Sarah Eagleton’s Speech (UPDATED)

I said earlier today that I thought Sarah Palin’s speech was probably going to be great, since the McCain campaign’s future hinges on her ability to get past her scandals and portray herself as both likable and Presidential.

Unfortunately for them, Palin’s speech really didn’t stack up.

She started out clearly very nervous, which isn’t the image you want to project when you’re trying to convince the country you’re ready to be Vice President.

And her delivery was off–to be honest, it sounded like Palin was reading a script instead of delivering a heartfelt speech. It’s not not surprising–McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis told us that the speech was written long before Palin was even chosen, they just retooled it to fit her biography–still, her delivery was unexpectedly terrible. I thought Palin was a better speaker than this.

I read Palin’s full remarks. It was great material very poorly delivered. All of those details in there about energy and foreign policy don’t prove Palin’s knowledge, since she was just repeating words put into her mouth by McCain’s speechwriters. To that extent, she comes off a bit like George W. Bush–she doesn’t really understand the material, but she repeats it because it’s what she’s told to do.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that Palin’s tone was surprisngly off-putting. I figured her small-town charm and natural likability would be out in full force. Polls taken after she was announced as McCain’s running mate showed that, even though a vast majority of people think Palin isn’t experienced enough for the job, people find her extremely likable. I figurd the McCain campaign would would best use her as a personable foil to McCain’s grizzled warrior.

In this speech, though, Palin didn’t come off as charming at all. In fact, she came off as just the opposite–smarmy and arrogant. To me, it’s like one of McCain’s advisers told her to project confidence, and she took it way too far and projected pure, nasty condescention. This isn’t the down-to-earth, affable Palin who was introduced to the world last week, nor is this the effective attack dog VP candidates usually become. Palin is something that combines the worst of both of those worlds–nasty and self-righteous.

I’ll admit that the speech has some damn good barbs at Obama–the community organizer line is sure to stick, even though it insults community organizers and the thousands of people they’ve helped–but Palin can’t really deliver an attack well. The parts of her speech where she attacked Obama came off like an overbearing comedy routine, not a serious speech by a Vice Presidential nominee.

And Sarah Palin didn’t really address the elephant in the room–she didn’t display shy she’s qualified to be Vice President. It seems like Rick Davis & co. wrote the speech for someone with better credentials and then forgot to include a part where Palin explains how her short tenure as Governor qualifies her to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency. Palin talked a lot about being Governor, she talked a lot about what she (or, more accurately, McCain) would do in office, but there was a step missing in the middle that left a giant, gaping hole in her speech.

Overall, I’m not sure how Palin’s speech will be received. No matter what, the GOP is going to defend it and claim that she redeemed herself–but they were going to say that no matter how it went, let’s face it. I saw a candidate suppressing her natural charm and carisma, instead coming across as smarmy and condescending, giving a speech she doesn’t really understand while looking like she could have used a few more practice sessions before stepping out into the limelight. Overall, it was a standard convention speech, not the redemptive speech that Palin needed to give in order to seriously save her candidacy.

UPDATE: More thoughts on Sarah Palin:

I still think it was a great speech, though poorly-delivered.  But I don’t think it was the speech Sarah Palin needed to give.

Palin’s speech was Bush circa 2004–it was red meat for the followers, a sneering, condescending attack on the GOP’s political opponents.

But I don’t think Sarah Palin won anyone over.  I don’t think anyone who wasn’t voting for her last week was swayed by this speech alone.  She energized the Republican base, sure, but the Republican base isn’t enough to win this election.  They were barely enough 4 years ago, and since then the number of Republicans has dropped and the number of Independents and Democrats has skyrocketed.

If this is their strategy, the GOP is going to lose, plain and simple.  If they can’t bring new people to the GOP coalition, they will lose.

More importantly, Palin didn’t address her political scandals, which are going to continue to dog her until November (and possibly beyond). Nor did she prove she was qualified to be President, another question that’s going to dog her for the next two months. And Rick Davis & co. filled her speech with the same easily-disprovable lies that were in Palin’s introductory speech a week ago.

The Republicans and their supporters are raving about the speech, and that was the point–it was designed by Rick Davis & co. to fire them up. But for everyone else out there–the vast majority of the American people–Sarah Palin didn’t do anything.  In fact, her nastiness may turn independent voters off and it’s already galvanizing Democrats against the McCain-Palin ticket.