Sen. Barack Obama’s candidacy has given the race an even broader international appeal than usual. But the dynamic of McCain campaign holds their attention as well.

For the past week or so, a group of about a dozen foreign journalists — from countries as diverse as Albania, Nigeria and Kazikstan — have been following the candidates of both parties, with the help of the U.S. State Dept. Recently, they had a chance to watch Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in action in Wisconsin.

For at least one of them, Ruth Suarez, of Madrid’s Metro newspaper, it was not what she expected.

AMC: What strikes you the most about the crowds at Palin rallies?

RS: I did not expect to find African-American people here. There are not many, but there are some.

AMC: How is this different from other part of the country?

RS: This IS the “real America,” like she [Palin] says. When I came over other times, I saw New York and Massachusetts. They are more like Europe. Being here [in Pennsylvania], you feel more like it is real America, because when you meet people in New York, you cannot understand why Bush has won two elections. You meet people here, and you understand.

AMC: Are you saying that these people are more like what Europeans think of the stereotypical American?

RS: Oh, yes. For me, socialism is not so bad! In Spain, we have a socialist president!

AMC: What do you think of the enthusiasm people show these rallies?

RS: I understand enthusiasm. There’s enthusiasm in Europe. But I don’t understand why it continues right up to election day. In many countries in Europe, the day before the election, there’s no campaigning. You get a day to think.

Yet McCain’s advisers insist the race is close, perhaps even a statistical tie. The rallies in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, they say, will eat into Obama’s margins.

But in order for movement on the margins to matter, says senior adviser Charlie Black, McCain is going to have to clean up– and turn out — in central and western Pennsylvania. “If you have a big turnout in those parts of the state,” said Black, “he’ll have a good lead before you get to southeastern Pennsylvania.”

That’s where Palin comes in. She spent most of the last week almost exclusively darting around rural Pennsylvania, hitting Little League stadiums, high school gyms, diners and even a pumpkin patch. At some rallies, she drew crowds four and five times the size of McCain’s.

“What works [in the suburbs] is the tax message — Joe the Plumber,” said Black. Also, what Black called, “the Joe the Biden message” — the idea that “the next president will be tested so you need to focus on who would be best to be commander in chief.”

These points seem especially high-minded compared with Palin’s invocation of Obama’s “associations” with the likes of William Ayers and Rashid Khalidi, who McCain has not mentioned on the stump in days. Palin has herself avoided mentioning Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But the Pennsylvania GOP, however, is currently running an ad featuring the controversial reverend — despite an early vow from McCain that the campaign would steer clear of him.

“We wish they wouldn’t do Wright ads,” Black said, “but, as McCain said in the spring, we can’t be the referee of every ad. … People know how he feels. If they cared what he felt about the issue, they wouldn’t run the ad.”

Black says the campaign expects to be “400,000 votes down” in Philadelphia alone, “but the suburbs are the key.” Thus, while Palin works the outdoorsy types with talk of that “real” portion of America that is otherwise so elusive, and puts even the most technical and esoteric policies in terms of what’s good for “our children,” McCain sticks primarily to economic nuts and bolts.

Today McCain chastised Obama for supposedly wanting to raise taxes, whereas he would let people “keep more money in their pants.”

Sen. Barack Obama’s day is more leisurely, with three events in Jacksonville, FL, Charlotte, NC, and Manassas, VA. His day ends around 10 p.m. CST.

Obama’s load is further lightened by the absence of a large press corps. As has been reported elsewhere, his campaign decided against adding another charter plane to the entourage to seat the dozens of journalists that typically — and understandably — hop on a campaign to report on its final days. Some have interpreted this refusal as a form of revenge on outlets that endorsed McCain; the campaign itself argues that a second plane would have slowed it down. The latter is arguable.

The second McCain plane — affectionately known as the “ass plane” — tends to be ahead of the primary plane, but any time you add another person to an entourage, no matter where he or she is traveling, you increase the possibility of delays.

We know that the Obama campaign’s decision not to add another charter wasn’t because it didn’t want to spend the money. While enormously expensive, charters are ultimately billed to news organizations.

I suspect Team Obama skipped the charter because, at this point, it doesn’t need the press to be there to write about them. Heck, at this point, it barely needs the press at all.

For all the talk of the Bush administration’s contempt for the media, and its attempts to work around the “filter” of the MSM, it’s the Obama campaign that’s all but perfected the smooth integration of the public into a message-distribution machine. From its incredible, promoting-from-without volunteer ground game to its cellphone-list-calling ventures, many of Obama’s most ambitious aides have used “earned media” (what political professionals call media you don’t pay for) as almost an afterthought.

