Liberal reaction to Palin's speech

I think the most clueless reaction I saw was when Mark Shields on PBS, while praising her delivery, criticized her speech for belittling Barack Obama. Ya think?

The meme running through a lot of the media and liberal (or do I repeat myself) reaction to her speech is to criticize her for being negative. Hello!? That is the traditional job of the vice presidential nominee. She demonstrated that she was willing to play that role, but do it with a smile and a sparkle in her eye. Perhaps it seems a mite bit sacrilegious to inside-the-beltway admirers of the Democratic ticket, but that's part of her job. If she can continue delivering her criticisms of Obama and Biden with a smile and a wisecrack, she'll be very successful. We all know that the lines that people remember from the debates are always the well-delivered humorous ones. It's tough to do, but a well-crafted zinger is worth a thousand words on policy. Perhaps that is a shallow way to evaluate a candidate, but it's also the truth. Do you remember anything from Reagan's 1980 debate with Jimmy Carter beyond "There you go again?" Do you remember anything from Mondale's performances in his primary debates than "Where's the beef?"

And did all these hand-wringers over her negative tone ever criticize Obama or Biden for "belittling" President Bush or McCain? Or for Obama's ridiculous assertion that he has too had executive experience because he's run a successful and expensive presidential campaign? Or did they just accept that running a campaign for his own benefit is the same as administering a town or state for the benefit of others?

The Democrats have spent the past year painting America as one step away from Hoovervilles and breadlines. They've declared the war in Iraq as a defeat that we should just abandon and come home. They've been harsher on the Bush administration's efforts on fighting terrorism than they've been on the terrorists. And then they've done their very best to link McCain to the unpopular Bush administration so that they can pivot and call for their own brand of change. That represents the political cards that they're using to argue that they should be given control of the White House and they're doing their best to play those cards. Did liberals think that those yearlong attacks were too negative?

Oh, and another meme running through some of the commentary last night was that she had help from a speechwriter for her speech. Come on! That's what politicians do these days. Even FDR had speechwriters. John F. Kennedy's famous speeches were written by someone else. And is Joe Biden or any campaign associated in a position to mock another candidate for using someone else's words?

Mark Hemingway links to some other liberals' responses to her speech. They sound worried. As well they should.

John B. Judis in the New Republic admired the part of her speech where she used her biography as coming from a small town to twist the knife in Obama's expressed contempt for those small town people voting for Clinton because they're bitter and clinging to their guns and religion. But then he sets up his own test for how successful she was.

The big question about Palin, though, remains unanswered: It is whether the smaller questions about her family and her past political associations will continue to dog her, and force McCain to defend his choice of her. A good test will be how much time McCain has to devote to answering questions about Palin when he appears on Sunday talk shows. If it takes up a quarter or third of the questioning, then he will be diverted from getting his own message across, and Palin will have proven, in spite of her small town appeal and speaking ability, to be a liability.

That's mighty cute. Prime the media to pepper McCain with questions about her, which they'll be happy to do, and then he'll be ready to turn around and say that the media's fearful fascination with Sarah Palin is a demonstration that she's a liability. You could just as easily turn that around and say that since Republicans are criticizing Obama on his lack of a record that his meager biography of leadership is a liability for him. The difference is that Judis is depending on the media to deliver his attacks and the Republicans have to do the job themselves. Well, Sarah Palin has proven that she is more than ready to take on the job and that she's quite good at it.