“REACHING OUT” is a weaselly expression if I’ve ever heard one. Both Palin and McCain are now described to have “reached out” (ergo connected) to independent voters. Would that spin itself appear to be a “reach?”

I’m not sure I’d say either speaker even “reached” FOR other-minded voters. Mockery of the opposition was so base at the RNC, the jokes could only have landed within the closed GOP circles of snickering Muttleys. If the media needs to spin the official record to suggest the candidates aimed to connect with impressionable undecideds outside their party, the best reporters could truthfully approximate is that the politicians TRIED to reach out.

What does “reaching out” describe to you? Sticking your hand out in a conciliatory gesture, hoping the other side will shake it? Leaning over the edge of a lifeboat to rescue someone from the water? My vocabulary constraints hold that “reaching out” implies a connection reached, a bridge sought and made. Would that be an even credible typification of any of the RNC speeches? Reaching “out” infers there’s someone out there. And the past tense of “reached out” requires an “in vain” otherwise it’s presumed you got there.

If someone voices an apology, suggests a compromise out loud, but there were yet no takers; would it not be likely that a middle consensus was not exactly “reached?” I’m not sure, but to describe in retrospect that a speaker reached out, implies that someone took their hand. McCain reached for, or pandered to, but did not get “out.”