Is John McCain Bob Dole?
Or is he Dwight Eisenhower? (Actually, that may depend on whether Barack Obama is Mike Dukakis or John Kennedy.) A handicapping.
By John Heilemann
New York Magazine
By the time John McCain trundles into the ballroom of the Fairmont hotel in Dallas, he has already had what for most men his age would have been a very full day. He has met the press at a Mexican restaurant in San Antonio. He has held a town-hall meeting at a barbecue joint in Houston. He has fielded yet another question about the “North American Union,” the latest conspiracy theory from the nutters who brought us the New World Order. He has uttered the salutation “my friends” at least 40 times. And, oh yes, he has won the Republican primaries in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont, dispatched that holy-rolling goober Mike Huckabee back whence he came, and secured his party’s nomination for president of the United States.
So McCain is feeling pretty chuffed when he mounts the stage with his canary-yellow-suited, Barbie-blond gal, Cindy. The crowd before him is measly by Barack Obama standards, just a few hundred people, but it’s plenty loud and lusty. The confetti cannons are loaded and cocked, the balloons pinned to the ceiling.
Out in the audience, Mark Salter and Steve Schmidt look twitchy. The goateed Salter is McCain’s chief wordsmith; the shaven-headed Schmidt his mouthpiece. Through experience, the two men have learned that prepared addresses are not McCain’s best friends—and teleprompters his mortal enemies. On a good day, McCain merely looks shifty when he’s reading off a prompter, as his eyes track the flowing text; on a bad day, he stutters, stammers, yammers, making him seem … well, let’s not go there.
As McCain begins to speak, Salter and Schmidt position themselves so they can see both their boss and the giant flat-panel on the camera riser directly in front of him. The speech is short. It’s going smoothly. McCain is nearly done. “Their patience,” he is saying of the American people, “is at an end for politicians who value ambition over principle, and for partisanship that is less a contest of ideas than an uncivil brawl over the spoils of power.”
(Continued here.)
By John Heilemann
New York Magazine
By the time John McCain trundles into the ballroom of the Fairmont hotel in Dallas, he has already had what for most men his age would have been a very full day. He has met the press at a Mexican restaurant in San Antonio. He has held a town-hall meeting at a barbecue joint in Houston. He has fielded yet another question about the “North American Union,” the latest conspiracy theory from the nutters who brought us the New World Order. He has uttered the salutation “my friends” at least 40 times. And, oh yes, he has won the Republican primaries in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont, dispatched that holy-rolling goober Mike Huckabee back whence he came, and secured his party’s nomination for president of the United States.
So McCain is feeling pretty chuffed when he mounts the stage with his canary-yellow-suited, Barbie-blond gal, Cindy. The crowd before him is measly by Barack Obama standards, just a few hundred people, but it’s plenty loud and lusty. The confetti cannons are loaded and cocked, the balloons pinned to the ceiling.
Out in the audience, Mark Salter and Steve Schmidt look twitchy. The goateed Salter is McCain’s chief wordsmith; the shaven-headed Schmidt his mouthpiece. Through experience, the two men have learned that prepared addresses are not McCain’s best friends—and teleprompters his mortal enemies. On a good day, McCain merely looks shifty when he’s reading off a prompter, as his eyes track the flowing text; on a bad day, he stutters, stammers, yammers, making him seem … well, let’s not go there.
As McCain begins to speak, Salter and Schmidt position themselves so they can see both their boss and the giant flat-panel on the camera riser directly in front of him. The speech is short. It’s going smoothly. McCain is nearly done. “Their patience,” he is saying of the American people, “is at an end for politicians who value ambition over principle, and for partisanship that is less a contest of ideas than an uncivil brawl over the spoils of power.”
(Continued here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home