Thus McCain’s second plane, as lucky as I feel to be on it (snarky video below notwithstanding), seems less like a luxury than another sign that the Republicans have been lapped, tactics-wise — if not according to mileage specifically.

After first boasting that he wanted to “beef up” Sen. Barack Obama’s “skinny legs,” perhaps by “doing some squats,” he opined that McCain had been in a Vietnam camp for longer than Obama has been in the Senate.*

This is, of course, true, but one imagines that the various tenures make use of vastly different skill sets. If, however, we elect Obama and then the country enters into some sort of dystopian nightmare scenario in which even the president is threatened with daily torture and solitary confinement, well, then, I guess we’ll all be sorry, won’t we? Then again, I sort of imagine that scenario to be more likely under a McCain administration, so it’s kind of a chicken-and-egg thing.

Toward the end of his remarks, McCain became more passionate than I’ve seen him in awhile, responding to a very amped-up crowd of about 10,000 by repeatedly encouraging them to “Fight! Fight!” and ending with the truism, “We’re America! We never run from history, we make history!”

If only there were another way.

*This used to say “longer than Obama had been in prison.” That is not what Schwarzenegger said. I am sorry. I image some McCain supporters are as well.

Perhaps her speechwriter is trying harder to match up his written words with her spoken ones, because the most striking thing about the remarks wasn’t the content — standard fare, mostly. Apparently, Sen. John McCain is more prepared than Sen. Barack Obama!

Rather, it was the “!.” Literally.

Her text contained 11 of them, including the three in this paragraph:

One of the requirements of presidential leadership is to understand that the “dangers of the world” do not disappear when our attention is diverted! In fact, if we remain distracted for too long, they become much, much worse. As Sen. McCain said yesterday: we’re going to pull through this economic crisis! And with policies to keep taxes low, promote growth, and create jobs, we will come out stronger, just as America — the greatest country on earth — has done before!

And the powerful one-two punch here, which makes little grammatical sense but I think is supposed to be scary!:

Our children’s future is at stake here! In this time for choosing, the question is which man will protect us from Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran and other grave threats in the world, which one understands the threat!

The entire emphatic document follows:

Thank you. It’s good to be in Erie, Penn., and I appreciate the hospitality of Penn State. I’m grateful as well to our distinguished guests: Gov. Tom Ridge, former CIA Director Jim Woolsey, John Lehman, the 17th secretary of the Navy, Amb. Rich Williamson, Adm. Marsha Evans and retired three-star Gen. Carol Mutter of the United States Marine Corps: I thank all of you for joining us.

Yesterday in Ohio, I spoke about the great and urgent need to gain energy security for our country. Energy policy is just the most dramatic example of how domestic and foreign policy cannot be separated anymore. When we draft energy policy these days, we need to think about both prices at the pump and about pipelines on the other side of the world, about basic economics and about the fundamentals of national security.

It used to be we could place domestic and foreign concerns in more or less “distinct categories” — and choose a president according to which seemed the greater priority at the time. But the world has so drastically changed and those days are gone. Even if a most immediate concern is economic, our recovery will still depend on leadership that can protect and advance our security and our vital interests in the world.

It’s easy to forget this in a time of economic worry and hardship. When your most valuable assets — from your home to your retirement plan — seem at risk, it may be hard to spend much time worrying about great troubles in far-off places. When you fear for your own job, or the possible loss of health insurance, it may be hard to spare much thought even for the most urgent matters of national security. The security of other nations, and even the fate of millions of people across the world, can seem remote when America itself is passing through an economic crisis.

One of the requirements of presidential leadership is to understand that the “dangers of the world” do not disappear when our attention is diverted! In fact, if we remain distracted for too long, they become much, much worse. As Sen. McCain said yesterday: we’re going to pull through this economic crisis! And with policies to keep taxes low, promote growth and create jobs, we will come out stronger, just as America — the greatest country on earth — has done before!

But when the worst of our economic crisis has passed — and it will pass — we don’t want to find ourselves facing even graver problems because we lost sight of the things that matter most. And as John McCain has understood throughout his career — serving on carriers, in cockpits and in the Capitol — nothing takes priority over the security of this country!

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the consequences of victory and defeat alike will reach far into the future making America much safer, or placing us in greater danger. Now, Barack Obama didn’t have much to say in that long infomercial of his last night about the stakes in the wars America is fighting, or about the need to support the troops in the field or why he supported cutting off funding to our troops in the war. He prefers to wrap his “closing message” in a warm and fuzzy commercial message. He wants to soften the focus in these closing days, hoping your mind won’t wander to the real challenges of national security that he is incapable of meeting. But in “a time for choosing,” what we need is clarity! We need an alertness to dangers that are still in our power to contain!

