The McCain campaign belatedly endorses the concept of a "cone of silence"....for Sarah Palin.

"I would immediately close Guantanamo Bay, move all the prisoners to Fort Leavenworth and truly expedite the judicial proceedings in their cases."

-- John McCain. March 19, 2007.

"                            "

-- John McCain, Sept. 4, 2008.

“Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming, or the precise timeline of global warming, we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters, and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring. We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great.”

-- John McCain, May 13, 2008.

          ...."restore the health of our planet"

-- John McCain, Sept. 4, 2008.

"You well know I've been called a maverick, someone who marches to the beat of his own drum."

-- John McCain, Sept. 4, 2008.

Yeah, right. Did anybody else notice that the maverick's drum missed a major beat and a half tonight? That's the problem with so much newspaper coverage (like the current New York Times headline, "Acceptance Speech Highlights Record of Defying G.O.P.") and TV blather, that so much attention is focused on what the guy (or gal) said -- and such little is noted of what he or she didn't say.

Let's consider the "maverick" John McCain. He has taken some bold political risk in the past -- sponsoring the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms and opposing the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 spring to mind -- but to get the GOP nomination this week he had to spend the last 19 months chucking these down the memory hole, so it wasn't exactly a shocker when they weren't mentioned tonight to burnish those maverick credentials. So how'd he justify his claim?

He slammed his own party on graft -- "we lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption" -- but that's pretty easy when Jack Abramoff isn't in the room and everyone who is there thinks he's talking about somebody else. Both parties didn't cut the size of government enough? -- hardly a bold challenge to a house full of GOPers.

There were two major maverick stands that John McCain took this year, two fairly brave positions that actually bucked the majority of the Dittoheads in his own party. One was his promise to close Guantanamo, and the other was his pledge to respect the scientific evidence that climate change is a major problem.

But tonight, on the big American stage, the maverick pretty much left those in the saddle bag. OK, his reference to "restore the health of the planet" was his straight talk, I guess, on global warming, but I pretty much missed that line the first time around, and I promise you that 95 percent of the nation missed it, too. The thing is, the best way to tell the electorate that you take the problems known as "global warming" or "climate change" or "greenhouse gases" seriously is to show people that you weren't afraid to use those very terms in a room dominated by Limbaugh-loving science skeptics.

But you were afraid.

And the failure to mention closing Gitmo -- or the fact that when you were actually still a bit of a maverick you bucked the White House with anti-torture legislation in 2005 -- is unconscionable, in my opinion. The fact that McCain had been tortured himself -- as he so eloquently recounted again tonight -- and, once upon a time, stood as a moral force in this country who would stand up to make sure that we never stooped to that level, was once a compelling argument for a McCain presidency. Now that argument is long gone. Was the problem that it was a cross-current with his Hanoi narrative, or was it just too much of a challenge to a right-wing audience that would gladly follow Bush's torture policies to the gates of hell, and right on through them?

Either way, John McCain was a "safe" maverick tonight.

Which means he was no maverick at all. 

You betcha.

I can't give the "full Palin" to John McCain's acceptance speech because a) he wasn't as interesting and b) I'm too exhausted. His story of his years in the Hanoi Hilton is a compelling saga of courage that anyone would belittle at their own risk, but I do wonder if that's what 30 million Americans were really tuning in to hear tonight. His call for "change" was shockingly light on detail -- could that be because his program of never-ending tax cuts, school choice, health care for Americans who can afford it, etc. -- wasn't so different from the two terms of the two words this maverick dare not utter, "George" and "Bush."

Reminder: I would have liked a lot more details from Obama, too. On the reality-based front, I'd give Obama a B- and McCain a C+. I hope the debates can fill in some of the blanks but I'm not holding my breath. America has too many problems that don't have bumper sticker solutions.

Stay tuned for one more important point about the man who was hailed on one poster as a "mavrick."

Yes! September baseball has been one big downer in this town. Barring a sweep of the Mets in NY (as they did last year around this time, but still...), the day will come to dissect the 2008 Phillies, but not today.

Sad -- sports has always been a diversion from politics, but the last couple of weeks politics has become a diversion from sports.

