Obama’s speech last night was pretty much the same speech he’s been giving all week. It’s a good speech, and his delivery last night was flawless, even absent the Teleprompter, but it was also stunning for its lack of substance. About ten minutes in, after at once honoring McCain for his “half century of service to this nation” and slamming him for warmongering and flip-flopping, Obama tell us what his campaign is really all about:
This is what happens when you spend too long in Washington. Politicians end up not saying what they mean and they don’t mean what they say. And that is why in this election our party can’t stand for business as usual in Washington. The Democratic party must stand for change–not change as a slogan, not change as a bumper sticker, but change we can believe in. That’s what this campaign is all about.
It takes a lot of audacity to deny that your campaign is mere sloganeering and then to reduce it to a slogan in the very next sentence. And while the Obama campaign doesn’t actually sell the “change we can believe in” bumper sticker on their website, they do sell the t-shirt.