Seven years after 9/11, there is a temptation to assume that we have seen the worst that terrorists can do, or that they have somehow changed their mind, and abandoned their mission of inflicting “catastrophic harm” on our country! But we must not confuse effective countermeasures with an end to the threat. The terrorist threat will be with us for many years, and millions of innocent lives are in the balance. Our children’s future is at stake here! In this time for choosing, the question is which man will protect us from Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran and other grave threats in the world, which one understands the threat! That man is Senator John McCain.

If you don’t believe me, Senator McCain’s running mate on this score, then just listen to Senator Obama’s running mate. In that way of his, Joe Biden strayed off message the other day and stumbled on the truth. And he never sounded more certain of anything. First, in the primaries he said Barack Obama is not ready to be president. Then, the other day, he “guaranteed” us that Obama’s lack of experience ensures us an international crisis. He said we could expect this crisis by July of 2009, within just six months of an untested man’s arrival to the Oval Office.

After a warning like that, it would be some comfort to believe, at least, that Congress might provide some national-security leadership. But, no, we’ve been put on notice by the Democrat majority that this is not to be expected either. Already, plans are underway by Democrat House Finance Committee chairman Barney Frank to cut defense spending by 25 percent!

We’re fighting two wars, with a force strength in need of rebuilding, and a guaranteed crisis heading our way, in the considered judgment of Joe Biden himself — and they think it’s the perfect time to radically reduce defense spending? They even tie these cuts to projected savings from the forced withdrawal — an early surrender — in Iraq that Barack Obama promises! The far left wing of the Democrat Party is preparing to take over the entire federal government, folks. And according to their own stated plans, the first thing to go will be one quarter of our defense budget.

As the time for choosing draws near, let me provide a better idea — wiser and safer course for America. Let’s not retreat from wars that are almost won. Let’s not gut the defense budget, in a time of multiple conflicts and obvious dangers. And let’s not entrust all the powers of the federal government to the one-party rule of Obama, Pelosi and Reid.

You know, a man can be admirable in many ways, and promising, and yet still not be ready for the most important and demanding job in the world. Rousing speeches can fill a stadium, but they cannot keep this country safe. For a season, a man can inspire with his words. But for a lifetime, John McCain has inspired with his deeds. And in five days, it will all come down to a choice between these two men, Barack Obama and John McCain.

Only one of them understands the costs of war, because he has paid those costs himself in the pursuit of peace. Only one of them has ever held command over more than a political campaign, and borne responsibility for the lives of others. He is a man of unquestioned honor, of personal and political courage, and of tested judgment — the kind of judgment that avoids crisis instead of inviting it. In a time of great danger, we are fortunate to have a man of his caliber ready to serve as commander in chief — and I ask you, my fellow Americans, to elect John McCain as the next president of the United States. Thank you, and God bless America.

PALIN: Have a seat and we will just get to talk about one of these most excited issues, in my world anyway, and that’s energy. And, I’ll tell you, taking the tour of this plant right now, and I thank you so much, doctor, for allowing that tour. I get so excited talking about energy. I want to get you excited about it, because energy independence for our country is all about our nation’s security and our economic prosperity, the opportunities that we have for jobs. And I would encourage you, also, get to know about this company right here, Xunlight. And, what, uh, you have been able to accomplish here is very inspiring and can be seen, I think it’s a role model even, you, the organization here, what you’ve accomplished for others in our great nation in order to allow our nation to become energy secure. So, so happy to get to be with you today. And, again, I appreciate that tour.

Excited about this, I thank you very much, and for your hospitality again, doctor, thank you. Um, good, good things being said about this corporation as you’re progressing with the solar panels, understanding alternative energy sources so necessary as a piece of the puzzle that we’re working on. I know my state of Alaska certainly is working on this, all that we can do to put the pieces together to allow our nation to become energy secure.

And, every day, I know that here, especially, when there are no cameras around to draw attention to it, this company and others like it are engaged in the great enterprise of energy independence. And what we see here is just a glimpse of much bigger things to come. Solar panels here, solar energy being tapped into. It’s one of many alternative energy sources that is changing our economy for the better. And one day these sources, they’re gonna change our economy forever.

All who work in pursuit of new and clean energy sources understand that America’s energy problems do not go away when oil and gas prices fall, as they have in recent weeks. Oil today is running at about 64 dollars a barrel – that’s less than half of what it was just a couple of months ago. And though this sudden drop in prices sure makes a difference for all of our families and our pocket books and for our local communities’ budgets and our state budgets, the danger, still, of our dependence on foreign oil is just as real as it was before this decline in oil and gas prices. It is just as great a threat.

