McCain takes stage, turns down heat
For a man at the top of a presidential ticket, John McCain had an unusual task last night: to remind the nation that he was the star of his own show.
Barack Obama didn't have that sort of problem a week ago. With Bill and Hillary Clinton on board for unity, a main event in a football stadium, and a cadre of TV commentators gushing about his rhetorical skills, the Democratic National Convention played as a crescendo that culminated with Obama's acceptance speech.
But at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, the media attention has all centered on Sarah Palin, McCain's surprise vice presidential nominee. She has functioned this week both as an ambassador to the corners of the party that still doubted McCain and as the sort of friend who sucks all of the energy out of a room. To TV viewers, she has been a source of deep fascination; her fiery speech on Wednesday drew 40 million viewers, nearly as many as Obama's did.
All of that attention made it hard not to wonder how McCain could keep the momentum going - and the ratings equally strong. (But for the fact that last night's NFL season opener ended on time, NBC might not have aired parts of the speech at all.) McCain also had to compete with the rhetorical tone Palin set Wednesday night. Along with presidential wannabes Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Rudy Giuliani, she got her best crowd response when she was mocking and sarcastic and turned the term "community organizer" into a barbed punch line.
McCain came onstage to somber music and a spotlight in a darkened hall, and he met with boisterous cheers - though perhaps not as many as his vice presidential nominee drew the night before, when applause was used not just as support, but as spite.
Early on in his speech, the candidate seemed to revert to his old bipartisan ways. "A word to Senator Obama and his supporters," he said, with a small smile. "We'll go at it over the next few months. You know that's the nature of the business. And there are big differences between us, but you have my respect and my admiration."
It was at about that time that a couple of frenzied protesters charged down the aisles, drawing the TV cameras and leading the crowd to chant, "USA!" over McCain's words. "Please don't be diverted by the crowd noise and the static," he said. "Americans want us to stop yelling at each other, OK?"
After a week of metaphoric yelling on the Internet and TV shows, with grenades thrown from both political aisles, it seemed a fruitless call. But it also felt like honest sentiment from a man with a personal history of bipartisanship. And in a way, McCain's more subdued demeanor strengthened his point. He isn't the soaring speaker that Obama can be, and, despite his famed temper, he doesn't have a catty streak. His strength in large part stems from his biography - laid out before he hit the stage, in a video heavy with testimonials from his mother - and his long reputation for maverick choices and campaign straight talk.
His wartime heroism drew the most fervent support from the convention floor; when he shouted, "Stand up and fight," the crowd got to its feet. And his plain-speaking discussion of his days as a POW seemed to captivate both the crowd and the TV reporters. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell noted that, on the trail, she'd never heard McCain talk in such detail about his wartime days.
Still, the pundits who almost universally gushed about Palin's performance on Wednesday were more divided, and reserved, about McCain. CBS's Jeff Greenfield said he found the speech underwhelming and familiar. Bob Schieffer said it "appealed to our better angels." On the Fox News Channel, Karl Rove declared, "It was a workmanlike speech, but it wasn't what we saw" Wednesday night.
In truth, they were saying the same thing. McCain didn't reclaim that Palin energy for himself, but for the purposes of attracting swing voters, he probably didn't want to. This campaign is already heavy with stars, and the heat has gotten overwhelming. Last night, McCain made a stab at playing it cool.
Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com 