The Shitty-Ass Green Speech

Shitty-ass green, that's all I could think about while watching John McCain's crappy-ass "prebuttal" to Obama's stirring nomination speech. And a crappy-ass speech it was. This didn't sound like a guy ready to pounce on the presidency. It sounded like the same kind of crappy-ass speech that makes people hate political speeches. Forget about presidential, this wasn't even a Senator level speech. Honestly, McCain's speech reminded me of the hotshot speaker that might come to your highschool to give some peptalk on why you need a goal in life. And while that guy might have been one of the more exciting speakers you tuned-out, you still tuned him out. Needless to say, this was not an Obama speech.

Not that I think speeches are the primary guideline to determine who should be president, but it helps. But it wasn't even that McCain's delivery sucks, which it totally does. The speech itself really sucked. And that was the worst part, in that it was obvious McCain had to pump the speech by giving it a false sense of urgency, but he failed miserably. Rather than make us believe that he was saying something interesting, it just made him come off as cheap and phony. And while I definitely believe these words would have sounded better coming from Obama's mouth, he just wouldn't have delivered this speech.

Heck, at least Obama knows how to work applause into his speeches, in order to get the audience involved; while McCain often seemed surprised and sometimes annoyed that anyone in the audience had any interest in participating. But isn't that indicitive of how their presidencies would be? And the few times he did pause for the audience, it was for set zingers against Obama that didn't even seem to fit in the speech. Like the guys who came up with the zingers weren't the same guys who wrote the speech, and the speechwriters had to figure out afterwards where to put the zingers. You could almost feel the cut-and-paste going on in that thing.

And don't get me started on McCain's mixed messages. It's obvious these boobs don't even have a gameplan, and while I welcome all the opportunities McCain will give us by embracing Bush's legacy, I also welcome every time he starts dissing Bush too; like he did in this speech. McCain's in a lose-lose, and the more he's stuck talking about all the "change" he's planning to bring, the more he'll be reminding everyone of how badly Bush and the Republicans screwed everything up.

McCain's fighting this game on Obama's turf and can't possibly come out ahead. It's like Kool-Aid trying to beat Coke by telling kids they can make it carbonated by farting in the glass. Sure, you get bubbles, but who wants them?

Shitty-Ass Green

But all the same, my main thoughts were on that shitty-ass green. And this is the clearest sign that the Bush Era is over. Because if the Bushies were good about one thing, it was making Bush look better. And that was entirely necessary as Bush really does look like Alfred E. Newman's idiot brother. And so they always made sure his surroundings looked powerful and presidential, even when he looked weak and flakey. As I've learned over the years reading BAGnewsNotes, while the Bushies were incompetent at most things, they knew how to stage an event. The McCain people, on the other hand, don't even seem to understand why it's necessary.

And for as much as McCain's "A Leader We Can Believe In" background was a fairly lame reminder that the Republicans are trying to saddle us with yet another authortarian we'll just need to trust, it's the green background that just makes McCain look like shit. It's like they're not even trying. And the fact that they had McCain give this speech on the same night as a historic Obama speech shows that this isn't even the B-team. It made what otherwise would have been a bad but forgetable speech into a bad speech to be remembered. And that's the last thing they needed.

While I'm sure they imagined that just getting him on TV for a big speech was enough, it wasn't. Either they needed to have McCain ready with a bigger speech than Obama's (including a bigger rally, rather than the gym-like atmosphere he had), or he just should have stayed home. But in no case do you show your candidate giving a minor speech to a few hundred interested people while your opponent is giving a major speech to thousands of excited people. That's just not how it works and isn't a mistake the Bush team would have made.

And this is all just more evidence that McCain's just a patsy in this election. They want him to beat-up Obama as much as possible, but they sure as hell won't do much to save him. And with this sort of political manuevering going on, all they're doing is making Obama look better. Again, McCain's trying to go toe-to-toe with Obama on Obama's turf, and it was a blow-out. I'm not sure why McCain imagines it's a good idea to get into a speech-pissing contest with Obama, but it's no worse than his insistence on bad-mouthing Bush and the Republicans who empowered him.


On a side note, am I the only one who thinks of Austin Powers every time McCain smiles? I didn't watch the whole thing, but I noticed it at the 7:10 mark, and even worse at the 8:10 and 9:15 marks, where he even breaks into a perverted sort of Austin Powers laugh both times. Just thinking about it makes me like those movies less. Oh, behave!