The price of oil is declining largely because of the market’s expectation of a broad recession that would lower demand. And that’s not a good indicator, perhaps, of things to come, and should only add to our sense of urgency in gaining energy independence. When our economy recovers, and growth once again creates new demand, as it will, we could run into the same brick wall of rising oil and gas prices — and now is the time to make sure that that doesn’t happen. We have an opportunity right now, seizing this moment with lower prices to really start tapping in to some technology that will allow our nation to be firmly put on that path towards energy independence. In Washington, we can view this period of lower prices as just one more chance to make excuses, embracing status quo, really doing nothing about it, on the energy, uh, security problem that we face. And I think that we have heard enough excuses and we’ve been lax for too long. Or we can view this opportunity as the time to finally confront the problem. And John McCain and I are so committed to confronting and fixing the problem that we face with our reliance on foreign sources of energy.

In reality, yes, in reality, volatile oil prices are just the most immediate consequence when foreign powers control our energy supplies. They are an economic symptom of a strategic problem. And prices will only stabilize only when we have reached the great goal of energy security for America.

Achieving this objective will require a clean break, not just from the energy policies of the current administration, but we’ve gotta go back and realize that it’s been 30 years worth of failed energy prob– policies in Washington; 30 years where we’ve had opportunities to become less reliant on foreign sources, and 30 years of failure in that area. As in other challenges that confront our nation, we must shape events, and not simply manage crisis. Let’s look back in history and realize and learn from mistakes made in the past. We have that luxury of doing that now. Instead of assuming we have to just manage crisis from Washington, D.C., let’s be proactive and take an opportunity like we have today to confront a problem and fix a problem. We must steer far clear of the errors and false assumptions that have marked the energy policies of nearly twenty Congresses and seven presidents. Some tasks will be the work of decades, and some just the work of years. And they all will begin in the next term of our next president. And it all begins on November 4^th. Our country’s gonna go one of two ways with energy policy, leading us towards energy security, relying on the domestic solutions that are in front of us, or more and more reliance on foreign sources of energy. November 4^th is that time of choosing. We’re gonna go one of two ways.

For our part, John McCain and I, we’re determined to set this country firmly on a path toward energy independence. America has the resources to achieve this vital goal. We certainly have the ingenuity. And, John McCain and I, if are elected, we will supply the political will, finally to get this done.

In my experience in Alaska, I have seen what American ingenuity can achieve if given a chance. As governor of a huge energy-producing state, and as chair of our state’s oil and gas conservation commission, and as chairman of the nation’s Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, I’ve also seen how political pressures, and special interests, and corporate abuses, though, can work against the clear public interest in expanding our domestic energy supplies. I’ve had to take on some of that, especially there in Alaska, taking on a good old boy network that had been too controlled by some of those interests.

Alaska is one of the most resource-rich places on earth. Yet for many years, our state’s oil and gas wealth was the carefully guarded preserve of the political establishment — the good ol’ boy network –- and it was rewarded by a few big oil companies through an oil services company that liked things just the way that they were. They didn’t want any shaking up. They didn’t want anybody to come in and disrupt the good things that they had going there. But it was to the public’s detriment what was going on. And, as you may have seen this week in the news, Alaska’s senior senator is not the first man to discover the hazards of getting too close to oiled, moneyed interests with agendas of their own.

For the people of Alaska and their representatives, it’s been a hard enough time that we have had to persuade Congress, even, to authorize some of our developments. Start from the beginning of our energy producing history, trying to get authorization to construct our original Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline. When Congress finally acted in 1973 to allow that infrastructure to be built, they approved that pipeline over the “No” votes of a few senators, including Senator Joe Biden. He kicked his career off, his political career, saying no to this piece of infrastructure up in Alaska that has safely flowed 15 billion barrels of U.S. crude into hungry U.S. markets. He started his career saying no to that domestic solution, and it’s been no every since.

For the next three decades in Alaska then, there had been talk of building our next piece of infrastructure that was so necessary to feed hungry U.S. markets. This would be a gas pipeline to transport cleaner, greener natural gas down to the Lower 48. We have such an abundance of natural gas in Alaska. Geologists show us hundreds of trillions of cubic feet waiting to be tapped on offshore. But, all that it ever amounted to up in Alaska and across the U.S. for the plans for this gas line had been talk. Everybody talked about it and planned for it and dreamed about it. There have been articles written about the need for a natural gas pipeline to feed U.S. markets since the ’50s. Ever since I grew up I remember hearing about this dream for a natural gas pipeline. But all it was, was talk. And one of the main obstacles was big oil itself that wanted a pipeline, a gas pipeline even to be built only on their terms — ExxonMobil was one of the participants in that, and other companies also.

