Shoulda said rouge on a corpse

I absolutely don't believe Obama was jabbing at Sarah Palin with his "lipstick on a pig" remark yesterday, and I hope she and McCain laugh it off or shrug it off. Repay him with grace for his gracious refusal last week to drag Bristol into the campaign. Send him a gift box of lipsticks from Avon and move on. I'll bet that around the Illinois Senate where Obama served, as around the Colorado Senate where I served, two of the cliches to describe a futile spin effort were that you can try to put lipstick on a pig or rouge on a corpse, but you'll fool no one. Young Obie probably absorbed both in his vocabulary when Sarah was unknown beyond Wasilla. Don't you know he wishes now that his preferred cosmetic for mocking his opponents' claim of change had been rouge.

If the remark wasn't a slur, though, it was still a gaffe, a big and easily avoidable one. Which gives more evidence that Obama is badly off his game right now, rattled by the Palin phenomenon and the dramatic momentum shift since his Invesco acceptance speech. (How long ago that already seems!)

Any candidate thinking clearly on his feet, as you simply have to do at every moment in the big leagues, would have done a silent self-edit when "lipstick" and "pig" presented themselves in the same sentence and instantly substituted -- rather than added, as he did, too late -- the smelly fish reference or something else with no double entendre. Barack did this to himself because he's obviously not thinking clearly at this season of unexpected adversity.

You can hardly blame the poor guy. It's tough out there all of a sudden. Exhibit A would be the New York Times front-page story last Sunday: "Rival Tickets are Redrawing Battlegrounds. Palin Helps GOP Put More States in Play." It said in part:

Fresh from the Republican convention, Senator John McCain’s campaign sees evidence that his choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate is energizing conservatives in the battleground of Ohio while improving its chances in Pennsylvania and several Western states that Senator Barack Obama has been counting on, [including] Nevada, New Mexico [and] Colorado.

Exhibit B, corroborating this, is the 13,000 who turned out for McPalin in Colorado Springs on Saturday. With any other running mate, Mac would have drawn about 1300.

Exhibits C and D, a couple of columns that have made waves this week on talk radio and the conservative blogs. Pundits can say anything, of course, and two swallows don't make a summer, but what's striking is the confident prediction of not just defeat but decisive defeat for Obama, partly as a result of the VP matchup.

Heather Higgins, board chair of the Independent Women's Forum, wrote on Townhall.com:

Here’s an unconventional prediction: in this race, unlike those before, the Vice President will actually matter, particularly in what they capture relative to that anti-Washington sentiment. Barring major mishap, here’s a second unconventional prediction: this isn’t going to be a close election, but will look far less like 2000 or 2004 than it does like McGovern in ’72.

And Spengler (pseudonym of an Asia Times columnist whose identity not even Google seems to know) wrote in his latest piece, which Rush Limbaugh trumpeted to the world on Tuesday:

Obama will spend the rest of his life wondering why he rejected the obvious road to victory, that is, choosing Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential nominee. However reluctantly, Clinton would have had to accept. McCain's choice of vice presidential candidate made obvious after the fact what the party professionals felt in their fingertips at the stadium extravaganza yesterday: rejecting Clinton in favor of the colorless, unpopular, tangle-tongued Washington perennial Joe Biden was a statement of weakness. McCain's selection was a statement of strength. America's voters will forgive many things in a politician, including sexual misconduct, but they will not forgive weakness.

That is why McCain will win in November, and by a landslide, barring some unforeseen event. Obama is the most talented and persuasive politician of his generation, the intellectual superior of all his competitors, but a fatally insecure personality. American voters are not intellectual, but they are shrewd, like animals. They can smell insecurity, and the convention stank of it. Obama's prospective defeat is entirely of its own making. No one is more surprised than Republican strategists, who were convinced just weeks ago that a weakening economy ensured a Democratic victory.

To repeat, and use another cliche, these are but straws in the wind. But it was interesting to hear Hugh Hewitt, no incautious cheerleader, also speculating yesterday that we may be seeing everything start to crumble for Barack Obama and the supposed Democratic sure thing.

One reason, then, for Obie not to have made the safer remark in his Ohio speech that "You can't put rouge on a corpse" is that he may be starting to get morbid feelings about his own chances in November. Final cliche: Never mention rope in house of a hanged man.

Maggie & Ronnie, meet Sarah

Slated on Backbone Radio, Sept. 7 Listen every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, Denver... 1460 KZNT, Colorado Springs... and streaming live at 710knus.com.

Rudy Giuliani's powerful RNC speech on "Suppose you were hiring someone" was a primer for voters on the contrast between Kid Obama and Maverick McCain. But if we imagined the same situation for McCain himself as a readiness test for the presidency, the Republican nominee just aced it. In selecting Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for his running mate, McCain made the most insightful and impactful personnel pick for America's future since President Bush tapped Gen. Petraeus to turn around the war in Iraq. The self-described "pit bull with lipstick" has put new teeth in Mac's reform campaign and brought star quality rivaling Obama's own. Palin's brilliant acceptance speech topped Rudy's high-energy warmup act and cheerfully bloodied the opposition. Look out, America. She's here.

