Putting it in perspective

Mr. Obama responded by comparing Wasilla's 50 city workers with his campaign's 2,500 employees and dismissed its budget of about $12 million a year by saying "we have a budget of about three times that just for the month." He claimed his campaign "made clear" his "ability to manage large systems and to execute."

Of course, this ignores the fact that Mrs. Palin is now governor. She manages an $11 billion operating budget, a $1.7 billion capital expenditure budget, and nearly 29,000 full- and part-time state employees. In two years as governor, she's vetoed over $499 million from Alaska's capital budget -- more money than Mr. Obama is likely to spend on his entire campaign.

the election.

Exactly:

Anyone who predicts with any certainty what will happen in the next eight weeks ought to explain how well they forecast what would happen in the past eight days.

Who benefits?

People think conservatives are cruel and heartless.

Maybe they're right.

But look how often programs meant to benefit working class people end up enriching the elite, and socking all taxpayers:


In its most dramatic market intervention in years, the U.S. government seized two of the nation's largest financial companies, taking direct responsibility for firms that provide funding for around three-quarters of new home mortgages.

....

With that, the U.S. mortgage crisis entered a new and uncharted phase, potentially saddling American taxpayers with billions of dollars in losses from home loans made by the private sector.


.....

At Fannie, Herb Allison, who formerly served as chairman of the investment company TIAA-CREF, succeeds Daniel Mudd. Freddie's chief executive, Richard Syron, was succeeded by David Moffett, who has been vice chairman and chief financial officer of U.S. Bancorp.

Potentially, Mr. Syron could walk away with an exit package totaling as much as $15 million, said David Schmidt, a senior consultant at James F. Reda & Associates LLC, a compensation consulting concern in New York. That includes a pension and deferred compensation, about $3.7 million in severance pay and a possible payment of $8.8 million to compensate for forfeiting recent equity grants. A Freddie spokesman said Mr. Syron had said he doesn't "anticipate receiving nearly that much."

Mr. Mudd's exit package, including stock he already owns, could total $14 million, Mr. Schmidt estimates.

McCain

Isn't there a contradiction between conservatism and "Country First"?

And is "maverick" reliable?

A new "Cross of Gold"?

Could Sarah Palin's address to the Republican Convention be compared, in its political impact, to William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech?

It might -- but this might pose as many dangers as threats to the Republican Party.

This is to speak of political impact only. As Washington Post writer Robert Samuelson points out, neither party is addressing the real challenges: health care costs, entitlements and immigration.

But political impact counts too. Bryan changed his party, thus politics. Palin might have done the same thing. She certainly got Republicans excited, a feat somewhat like raising the dead. That counts for more than many thing.

Bryan was just 36 when he delivered his speech to the Democratic Convention in 1896, calling for currency to be backed by silver, rather than gold. It was a way of helping debt-burdened farmers — by, in effect, inflating the money supply. The delegates went into a frenzy, and he was nominated as the Democratic candidate.

More generally, he helped ignite a revolt by the older agricultural order — then still a huge slice of the population — in a revolt against the rise of industrial power. Farmers and those who felt they were being left behind coalesced behind Bryan and the resentments and fears he articulated when he concluded, "You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."

Palin's speech was a revolt against the media, the Washington elite, the intellectuals — against the knowledge elite that now dominates the economy just as the robber barons dominated the industrial economy that was swamping the agricultural sector in 1896.

Both text and subtext conveyed the message pitting the average American against the technocrats and CEOs who have really run the country for the past couple of decades. As many have written, we are in a knowledge-based economy. Palin, and those who respond to her, are challenging the reigning axis of power in Georgetown and on K Street in Washington, Wall Street and the Upper West Side in New York, and Marin County and Malibu in California.

Some might look askance at the Republican Party's representing average folk, but, as other writers have noted, the two parties have been trading places very quietly for years. Suddenly, the Republicans are on the verge of being the party of the people, which they have not generally been, at least since Abe Lincoln.

Moreover, this is not merely a conservative move. Take for instance an upset here in Utah's ultra-conservative Third Congressional District. Chris Cannon has represented the district for a dozen years, and garnered from conservative groups approval ratings in the mid to high 90s. But that wasn't enough. He seemed too distant, too focused on Washington. A political newcomer, Jason Chaffetz, running with no paid campaign staff, shellacked Cannon in the primary, and is the odds-on favorite to win in November.

So it is not so much a conservative shift as a populist one. It is not enough to be conservative, at least as the media and politicians usually measure it. The new Republican Party must connect with the people, not just dictating to them, but acting as a conduit for their dreams, and fears.

This is no guarantee of victory, of course. Bryan never won the presidency in three tries, and ended his career in the famous Scopes trial, which won him the derision of the rising class of intellectuals.

Nor is it a guarantee of good policy. Bryan's silver policy would have caused inflation, which in the long run hurts ordinary people more than it does the bankers and financiers, who can game the system. Palin populism may not be any better than the elitist policies it decries.

Yet neither should the potential of this new Republicanism be ignored. Palin mocked the media, for instance, and in fact the mass media's power probably crested years ago, and may be in decline. A fast-changing world may be tearing power away from New York and Washington, and moving it across the nation.

And it may be double-edged. Here's the core revelation: the Palin Republicans (and perhaps the Chaffetz ones) won't settle for just following orders. The Republican Party can't just use them; it's the other way around.

Take immigration. Say McCain tries the old switcheroo, and passes immigration "reform" this new base perceives as "amnesty." They won't just grumble and take it. They will explode.

And the Republican Party will join the Whigs and the Populists and the Know-Nothings and all the other political parties that are now just history.

Showtime

Palin's on. 9:29

She's good, too. She's the best candidate McCain could have chosen, judging by Mitt, Huck, Rudy, et al.

Is this the day the Republican Party, and thus American politics, changes?

A speech is not only the words, but the situation and the delivery. Like a song or play.

It's coming together for her.

"we put the government of the state back on the side of the people."

My thought: that's the trope: not no government, not the government leading the people, but putting the government on the side of the people.

"that luxury jet was over the top" She put it on eBay!

Sarah Barracuda.

Got rid of the chef.

Those lips pressed together on the veto records.

9:51 -- Oil threat.

He's written two books but no laws. That's a key point: Obama is more a literary than political type.

She has fired up the Republicans, which I thought impossible.

She's got a rapier wit.

She's a hoopster too. Palin v. Obama, one on one.

"the American presidency isn't supposed to be a journey of personal discovery." Ouch!

10:03: Praise the Lord, she's raised the dead -- the Republican party.

Election won? Not by a long shot. But the game is on.





"If our state was going to build a bridge, we were going to build it ourselves."

More speakers

A smell of smoke in neighborhood. Really, ours

####

8:51 -- Crowd is chanting "zero, zero!"

Hawaii's governor says Palin will be a great vice president. Has anybody been a great vice president?

9:01 -- Giuliani on. "USA." McCain is a true American hero. Yes, but will he be the best president?

Lay off the story! They'll overuse it.

He's ripping Obama. Rudy is a little scary looking, but perhaps offensive.

When Dems gave up on Iraq, they gave up on America. Yes.

Does this signal a sea change in politics -- GOP as people's party?