They should have been competing to invest in a new means of delivering their product to market. They should have been competing for the right to tap into the hungry markets, flowing our resources into those hungry markets. And, instead, they wanted a higher and higher price than any fair competition would yield, so they wouldn’t build the line. They were holding out for more billions of dollars — in public money. No one in good conscience could pay them what they wanted to build that gas line. And that’s how things were left, that’s how we found them when I decided to run for governor. There was no progress, no pipeline, no gas revenue for Alaska, no added energy security for America, because previously it had been all talk.

So we introduced, when I got elected, we introduced the big oil companies and their lobbyists to a concept of something that, evidently, they had forgotten, and that’s free-market competition. They had a monopoly, previously, on power and on resources, and we broke it.

And the result, finally, is progress on the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North America’s history — a nearly forty-billion-dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence. That’s what I’ve been working on up in Alaska, to help all of you, to help the rest of the U.S., energy supplies safely, ethically being tapped into, flowing through infrastructure to feed our hungry markets. So, with this gas line, when the last section of pipe is laid and its valves are opened, that gas line will lead America one step farther away from reliance on foreign energy. And that pipeline, that pipeline will be a lifeline — freeing us from more U.S. debt, and dependence, and the influence of foreign powers that do not have America’s interests at heart. And it is so important that more Americans realize what we’re up against when we consider our reliance on these foreign sources.

What we’ve done in Alaska, we shook things up in our state capital. And, whatever the good ol’ boys are running these days, I know it’s not the State of Alaska. And that’s the kind of reform that we need, serious reform in Washington, because the stakes for our country could not be higher. And if we do not transform and reform our government, we’re never going to get there, a secure, independent nation when it comes to energy.

Energy security is one of the great questions in this election. Sometimes I think it’s no wonder that our opponents don’t want to talk a whole lot about this, because they don’t get it. It doesn’t seem that they understand that we have the ingenuity and the domestic solutions right here. They don’t want to talk about it. But, it tests our ability to confront and solve hard problems in Washington, instead of constantly taking the easy way out and just putting the problem off for later. And it brings together so many other issues also — from the value of our pay checks to our nation’s most vital interests abroad. Americans blame Washington for doing next to nothing about our energy problems, and on that front they are right. The American public is right when they understand that not enough has been done in D.C. to get us off the path that we’re on, put us on a better path.

Abroad, we see Russia now with designs on a vital pipeline in the Caucasus. Wouldn’t they love to control entirely that pipeline? Its strategy there is to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon. And there, as elsewhere, we cannot leave ourselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers.

To confront the threat that Iran too might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world’s oil supplies … or that terrorists might strike at a vital refining facilities in Saudi Arabia … or to consider that Venezuela might shut off its oil deliveries, as Hugo Chavez likes to threaten sometimes … we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas. And we can do it because we have it here, God has so richly blessed our land with the supplies that we need.

And, in the worst cases, some of the most, the world’s most oil-rich nations, they’re also the most oppressive societies. And whether we like it or not, the money that we pay, U.S. dollars going to pay for their oil only makes them more powerful and more oppressive. Oil wealth allows undemocratic governments to crush dissent and to subjugate women, to oppress the people that live in these countries. Other regimes, too, they use it to finance terrorists, finance terrorists around the world and criminal syndicates in our own hemisphere.

By relying upon oil from the Middle East, we not only provide wealth to the sponsors of terror -– but we provide high-value targets to the terrorists themselves. Across the world these pipelines, refineries, transit routes and terminals for the oil we rely on. And Al Qaeda terrorists, they know where they are.

And if all of that wasn’t bad enough, there is also, of course, the damage that our dependence on foreign oil inflicts on our economy. Over the years, trillions of dollars have flowed out of our country, often to nations or regimes hostile to our country. Through this massive transfer of wealth, we lose hundreds of billions of dollars a year that would be much better invested in American enterprises to create American jobs.

And all of this explains why, as Senator McCain has said, energy security is not just one more issue on the candidate questionnaire. It’s much more important than that. Energy security is the sum total of so many problems that confront our nation. It demands of us that we shake off the old ways, no more embracing status quo on this issue. We must negotiate new hazards, and make hard choices that have long deferred. And three decades of partisan paralysis on energy security, that is enough. I do not want to hand this problem on to my children or your children. I want to take care of it, confront it, fix the problem, we can do this. It’s time that we meet this challenge in a way consistent with the character of this nation, and that starts with producing more of our own energy.