The Daily News' Fatimah Ali wrote an op-ed column this week that frankly I didn't see until late in the game because of everything else this week -- it was way off base including a bizarre suggestion that there'll be a "race war" in November if Obama loses, which is a highly inflamatory thing to say without any evidence to back it up. So the piece deserved criticism.

Except when the response is to make fun of her name:

On his syndicated radio show, Jim Quinn referred to the National Organization for Women as "the National Organization for Whores," and said of Philadelphia Daily News columnist Fatimah Ali: "[Y]ou know, Fatimah, what's your real name? Come on, seriously. I mean, get an American name, will you, if you want to be an American." He then asked: "You don't suppose she's a liberal black Muslim, do you?"

Stat classy, talk radio. That's why I have to laugh when the president of the United States speaks on national television with a throwaway line about "the angry Left." He's the leader of all the people, but only one ideology possesses this most basic human emotion. Puhleez. On the very day that President Bush said this, I wrote what I think was a pretty level-headed post when it came to Ronald Reagan -- I did criticize his energy and tax policies but noted he was pragmatic about picking a veep and that he was able to connect with voters in ways that Barack Obama has not mastered.

In response, a former functionary in the Reagan administration who now works inside the Beltway as a "communications specialist" wrote a potty-mouthed (and substance-free) response on Free Republic and emailed it to me with the heading "hey douchebag." And yet our president thinks only the Left in America is angry. In 2000, he promised to be "a uniter, not a divider."

Remember that when this year's crop of candidates promises how they'll be.

Most Beltway pundits are tripping over themselves to come up with most enthusiastic "grand slam" phrase for Sarah Palin's speech, but this wasn't supposed to be about them -- it was supposed to be about the "hockey moms" and all the swing voters who haven't been signed sealed or delivered for Barack Obama.

So, what did some honest-to-God swing voters think? Check it out:

George Lentz, 66, Southfield independent: “I was completely underwhelmed. She was a Republican novelty act with a sophomoric script. It was not even a speech I would expect for someone running for the local PTA, much less for vice president.”

Diane Murphy, 42, Sterling Heights independent: “It appears that once she makes up her mind, that is the end of it. We live in a gray world, not every answer is black and white.”

Jan Wheelock, 58, Royal Oak independent: “Nothing worked for me. I found her barrage of snide remarks and distortions to be a major turnoff. She is not a class act. The most important point she made is that she will be an effective attack dog.”

Read the whole thing. There's another example here. (h/t Talking Points Memo)

Sarah Palin delivered a great speech tonight -- for her party, for John McCain, for herself, for what she set out to accomplish. This was America's  first real glimpse at the Alaska governor, and what we saw was a boffo politician who speaks in a plaintive prairie voice that channels America's Heartland like a chilling breeze rippling a field of wheat, who knows how to tell a joke, how to bring down the house and bring a tear to a few eyes. She is proud of her family, as she should be, and there is much to admire in her own "personal journey of discovery" (don't we all have these, by the way?) including her efforts to raise her son Trig. It is indeed nice to think that there would be an advocate for such children inside the corridors of the White House, although I'd surely like to hear what -- if anything -- she's done for special needs kids as governor of Alaska.

But...it was a great speech -- written for someone else, a male in fact, days before the Palin selection was even a gleam in John McCain's eye, but a great speech nonetheless. The pundits are fawning over it as I write this -- Tom Brokaw said she could not have been "more winning and more engaging" -- and in a world that is dominated by horse race journalism I can understand why, because I agree that Palin's one-of-a-kind story has given her long shot running mate a decent chance now of pulling this one out at the finish line.

It's a good metaphor, a horse race, because in the end it finishes right near where it started -- just as it will be for America if John McCain and Sarah Palin are sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009. Yes, it was a great speech politically, and a great night for her family, but an empty speech for America -- and for America's families. It was defined by its lowest moment, Palin's shameless lie about "the Bridge to Nowhere."

This was a Speech to Nowhere.

It was a Speech to Nowhere when Palin said that "I told the Congress 'Thanks but no thanks' on that Bridge to Nowhere, because that was a lie, and the worst kind of lie in American politics, a blatant falsehood that showed utter contempt for the American people that Palin pledged to serve, assuming we are too stupid to look up or know that truth, that she pushed for those funds in Congress and while she got great political mileage out of announcing that she was killing the project, she still has not returned the funds to American people.

