Listening to NPR on my drive home last night, I heard a McOperative discussing how the “maverick” (gahhh! I hate that term!) candidate’s acceptance speech would not try to top the masterful Obama speech of the week before. He said the public would see a speech with a different tone, and he used a phrase that jumped out at me for its familiarity: “lowered expectations.”
I recall that “lowered expectations” was how the GOP prepared us for the early W years. (The phrase was used again at the start of TheSurge™.) I don’t have access to LexisNexis, but I invite anyone that does to run a search of “lowered expectations” and its variants in relation to the Bush presidency. I’ll bet you get a lot of hits. Bush’s people said it time and again. So, how’d that work out for ya?
What? Bush f*cked up again? Well, whose fault is that? We told you not to expect too much from the guy. If you had high expectations you should have elected Gore. (Oh that’s right, you did. Thanks Supreme Court and Diebold!)
After eight years of “lowered expectations,” isn’t it time that we have higher expectations for what our leaders say and do, especially when they do it in our name?
Barack Obama made many specific promises in his acceptance speech and on the campaign trail, and I fully expect the American public and the press will hold him to those promises and go after him if he doesn’t follow through. I believe he feels the same way, and that makes me optimistic.
I was looking for those same kind of specifics in McCain’s speech last night, too. Unfortunately I didn’t hear any. It was almost as though McCain suddenly remembered he had to give a speech and just pulled one from the shelf, dusted it off, and went on stage.
Defining? Yes, but certainly not in the way they had hoped.
Following the speech, one floor delegate gushed, “He said all the right things.” And I couldn’t agree more. He said all the “Right” things. McCain offered nothing but the same tired laundry list of Republican flash points: lower taxes, conservative judges, and terror, terror, terror.
It was like throwing meat to hungry dogs--the same vacuous slogans we’ve heard before, guaranteed to get a Pavlovian round of cheers (for lower taxes) or jeers (for Obama).
How does that represent change? It doesn’t. And they know it. The dictionary definition of “conservative” is “tending to oppose change.” Let McCain say anything he wants; we won’t hold him to any promises he makes because we’re supposed to have “lowered expectations,” just like with Bush.
Four years from now, will it be: What? McCain f*cked up again? Well, we told you not to expect too much from the guy. If you had high expectations, you should have elected Obama. By the way, did you know John McCain was a POW?