September 5th 2008
Fight, Fight, Fight
Fight with me. Fight with me.
Fight for what’s right for our country.
Fight for the ideals and character of a free people.
Fight for our children’s future.
Fight for justice and opportunity for all.
Stand up to defend our country from its enemies.
Stand up for each other; for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America.
Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We’re Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history.
Thank you, and God Bless you.
T
here were 34 variations of “fight” or “fought”‘ in John McCain’s speech last night. Has something interesting shown up in the McCain polling data to justify lacing up the gloves so emphatically?
At first blush, I just don’t get it because this keeps running through my head:
Q: What’s the biggest fear of McCain promoted by the Left towards the middle and undecideds in order to drive them towards Obama?
A: That he’ll drag us into another war we don’t want to fight.
Playing up McCain as a fighter does little to relieve people who worry that if McCain is elected, we’ll be fighting in Georgia and Iran within months. (Versus getting bogged down with a ground war in Afghanistan and the eruption of Pakistan if Obama does what he says he’ll do. Big if.)
Maybe it’s just to fire up the still hesitant among the GOP, to give them the sense that they’ve got a champ in their corner who can KO BHO. But to do this so forcefully before the biggest audience of undecideds and moveables he’s going to see all season is a high-risk proposition.
What it’s not is a stumble. Nomination acceptance speeches are so thoroughly vetted that a mistake like having the wrong primary theme can’t happen.
I think what it all comes down to is this: John McCain is at his core a fighter. It’s just how he sees himself. For the most important speech of his life, he decided to go back to his fundamentals because he knew that he’s a lousy speaker, but is a better speaker when the material is natural to him.
Back that up to the high favorables Sarah Palin’s got as a result of her own image as a corruption fighter, and toss in a bit of polling data, and you’ve got 34 mentions of “fight” in a convention speech.
By comparison, BHO’s speech in the temple included just four fight/fought references, two to Iraq and Afghanistan, one to America’s troops in general, and one to his experience as a (drum roll, please!) community organizer. It couldn’t be more clear that he sees himself as something other than a fighter.
All in all, the words provide a pretty darn good measure of both men, don’t they? Obama is going to go out there and talk for us; McCain will fight for us. Both options are justifiable, depending on your view of the world. It’s going to be a close election.
