Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

I would have agreed with your assessment until the last five or so minutes of the speech.  When he got personal and told us his conversion story when he transformed from a self-centered life to a country-centered life, it brought tears to my eyes.

No, John McCain isn’t a great orator.  He’s just a genuine American hero.

I thought it built up well.  It was slow and McCain like to start.  An okay speech.  But as it built to the end it worked because of the authenticity of the speaker.  He may not be the best orator, but he has a hell of a story.

I’m one of those independents everyone is trying to woo. I really do vote for members of both parties and voted against Bust twice, but supported McCain - with substantial money - in the primaries in 2000. When McCain lost I voted for Gore. So I’m biased for McCain and have been for years.

Still, I thought it was a wonderful speech. It was McCain being McCain. I’m much less concerned with the polish of the delivery or the sophistication of the rhetoric than I am with substance and the character of the individual and the quality of their ideas and plans and the implications of their policies.

I cannot even imagine voting for Obama/Biden and cannot for the life of me understand what anyone sees in them.

Washington is THE problem and McCain/Palin is the cure. I am 100% confident that these two amazing individuals are the right people at the right time for America.

On the contrary, Mr Obama was interrupted many times by leftist agitators - they were his audience at the stadium ;^)

I agree with “K.T.Cat,” above. McCain was not polished, but he was genuine. I think that’s what the McCain-Palin ticket has going for it. They are genuine people. Obama and Biden are too slick.

Up until the last segment the speech was good but not great. When he described his own journey from serving himself to serving something greater it was moving. When he called on the audience to serve others and to fight to make the nation greater it was inspiring. McCain is at his best when he gives voice to his passion for serving his country and her people.

Palin is a better speaker and seems to be natural politician, but McCain has his own gifts, and they shine in their own way.

McCain’s speech wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.  It was exactly what I expected.  He has never had the “wow factor” that Reagan had or that Obama has within his cult following.  But most political speeches are pretty mundane as far as i’m concerned.  I don’t think that Obama or McCain convinced anyone to vote for them who was either undecided or opposed to their candidacy.  I think that Palin may have had more of an impact than many in the media or blogosphere seem to believe.  In particular, I think she has a very real chance of winning over undecided voters in swing states like Ohio and Pensylvania.  There are many working class voters who can relate to the realities of her life much more than they can to Obama’s.

And, Prof. Bainbridge I can’t believe you made this assertion: “Bush was wrong about global warming and energy policy, McCain was right.” Bush has pretty much tried to avoid global warming over the last four or five years, but to the extent that he is a skeptic and McCain wants to impose a cap and trade system on CO2 emissions that cost hundreds of billions and confer precisely no benefit whatsoever (other than to politicians with one more regulatory scheme they can use to wild power over the electorate), Bush is right and McCain is wrong.  As to taxes, I think that spending is the real problem.  Aren’t federal income tax revenues within one or two percent of the amounts projected by the CBO back in the 1990’s?

I heard of few snippets of what some might call a John McCain the “Maverick” version of change. But when I heard these words from him: “All these functions of government...”, all he did was more or less confirm for me that nothing really will fundamentally change in Washington, DC. It has been far too long since many politicians have read the Constitution, specifically Article I, Section 8, to recall what the legitimate functions of the federal government really are. If there are especially wise instances wherein it is desirable to expand the role of government, there should be no difficulty in amending the Constitution to allow for it. If politicians are so intent upon the exercise of unauthorized power without amending the Constitution, what is the point of having a Constitution at all?

"Of all the detestable places, Washington is the first.” - George Templeton Strong.

Look, there are more people in D.C. who are absolutely dedicated to the preservation of the corrupt status quo than there are guitar pickers in Nashville. The whole Beltway and the way business is done there are based upon conflicts of interest and back-scratching that are only rarely revealed to the public, and which no President, or President/Vice-President team, can undo. The scope and scale of the problem are just too large and widespread. The best we can hope for is that the next team won’t make it too much worse.

You makes your choices and you takes your chances.

What he didn’t have was cockiness.  Hilliary lost her bid because of it.  She assumed she was the heir and structured her campaign as a run against GEORGE W. BUSH.  She dismissed Obama until it was too late. 
Obama structured his campaign as “I didn’t make that one bad vote for the war but Hilliary did.” A very convoluted argument, but the lefties loved it, and he won.
Now Obama has the nomination and the first thing he did is get cocky.  He didn’t think he needed to move right of center so he didn’t make himself fool proof with a Hilliary VP pick.  He didn’t think he needed “governing” on his resume, and he thought he had OH, PA, MI, and MN in the bag.  He could have sewed up Ohio by asking Strickland to be on his ticket.  He could have made major in-roads in PA by selecting Rendell. These were Hilliary voters. But he was cocky and went with a guy that would satisfy the lefty nut jobs when he needed to move to the center.
Old John McCain was not just the original maverick, he was also very cocky.  Last night, he was not cocky.  He was not a wise guy.  He was not slick.  He was not packaged.  The whole GOP convention and his speech was about Change.  Real Change.  Change you can believe in. 
He repeatedly asked people to “Stand Up”, a background theme started when he said “Sarah Palin doesn’t allow anyone tell her to sit down”. 
He flubbed the speech.  The back ground was awful.  But it was gut wrenching in its honesty.  The message, not the words, not the background, not the delivery was so real it was humbling.  He apologized for the behavior of the GOP in the last decade.  He reached out to those people, people like me, who want to believe that it matters who we send to Washington.  He spoke directly to people, like me, who wanted to believe that small government, lower taxes, and honesty were the reasons for choosing the GOP over the big government, higher taxes, and political “machine” of the Democrat party.
John McCain stole Obama’s message last night.  But he didn’t do it for glory and power.  He didn’t do it for John McCain.  He did it for me.

