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If Barack Obama loses this election to John McCain – something which, for the first time, I regard as a real possibility – history will point to August 29 as the pivotal moment. That was when Mr McCain announced that Sarah Palin would be his running-mate, and when livid Democrats and their friends in the media voiced their feelings about her and much of the electorate, and gravely harmed their candidate’s prospects.

For Mr McCain to win the election against the odds that faced him pre-Palin – with the economy in the tank and the incumbent Republican president setting records for unpopularity – would be sensational enough. For this to happen because of his vice-presidential pick, a decision that is usually of next to no consequence, beggars belief. The Democrats had to bring all their resources to getting themselves into this fix. They proved equal to the task.

As I argued last week, Mr Obama’s own initial reaction to the Palin nomination was exactly right. All the party had to do was follow his lead. Mr Obama, in effect, would give her enough rope; her inadequacies would reveal themselves in due course; it cost nothing, in the meantime, to be courteous, and to keep pressing on the issues, where the Democrats still enjoy an advantage with most voters. Ms Palin’s first television interview last week, an adequate but far from stellar performance, affirmed the wisdom of that course.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Please post comments below.

I thought she did all right–a good, adequate performance, but no more. I doubt that it will have changed many minds. People inclined to like her saw nothing much to alarm them; people inclined to dislike her saw nothing that will have impressed. I think that many viewers, like me, will have regarded Gibson’s tetchy, unfriendly, weary, inquisitorial demeanour–that constant frown, as if to say, “remind me why I am talking to YOU?”–as off-putting, and therefore helpful to the accused. She is under intense pressure, obviously. I think she deserves high marks for unflappability–and that, heaven knows, is a good thing in a vice president (or president).

I agree with Jim Fallows, though, that the combination of little knowledge, incuriosity, and an unduly decisive temperament is very dangerous. Bush underlines that danger, to be sure. What one wants is self-assurance that understands its limits, and some appreciation of the need to balance ends and means. I still don’t know what to make of Palin in that regard. There are some worrying signs.

I don’t go along with the view that her answers on the “Bush doctrine” were a serious misstep, however. True, she did not know what that term meant. The fact is, it means different things to different people. If Gibson had put that question to me, my answer would have been: “It depends what you mean by the Bush doctrine.” In effect, that was what she said. And it deserves to be noted (as Jim points out, but with a kindly lack of emphasis, calling it a minor error) that Gibson himself apparently does not know what it means.

GIBSON [impatiently]: The Bush doctrine as I understand it is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree…?

No, Charles. That is not what the Bush doctrine means. The right of anticipatory self-defence is already enshrined in international law. Countries do not have to wait until they are attacked to legitimately defend themselves. The Bush doctrine advances the notion of preventive war: the right to attack not in order to defend yourself against an imminent assault, but to deal with less certain, more distant but still possibly mortal threats.

Whatever you think about the Bush doctrine, people who laugh at Palin for failing to know what it is really ought to make sure they understand it themselves.

One wonders how much lower this election can sink. The furore over “you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig” sets a new benchmark. The idea that Barack Obama seriously intended to call Sarah Palin a pig is surely absurd. Yes, it was a stupid thing to say; and yes, many people in his audience enjoyed the implication; but I would be amazed if it was not just an injudicious unscripted remark. The Republican outrage over it is wholly synthetic. The Democratic outrage over the Republican outrage is mostly synthetic too—though not entirely, because there is some genuine anger over the way the race is going mixed in.

The Democrats urgently need to get a grip on this. When they rage at unfair Republican tactics, part of that fury unavoidably spills over into anger at the electorate for being so gullible as to fall for it. Far better to rise above this sort of stuff, and radiate confidence that the electorate will see through it. If Obama gets angry at the electorate, or can even be plausibly accused of it, he is finished.

I don’t know whether I find Camille Paglia infuriating or compelling—often, I suppose, both at the same time. I thought this piece for Salon was excellent, despite the obligatory weirdness. I find her views on abortion inexplicable, and I’m not sure what it could ever mean to call nature “fascist” (as she does later on in the article), but I think she makes some very astute observations about the race.

The over-the-top publicity stunt of a mega-stadium for Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention two weeks ago was a huge risk that worried me sick — there were too many things that could go wrong, from bad weather to crowd control to technical glitches on the overblown set. But everything went swimmingly. Obama delivered the speech nearly flawlessly — though I was shocked and disappointed by how little there was about foreign policy, a major area where wavering voters have grave doubts about him. Nevertheless, it was an extraordinary event with an overlong but strangely contemplative and spiritually uplifting finale. The music, amid the needlessly extravagant fireworks, morphed into “Star Wars” — a New Age hymn to cosmic reconciliation and peace.

