Gov. Sarah Palin did her job in St. Paul Wednesday evening. It was a narrow assignment.

Her job was to energize a hall full, a party full, of campaign workers to do their jobs.

The generic form of the job comes with a standard-issue license for rhetorical freedom. Hers came with a license of the double-oh variety. Whatever it takes to get them on their feet, get them moved and moving.

Overstatement required; cleverness rewarded. Wave the flag. Slice and dice, slam the opposition with a two-by-four. If FactCheck.org gets real busy Thursday morning, so be it.

That's all OK if you've got just that party audience to speak to. They know what the speech is about. They know why the rhetoric is what it is.

Trouble comes when the audience is expanded to include, you know, like voters. That's a different audience, with different political needs; the rhetoric that works inside the hall doesn't play the same outside. (Even the delegates knew that: listen to the did-she-really-say-that-and-should-I-laugh hesitations following Palin's hardest lines about Democrats.)

We see the same problem in local campaigns here; getting out the two-bys may satisfy the tastes of party regulars, but is greeted with, at very best, a collective public shrug from the rest of us – if it doesn't just drive us to inattention, to distraction and away from the polls.

So, fellas (I'm talking to the candidates, where it is all fellas for us here now, for this cycle), watch it. The sly line, the suggestive question, about your opponent constructed over a breakfast strategy conference, that cutting line that makes your team feel good, just might not be what will get us to vote good.

And please remember when a debate is not a debate, and just who suggested the occasion.



Posted by

G.E. "Skip" Lawrence