John McCain's Vice President Announcement Rains on Barack Obama's Acceptance Speech

Senator Barack Obama won the Democratic National Convention's nomination for president on August 27, 2008, and will officially accept in a speech that will be given before a sold-out Mile High Stadium crowd of more than 75,000 people on August 28, the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. No coincidence, that. And America will see the spectacle of it all on national television.

The Democrats are riding a wave of reunification, of excitement, and of pomp and circumstance. It will culminate with Senator Obama's acceptance speech.

CNN reported that their latest poll saw a five-point jump in Senator Obama's election numbers.

Obama's speech is something that the Republicans, whose Republican National Convention kicks off in St. Paul, Minnesota, next week, would simply love to dampen by any means possible. For the last couple days of the Democratic National Convention there has been the lurking knowledge that Senator John McCain has chosen his vice president. That subtext to all the Democratic news coming from Denver has set the stage for a major Republican preemption.

The John McCain camp has planned for a while to announce their vice presidential choice in Dayton, Ohio, on Friday, August 29 at a political rally. The Republicans have kept the information of McCain's choice secret.

But Senator Obama's camp kept their vice president choice secret as well. Still, with observant reporting by CNN, Obama's choice of Senator Joe Biden as his running mate was preempted (and the text and e-mail messages to supporters that were to precede that announcement).

With all the excitement and emotion being generated by the Democratic National Convention and Obama's upcoming speech, there is little doubt that the GOP would like to soften the historic impact and significance of the event. How better to do that than to announce Senator McCain's running mate just before Obama's speech? The announcement would certainly be big news. And it would compete with the speech for the attention of the public.

Some might think that the Republicans might be wary of such a move because of emotional backlash. And that is a possibility, given the nature of the moment and the historic importance of Obama's speech, not to mention its significance with regard to the Martin Luther King's speech.

But who would such a move alienate or disaffect? Liberal whites and black voters? People in those demographics vote overwhelmingly Democratic anyway. Such a strategic move by the GOP and the McCain camp would cause a cry of outrage, but it would have little effect on the Republican voting base.

But the GOP are old masters at political machinations. They are far too skilled at political games than to directly announce their candidate. No, it would be done indirectly, through a "leak" in the McCain camp. That way the McCain organization can claim they had nothing to do with it, were still planning to formally announce their choice for vice president in Dayton. In political circles this is known a "plausible deniability."

And what does this accomplish? It mutes Obama's thunder. Bad enough for the Republicans that this huge political gathering of popular support for Senator Obama will be shown nationwide (and worldwide). Even worse that the event will be underscored by running facts on television, on the internet, and on radio about the candidate and the historic import of the night's proceedings. And still worse that pundits and commentators will be talking up the Democrats all night long.

The Republicans may not want to wait for it to rain on Obama's speech to blunt the impact. What better way to begin the run-up to the Republican National Convention?

Nor is Senator McCain averse to the idea of preemptive strikes.