McCain’s Islamofascist Aesthetic (and other, more substantive, critiques of his speech last night)

John McCain’s speech last night.

John McCain kicked off his official general election campaign against Barack Obama last night with uniquely awful speech. The substance was silly and the delivery left me wishing I was listening to George W. or Fred Thompson. It was bad. Here are only a few of my criticisms:

Visuals – What was with the green background? It was distracting and, well, green. You know, like the Green Party. Very strange. All it served to do was to highlight the fact that Sen. McCain forgot all of his Republican gear: no flag tie or lapel pin. His clothes weren’t even red, white and blue! He had on a red and black tie, what is this? No Republican points there.

Some people took more serious issue with his choice for theatrics. Matthew Yglesias writes at the Atlantic:

It’s interesting that he’s shifted his aesthetic from his old black and white “fascist” aesthetic to a new green and white Islamofascist aesthetic.

Ouch.

Delivery – He stuttered and stumbled over almost every word last night. His smile, serious, smile, serious game was really strange. Really, not to harp on the age issue, but it really felt like a strange story-time session with a grandfather speaking to a bunch of kindergardeners. He also was sweating like Nixon in a debate with Kennedy. Hm…

Content – Oh boy. First, he sucked up to Hillary Clinton and her supporters, blaming the media for under-appreciation. That was a silly attempt to win over disaffected Clinton supporters, I don’t think that’ll work. They might be deeply upset that Obama is the nominee, but I don’t think many of them will be fooled into voting for McCain.

He had the audacity to cite our failed response to Hurricane Katrina as something that he could have handled better. His speech was in New Orleans, sure. But where was McCain when Katrina hit? Oh, right, cutting his birthday cake with his buddy George W. Way to go.

That of course brings me to my next point. Pundits all recognized this speech as an attempt to revive the maverick McCain of 2000. The moderate party outsider who never would have anything to do with George Bush. Unfortunately, that old McCain that even I respected died the day he started his run for President. Pandering to the religious right, fundraising with the President, soaring as a bigger hawk than many neo-cons and accepting millions in campaign donations; these are the things that saw the end of McCain as a maverick. There’s no way he can separate himself from Bush (Karl Rove is one of his campaign advisors and he voted in line with Bush 95% of the time, mind you), and Obama is going to hammer that point home. A vote for McCain is a vote for 4 more years of Bush, maybe in some ways worse.

McCain quipped, “The wrong change looks not to the future but to the past for solutions that have failed us before and will surely fail us again.” So, so ironic.

He also seems to think that he can claim the surge was a success. Yes, violence may be down (but is certainly on-going), but that was not the point of the surge in the first place. We initiated this tactic in order to provide the Iraqi government time to consolidate political power and to begin initiating a sustainable and stable political process. That has not happened. The surge has failed.

Next, this critique McCain keeps hitting on that Obama hasn’t been to Iraq to speak with General Patreaus. Sure, such a meeting would be nice, but even I can imagine what the guy would say. It’s not like McCain’s trips have taught him anything. He claims that he can walk through the streets and markets without fear or body armor, when he really did so with a huge vest and 100 American soldiers, blackhawks and apache gunships. He claims to know that General Patreaus drives around without worry in unarmored humvees. Also not true. You can see these claims and rebuttles in the following video:

Of course, Obama’s response in his own speech last night was even more potent, asking why McCain hasn’t visited American families with their own, domestic problems. It’s going to be a wild fight.

McCain claimed that Obama’s intentions to get us out of Iraq could threaten to draw us into a broader war that would claim even more innocent lives. That one really baffled me. Does anyone know what he means by that? If we pull out of Iraq, we get to concentrate on al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. We’ll have our military aid still going to Israel and Pakistan. What else is there? Iran? Tensions are going to remain way higher with Iran while we occupy Iraq than if we were to leave. So what is this broader war that McCain speaks of? Let the fearmongering begin, I guess.

McCain dared to bring up his work in campaign finance reform and ethics reform. Sure, McCain-Feingold was a first step, but it wasn’t enough. And unfortunately, McCain has abandoned that cause now that he is running for President. He is accepting huge sums of private donations and won’t even speak to clean elections advocates any more. Obama, on the other hand, while proving himself to be a master funderaiser, is also a sponsor of the Fair Elections Now Act (McCain isn’t) and may very well have Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano (elected cleanly there) and Sen. Dick Durbin (co-author of the FENA Bill) on his cabinet. That is what I call dedication to election and ethics reform.

Finally, and perhaps worst of all, was the condescending refrain: “And that’s not change we can believe in.” Though McCain was proud as hell at the lame, immature line, he used it over and over, wearing it out instantly and showing just how awful he is at speechcraft. I really don’t know what else to say about that, but really it was infuriating and just downright sad.

If last night’s speech is any indicator as to how McCain will be running his campaign, he’s in for a rough ride. I look forward to Sen. Obama tearing his speeches apart.

Your thoughts?

-Mike