And in a McCain administration, in our administration, we will authorize and support new exploration and production of America’s own oil and gas reserves — because we cannot outsource the solution to America’s energy problem, we can’t outsource that, we gotta take care of that ourselves. Again, we can do this. Every year, we are sending hundreds of billions of dollars out of the country for oil imports, much of it from OPEC, while America’s own oil and gas reserves in America are warehoused underground, they’re going unused. And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we’ve got lots of both, oil, gas. We gotta lot of coal also.

And as a matter of fairness, we must assure affordable fuel for America by producing more of the trillions of dollars’ worth of our oil and gas. Our land and offshore, we’ve gotta drill here, we’ve gotta drill now. And that is one thing that as we travel around this nation in this campaign and we’re in these rallies, you say that and it resonates because people understand then, and they start chanting drill baby drill, they understand that we must drill here, drill now, because we can do it, and because of the geology of so many of the areas that they live, they understand that warehoused underground are those resources.

Another essential means to energy independence is a dramatic expansion in the use of nuclear energy. We’ve gotta tap into that. In our administration, we will set this nation on a course to build 45 new nuclear reactors by the year 2030. That’s a lofty goal, I know. And we will set the goal of 100 new plants to power the homes and factories and cities of America. This has to be tapped into also. This has to be part of the solution.

This task will be as difficult as it is necessary. We will need to recover all the knowledge and the skills that have been lost over three stagnant decades in a highly technical field, like nuclear. We need to solve complex problems of moving and storing materials that will always need that safeguarding. And we will need to do all of these things, and do them right, and we have done, as we have done great things before. We have to tap into American ingenuity and make sure that our young people are growing up understanding the benefits of nuclear, and our colleges are teaching that science also.

One of the efforts that will assist in securing our overall energy future is the development of clean-coal technology also. Here we have another big disagreement with our opponents. It was just about a month ago that Joe Biden told a voter in a rope line, but media caught him on tape, he told a, he told a voter that “we’re not supporting clean coal.” He says that clean coal, it’s, it’s a good idea for China, but, sorry Ohio, he says, Joe Biden says it’s not for you.

And that is just nonsense, and there’s plenty more of that nonsense when, um, you look at Senator Biden’s record. He’s against drilling off our coasts. He says it’s for environmental reasons that he’s opposed. But he says that offshore drilling holds real promise for the island nation of Cyprus — as if the environmental safeguards there are more rigorous than our own. And so far as he and Senator Obama are concerned, nuclear power’s okay, too — but only for France and other European nations. Our opponents seem to have all sorts of solutions and ideas to meet the energy needs of other nations — now if they would only focus on more of what America needs.

And it is worth asking why Senators Obama and Biden are opposed to the very same production methods in America that they advocate for other nations. Nobody seems to be asking them that. Usually, the answer that we hear –- gotta assume based on their record and some of their comments –- is that they fear environmental harm from domestic production, especially in the case of offshore drilling. But there’s a big problem here, even if we take their argument on its own terms. Technology has made production far cleaner than was ever thought possible, tiny footprints is all that is necessary now — by use of such methods as horizontal drilling, and carbon capture and storage, and enhanced recovery. Technology has come such a long way. Again, they don’t get it. They need to understand the science behind all of this today. And those cleaner, safer technologies are far likelier to be used in the US and Canada than in China, India or other developing nations. It’s here, well there — they will be produced in environmentally friendly manners and protecting the workers. Much more likely here than in these developing countries.

So policies that forego domestic production don’t protect our environment. They simply accelerate and reward dirtier and more dangerous methods of production elsewhere, in countries that apply few, if any, environmental or workplace safeguards. While our opponents like to posture as defenders of the environment, in practice their refusal to support more domestic production does nothing more than harm. It ultimately harms our environment. It doesn’t do any good.

And as for our coal resources — let me get back to coal –- America has more coal than the oil riches in all of Saudi Arabia. I don’t know if a lot of people have realized that. Burning coal cleanly is a challenge though, it’s a challenge of practical problem-solving and human ingenuity though — and we have no shortage of those in America either. So, in a McCain administration, we will commit two billion dollars each year, until 2024, to clean-coal research, and development, and deployment. We won’t just be talking about it. We’ll be doing something about it to find the solution that we need to reach clean coal technology that can be—the technique can be deployed and we can live with this. We will refine the techniques and equipment. And we’ll deliver not only electricity but jobs to some of the hardest hit areas hardest hit by these economic times.

