The Failure of McCain's Speech

It's a given that McCain is not the orator that Barack Obama is but his acceptance speech failed for reasons having nothing to do with his speaking skill.

First of all the one thing Republicans are good at is cynical false attacks. This was evidenced all week by speaker after speaker and is the tone that has been used by Republicans for decades that have divided this country along partisan lines. McCain despite the false and misleading commercials that he runs on a daily basis, wanted to come off as Mr. Nice Guy last night and it was frankly not believable.

The second and biggest problem was that the speech was all about how bad the last 8 years have been under the leadership, and I use that word loosely, of a Republican administration and how a new republican administration will fix the mess they made.
McCain tried to push a change message when the details of his speech was the same old republican mantra they have been chanting for the last 8 years.

He talked a lot about helping business, and high corporate tax rates, yet he seemed to forget the middle class. He stated that the good jobs were gone and mentioned some ridiculous government give away program to pay those the difference in the good Jobs people once had and the crappy jobs they can find now because of republican trade policies.

The most telling disconnect with the middle class came when McCain, instead of talking about the thousands of Americans actually losing their homes because of the mortgage crises, he instead used as an example a guy who lost all his real estate investments.

McCain also had a section on bi partisanship. He talked about reaching across the aisle, the example his campaign manager used today was working with Lieberman. I have news for you McCain, Lieberman is no democrat. He talked about getting things done without a care for who gets credit. Good sentiment but it was the Republican party that brought us Gingrich, Bush, Cheney and Rove, it was the republicans that demonized Clinton, that relentlessly attack the current House and Senate Leadership and block every single attempt by the Democrats in Congress to pass real solutions for the energy crises unless it involved padding oil companies profits with new unused oil drilling leases.

Then there was the old and tired "maverick" claims. You know I used to admire McCain for his "maverick" stance. But that was 4 years ago. Since then he has sold out on almost every single issue to suck up to the far right wing of his party to gain the nomination, including torture. He tried to claim he would change the damage caused by 8 years of the Bush presidency and 6 years of Republican rule, yet this man voted with Bush 90% of the time.

McCain's speech failed not because he is a boring speaker, but because it lacked three things, passion, substance and facts.