The Speech.

Here are my random thoughts about Obama's speech Thursday night. First a few notes about the warm-up acts and the overall atmosphere.

-I tuned in an hour early to see Algore warming up the crowd. I expected him to put everyone to sleep, but in the last 8 years he's become a more passionate, dynamic speaker. He compared Obama to Lincoln more than once, the validity of which remains to be seen. Like a lot of the Obamamessiah stuff I thought it was a little unfair to the Senator to put that kind of expectation on him. I'd settle for a Taft at this point.

-The set looked a lot less gaudy than I expected from the descriptions I'd heard. All day on talk radio they'd been describing it as some kind of pagan temple. It looked very subdued when I actually saw it.

-The larger stadium crowd wasn't quite the visual I thought it would be. This may be because I'm used to seeing crowds that size at sporting events, or it may be that on tv a crowd of 20,000 or 80,000 are more similar than they would be in person.

-There were about 30 minutes of "ordinary people" speeches. The ordinary people were a little too ordinary. The one that stuck out most to me was an auto worker from Detroit who said: "Working class families were doing fine in Detroit until the Bush administration took over". Bullshit. I laughed out loud at that line. (Because Detroit was heaven-on-earth when I lived there in the mid-nineties) Detroit has been in a free-fall for about 40 years now. In that time the state and federal governments have been controlled by each party and the nation has had its ups and downs, but Detroit has only been run by one party and there haven't been too many "ups" to speak of.

-as to the speech itself, I thought it was very good, not quite as good as the one he gave in '04, but it served a different purpose. The '04 speech was soaring and inspirational, while this one had to be more workman-like.

-I thought the most effective part was where he directly addressed the "celebrity" stuff. This was important to show that he identifies with "hard-working Americans" (which may be my least favorite political buzz-word these days).

-For a lot of the speech I got the impression he was running against Bush. Not a bad idea, but they've been trying to tie McCain to Bush for about 6 months now, and I've seen no signs that it's working with the electorate so far. McCain's maverick reputation (rightly or wrongly) may very well be too entrenched in the minds of the public to be reversed.

-He's definitely a "big picture" guy rather than a policy wonk.

-Make no mistake about it. We are a nation of whiners. Remember how much whining ensued when Senator Gramm said that? They kind of proved his point.

-Both candidates are promising to end our dependence on foreign oil... and both will fail to deliver if elected.

-I thought he left McCain some openings to counter-attack by claiming McCain doesn't know what "ordinary" people go through, etc. Also this makes it a little easier for McCain to attack Obama without looking too mean-spirited.

-Overall, I thought it was a very good night for Senator Obama. I'd give the final night an A, and the rest of the convention a B-. It was kind of unfocused as Democratic Conventions usually are when compared to the absolute "message-discipline" that permeates Republican conventions. The high points for me were the speeches of Biden and Obama, as expected.

The Speech: Media Reactions.

Tonight is Barack Obama's long-awaited acceptance speech, which I'm sure will be very good. I will be posting my thoughts on the speech tomorrow, but I'd like to look at the media response first. Now, of course the media response hasn't really happened yet but it isn't all that hard to predict. So here are some words and phrases you're almost sure to hear in the next few days.

-"He hit it out of the park tonight!"
-"The greatest political speech of my lifetime!"
-"Moving"
-"Inspirational!"
-"Transformational!"
-"Visionary"
-"Electrifying!"
-"How is McCain going to comeback from this?"
-" A knockout punch"
-" His poll numbers will go through the roof!"
- "This speech got him X-million votes!" (This will, of course, be impossible to verify until November.)
- "Substantive"
-"I was spasming uncontrollably the whole time!"
-" I want him to hope all over me!"
-"Wow!"
-"Historic"
-" I cried during his speech."
-"Eloquent"
-"Articulate"
-"He wrote most of it himself"
-"Answered the doubters." ( this will make me laugh the hardest. As one of his "doubters", his abililty to read a teleprompter was never something I doubted.)
-"Dr. King"
-" I am speechless!"
-"Inclusive or inclusionary"
-"Meteoric rise"
-"Changed the face of politics for a generation" (a bit soon for that, but I have a feeling I'll read those words.)

There will be a lot more fawning I'm sure, but this list is just the phrases I expect to read tomorrow. There will also be the usual gushing about how smart, compassionate, etc. he is. If the past several months are any indication, news articles from the left will sound mostly like they were written by teenagers describing someone they have a crush on, with some containing so much metaphysical New Age language that they read almost like an astrology reading. It should be fun. I'll be interested to see how much the speech and the convention do to boost his sagging poll numbers.

Vacation Musings.

I'm currently in the middle of a week-long vacation, visiting my family in Michigan. It's been fun so far. I will be posting plenty of pictures (probably after I get home since the dial up connection here makes uploading pictures a very slow process). Some thoughts so far:

-Six A.M. is not such a bad time for a flight (especially one jumping a few time zones ahead), provided it's from a small airport that you can get into relatively quickly.
-This was the first time in the history of me flying that I actually spent the better part of a flight talking to the woman sitting next to me. I'm usually next to the snorer, the person who is freaked out, or the large coughing guy.
-O'Hare is a pretty nice airport. Which is good, because I will have four hours to kill there when I fly home next Wednesday. I like the fact that you are never more than 100 feet from a Starbucks, the adequate placement of moving walkways, and the fact that it doesn't smell nasty, which brings me too...
-Is there a nastier airport anywhere than Detroit Metro? Usually when I arrive and the entire terminal smells like the inside of a french-fry vat and there are leaks in the ceiling and peeling paint, I know I'm home. (I usually know by the inordinate number of veiled women as well)
-I'd forgotten how crappy humidity can be. Colorado Springs at 90 degrees isn't so bad. Michigan at 90 degrees means I need to change my shirt every time I come in from outside. The air just feels thick. I did feel like it was easier to do extended walking though, probably because I've gotten used to not having any oxygen in the air.
-I visited my Alma Mater today, and it looks way different. Buildings going up everywhere and all of them look way more expensive than they need to be.
-I drove through a few areas I hung out in when I was in college and took some pictures. They look really different too. The shack I used to rent surprisingly seems to have some one living in it, meaning it must not have been condemned like I expected.
-I went down to the beach to take pictures. Those will be up before long.
-My folks cooked me a very large steak tonight that has to be seen.
-Someone on the radio said it was getting kind of dry here. I laughed at that since they have this weird green-colored grass here rather than the normal brownish-yellow I'm used to at home.
-Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to actually post some of the pics I took of sailboats, steaks, my dog, etc.