I watched large portion of Sarah Palin’s speech last week while waiting at the airport for my delayed plane. The first couple of minutes after I tuned in she seemed a bit wooden. But then she loosened up and launched into the good lines crafted by very skilled speech writers. The Republicans want to pull off what Bush junior did four years ago: to convince the voting public they would be more secure under him than under the Democratic candidate, which of course was a complete fantasy. Palin’s performance was universally hailed as a great performance and a new media star was born and McCain weak speech made him into the sideshow. After Palin’s speech, McCain came out onto the stage. I had never seen his fully body live. His upper body was very stiff, and he looked a bit like a Robot waving his hands, perhaps a consequence of his injuries in Vietnam. Palin’s youth made him look ever older. As Frank Rich points out in the article below she offers a great distraction from the weakness of John McCain as the Republican presidential nominee. It is too early to tell how she will play out over the next 2 months. Eight years ago I was a fan of McCain. The evidence starts to get stronger by the day that he is temperamentally not fit to be president.

Palin and McCain