Sarah Barracuda is the best thing to happen on the right since 1980. She has the backbone of the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, along with the wishbone and funnybone of our own Gipper, Ronald Reagan. Ronnie from on high and Maggie from her honored retirement in Britain must both have been beaming as Palin electrified the delegates on Wednesday night.

So hold off on Barack's coronation. This is going to be a heckuva race after all, and those styrofoam Greek columns could have to stay in storage for good. Come Nov. 5, the ex-community organizer may wish he'd been a mayor instead -- someone with actual responsibilities.

This Sunday on Backbone Radio, we'll talk about both conventions, RNC and the now-overshadowed DNC, with some great guests including Kate O'Beirne of National Review... former Gov. Bill Owens... Mike Littwin of the Rocky Mountain News... and two Colorado GOP delegates just home from St. Paul, Kathleen LeCrone and Debbie Brown.

Author Peter Schweizer will also be along to focus the lessons of his new book, "Makers and Takers," on the conservative-liberal showdown of this fall's campaign. You can get course credit just for memorizing his Palinesque subtitle: "Why Conservatives Work Harder, Feel Happier, Have Closer Families, Take Fewer Drugs, Give More Generously, Value Honesty More, Are Less Materialistic and Envious, Whine Less...And Even Hug Their Children More than Liberals."

Is it just me, or has politics gotten to be more fun since Obie visited Berlin and McCain phoned Alaska? Join us for one of our best-ever shows and find out.

Yours for caribou on the menu, JOHN ANDREWS

Give'em hell, Sarah

Gov. Palin is correct: she and Harry Truman do have a lot in common. Consider this time capsule from 1944: "Poor people of the United States. Truman is a nice man, an honest man, a good Senator, a man of great humility and a man of courage. He will make a passable Vice President. But Truman as President of the United States in times like these?" That was Richard Strout, writing in the New Republic shortly after FDR named his fourth-term VP candidate. In the short time since she was announced as John McCain’s running mate last weekend, the New Republic and other publications have again begun laying judgment on the merits of a choice for Vice President. Peter Scoblic of the current New Republic calls Palin’s resume “frighteningly thin” and the choice of her as VP “arrogant”. Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post said McCain had put “politics over country” in choosing a candidate with so little foreign policy experience. John Dickerson of Slate called it “reckless” and Jonathan Alter at Newsweek is sure she’s likely to “bellyflop” when faced with questions from reporters on issues she’s not familiar with.

They obviously hadn’t met “Sarah Barracuda” yet.

They sure have now. If Sarah Palin’s rousing speech at the Republican National Convention is any indication of how she will handle herself – as both candidate and office-holder -- the media and the pundits will be eating their words. In her speech on Wednesday night she deftly made reference to these doubters in the media -- and to her own unusual road to the nomination -- by referring to “a young farmer and haberdasher from Missouri who followed an unlikely path to the vice presidency.” She was referring, of course, to Harry Truman – a small town man of common means who became both Vice President and later President in a time of war – and ended up being what many now consider one of the better presidents of the 20th century.

It is a comparison that fits Palin well – and may help to quiet those who say that she isn’t yet ready to be Vice President. As noted biographer David McCullough writes in Truman, he was the “son of rural, inland America”, who never went to college and served with distinction as an artillery officer in the Missouri National Guard in World War I. He tried his hand at several vocations before starting his haberdashery business – which ultimately became a casualty of hard economic times. Like the life of Sarah Palin and her family, it was not one of privilege -- rather it was filled with the ordinary challenges of an ordinary American.

Also like Palin, Truman began his political career in small-town politics -- as an administrative judge of the Jackson County Court, where he was known for his honest efficiency and ability to “get things done”. After a series of local government posts, he entered the larger stage as a United States Senator from Missouri in 1934. Truman’s senate career was largely uneventful until the early 1940s when he led what became known as the “Truman Committee”, investigating waste and fraud in defense contracting. He made his name on something that Sarah Palin would certainly appreciate – pushing back on graft and “sweetheart” deals inside the government.

Harry Truman’s experience as a Senator wasn’t especially broad or deep, and it hardly prepared him to be Vice President in a time of war. He was VP for just three months and rarely saw FDR alone before the President’s death. Upon becoming President himself, Truman had little inside knowledge about the key issues facing him: he knew little about how World War II was being prosecuted and knew nothing about the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb. He also was totally unprepared to deal with Joseph Stalin – who had been pushing around an ill and weakened Roosevelt in negotiations over a defeated Europe. By all measures, Truman was hardly qualified to step into the presidency. As McCullough writes, the reaction in the country was initially one of panic: “Good God, Truman will be President”, it was being said everywhere. “If Harry Truman can be President, so could my next door neighbor.”

And yet, history shows that Truman was more than up to the job. He went to Yalta just after FDR’s death and took the measure of Stalin and saw that he was not to be trusted -- making it clear that the United States would not stand pat while the Soviet Union annexed all of Western Europe. He made the tough decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan because he knew it would end the war in the Pacific. He went on to pass the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe. He desegregated the U.S. armed forces and recognized the state of Israel. In short, he made tough decisions on the most complex issues of the day -- decisions that have stood the test of time.

