So Much, For So Little

Maybe I'm just a dorky bookworm, but it would be nice to learn about actual policies from people who purport to lead a nation of 300 million people. But with Palin's speech, the McCain campaign's plan for victory has become even more clear: biography, biography, biography. McCain the selfless warrior, the uber-patriot, Palin his maverick protege. (Obama the ephemeral, narcissistic elitist who hates Real Americans.) She was surprisingly fierce, I thought, even extending Guiliani's attack on community organizing as a somehow amateurish activity unbecoming to a would-be president: I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. 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 are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening. It tires me, it really tires me to note at the end of this third convention day that I haven't actually learned anything from a single speech I've heard thus far. The same Obama knocks repeated ad nauseum. Lieberman's appearance was unusual (though his speech was hardly that), but nothing new has been communicated, no Republican has said anything even vaguely surprising. The rhetoric repeats itself, a seemingly endless tide of government mistrust and thoughtless patriotism that miraculously manages to hold two directly opposing ideas simultaneously: that those who criticize the U.S. lack patriotism, and that John McCain and Sarah Palin are proven reformers who take on government corruption. America is always right and beautiful, but its government is bloated and needs swift relief to save it from itself. As though America, before the Fall, once existed without a government. It's disturbing to think that so many millions of dollars can be spent, and so much security deployed to disrupt so much of St. Paul, to thoughtlessly confirm what everyone here already believes and who everyone already knew would be nominated. But by looking for new political ideas and policy proposals, I am, of course, expecting unreasonable things from a major American political party convention.