The Osterley Times: Palin attacks Obama from behind a heat shield.

I have watched snippets of Palin's speech at the BBC and read the transcript online but, unfortunately, the Republican party - unlike their Democratic rivals - have not got it together to have the entire thing online ready to be watched by the time I wake here in the UK. I guess organisational skills still aren't their thing.

But from the clips I have watched and the transcript that I have read one thing strikes me more than any other. Much was made of how Biden must be careful not to hit her too hard during the Vice Presidential debates, because the public would somehow object to this. I have always thought this to be sexist nonsense. I mean seriously, did the public worry that Hillary wouldn't be able to take the rough and tumble of a political debate?

But Palin came out with enough attack tonight to make her a fair target and to allow Joe to take the gloves off when dealing with her.

From what I can see the Republican crowd loved her, but I note that she's running with McCain's latest excuse that the media think she's unqualified because she's some kind of "Maverick" outsider:

As for my running mate, you can be certain that wherever he goes, and whoever is listening, John McCain is the same man. I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment.

And I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.

But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people.

This is simply nonsense. She's not qualified because she recently admitted that she has been too busy to pay attention to Iraq and that she only, last year, picked up her first passport.

And, if she is ready to take over as President of the United States at a moment's notice, then why are McCain's team hiding her from the national press behind a Republican heat shield?

She's not qualified because her time in office in Alaska has been spent mostly dealing with energy policy above all else.

The reasons: Alaska, whose population of 670,000 is smaller than that of all but three states, has no income or sales tax, few manufacturing jobs and even fewer illegal immigrants. And its economy is based almost entirely on natural resources and tourism.

"She has a limited amount of experience, so we don't know what her stances are'' on larger national issues, said Alaska state House Speaker John Harris, a Republican supporter of the governor.

Indeed, her speech was most notable for the things that she didn't mention. There wasn't a single word on the economy and if she is aware of how much people are hurting under the Bush administration it wasn't something which she felt the need to share. Rather, she chose to talk about what one would expect the governor of a small state which depends on natural resources and tourism above all else to talk about; she spoke of drilling, which even she had to admit "won’t solve every problem", but it's nevertheless what she - in her major speech to the nation - brought to the table. It's the kind of thing which implies that she lacks the overview on a wide range of issues which are needed in a Vice President. In short, she sounded like the governor of Alaska.

She also seems to have a strange inability to tell the truth, and a love of narrative that fits in with the kind of Mother Teresa lies which have epitomised the McCain campaign.

For instance, she claimed that she put the luxury jet on Ebay, which I hardly think is a sign of good managerial skills, rather it's the kind of rash behaviour that McCain displayed when he hired her.

For what's missing from this story is the fact that she was unable to sell a jet in this stupid manner and that she had to use much more conventional means. But the narrative matters more to Palin than the reality, so "I sold the jet on Ebay" is the very deliberate inference which she implies, whilst carefully choosing her words to give the lie cover.

And she repeated the lie that she was against the Bridge to Nowher e which is simply untrue.

She then, without a hint of irony, spoke of Obama speaking in front of "devoted followers" as thousands of Republican sheep cheered this woman that they had never even heard of this time last week.

Whopping lie followed whopping lie:

The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes ... raise payroll taxes ... raise investment income taxes ... raise the death tax ... raise business taxes ... and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Obama will actually lower taxes for 95% of Americans, so Palin must be expressing concern for the richest Americans, the ones who have most benefited from the Bush years in office, and the ones who McCain proposes cutting their taxes even more than any other group of Americans. In McCain's world you simply can't give too many tax cuts to the rich.

Not that I am dumb enough to think that she wrote this speech; indeed, it's already been made clear to us that the basic speech was already prepared before she was even chosen.

So she's turned up and read the prepared speech, with a few personal items inserted, before a wildly partisan audience and, from what I've seen, she read it rather well.

That still doesn't make her ready to be Vice President. And Biden can now expose this during his debate with her. It's one thing to read someone else's words in front of a wildly partisan crowd, it's quite another to take part in the rough and tumble of an election and hold your own.

If Palin has what it takes then McCain should stop hiding her from the press and allow the scrutiny of this candidate that the American people deserve. After all, this is a democracy right?

In democracies we are allowed to get to know candidates, to challenge them, to put them through the grinder before we are asked to vote for them. McCain needs to remove the heat shield that he has wrapped Palin in and allow his candidate to feel the full force of the temperature in the kitchen that he says she is qualified to run.

Only then will we ever know if his judgement is correct.

Hat tip to Balloon Juice for the Nowhere photograph.

UPDATE:

The speech is now available.

UPDATE II:

Ezra Klein:

Palin could have taken the moment to define her mayoralty as an education in the concerns of small town Americans, or an experience leading to the realization that government works best when it is closest. Instead, she essentially agreed with her critics: Her experience amounts to 18 months as governor of one of the smallest states. Tonight, she put the best spin on that experience, but she didn't challenge its basic shape or limitations. She chose the applause line, not the deeper argument. In that sense, the speech was slave to the same priorities that governed her selection as vice president: It was aimed at winning the news cycle, not the campaign.

"It's a long way from the fear and pain and squalor of a six-by-four cell in Hanoi to the Oval Office," Palin said a few paragraphs later. Nowhere did we hear of the great things John McCain would do, Instead, we heard, over and over, of the agonies John McCain endured. The presidency was presented tonight as if it were the Medal of Honor, or a purple heart. As if it is only a quirk of our political process that stops us from simply finding the longest serving prisoner of war and gifting him the keys to the office.