• McCAIN’S RENEWAL: SARAH PALIN

The Democratic convention’s star-studded crowning of Obama at the elaborate altar in Denver provided America with another sampling from a polished orator, presenting no surprises. Before CNN and MSNBC had time to recover from their swooning, McCain sent a long hard throw to the plate in the form of Gov. Sarah Palin. Palin’s first address on the world stage was surprisingly effective, and her delivery resonated with a genuine energy that both McCain and Obama should envy. Her address also towered over Biden’s uncomfortable delivery of words sounding too much like someone else’s voice.

For some reason when Palin says “challenge the status quo to serve the common good,” you get the sense that she actually means it. The Democratic leadership has already decried Palin’s lack of experience with the insult, “John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.” That is probably not the best place to begin the attack. Of the foursome lined up for the run to the White House, Palin is the only one who can claim any Chief Executive experience. In her case it is of both a company and a State. Having enriched the Alaska coffers after taking on the oil companies provides her some coin with middle America as it struggles with escalating oil prices and cost of living. Palin took on both Democrats and Republicans with ethics legislation against corruption. Her reputation as a reformer fighting cronyism almost makes her an unlikely new member of the Republican Party leadership given its Congressional track record of the past decade.

While Obama, the new countenance of the Democratic Party, chose a Washington insider as his running mate, McCain’s pick of Palin serves up a surprising potential new face for the Republicans. It is a maverick decision, and evidently not one expected by the Republican guard and financial backers. McCain’s new V.P. running mate is an invitation to some of the women who supported Hillary Clinton but whose patronage was shaken when she was sidestepped for V.P. by Obama. Her anti-abortion stance will make such attraction difficult.

This unexpected pick of Palin presents some insight into McCain’s decision making, and changes the national political landscape. In one move, McCain adds distance between himself and the Bush/Cheney administration, and puts some substance on his version of change. The politically unbalanced media onslaught has already started against Palin, nevertheless this decision by McCain will stimulate new dialogue on the road to the Oval Office, and will certainly impose fresh perspectives from and on the Republican Party front. Her presence will invigorate the McCain campaign with new energy, while at the same time reminding Democrats that their new leader ignored almost half of them by not selecting Hillary Clinton as his own V.P.

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• WHY OBAMA WILL WIN, BUT CAN’T DELIVER

McCain embarrassingly strains at the altar of speech giving, the teleprompter, like a schoolboy forced to stand at the front of the class to explain how he spent his weekend with the family. Cut to Obama, giving a speech, anywhere, doesn’t matter where, and the contrast in presentation is peculiar given that both are running for arguably the most important office in the world. Presentation shouldn’t matter but it does. McCain’s lack of presence makes him seem weak and appear out of his element. That doesn’t mean he is weak, but he is not helping his image in the public’s consciousness.

Even in his attempts to deliver emphatic points, McCain can’t muster conviction. Middle America is feeling uncomfortable on too many fronts and that discomfiture expects some appearance of conviction in a candidate. Only conviction will lead the American taxpayer out of the economic trench currently slowing progress. Only conviction will chart a new course away from the path that for the past eight years has been led by what has become the most despised resident of the White House in the history of that seat of power.

America needs its sense of confidence back. New blood, new thinking, and new ideas will forge a road back to that feeling of confidence. Obama has been able to present such a dream. Real or not, he is the new hip kid on the block who becomes vested with the hope of a nation urgently looking for change. Deep change. Obama becomes anointed as the savior who will rebuild the nation’s current economic mess and international stature.

America is a leader, and America makes its leaders. It dreams them up. They are a product of America’s illusions and aspirations as it goes about its business of working, raising families, and enjoying or stressing about life. America injects the White House with its expectations. America also forgets that the leaders it chooses are human, often with more frailties than the average American, and the expectations are often misplaced. The last two Presidents are examples to remember. Clinton had the potential to become one of the country’s greatest, yet he lacked a profound sense of history and his frailties rendered his Presidency impotent. Bush contrasted Clinton’s intelligence and appeared to be “everyman,” presenting a clean contrast that would not soil the stature of the Oval Office. Bush rapidly devastated both the image and the economy of the country with a lack of understanding on too many elements to be delineated here. Nevertheless, on he marched with confidence that his beliefs, fervor, and convictions were absolute, and that debt financing was his earned capital to be spent. This generation’s great-great grandchildren will be paying for that earned capital.

Obama is the only candidate in whom America can inject an expectation of a refurbished sense of glory. He is a blank canvas that America needs to inject with its anxious anticipation of a positive tomorrow. The actualization of Obama fulfilling expectations, his own or America’s, is an unlikely eventuality. He has set his own bar impossibly low, since he has refrained from making firm and definitive commitments, and has a record of abstaining from making difficult decisions in his short life as a sitting politician. Obama’s backpedaling on Iraq, for example, and announcing that he doesn’t plan on rushing out of the war, further blurs the lines that differentiate him from the competition. We understand. He's running for office and needs to stay neutral and polished, ... however, where's the passion for something specific? Where are the principles?

Bush has pushed America into a corner from whence it expects to be led toward lighter days. The new and overwhelming expectations are foisted on another human being with all the limitations and baggage we would rather not notice. As always, the average middle income tax payer will continue to do the heavy lifting. And also as always, in that expectation, America will not be disappointed.

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