Notes on John McCain's speech

Well, it looks like John McCain's speech in St. Paul is finally over.

I was watching at the beginning, but I didn't want to fall asleep without taking advantage of a delicious backyard grill, so I went outside midway through to eat dinner. By the time I came back, the speech was still going, and I didn't miss one second of its conclusion, complete with the obligatory confetti and balloon drop.

A few thoughts on the speech:

• Thanks for the shout out to Team Obama, Senator McCain. It'd be a lot easier for us to respect your ticket if you would kindly tell Sarah Palin to stop telling lies about ours.
• Speaking of Sarah Palin, it sure seems like she has overshadowed McCain throughout these last few days in St. Paul. Chuck Todd, on MSNBC, opined on the post-speech broadcast that the 2008 Republican National Convention was Palin's show. It's telling that McCain's biggest applause line during his speech was his reference to his running mate.
  
• Do McCain's campaign staff not watch the Colbert Report on Comedy Central? Once again, they had McCain delivering an important primetime address to a television audience in front of a green screen (for at least part of the time). Later, it was a blue screen. My guess is, it'll soon be time for another Stephen Colbert Green Screen Challenge.
• Did the McCain camp get permission from Heart to play "Barracuda" after the speech had ended and Palin was onstage waving to delegates with him? The band, also famous for its hits "These Dreams" and "Never", is known for its loyalty to the Democratic Party. And McCain's campaign has a history of using songs without getting permission from the artists.
• In what I would call a metaphor for a bankrupt party lacking fresh ideas and substance, convention organizers tried to incorporate fireworks into the conclusion of McCain's speech, mimicking the grand Democratic finale at Invesco Field a week ago. Except the Republicans' fireworks weren't real. They were fake: a looping tape played on a screen behind McCain and Palin.
• Analyst Jeffrey Toobin is calling McCain's speech one of the worst ever from a presidential nominee - "shockingly bad", to use his word choice.
  

Finally, in what might just be the funniest and best moment of the entire night, former Pennsylvania Governor and one-time potential vice presidential choice Tom Ridge accidentally committed a major Freudian slip on MSNBC attempting to respond to a question from Tom Brokaw:

BROKAW: But the fact is, governor, that you have had eight years of a Bush administration a lot of Republicans in Congress for the last eight years, so why wouldn't the American people say, look, they had their shot, we're going to change?

RIDGE: Because John Bush - because John McCain is very much his own man.

Hilarious. Those twelve words sure say it all, don't they?

UPDATE: Obama's official response:

Tonight, John McCain said that his party was elected to change Washington, but that they let Washington change them. He’s right. He admonished the ‘old, do-nothing crowd’ in Washington, but ignored the fact that he’s been part of that crowd for twenty-six years, opposing solutions on health care, energy, and education.

He talked about bipartisanship, but didn’t mention that he’s been a Bush partisan 90% of the time, that he’s run a Karl Rove campaign, and that he wants to continue this President’s disastrous economic and foreign policies for another four years. With John McCain, it’s more of the same.

That’s not the change Americans need. Barack Obama has taken on the special interests and the lobbyists in Illinois and in Washington, and he’s won. As President, he’ll cut taxes for 95% of all working families, provide affordable health care to every American, end the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas, and eliminate the oil we import from the Middle East in ten years.

The conventions are over. Now, the final heat towards November 4th begins.