If you haven't seen it I urge you to find a video of it. It was absolutely one of the most eloquent, uplifting, tear-jerking and inspiring speeches I have ever heard him make. The tone was perfect, mixing respect, sorrow and optimism in equal parts. It left you feeling at the end as if you had awoken from a night of uneasy sleep, worrying about something not quite visible in your dreams, only to find out that the sun was shining, there was a light, warm breeze blowing through the window curtains and you felt incredibly refreshed and alive. You know, like those feminie hygiene products they always show on the telly.
Anyway, find it, watch it, and enjoy it. This will go down as one of the best speeches by any President. Ever. I am not joking.
Plus, it seems that it may have just about completely ended Caribou Barbie's political aspirations once and for all. That's quite a two-fer. You see, two things will be remembered about yesterday, the first is the President's eloquent and heartfelt appeal for the country to unify after a terrible tragedy and for all of us to try and live up to its' better aspirations with calmer and more respectful dialogue, the other is the bitter, self-centred, accusatory, combative, and stunningly anti-semitic pre-recorded bile spewed by someone that was once politically relevant for about a month and a half.
Sarah Palin couldn't possibly have looked less 'Presidential' (if indeed that was what her advisors were aiming for) if she tried. Standing in front of a background that looked like one of those fake ones used at a supermarket photography studio, she painstakingly picked her way through the words someone else had written for her, syllable by syllable. She looked for all the world like a contestant in a beauty pageant trying earnestly to communicate her desire for world peace whilst wearing a shimmering thong bikini and 5 inch heels. The ultimate irony about this of course was that you could see the reflection of the teleprompter in her "make me look smarter" designer glasses, something she has relentlessly criticised the President for doing.
Many pundits, on both the left and the right, have started to wonder aloud if she has done irreparable harm to her chances of winning the republican nomination, or indeed whether she has a viable political future at all. Personally I think she is done and dusted, and I think that deep down inside she knows it too. My bet is that she'll tease all the knuckle-draggers she calls her base for as long as she possibly can, and then when it comes time to make the decision, she'll make up some half-assed excuse not to enter the race, you know something like "the lame-stream media pundits will only use it as a chance to attack me or my family" and she'll stay on the sidelines snarking and sniping, making speeches and "writing" books as she has done since 2008.
Why do I think that? Well, consider for a moment how she first made her entrance onto the national political stage. She was plucked from obscurity by Grampa McLame, who thought that female Clinton supporters pissed off at Obama for having won the Democratic nomination would simply vote for whomever had a vagina on their ticket, so she has never had to run the gauntlet of having members of her own party tear her apart in a brutal primary contest. She's only had the "un-American liberal lame-stream media" to deal with, and even then only at arms-length in pre-scripted fluff sessions. Just wait 'til Mike Fuckabee, or Toad Gingrich or Mutt Romney start going after her shallow resume as a lightweight quitter with no real political bona fides and see just how quickly she begins to melt before your eyes like the wicked witch of the west...She can't afford to have that sort of damage inflicted on her marketable image, so rather than risk entering the race and being torn to shreds by her fellow republicans and then quitting (again), I don't think she'll even enter. She'll quit before it even starts.
Who says there's no such thing as miracles?
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