Discriminations

Four days ago, half -way between Sarah Palin’s Friday debut as vice presidential nominee and her smashing Wednesday night address to the Republican Convention (and 37 million viewers), I wrote the following, in a post titled Change Who Can Believe In?:

It seems to me that if Obama is elected change (or should that be Change!) will consist entirely of replacing Republicans with Democrats. There’s nothing wrong with that, and if you’re a Democrat that’s probably all you want. But there’s nothing in Obama’s past (insofar as he has a past), in his campaign to date, or in his programatic acceptance speech to suggest there will be anything new or different about the nature of the Democratic agenda he will pursue.

McCain, especially with his selection of Palin, promises something completely different. If he is elected I think there’s a good chance radical and fundamental change will come ... to the Republican Party....

Now, I would say at least to the Republican Party. After McCain’s speech last night (which I thought much more effective than most pundits did, for whatever that’s worth), and especially after Palin’s forceful presentation, it’s now pretty clear that this campaign will not be Obama’s “Change!” vs. McCain’s “Experience!” It will be between two competing versions of change.

I’ve been thinking about that, and I’m still having a hard time seeing any change that Obama will bring except for exchanging Democratic policies and bureaucrats for Republican ones. I don’t mean to minimize the significance of that, but in my opinion the rumbles in Washington such “change” would produce would rank significantly lower on a political Richter Scale than the destruction (creative if you like it, disturbing if you don’t) that would follow in the wake of McCain and Palin blowing into the White House. (Think of Susan Page’s headline to her Sept. 4 article in USA Today: “Palin maes landfall in St. Paul.”)

But I might be wrong (there’s a first time for everything). If you think I am, give me some examples of “change” that Obama would produce in Washington that were not also advocated by Michael Dukakis or Al Gore or John Kerry or that stray in any significant way from traditional Democratic orthodoxy.