And in the end, with or without the green light from Joe the Six-Term Senator, we’ll make clean coal a reality. And it is for the sake of our nation’s security and our prosperity that we need these energy resources from America, and they can be brought to you by American ingenuity, and they’ve got to be produced by American workers.

And it is to meet America’s great energy challenge that John and I will adopt that “all of the above” approach that’s needed. In our administration, that will mean harnessing alternative sources, like wind and solar. The great job you are doing here with solar. Geothermal. We have many, many alternative sources that have not yet been tapped into and allowed to become economic and reliable. That’s the key, of course, is the reliability of these alternative sources. We’ve got to end subsidies and tariffs that drive prices up though, and provide tax credits, is what we’ll do, indexed to low automobile carbon emissions. And we’ve gotta encourage Americans to be part of the solution, too, by taking steps in their every day lives to conserve more and use less. And you don’t hear a lot of talk about that also, the need for all of us to conserve these energy sources, especially, obviously, the non-renewable sources of energy. We’ll control greenhouse gas emissions by giving American businesses new incentives and new rewards to seek, instead of just giving them new taxes to pay and new orders that they must follow, so says government.

On energy policy, our opponents are always talking about things that we can– we cannot do. This is what you always here from our opponents, things that you cannot do because our own government won’t let us. When you look over the energy plans of Barack Obama and Joe Biden and the allies that they have there in Congress, it is just a long, labored agenda of inaction. And we cannot afford this, not a day longer. And it’s the same agenda of inaction that we could expect under a one-party rule of Obama, and Pelosi, and Reid. And I say that, again, based on their record of inaction. Yes. They’re always talking about things that we cannot do in America. Stifling the entrepreneurial spirit with more government control, saying– saying to the American public why we can’t do something. Why we can’t produce and why refineries can’t build, and why we can’t approve more plants, and coal why we cannot use that, and why we cannot master new technologies. As John McCain has observed, for a guy’s who’s slogan is “Yes we can,” Barack Obama’s energy plan sure has a whole lot of “No we can’t.”

And, again and again, again and again, our opponents say that drilling will not solve all of America’s energy problems — as if we all didn’t know that already. But the fact that drilling won’t solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.

No, we cannot “drill our way out of the problem” entirely. But this is America, and it’s the most resourceful country on earth, and we can drill, and refine, and mine, and enrich, and reprocess, and invent, and build, and conserve, and grow, we can use every available means to regain our independence. But, we first have to say, yes we can do it. Yes.

And the mission of energy security will demand great things of our country. It will require commitment, and resolve, and political courage. It will require that bipartisan approach that John McCain is known for. He is the maverick of the Senate because he’s been able to have the courage, the guts to manifest his commitment to working across the aisle to fix the problems that America has and face the challenges. He’s known as the maverick, and he’s got the scars to prove it because he takes shots from his own party and from the other party also. But it’s gonna take that kind of courageous, wise, experienced approach to meet America’s energy challenges, and that’s what John McCain is all about. John McCain is a man who knows something about hard missions, and about overcoming dangers and keeping faith with his country. He has always put his country first. And the stakes are so high, and complete success, it’s not gonna come quickly on this front. But I can promise you this: That unless we begin this mission now, today, the only change we’re gonna see is a change for the worse. And when we do succeed in the hard work ahead, our children will live a more prosperous life in a more prosperous country, and they’re gonna live in a safer world. That’s what energy independence will bring us. So, I thank you for being here today. I’m excited about the possibilities that we have and putting together the pieces in this puzzle, putting it all together, the big picture for America, the possibilities that we have, the potential in America to finally getting our nation firmly on that path towards energy independence. In this arena, also, I promise you, John McCain and I will not let you down. Thank you and God bless you. Thank you. Thank you, guys.

]]> http://washingtonindependent.com/15713/sarah-palins-super-script/feed 10 http://washingtonindependent.com/15614/palin-elaborates-on-joes-resume http://washingtonindependent.com/15614/palin-elaborates-on-joes-resume#comments Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:02:36 +0000 Ana Marie Cox http://washingtonindependent.com/?p=15614

This is the lunch we have been provided by the Palin staff. The life of a campaign reporter is glamorous and fulfilling.

Bowling Green, Ohio

We’ve just wrapped up the second Palin campaign event of the day, a “Victory in Ohio” rally whose highlight — aside from the rather off-key selection of “Big Ol’ Jet Airliner” as pre-rally music — was the introduction of Joe the Plumber. Or, as the press corps has come to call him, JTP.