The foundation for these decisions came not from experience, but rather from a wellspring of solid character, reliable instinct and good judgment. As Mary McGrory wrote in the Washington Post on the day of Truman’s death in 1972: "He was not a hero or a magician or a chess player, or an obsession (emphasis added). He was a certifiable member of the human race, direct, fallible, and unexpectedly wise when it counted.

Unlike Barack Obama, who is an obsession of the left, Sarah Palin from this vantage point looks a lot like Harry Truman: a small town woman with five kids and a husband who has a regular job. She began her career as a small town mayor, close to the people and their problems. She took on the entrenched interests of her state, resigning as Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in protest of ethical violations by another commissioner that were ignored by the sitting governor. When she became governor herself, she quickly broke up the old boys network that is Alaskan politics, rejecting the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” and passing real ethics reform in the state. She’s a reformer who is tough and principled, and who has earned the respect of her opponents. And based on her speech Wednesday night, it is not difficult to imagine Sarah Palin standing firm with Vladimir Putin if put in that position -- much in the same way Truman handled Stalin.

Indeed, those who have seen Palin in action in Alaska attest to her good political instincts, her toughness and her broad-based appeal to ordinary Americans. As Christopher Orr of the New Republic writes: "What the Democrats seem poised to miss now (about Palin) --is that she is a true political savant; a candidate with a knack for identifying the key gripes of the populace and packaging herself as the solution. That keen political nose has enabled her to routinely outperform her resume. Nearly two years into her administration, she still racks up approval ratings of 80 per cent or better."

If the Democrats missed it before, it will be hard (but not impossible – such is their disdain for her) to underestimate Palin after the performance she put on tonight at the Republican National Convention. What they saw was a natural at work.

Orr goes on to make another critical point about Palin: "Sarah Palin is a living reminder that the ultimate source of political power in this country is not the Kennedy School or the Davos Summit or an Ariana Huffington salon; even now, power emanates from the electorate itself. More precisely, power in 2008 emanates from the working class electorates of Pennsylvania and Ohio."

My guess is that in this election year, Harry Truman would have appealed mightily to those working class voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio – regardless of how many Senate hearings he’d held, or how much foreign policy experience he has. And now, after Sarah Palin has had a chance to introduce herself to the American public, I bet that she will, too.

Photos from RNC St. Paul

Wow! Here are some of the pictures I took during the RNC, where I was one of Colorado's alternate delegates. [photopress:RNC_all_103.jpg,thumb,pp_image] Convention hall at the XCel Center in St. Paul

[photopress:RNC_all_117.jpg,thumb,pp_image] Kathleen LeCrone on the floor of the RNC. Notice the "red phone" of power!

[photopress:RNC_all_133.jpg,thumb,pp_image] Sarah Palin from a ar! She was dynamic! Words cannot express how she wowed us!

[photopress:RNC_all_073.jpg,thumb,pp_image] Cindy McCain and family.

[photopress:RNC_all_052.jpg,thumb,pp_image] Kathleen LeCrone - speaking into the Colorado microphone.

Sarah's got sass

"Like being a community organizer, except a mayor has actual responsibilities." "A pit bull with lipstick." These zingers and others from Gov. Sarah Palin's speech to the RNC Wednesday night were notable not only for the words themselves, but for the combative twinkle in the Barracuda's eye as she delivered them -- along with the playful smile, the athlete's body language, the little taunting drawl in her voice, and her flawless timing as the hall roared and the nation watched. The VP nominee had attitude coming out of every pore, and it was just right, not over the top but not one bit intimidated either. I've taken your best punch, she seemed to be saying to all the jackals of the left, and I'm still standing, glad to have my chance to punch back, and ready for the next roundhouse you may want to throw. Bring it on.

Here is, as she herself told the delegates, a news flash: This woman is a frontier fighter, as happy a political warrior as you'll ever see from any era or either sex, a huge asset to the McCain ticket, a nightmare for Obama-Biden, and a new force on the national scene that's not going away any time soon, come Daily Kos and Sally Quinn in September, win or lose in November. Sarah Palin is here and she's staying.

I've been there for convention speeches since Goldwater said no to an adoring throng at Chicago in 1960, been around Presidents and Vice Presidents and candidates for the job since Nixon went into Cambodia in 1970, written and given a zillion speeches of my own or for others on large and small occasions, and my friends -- as the Original Maverick might say -- this was a hell of a speech delivered by a hell of an American.

I also happened to be there when the jackals ran Tom Eagleton off McGovern's ticket in 1972 -- the Nixon team were loving every minute of it, of course, and RN knew a little about that; they had tried the same thing on him in 1952 and failed -- and my reading after tonight is that anyone on the Dems' side who thinks Palin can be chased away this week, or who expects McCain to panic and dump her, is smoking something.

Sarah's message at RNC St. Paul is that she doesn't scare, doesn't quit, doesn't run. She's a winner and intends to win this round against the odds as she's won so many before. Sarah's got sass.