Palin Punctuated Equilibrium
After my deep reading of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s rhetorical skills Tuesday, I confess I wasn’t quite up to scrutinizing her talk on national security issues for deviations from the point. But, not wanting to totally fail those interested in continued examination of Palin’s style, I took a look just at the remarks as prepared for delivery.
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.
