One of the measures of how well the Republican National Convention went last night is whether it knocked the Sarah Palin stories off the front page. Or, at least, changed the tone from scandalous to... I don't know, something other than scandalous.So the first thing I did when I logged on this morning was check the top headlines at Google News. Headline #1; "High-profile teen pregnancies in spotlight." The first sentence; "The revelation that Bristol Palin, the 17-year-old daughter of GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, is five months pregnant puts teen pregnancy squarely in the spotlight again this summer."
Mission most definitely not accomplished. Despite Fred Thompson's assertion that "the selection of Governor Palin has the other side and their friends in the media in a state of panic," blind panic isn't the vibe I'm getting. I think the word Fred was searching for here is "glee."
George W. Bush managed to accomplish what most of the party preferred -- to both be there and not be there, giving a relatively short address via video. I don't know that having GWB on a giant screen, distributing talking points like Big Brother was all that great an idea, but what's done is done.
And making the headliner Joe Lieberman was almost inarguably a mistake. He's about as exciting as reading a dictionary. Worse, he topped off a night of "Yay for Sarah Palin!" with a weak endorsement. Newsweek's Adam Kushner calls Lieberman's address "languid," "pleading," and "placid." The guy is famous for being boring. The RNC seemed to recognize this fact by making Lieberman's speech as short as Bush's...
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