The end of the “reality convention”

Yesterday, the Republican convention more closely resembled reality television — “Survivor” meets “As The World Turns” — than a traditional political event. Today, I understand, something close to normal service will resume. Thus, the Republicans will begin to make their case to the American people: the case against Barack Obama and the case for John McCain.

The former case is easy enough to make. The latter case is a bit more tricky.

Judging by his ad campaign, McCain’s position is that “Washington is broken,” “we’re worse off now than we were four years,” and that only John McCain, “the original maverick,” can fix the mess. But at their convention the Democrats hammered home the point that McCain voted with President Bush 90 percent (or 95 percent, depending on who was speaking) of the time. As John has said, it seems unreasonable to expect voters to elect another Republican president if things have deteriorated under a Republican administration that McCain has pretty consistently backed.

So McCain and company have their work cut out for them. But at least it now appears they will have the opportunity to undertake it.

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