I don’t mean to be weird or anything, but the sexual tension was palpable: “All the pictures I’ve seen of him, I knew I’d like him wearing his Carhartts and steel-toed boots.” Gov. Sarah Palin apparently got so excited that she momentarily granted him the honored double status of veteran and Frontier State native: “He’s a fellow Alaska[n], and he’s a fellow military man who has served our country proudly. I’d like you to meet him.”

He is neither. But then again, his name isn’t Joe and he isn’t a plumber. So, really, who’s to blame her for getting a little carried away?

Speaking of getting carried away, Palin drew excited responses from the crowd when she — for the first time during the campaign — brought up Rashid Khalidi, “another ‘professor’ and ‘guy in the neighborhood.’”

Palin’s attack on Khalidi has been eagerly anticipated by GOP faithful for sometime. The National Review, in particular, has practically begged for the campaign to make an issue of “the top apologist for terrorists” — i.e., former spokesman for the PLO — who is another (distant) associate of Sen. Barack Obama’s. Indeed, when Palin first mentioned him, mangling his name a bit in the process, several audience members shouted good-natured corrections.

Palin grouped Khalidi with another familiar target: the media, suggesting that The Los Angeles Times has been suppressing a video tape of Obama’s attendence of the controversial figure’s birthday party: “The newspaper that HAS THAT TAPE — THE LOS ANGELES TIMES — REFUSES TO RELEASE IT.” She continued, “If there is a Pulitzer prize for excellence in kowtowing, then, LA Times, you’re winning it.”

The crowd was winning something for its loud voicing of approval.

Having observed the McCain campaign for almost two years, I’m inclined to believe Palin’s less-scripted moments are, in fact, less a result of active disobedience than in the governor’s own somewhat McCain-like unwillingness to stick to a script.  Here, in Toledo, where she just gave a speech on energy independence, Palin’s own independence took a literal turn: If there is any one place she has gone rogue, it is against her teleprompter.

Visible over the shoulder of the press corps, the monitor that displayed Palin’s speech shifted occasionally, as its operator struggled to pick back up after she drifted off in tangents, dropping in folksy-isms like urging some “tappin’ into new ideas” and noting “special interests” –  “I’ve had to take on some of that,” she said, “especially up there in Alaska, where they didn’t want any shakin’ up.”

Her ad-libs are short on “g’s.”

Following along in the prepared remarks, another theme developed in the lines Palin delivered: herself.

To the statement, “So, we introduced the big oil companies and their lobbyists to a concept some of them had forgotten — free-market competition,” she inserted, a “when I got elected,” as in, “So, we introduced — when I got elected — the big oil companies.”

And when the remarks had her warning “energy security…demands of us that we shake off old ways, negotiate new hazards and make hard choices long deferred,” she made the plea personal: “I do not want to hand this problem off onto my children or to your children.”

Though the speech was mostly a recitation of energy-policy proposals that Sen. John McCain has been offering for months — nuclear power, limited offshore drilling, “clean coal” — Palin’s flourishes made the speech hers. The line, “Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas” could be said by either the top or the bottom of the ticket.  But, “God has so richly blessed our land with the supplies that we need”? You would pretty much have to write God into a McCain speech to get him to say it. Palin adds it on her own.

The media traveling with Palin say that none of these flourishes are particularly new. They are artifacts of her stump speech, and, obviously, part of being a compelling public speaker is to make speeches written by other people sound like you. Unless you’re Joe Biden, in which case you simply claim all your speeches to have been written by you.

Obama is deeply involved with crafting his speeches before they’re delivered, and so doesn’t tend to improvise. McCain has the advantage of having worked with the same speechwriter — Mark Salter — for 20 years, achieving a sort of mind-meld that allows Salter to anticipate even where a “my friends” or three should be added.

If Palin’s speechwriter wants to keep his or her job beyond next Tuesday — like, say, through 2012 — I’d take note of what Palin’s verbal crutches are as well. McCain’s “my friends” tic is both a way of giving a speech his own stamp and, often, a sign of emotional investment — he’s telling listeners to really pay attention this time. He means it.

To judge by the difference between her speech as written and as delivered, Palin’s version of “my friends” is simply “Alaska.” The speech writer directed Palin to mention it eight times. Palin went to the “Alaska” well almost twice as many times. Drill, baby, drill, indeed.

It would probably be unfair to read too much into Palin’s freelance speech writing, though it does offer some insight into a candidate who otherwise has been hesitant to speak off the cuff.

When she went out of her way, though, to heap praise on McCain at the end of her speech, it probably was out of genuine enthusiasm. And when she changed a line from “our children” living in a “more peaceful” world to a “safer” one, maybe it was because she thinks the terms are synonymous.

At least I hope so.