Bush and Lieberman promote McCain, ‘a great American’

Two interventions have put the Republicans' national rally in St Paul, Minnesota back on track - one divine, the other overtly political. The first was Hurricane Gustav, the threat of which gave Team McCain the excuse not to have George Bush - the most unpopular president since the disgraced Richard Nixon - appear live on stage with their candidate.

Instead, having spent Monday in Texas, monitoring the ever-weakening storm, the President gave an eight-minute speech yesterday, delivered by satellite link from the White House, in which he made all the right noises - McCain was "a great American" and ready to make the tough decisions "in a dangerous world" - without fluffing his lines.

It is thought to be the first occasion on which an incumbent president has not managed to address the party convention live. Asked whether the President's absence from St Paul was a godsend to McCain, an anonymous consultant to the Republican national committee told the BBC: "You can say that again."

The political intervention came last night from Senator Joe Lieberman, the life-long Democrat who turned independent two years ago and who only two elections back came within a whisker of getting to the White House as Democrat Al Gore's running mate.

Addressing the crowd at the Xcel Energy Center in St Paul, Lieberman asked: "What is a Democrat like me doing at a Republican convention like this?" and then told them: "I'm here tonight for a simple reason: John McCain is the best choice to bring the country together and lead America forward. And I'm here because John McCain's full life testifies to a great truth: Being a Democrat or a Republican is important. But it is not more important than being an American."

With several glancing blows at Barack Obama - "eloquence is no substitute for a record" - and with continual references to McCain's maverick nature, the speech went down well with delegates - and very badly with his old colleagues in the Democratic party.

A spokesman for the Senate majority leader Harry Reid issued a statement afterwards saying: "Senator Reid was very disappointed in Senator Lieberman's speech tonight, especially when he appeared to go out of his way to distort Senator Obama's record of bipartisan achievements in the Senate... As the American people have made very clear, the last thing this country needs is another four years of the same old failed Bush-McCain policies of the past."

Lieberman’s speech, writes Dana Doldstein on the American Intellectual, "was not about national security, or tax cuts, or social conservatism". Its themes were "patriotism, honour, and personal sacrifice". Unfortunately that meant the speech "had the disadvantage of failing to speak directly to really any of the fundamental challenges facing the nation in a time of war, climate crisis, and looming recession".

Steve Kornacki writes on the New York Observer that the most telling aspect of Lieberman’s speech was the fact he "pointedly avoided endorsing any other Republican candidates or even speaking of the Republican Party in more favourable terms than the Democratic Party. He explained his personal reasons for endorsing McCain, and didn't go much further than that."

Comments left on the Conneticut Local Politics blog were generally scathing towards the hometown senator. One reader wrote : "This is the first time I’ve seen a rat swimming to a sinking ship".

FIRST POSTED SEPTEMBER 3, 2008