons of one’s opponents to Hitler.
That was a pretty powerful video. But they left off the part about how that guy died … what, six years ago?
10:15 PM … Green Screen!!!
10:19 PM … Green, Baby, Green!
10:23 PM … I’m so glad President Bush is president. Now, let’s win this election and get this country back on track.
10:26 PM … I loved the part with the ritual slaughter of the protester. That rocked. That was the best thing since the Lord of the Flies interlude between the Rudy and Palin speeches last night.
10:33 PM … Can we bring in a few shrinks on that one. This is a guy most known for having a bad temper and getting into a lot of fights. He’s known for it.
10:35 PM … I won’t stand for Obama shilling for the oil companies! Enough!!! Four years of Obama oil-shilling is enough! Also, Enough!
10:38 PM … Can we get Palin back?
10:40 PM … It’s astonishing that he’s giving this whole speech from memory.
10:44 PM … Did anyone else notice this? A few lines back I think he called for abolishing unemployment insurance. Here’s the line: “I know some of you have been left behind in the changing economy and it often seems your government hasn’t even noticed. Government assistance for unemployed workers was designed for the economy of the 1950s. That’s going to change on my watch.”
10:46 PM … I remember back in ’64 when Barry Goldwater first said ‘Drill, baby, drill.”
10:50 PM … TPM Reader PT: “What are the odds Governor Palin drops McCain from the ticket? After a performance like this, it’s a serious question.”
10:53 PM … I’m trying to be objective in this. But this seems pretty feeble, no? What actually surprises me is that the speech itself, not the delivery but the speech, doesn’t seem that great. A lot of laundry list stuff.
10:57 PM … They/he should have started with biography. Much more compelling than the boilerplate that made up most of the speech.
11:01 PM … I question the wisdom of not letting anyone in the auditorium under 50.
11:02 … Nothing brings so much happiness as betraying all the ideals you said you believed in to try to take advantage of your last chance to be president.
11:08 PM … I’m insulted that McCain uses a lifeless speech to hide his lack of specific policy proposals.
Yes, for all of you who’ve written in, we also just saw Tom Ridge slip and say “Because John Bush, er, John McCain is his own man.”
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this speech tonight. But I was pretty sure, as high-stakes conventions speeches almost always end up being, that it would be good. But I really don’t think it was. It certainly wasn’t bad. He didn’t say anything embarrassing or have any real flubs. But the truth is that John McCain does have, at least for a critical five years of his life, a compelling story. And for a relatively brief period of the speech, toward the end, he spoke about it powerfully. But there wasn’t that much of it. The rest of the speech, when condensed to its essence, seemed to be that he’ll turn the page on the Bush era by continuing all of Bush’s policies.
Among the surprises, perhaps the biggest one was that it actually wasn’t a very good speech. Not in the sense of delivery, but the speech itself, the speech-writing. There wasn’t a clear theme, though it approached on toward the end. Most of it was a fairly tired recital of Republican boilerplate. Did they really devote like ten minutes to charter schools? It was much, much too long for the speaker. I really think they could have given him a much better speech.
Another surprise? What happened to the days when the Republicans were the masters of stagecraft and theatrics. They had him up with there with a set that on TV looked like the notorious green screen from the speech in New Orleans. Even Karl Rove, on Fox, pointed it out.
And when they panned out to see what the audience in the convention hall saw, it was some unidentified mansion. Like maybe a house they’re putting in an offer on? Weird. No idea what that was about.
I’ll have more thoughts tomorrow. But I thought the delivery was acceptable but tired. The speech itself let the candidate down. I can’t imagine the folks at Obama HQ didn’t look at each other and say, “Okay, we can deal with that.”
(Publisher’s Note: I want to give a shout out to the TPM staff. At the moment we have ten full-time employees, each of whom has put in two weeks straight of something like 15 to 18 hour days on convention nights. David Kurtz and Ben Craw in Denver and St. Paul and the rest of the crew working out of TPM HQ in New York — Justin Elliott, Andrew Golis, Eric Kleefeld, Kate Klonick, Zachary Roth, Greg Sargent, Lila Shapiro and Al Shaw. And interns John Davisson, Ezra Deutsch-Feldman, Daniel Gatti and Rachel Slajda. As we grow, we’re developing new ways to expand the scope and comprehensiveness of the coverage we provide for events like these. We’ve learned a lot these two weeks, which we’ll be applying in our debate and election night coverage over the next two months. And I’ve been really happy with the results. I hope you’ve enjoyed our coverage. — jmm.)
A lot of people were asking tonight: what the hell was that mansion up behind John McCain tonight during the first part of the speech? As I noted below, the TV close-ups only showed McCain’s head against the grass in the picture, which made it look like he was reprising his famed green screen performance. And when they panned out, it looked like McCain was showing off one of his mansions.
Well, several readers have written in to tell me that the building is actually the main building on the campus of the Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, California. And sure enough, this page on the school’s website makes it pretty clear that they’re correct.
You can compare below …
So it’s not a mansion, but a middle school. But that still doesn’t answer the question of why they picked this picture to have him standing in front of — when I would imagine that 99.9% of the US population would have no idea what they were looking at.
(ed.note: Thanks to TPM Readers JR and EK for cluing us in.)
Late Update: I’m surprised this hadn’t occurred to me. But several readers have suggested that perhaps one of the tech geeks charged with setting up the audio/visual bells and whistles for the evening was tasked with getting pictures of Walter Reed Army Medical Center but goofed and got this instead. At first I thought, No, that’s ridiculous. This is a major political party with big time professionals putting this together. Nothing is left to chance. I mean, is this the RNC or a scene out Spinal Tap or Waiting for Guffman? I still have a bit of a hard time believing they’re quite that incompetent. But when you figure in what appears to be the utter lack of any logic for this school being behind McCain and the fact that it has ‘Walter Reed’ in its name, I’m really not sure you can discount this possibility.
(ed.note: Special bonus snark: That’s not stock photo keyword searching we can believe in.)