After that extravaganza, marking the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s epochal civil rights speech on the Washington Mall, I felt calmly confident that the Obama campaign was going to roll like a gorgeous juggernaut right over the puny, fossilized McCain. The next morning, it was as if the election were already over. No need to fret about American politics anymore this year. I had already turned with relief to other matters.

Wow! Wham! The Republicans unleashed a doozy — one of the most stunning surprises that I have ever witnessed in my adult life. By lunchtime, Obama’s triumph of the night before had been wiped right off the national radar screen. In a bold move I would never have thought him capable of, McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his pick for vice president. I had heard vaguely about Palin but had never heard her speak. I nearly fell out of my chair. It was like watching a boxing match or a quarter of hard-hitting football — or one of the great light-saber duels in “Star Wars”… This woman turned out to be a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

Palin made sense to me as a VP choice, even though I did not think she would draw support from disappointed Clintonistas, or have more than a moderate appeal for centrist women. The polls suggest I was wrong on both points. It will be interesting to see whether this lasts when she is forced to explain her views on social issues, and how she might act on them as VP or president–as she presumably will be in the debate with Biden, if not before.

As promised in my previous post, some examples of the hundreds of messages I am getting about this article. (I know you only have my word for it, but I promise you these instances are quite representative. And something to bear in mind perhaps if you are sceptical about the writers’ bona fides is that these extracts are, as I say, from emails and not from comments on the blog intended for publication.)

The divorce [between working class Americans and Democrats] started long ago, about the time of George McGovern. His candidacy drove my father, for example, to vote Republican for the first time in his life. As for myself, I strongly oppose most of the policies of the Republicans, but, frankly, being in the same room with liberal Democrats and listening to them talk, alienates me, too. The arrogance and condescension is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

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I was a liberal once, serving as general counsel of the Peace Corps…, and it was some years later that the attitude you so aptly describe began to really alienate me from my former allegiance. It wasn’t so much the policies, although I’ve also moved to the center/right over the years, as it was the smugness, the patronizing attitude, and the almost pervasive hypocrisy that made the left intolerable. You give them credit for being well-intentioned, and I think you’re right, but they’re getting awfully mean this year.

One of the ironies is that I’m not really a member of the right either. The left drove me out, but I’m not comfortable with a lot of the conservative positions. The one thing that makes the right fundamentally more acceptable, though, is that for all their faults, the right wing politicians by and large do not think they are smarter than the left or the people of this country. The left is utterly convinced that the only reason others don’t agree with them is that they’re too stupid. Unfortunately for the left, the people are at least smart enough to pick up this attitude.

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[Good piece] on Palin. I say this as someone who would like to see Obama win. I’m amazed at how ugly and counterproductive the behavior you describe on the part of of out-of-touch media/lefty blogs etc has been.

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I am a Democrat and African-American and I found your article to be dead-on accurate. You could detect the snideness of liberal Democratic reactions a mile away. I find that Democrats from those parts of the US not located on the coasts tend to understand this, too. If you support his campaign you can only hope that it does not fall for this same mindset - something that so far they have avoided doing, hence its appeal in the Midwest and the West.

I want to reflect more carefully on the many emails I’ve received that take issue in a thoughtful and courteous way with my argument (as opposed to merely screaming about my duplicity, stupidity, ethnic origins and intellectual corruption) and I will come back to the subject again. But here is part of an email from a dear and esteemed American friend that I wanted to post and respond to straight away.

You are painting the entire Democratic party with the same brush thereby doing to them exactly what you are accusing them of doing to the Republicans. Being in (and from) small town America, I am constantly amazed at the thoughtful discussions I have had with both Republicans and Democrats on the candidates with no personal attacks or animosity expressed. It has been really interesting - very different than the last few elections. Perhaps the column needs to be more directed to the media.

The second thing that annoyed me is the final paragraph: “It will be hard. They will have to develop some regard for the values that the middle of the country expresses when it votes Republican. Religion. Unembarrassed flag-waving patriotism. Freedom to succeed or fail through one’s own efforts. Refusal to be pitied, bossed around or talked down to. And all those other laughable redneck notions that made the United States what it is.”

Except for the religious reference (I cannot abide mixing politics and religion), I can’t understand why you think that these are primarily Republican traits (I don’t like “values” references either). I think of everyone who told me how they cried during Obama’s speech (me included) because they felt hope and that surge of patriotism that they had been missing. And I know of no one who isn’t proud to succeed or fail on their own, or refuses to be pitied, bossed around or talked down to. I know you are making a point but I think this paragraph took away from the power of the piece.

