Obama's soaring speech and McCain's surprise pick

HOW many superlative speeches does an orator have in him? If you are Brutus, Antony or Barack Obama, too many to count! Forty-five years to the day the slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his magnificent "I have a Dream Speech" in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, in what experts dubbed the greatest acceptance speech in the history of American political conventions, on August 28, Barack Obama matched King and wowed America once again!
Obama's speech has been labeled a symphony. With 38 million Americans watching -- more than those who watched the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony, more than the audience for the American Idol finale -- Obama, the Mozart, threw nineteen unanswered punches in the form of musical notes at his Salieri, John McCain.
In front of 85,000 adoring fans in the Mile High Stadium in Denver, Colorado, Obama defined for America in specific terms the "change" he wants to usher in. Reciting a litany of Bush-McCain failures over the last eight years, Obama thundered: "Enough!"
Confronting McCain head-on, Obama reminded listeners that McCain "does not know the suffering of the American people" and suggested that as someone who defined middle class as "someone worth less than 5 million dollars," that McCain simply "does not get it."
Taking dead aim at McCain's supposed strength, foreign policy and national security, Obama challenged McCain to debate the issue. The party of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy does not have to be told how to defend America, he told McCain. Answering a McCain ad, Obama chastised McCain: I've got news for you, Mr. McCain, every American "puts America first."
Observers were surprised at the ferocity of Obama's attack on McCain, much to the delirious delight of his supporters. Democrats are fed up with their previous candidates, Michael Dukakis (1988), Al Gore (2000) and John Kerry (2004) for taking the moral high road to defeat, while the Republicans adopted the Karl Rovian low road to victory. They began having serious doubts whether Obama had the stomach to fight back. Americans detest a candidate who does not fight back when attacked.
Even staunch Republicans were stunned by Obama's uncharacteristic aggression towards McCain. Many Republicans described the speech as "manly." The challenge for Obama is to keep it up. McCain has been brutalising Obama with negative commercials over the last six weeks. McCain ads bombarded Americans with the message: "He does not have the experience to be the commander-in-chief." In the absence of credible rebuttal from Omaba campaign, Americans were beginning to believe the ad. At least for now, the bleeding has been stopped.
The McCain campaign did not allow Obama to bask in the glory of his speech. The very next day, Friday, August 29, McCain announced his VP candidate: Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska! The nation's first reaction was: Sarah who? People of the writer's generation were asking: Is she related to Michael Palin of the British comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus? (She is not.)
Experts concluded that it was a gamble, a gimmick to attract Hillary Clinton's disaffected women supporters. The problem is: Gov. Palin is everything Hillary is not. She wants to ban abortion for all causes all over America, she is a hunter and a supporter of gun rights, and she wants to drill for oil everywhere.
Some women were outraged. "It is an insult to American women to think that just because she has all female body parts, women would flock to vote for her, although she is opposed to key issues women have been fighting for decades." After entreaties from Hillary and Bill Clinton at the Democratic convention, urging Hillary backers to support Obama, there may not be too many disaffected Hillary supporters to woo any way.
McCain supporters worry that it was an impulsive choice, which does not speak well of McCain's first important decision. McCain had met Palin only once before offering her the VP slot. She has not been vetted thoroughly. In Alaska, she is under investigation for ordering the firing of her brother-in-law, who had divorced her sister.
For the last 18 months, Sarah Palin, 44, has been the governor of a state that has a population of less than Austin, Texas. Previously she was the mayor of a city of 8,000 people. She is on record as saying she is not interested in what is going on in Iraq. Yet, with a straight face John McCain proclaimed Sarah Palin "ready to be president." America has been accepting a lot of dreck from McCain. But, this one may be harder to accept.
Sarah Palin's absolute inexperience in foreign and national security affairs will seriously undercut McCain's effort to paint Obama as weak in these two areas.
Like Senator McCain's wife Cindy, Sarah Palin is a former beauty contest participant (we now know the kind of women McCain likes). She is extremely conservative and is the darling of the evangelicals. The problem for McCain is this: candidates rally their bases (left for Democrats, right for the Republicans) during the primaries, and then move towards the centre before the election, as Obama is doing.
The Republican base was never very enthusiastic about McCain, who prides himself as a maverick. McCain won the nomination through the support of independents and moderate Republicans. Now he is attempting to energise the Republican base by moving right, thus alienating the moderates and the independents, just before the election; a serious gamble.
Such is the conventional wisdom. But conventional wisdom may not apply here. Barack Obama is not a conventional candidate. Through coded words the McCain campaign has been reminding Americans that Obama is black and as such not patriotic enough, and therefore, cannot be trusted to lead this predominantly white nation. (Fact: Although blacks are 13% of the population, they constitute 30% of the US armed forces and disproportionately die for their country.)
There is an undercurrent of white nationalism that runs through working class white America. Like the wind, it cannot be seen, only felt. They often vote against their own interests. Even though Bush-McCain may have cost them their jobs and houses, out of racial loyalty they will continue to vote for the likes of them, instead of a black man who may restore their jobs and houses to them.
Obama's fate will depend on which way this wind blows.

Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed is a Rhodes Scholar and Daily Star columnist.