Don’t know if this was an election winner but it restored my faith in my party.  It restored my reason for caring about politics and who wins.

John, I won’t just stand up.  I will get on my knees and pray for you.  I will crawl through glass for you.  I promise, as Mrs. Average Voter USA, that I will pay attention, for you, John McCain.  And I will fight for change, real change, the kind you can believe in, the kind that only you (and Sarah Palin) can bring.

I think I finally understand John McCain.  I posted about it here, but I’ll spare you the click if you don’t want to see the whole thing and synopsize it.

John McCain is in Washington, but not of it. As I heard his life story, I wondered what it must be like for him to sit on Senate panels and hear the backroom deals where the pork-barrel earmarks are planned and favors exchanged. For a man who gained a religious zealot’s passion for his country while being tortured for 5 1/2 years in a foreign prison, these discussions must disgust him. How refreshingly alien to the culture of Washington he is!

He’d make a great president.

McCain is not a great orator, but he is absolutely sincere.  I am not saying Barack isn’t sincere, he is (and happens to speak well too, at least from a teleprompter).  But Mac spoke from the heart last night. 

McCain’s speech was directed to those Dems dissatisfied with Obama but unsure about McCain and the independents.  That is why the emphasis on reaching across the isle, hating war, and other similar themes.  To that extent, I think McCain did what he needed to do. 

The speech was effective.  It is not the greatest speech ever, but it exceeded expectations which were low.  That is why Mac went up five points on Intrade this morning and Barack Obama dropped 6.5.  The initial Rasmussen poll is looking good too (although that is time delayed a couple of days due to averaging and is not responding to last nights speech).  Now that bounce will change over the next few days.  But I think everyone recognizes that McCain-Palin have game.

McCain is Cinncinnatus.

I am still trying to figure out if Obama is Cicero (humble background but threw his lot with the “best people”, but lacked the rock star appeal of Obama), Caesar (Messianic like Obama, but I doubt Obama will invade France and abolish the constitution) or the Gracchi.

I like McCain’s ‘00 speeches, when he still cared and had a real reform issue to work with.  This hardly seems like the same man, and I miss him,

He’s right that the GOP HAS screwed up and needs reform, but two obvious things were missing in his speech.  He wasn’t willing to talk atall about what did go wrong, not even WHY the Surge he’s so proud of was needed.  Worst, he offered NOTHING to fix it other than a change of the nameplate in office, and the worry of an extremist who fired a librarian for not censoring her town’s library possibly inheriting the Presidency.

My gut thinks a man ready to serve as President should be able to show more leadership on those issues, if he’s a continuation of the party in power.  Especially a party so unpopular and corrupt.  Gore ‘00 isn’t my idea of great Presidential leadership, but he did show leadership on those issues.

Barnett Explains the Good, Bad and Ugly of last night: 

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Weblogs/TWSFP/TWSFPView.asp#8537

The speech was sincere, if a bit flat, but got the job done that McCain needed to do. 

The back screens were terrible.  I had the same reaction--like wouldn’t someone had dry run the slide presentation first to see what the backgrounds would look like on TV?  Nuts, but hey, mistakes happen.  Fix them.  With the nature of McCain’s speech a completely neutral background would have been better (I mean come on he is on a stage that looks like the face dial of a Movado watch). 

As for the O’Bama vs. O’Reilly, Fox must have run it early because I waited all night for it and it never came.  I started watching just before McCain came on live.  I am sure I can catch it tonight.  But given McCain’s ratings were so high and the only thing I am hearing that Obama praised the surge--I am not so sure that interview worked for him. 

Talking about “O”, I don’t think Oprah’s dis of Gov. Palin is a very smart move either (both for herself and Obama).  Expect the View to take advantage of that (and of course while the View is a fairly hostile venue, Ms. Hasselbeck will be there to watch Gov. Palin’s back).  Will it be civil or end up being a chick version of the last scene of the Wild Bunch?

Last scene of The Wild Bunch? It’d be more like the first scene in The Wild Bunch. You know, the one where the kids are dropping a scorpion into an enclosure to be attacked and killed by a swarming nest of ants?

Not that I’m comparing Palin to a scorpion, per se. But her on The View would be that kind of a vicious gangbang.

Hah!  Excellent one Letalis Maximus, Esq! 

But I think Governor Palin can hold her own against Joy, Whoopie, and Babs.  You may not know this but the diamonds in Sarah Palin’s earrings were crushed with her very hands. http://www.palinfacts.com/

And oh by the way, here is Barnett on the RNC post convention bounce:  http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/09/the_rnc_bounce.asp

The legend lives on from the Gray Lady on down
To the network they call “Fair and Balanced.”
The MSNBC, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of September turn gloomy.

With a load of delegates - 2,500 or more
Than the Barack Obama weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early

The ship was the pride of the Democrat side
Rising out of the machine in Chicago
As big ships go it beat out Team Hillary so
With a campaign and the Veep well seasoned.

Concluding some terms with a couple of special interest groups
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ships bell rang
McCain announced Sarah Palin.

The Kos and the Dish made a tattletale sound
Claiming that McCain was insane
First it was Trig, and then it was Bristol,
This would finish the old man off early.

Gustav came late and the GOP convention to wait
And bets were being taken when she would drop out
But when the Governor spoke to the assembled folk
The Dems were in the face of a hurricane Palin

When supper time came the old Veep came on deck
Saying I hear that life starts at conception
At 7AM when Intrade caved in
Biden said fellas it’s been good to know ya.

Then Captain hit a shoal called “New Pennsylvania”
And the Dem ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when Mac’s polls went out of sight
Came the wreck of the Barack Obama.

Under Carter the misery index averaged 14.6.

Under Reagan the misery index averaged 15.6.