Well said, Jana. I certainly intended no disrespect to grass-roots Democrats: my complaint is chiefly addressed to the party’s spokesmen–Obama is the exception–and advocates in the media. I believe they are letting the wider liberal movement down. I will say, though, that good-natured discussions between ordinary Democrats and Republicans might be harder to find in Washington DC, New York City and other metropolitan liberal redoubts than they are for you in Idaho.

As for the idea that those values or cultural affinities are widely shared or even universal, this has not been my experience. Obviously I am moving in the wrong circles, but the metropolitan liberal, in my experience, regards overt religious identity as vulgar, and evangelical Christianity as an infallible marker of mental retardation. Flag-waving patriotism is seen as a joke and an embarrassment. My point about refusal to be talked down to, and so on, was not intended to imply that only Republican voters think that way. What I was trying to say is that the liberal elite seems to forget that ordinary Republican-leaning Americans are proud people who want to be treated with some respect, that they are in fact entitled to it, and that their insistence on it is a quintessentially American idea.

My column yesterday prompted more emails from readers than any other article I have written. I usually get 10 or 20 letters or emails. I got hundreds about this one and they’re still coming. I expected to get a few from Republicans praising me (they would ignore the positive things I say about Democrats in general and Obama in particular) and a few from Democrats attacking me (these would be spluttering and furious: “are you kidding me? are you kidding me?”, and so on). And so I did. But these were outnumbered–vastly outnumbered–by emails from ex- or wavering Democrats who say they feel disappointed or betrayed by the party’s spokesmen and advocates. Who knew this strand of opinion even existed? Later today I’ll post one or two examples, together with responses to critics who made good points and some further thoughts on the subject.

This article is not the first to note the cultural contradiction in American liberalism, but just now the point bears restating. The election may turn on it.

Democrats speak up for the less prosperous; they have well-intentioned policies to help them; they are disturbed by inequality, and want to do something about it. Their concern is real and admirable. The trouble is, they lack respect for the objects of their solicitude. Their sympathy comes mixed with disdain, and even contempt.

Democrats regard their policies as self-evidently in the interests of the US working and middle classes. Yet those wide segments of US society keep helping to elect Republican presidents. How is one to account for this? Are those people idiots? Frankly, yes – or so many liberals are driven to conclude. Either that or bigots, clinging to guns, God and white supremacy; or else pathetic dupes, ever at the disposal of Republican strategists. If they only had the brains to vote in their interests, Democrats think, the party would never be out of power. But again and again, the Republicans tell their lies, and those stupid damned voters buy it.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Please post comments below.

Even allowing for the fact that one does not expect soaring oratory from John McCain, his closing speech to the convention was disappointing. He had a hard act to follow after Sarah Palin, but that is no excuse because there was no need to match that for excitement. Instead he had to do two main things, in my view, each of them readily achievable. First and most important, he had to affirm the party’s appeal for votes to the wide middle of the US electorate. Second, he needed to offer some specific domestic policies, and contrast them favourably with the Democratic agenda. He gestured vaguely in both directions, but nothing more.

The speech concentrated mainly on his biography—again. One hesitates to say this because McCain is an authentic hero; his bravery is something that very few of us, least of all this writer, could ever aspire to match; and knowing what inner resources he brings to his candidacy is of course an essential part of his appeal—but how many times does this story need to be told? This week his audience has heard it over and over again. Endless repetition must eventually dull its impact. His heroism and his capacity for sacrifice in the service of his country are unquestioned. By the end of the week, it could have been left at that.

Reaching out to the centre should have been regarded as a priority because of the Palin nomination. For the moment, that looks like a great success: she gave an amazing speech and, to the consternation of the Democrats and a large part of the US media, triumphantly vindicated McCain’s decision to select her. But Palin is a social conservative. Yes, maybe she can bring in centrists as well: that possibility makes her an instant force to be reckoned with in American politics. But right now it is no more than a possibility. She has energised the base—that much is certain—but her views on abortion and other social issues will alarm many centrists who might have been leaning to McCain. Having delighted the base, he needed to rebalance the ticket by moving deftly to the centre himself. Securing the base was necessary but not sufficient: the Republicans cannot win without independents.

Mr McCain, one imagines, would prefer victory to glorious defeat. Yet his centrist gestures were confined mostly to underlining his maverick instincts, his taste for bipartisanship, his willingness to go against party orthodoxy, and his appealingly frank criticisms of what the Republicans had achieved, or failed to, during the Bush years. All that was fine, as far as it went, but much too general. Give us examples. Offer some reassurance that this will not be the right-wing ticket that the Palin nomination suggests it could be. Yes, that would have risked disappointing the hall, but the hall has been very well catered to this week and it was a risk worth taking.

