Thoughts following McCain’s Speech
An email from Augur:
I wanted to share a few quick thoughts in response to McCain’s speech tonight.
McCain’s speech had a few moments of brilliance. The best was when he said people may see in him an imperfect servant of his country and then he had a nice turn of phrase (that escapes my memory) about how he will always be her servant. A nostalgic appeal to honor and valor should be a central theme of McCain’s campaign.
The speech as a whole was a catastrophic failure in terms of its overriding message. His theme was “That’s not change we can believe in”, a line he repeated probably ten times in the speech. His speech was extremely negative. I came away with it wondering what McCain was for. Obama is like Hillary, direct negative attacks from an opposing candiate don’t really land. McCain should always be positive – especially given his reputation as a hot-tempered contrarian, and leave the negative stuff to surrogates.
The main goal of the speech, apart from being a hit piece on Obama, was distinguishing himself from Bush. That’s why he held the event in New Orleans. That message was partially lost b/c of the negativity about Obama. He could have painted himself as a happy warrior, with optimism to rival Obama’s, but with a greater degree of pragmatism than the green Obama and the incompetent Bush
He did briefly say kind words about Hillary; he should have done that throughout the speech. The more of that he does, the more its going to hurt Obama when he refuses to put Hillary on the ticket. Obama does not want her on the ticket and starting tomorrow the press focus will soley be on whether or not there will be a joint ticket. If I were Obama I would name a VP right away and put that to bed and talk about how he’s looking forward to working with her in the Senate and letter (sic) her lead on health care.
She put a slick tactical move on him calling the press conference to say she’s open to being VP. She wants to preempt a “cold offer” to increase the pressure on him to make an actual offer.
In terms of delivery, McCain was awkward; his smiles looked forced and fake. He had some prompter slips and is very weak at delivering a canned message, although he’s decent extemporaneously and you could tell when he strayed from the script – he started to look natural, but so is Obama.
As an Obama fan, I’m looking forward to these two being on a stage together. Obama will exude vigor, energy and enthusiasm. McCain looks tired and awkward, and like he missed his window.
