Some random and scattered thoughts about the Democratic Convention, the Republican VP pick, and other errata:
- Quite frankly, the Democratic Convention scared me. I think its unhealthy for any one person to have that much attention and adulation, much less someone who might be the next President. Not that this is any reflection on Obama – he can’t help it, and to his credit he has handled his celebrity rather well. But when I saw that massive cloud of Obama banners and his supporters chanting and cheering and crying shivers ran down my spine. Such mass idolization might be helpful for Obama the candidate, but it is certainly harmful for the nation over which Obama wants to preside
- Still, Obama has continued his position as the lesser of the two evils in my eyes, especially after McCain’s VP pick. I was desperately hoping for him to throw us moderates a bone and choose Lieberman, perhaps as part of a realization that the kind of pandering to the hard right that worked in 2000 and 2004 just isn’t going to cut it anymore and that if he wants to have a chance at beating Obama’s war machine he has to remember the existence of the moderates and independents he used to court. In that sense his choice of Palin as VP was more than just a VP choice. It was another stop, and a big one on the Straight Talk Express’ steady journey to the right.
- Being on vacation I had to watch the convention on Indian hotel TVs that didn’t have CSPAN, and so I was forced to subject myself to the endless punditry and jabbering that is modern political news coverage. Even the normally commendable BBC filled their “American politics special” with the same few speeches being repeated over and over, each time followed by a fresh wave of punditry and speculation. Some day the cable news networks are going to realize that they could cut costs immensely by taking two out of work actors, handing them the transcripts of a few old episodes of Crossfire and having them read random lines out loud in no particular order. The audience would never know the difference.