More detail was needed in its own right, too, not just to rebalance the ticket. Once Palin blew the doors off the convention on Wednesday, bringing the torrent of derision over her nomination to an abrupt halt, lack of specific proposals in the Republican platform became the principal line of criticism—and unlike the response to the VP pick, this was a well-aimed attack. In his own superb speech at the end of the Democrats’ convention, Obama took pains to list a series of specific policies. McCain needed to match that or better. He not only failed to do so, but he made the gap all the more obtrusive with the part of his speech that mentioned by name families and individuals that were struggling for one reason or another. McCain said he would honour them and work for them. Good, but how, exactly?

Not for the first time, it occurred to me that McCain’s biggest mistake in this campaign has been in failing to develop a market-friendly proposal for universal health care. Mitt Romney did it in Massachusetts so do not tell me a Republican cannot go there. That plus Palin would have given him a shot at the base and at independents too. It would have cemented his appeal to middle America, which is much preoccupied with the worsening failure of the US health care system. Not to mention, it would have been the right thing to propose on the merits. If he had done this, I think I would be betting on McCain-Palin right now. Ceding the issue to the Democrats, in my view, was a mistake in every way. And I groaned to hear his attack on Obama’s health plan, falling back on the old “socialised medicine” line, which is a travesty.

Astonishing. It was a fine convention speech—but, reading the text, no better than very good. What was just sensational, far exceeding my expectations, was the delivery. After the thrashing she has received from press and television in the past few days, knowing what was at stake for the party and for John McCain as she stood at the podium, with a good part of the nation watching and waiting for her to trip, her composure and self-assurance were simply amazing. Who could fail to be moved by this? And it was even more impressive than it looked, because the waves of adulation from the audience kept interrupting her momentum: they did not know it, but at times the audience was making it harder for her. Yet she never looked hesitant or thrown. She paused when she had to and controlled the timing. She actually seemed comfortable. If ever there were a political natural, we saw one tonight.

It was not a safe speech, though at the beginning, when she was talking mainly about McCain, I thought it was going to be. She had a pair of difficult acts to follow, because both Mike Huckabee and (especially) Rudi Giuliani gave terrific barnstorming speeches before she came on. (Let‘s not dwell on Mitt Romney’s bizarre contribution.) She not only touched on her own biography, in ways sure to delight small-town Americans across the land, she also asserted her command, as the governor of an oil-producing state, of the energy debate. Had Democrats forgotten that this is a key issue in the election, and one on which they are trailing the Republicans in public opinion?

I was surprised that she dared to attack Obama-Biden on national security and foreign policy, where her credentials are weak: here she was saying, I’m not afraid of you. In fronting her own executive experience, comparing it favorably (and not without justification) with Obama’s, she dared to mock the Democratic nominee. That too was a risk, because mockery easily backfires—ask the Democrats about that tonight—and it paid off. All the barbs—“he has written two memoirs but not one piece of legislation,” and so on—went home.

Well, the Democrats have a problem. They had a few days of calling her a clueless redneck, a stewardess, a nonentity, and she has hurled that back in their bleeding gums. (If I were Joe Biden, I’d start practising for October 2nd right now.) Even before tonight’s speech, they had backed off the “no experience” strategy, because (as the Republicans intended) that was sending shrapnel in Obama’s direction. Their line right now is their default mode, that McCain-Palin is four more years of George Bush. But this too is a completely untenable strategy, since the Republican ticket now looks stunningly fresh to voters, as fresh in fact as Obama-Biden. Where they will have to end up is obvious: McCain-Palin is an extreme right-wing ticket. It is a team that will prosecute the culture war against all that is decent and civilized in the United States: that must be the line.

Aside from further surprises in her biography, this—not her supposed inexperience—is the vulnerability that Palin has brought to the McCain candidacy. We need to hear her questioned on those issues. How unbending a social conservative is she? So much as to frighten the independents McCain needs? McCain is not a culture warrior. That is not the campaign he wanted to fight. At the moment, however, this factor seems massively outweighed in electoral terms by the excitement she has brought to the campaign. The party cannot believe its luck. They want to win again, and suddenly they think they can.

What one next wants to know is how Americans at large react to what they saw tonight. I will be surprised if they were not very impressed.

Update: CNN on why the speech was a problem for McCain: “Well, he has to speak tomorrow night, and as we know, he is no governor of Alaska.” Flexibility you can believe in from the best political team on television.

