The Half-Time Show

The Democrats closed their Presidential Convention Thursday and the Republicans begin theirs this coming week.  John McCain has set things up for a much more interesting GOP Convention than had he not named Sarah Palin as his choice for Vice President. 

The purpose of this web log is voter education, by way of both the blog posts by the author and the comments by readers.  What sort of education can we provide for one another?

What we have this weekend is a brief pause between the big conventions.  It’s time for major spin.  Sarah Palin has drawn much attention because she seems to have come out of nowhere, plus she is youthful and articulate.  She was not considered to be on John McCain’s short list with Mitt Romney and the others.  She is not well known throughout the United States.  She is even newer to the national consciousness than Barrack Obama.

If the announcement of her nomination was intended to steal the thunder from the Democrat’s Convention in Denver, it has certainly done that.  Obama outlined his hopes for what he would like to accomplish in great detail, while staying within the confines of the his Party’s Platform positions.  Now it is all out there and there is nothing to do but talk about his goals and the likelihood of whether the new Congress will allow him to achieve them.  People can even speculate on how the promises he laid out will be received and how he intends to accomplish them.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is known only to Alaskans.  People inside the Beltway must get to work to find out more about her in order to have somethng to talk about.  In the meantime, commentators and pundits can do nothing but speculate the air time away.  Voters can decide what they see in her, based on what little is currently in the national record.

All of Obama’s cards are on the table, leaving nothing really new to talk about.

McCain has chosen a relatively unknown running mate, leaving a nothing BUT new things to talk about.

This is the half-time show, ladies and gentlemen!

It will last 3 full days (barring disaster in the Gulf).  Let us hope that this political half-time show DOES last the 3 entire days, and let us not overlook the significance of Labor Day.

Who will get the most air time on television and radio?  Who will get the most column-inches in newspapers?  Who will be on the covers of magazines?  Who will be more discussed on the “interwebs,” Obama or Palin?

Would another announcement from McCain have allowed for a different conversation?  Would there have been more retrospective review of the previous week in Denver?  Would there have been the same kind of preview of the convention in St. Paul?

Maybe the discussion of John McCain’s running mate would be just as dominant had it been someone else.  The fact that it is Sarah Palin just makes it more fascinating, whether you like her or not.  Yes?