VP speeches: Will they help me choose?

Posted by Lindsay in US Election 2008.

After eight years with Cheney, the puppet-master, I’m starting to wonder if maybe the vice presidential nominee is more important than originally thought.  John McCain is one heartbeat away from death; threats against Barack Obama haven’t yielded any truly dangerous psychos—yet.  You see where I’m going with this, right?  The next VP could end up being President #45.  The decisions the candidates made were especially important to me because I don’t really like either presidential nominee.  So, I waited (not as eagerly as some) to find out who the VP nominees are.  The media coverage surrounding Obama’s VP pick was disgusting.  Days of speculation ended by a middle-of-the-night text message.  Reporters gathered in front of Biden’s Delaware home.  Fox News circled with a chopper.  Was it really that stunning?  McCain’s decision, on the other hand, yielded less of a circus at first.  However, once the world figured out who the hell Sarah Palin is, the media jumped over the juicier details of her life.  Why talk about real issues when we have a Lifetime movie-in-the-making?

Now that I’m feeling the pressure of living the battleground state, I got transcripts of the VP candidate’s speeches.  After reading both, I still know very little about either.  Palin’s speech gave her an opportunity to outline her stance on the economy and the war, but she brushed over those topics.  She restated the obvious, echoing the Republican mantra of taxes are bad and anyone who votes against war hates America.  Her speech praised McCain and jabbed at Obama, based mainly on personality or unsubstantiated claims.  Also, people, by now, we realize that McCain was tortured in Vietnam.  Please stop telling us about it.  Joe Biden managed to mention Afghanistan, backed up his jabs with facts, and reminded everyone that Democrats love the middle class.

Palin could have played herself up as a middle-class hero, but she shied away from that terminology when giving her autobiography.  As Palin explained her job as mayor of a small town, she stated, “I might add that, in small towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they’re listening and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listing.”  As she continued, she pointed out that McCain doesn’t misrepresent himself that way and she is going to Washington to be different from other politicians.  Her line, “No one expects us all to agree on everything, but we are expected to govern with integrity, and goodwill, and clear convictions, and a servant’s heart” serves both candidates fairly well, considering Obama went into a life of public service when he could have used his educational background for a much more lucrative career.  Furthermore, what are her convictions?  I know them, thanks to the Internet and too much time on my hands, but she hasn’t said too much about herself.  It’s all praise for McCain and down with the Dems.

Out of the two, Biden’s speech had more substance.  When he moved into the issues, he stated, “…today that American dream feels like it’s slowly slipping away.  I don’t have to tell you that.  You feel it every single day in your own lives.”  This introduction into “real topics” allowed him to describe his nightly train ride to Wilmington (making him different from the others of the Washington crowd) and paint a picture of a struggling middle-class American family concerned about health care, gas prices, college and retirement.  He ended this monologue with a jab at McCain via a “Freudian slip” where he said George instead of John.  Biden also talked a lot about foreign policy including our lack of acknowledgment “ the emergence of Russia, China and India as great powers” and—my personal favorite—Afghanistan.  Specifically, he asks: “Should you trust the judgment of John McCain, when he said only three years ago, ‘Afghanistan, we don’t read about it anymore in papers because it succeeded’? Or should you believe Barack Obama who said a year ago, ‘We need to send two more combat battalions to Afghanistan’?”  He discusses the rebuilding of the Taliban; something politicians on both sides have seemed to ignore lately.

Reading the two speeches saved me hours of my life, and for that I am very grateful to the Internet.  After this round, I definitely side with the Democrats.  I default to them in most cases, on most issues, but I do have a very convincing conservative friend who can make the McCain campaign sound good to me (and he called me while I was writing this).  However, it would probably take a lobotomy to get me to like Sarah Palin.  I realize she is new to this whole national spotlight thing, but she needs to step it up if she wants to compete with Biden.  I might actually forgo Law & Order reruns for the debate between the two.  These speeches have piqued my interest, which I suppose is fairly important considering there’s only eight weeks until judgment day.

US Election 2008 |