Speech perfect ...

Interesting! I just watched Sarah Palin's speech. I hate to be proven right, but the media is so predictable and so reactionary. The press had set such low expectations for her that she couldn't fail to meet them. Now, the CNN commentators are falling over themselves complimenting her, "Wow! She can speak. How touching! How feminine!" ... How predictable. They now predict that the race will be close, and McCain could win. Surprise.

While everyone is falling over themselves praising her, what did they expect?

That she'd be an inarticulate bumbling speaker? But, we knew she could speak well. Its the one quality that all beauty pageant contestants must learn, and anyone who watched her speeches would have known that.

That her speech will be badly written? This, unlike many of Obama's speeches, wasn't a speech she wrote. It was written for her by expert speechwriters, Matthew Scully, who's one of the top speechwriters in the country. So, its hardly surprising the speech was well crafted.

The three things that struck me about the speech were that:

• This was a very strident speech that questioned their opponents character, unlike Barack Obama and Biden, who tend to focus on issues. McCain has clearly abandoned his commitment to running a clean campaign.
• The speech criticised Obama and Biden, but didn't lay out any specifics of what she and McCain would do. Her only promise was that she and McCain are people of good character, so people should trust them. Let's hope that McCain will do more.
• She was extraordinarily smug and sarcastic - I believe she just told the public, "bring em on". Expect the DNC to do just that.

The way she performed in the speech suggests that she'll do well in debates. The only problem for the GOP is that she may be so steely that it might be make a lot of men nervous and coupled how unknown she is on the issues, the DNC could make her look like Bush on steroids.