The first full day of the Republican convention—the schedule was put back from Monday because of Hurricane Gustav—went off smoothly. President Bush was beamed in from the White House, and Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman were the other headliners. No sign yet of Sarah Palin, due to speak on Wednesday, and the subject of almost every conversation in the margins of the event. Whatever the rest of the country may think of her, whether she proves to be an asset or a liability to the McCain campaign, her selection has generated extraordinary excitement and enthusiasm here.

At the same time, though, her arrival on the ticket threw the first day’s pace off a little. With Palin nowhere to be seen, day one, as they say, buried the lede. The idea was to devote it to introducing John McCain, but is any American politician less in need of an introduction?

The tributes were well enough done. True, Bush’s reference to McCain’s spirit being more than a match for the “angry left” was a bit puzzling. (Does anybody even in this hall think that Obama represents the angry left?) But Thompson’s funny, punchy speech had everybody asking, why wasn’t he like that during the primaries? Aside from the sustained ovation for a fallen soldier, Thompson got the biggest cheer of the night. (“And we need a president who doesn’t think that the protection of the unborn or a newly born baby is above his pay grade.”) His speech even had a morsel of policy content (taxes are a bad thing), which otherwise would have been entirely absent from the day. But there was nothing very surprising and, thanks to Palin, it all seemed a little beside the point.

Lieberman’s speech certainly ought to have seemed surprising, but his apostasy is old news. Eight years ago, this man was Al Gore’s running-mate; now here he was speaking up for the Republican nominee. He rested his case on the fact that McCain is an extraordinary man and these are extraordinarily dangerous times. But he said little to elaborate. He got a round of applause for Bill Clinton—no mean feat with this crowd—when he contrasted Clinton’s occasional willingness to work with Republicans with Obama’s record. And he got one big laugh: “If John McCain is just another partisan Republican, I am Michael Moore’s favourite Democrat.” If I had been just another of the partisan Republicans packing the hall, I might have been a little insulted by that, but the audience either failed to make the connection or was in a generous frame of mind.

Most Democrats by now detest Lieberman, of course, but one other thing he said might persuade those who don’t to get with the program. He not only praised McCain’s support for the surge of forces into Iraq (fair enough), but contrasted this with Obama’s “voting to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield”. That was tendentious at best, and the most aggressive attack on Obama of the day. Obama has never argued for funding to be cut off; he wanted a timeline for withdrawal attached to the funding. He did vote against a funding bill that failed to include such a provision; but then Lieberman himself, and most Republicans, also voted against a funding measure that did include such a provision. One way or another, almost everybody has voted against funding for the troops. Lieberman’s charge was unfair, and did not sit well with his appeal for one-nation bipartisanship.

And then again, there is Palin. Lieberman, widely thought to have been McCain’s first choice for VP (McCain is said to have switched because the base would not wear it), applauded the selection. “Governor Palin, like John McCain, is a reformer. She’s taken on the special interests and the political power-brokers in Alaska and reached across party lines to get things done. The truth is, she is a leader we can count on to help John shake up Washington. That’s why—that’s why I sincerely believe that the real ticket for change this year is the McCain-Palin ticket.” Lieberman and McCain see eye to eye on national security. But Lieberman is pro-choice on abortion, and a social liberal in other respects as well, whereas Palin is a social conservative. Genuine though his admiration for McCain may be, stretching his endorsement to the whole ticket seemed a stretch too far.

One last observation. Barring breakdowns later in the week, the Republicans have won the platform war hands down. The Democrats had their cheesy game-show set followed by the much-derided Greek column thing. The Republicans have a clean, reflective stage in front of an enormous high-definition screen, used so far to excellent effect. If I were with the DNC, I’d find out who was responsible and book them for 2012.

I was unsure how the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s daughter would affect social conservatives’ view of the governor’s nomination for VP, but they seem to be taking it in their stride. If anything they are seeing it as a positive—more proof that Mrs Palin is a good and supportive mother. At any rate, they say, it is nobody’s business but the family’s.

The other good news for the McCain campaign is that many Democrats are mishandling the issue as badly as they mishandled the nomination in the first place. There is a tone of exultation over the Palin family’s difficulties that will strike many centrists, and decent people regardless of ideology, as repellent. Again, to his enormous credit, Obama himself was the exception. What a class act he is. He reminded reporters that he is the son of an unmarried mother, said the families of candidates and especially their children should be off-limits, and told the press to drop the story. It won’t of course: it will mine it for all it is worth. But Obama said the right thing and gave every sign of meaning it.

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