It was a Speech to Nowhere because Palin also boasted seconds before that other lie of fighting against wasteful earmarks in Congress, even though she pushed for and accepted $27 million of such grants when she was mayor of Wasilla.  

It was a Speech to Nowhere because Palin said that "we've got lots" of oil and gas this country, and while one supposes that all depends upon what you definition of the words "lots" is, the production of oil in the United States has been irrevocably on the decline since 1970, and with her words she showed this nation that she and John McCain will perpetrate the dangerous myths that began with Ronald Reagan at his acceptance speech in 1980, that sunny optimism is the solution to all our energy woes, and not a posture that put energy research on a war footing, or requires moral leadership on conservation, mass transit, or any other common sense answers whatsoever.

It was a Speech to Nowhere because Palin boasted that "I stood up to the special interests, and the lobbyists, and the Big Oil companies," and the audience cheered -- after eight brutal years of the same crowd's cheering for two oilmen in the White House who fiddled while $4-a-gallon gas burned and while American men and women died in a needless war fought on top of an oilfield, and while lobbyist friends like Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed got rich at the same time.

It was a Speech to Nowhere because Palin had the nerve to talk at length about John McCain's "torturous interrogations" in the very same speech when she all but condoned the continuation of similar, abhorrent practices that have been directed for eight years by our own U.S. leaders, when she stated that Democrats are "worried that someone won't read them [terrorism suspects] their rights."

It was a Speech to Nowhere because Palin belittled "community organizers" -- thousands of Americans who work long hours for little pay in some of the toughest neighborhoods, trying to assist the American Dream that even the poorest among us can pull themselves out of the muck with a helping hand. Palin and other GOP speakers have turned a noble job into a dirty word tonight -- shame on you! Listen to what CNN's Roland Martin said after Palin's speech was over. 

My two parents are sitting home in Houston, Texas and they are both community organizers and the GOP and Sarah Palin might have well have said "being community organizers doesn't matter" to my parents face.  I'm disgusted. Community organizers keep people in their homes, keep their lights on, keep food in the fridge.

It was a Speech to Nowhere because it made no mention of the men that Sarah Palin and John McCain are running to replace -- their names are Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, in case you've forgotten this week -- and no acknowledgment that as many 80 percent of Americans believe this country is on the wrong track, or that you can't solve a nation's problems when you deny they exist.

It was a Speech to Nowhere because...well, I urge everyone to read the text, without Palin's sharp delivery or her adoring fans in the crowd and in the press box, and tell me where there is any kind of policy at all -- except for the short boilerplate passage on energy -- or any mention of the issues that concern everyday Americans, including the No. 1 issue of the economy. Show me the part where this "grand slam" of speech touches on how citizens can afford health care or sending their kids to college.

But more than anything else, it was a Speech to Nowhere because for all the acclaim, the great bulk of it was devoted to one thing, and that is the one thing that millions of Americans are talking about in 2008 when we talk about "change" -- to the ugliest kind of "pit bull" politics, to use Palin's words, that tear down the other side with cheap ad hominem attacks, surrounded by a cloud of half-truths (uh, those "Greek columns"...did you actually even watch Obama's speech? Because there weren't any) and ridiculous innuendo about "parting the waters" which means nothing but fires up a big hockey rink full of Dittoheads. These kind of vicious attacks -- without having the grace to acknowledge that, despite some real differences on issues with Obama, that he has already accomplished something impressive that says something positive about America and the progress we've made -- were utterly lacking in class. And this is what Tom Brokaw considers "winning" -- have we really sunk that low as a nation?. The people of America want and deserve a real debate, now trash talk from the basketball point guard who was once called "Sarah Barracuda."

I hope America wakes up tomorrow and realizes that Sarah Palin's words were rousing -- and completely empty, that they offered no road map (let alone bridge) for America other than more of the bogus partisan name-calling that has gotten us into the mess that we're in now.

Actually, let me rephrase that.

I hope America wakes up tomorrow.

Read all about it.