Democratic Convention: Day 3

Over four decades ago, Martin Luther King, a Republican, delivered his "I have a dream" speech calling for racial equality. And here we are today. The first African American has been nominated to the Presidency. Regardless of what one thinks of Barack Obama as a viable candidate for President, it is a watershed moment. I congratulate Mr. Obama. I believe every person in this country has the right to be proud of this moment.

Now on to the convention.

I was hoping someone would slip some sodium pentothal into the Clinton's drinks today. Unfortunately, no. The roll call vote was nothing more than poor political theatre. Hillary released her delegates this morning and the actual vote occurred outside of the convention. What we saw at the convention was a very dull script.

Bill Clinton once again proved he is the world's greatest liar. No one alive can fake sincerity the way he can. He gave a rousing red meat speech supporting Obama, saying all the things in support of Obama that Hillary did not say last night. He may have single handedly saved the convention for Obama. Given what has gone on over the past months and his obvious distaste for Obama, I wonder how the hell he did it. Regardless, it was a superb performance. If there is going to be a bounce, it will be tracable to this speech.

There were only two points of the speech really gave pause. At one point Clinton spoke about Biden's strong points on foreign policy. Clinton ignored any discussion of Obama and foreign policy, instead going straight to how Obama and Biden together would together be strong on foreign policy. I think it was lost on the crowd but it was pretty clear that even Clinton can't come up with a reasonable argument on that one. The second point was Clinton saying that people were calling him inexperienced in foreign policy in 1992. He let it hang at that, suggesting both that people were wrong about Clinton in 92 and that, by simple association, they are wrong about Obama today.

Clinton took the Presidency during a period of relative peace. The Soviet Union had just fallen apart. No one knew about the threat of radical Islam. Iran was recovering from its war with Iraq. Iraq had been defeated in Kuwait and was at its weakest. Even in probably the most peaceful environment we have enjoyed since the inception of our country, Clinton's ineperience showed with unmistakable clarity. Bin Laden and radical Islam grew through the Clinton era while he reacted slowly and just incredibly ineffectively. Europe saw anti-American leaders elected in most every country. Our soldiers died in Mogadishu because of Clinton's elevation of politics over force protection. If Clinton wants to argue his foreign policy successes, it's going to be an exercise in the rewrite of history.

Joe Biden was introduced by his son Beau, the attorney general of Deleware. The other son, Hunter, was noticably absent. He's the one who runs a lobbying firm.

Biden's speech is pretty outrageous. I am going to pull this apart separately. He is all over the place and some of the things he is saying are just mind numbing. Obama reached across the aisle to accomplish ethics reform? Obama was right on Afghanistan and Iraq? This is just utter insantiy.

Whoever is McCain's VP pick is going to have to be a good debator. If they are and they have a mastery of the facts, they ought to be able to pull this very disingenuous man apart.

Tomorrow: Wisdom From On High - live from the Barackapolis.

Update: Heh. I missed this. The song played at the Convention after Bill Clinton's exit from the stage? Addicted to Love. From Hot Air: "One last middle finger from Team Barry?"