Seen Any Good Speeches Lately?

Gore good, Carter good, Clinton very good. One thing that people never realize when they talk about "stiff" Gore and "Got his ass handed to him by Reagan" Carter is, these guys are actually very good at what they do. Just think about how many bad speeches and speakers you have seen in your life. My college graduation speaker was terrible and my sister's was much, much worse. This is a hard thing to do. People like Gore suffer because they get compared to past Presidents like Reagan and Kennedy who were the greatest American speakers ever. Gore and Carter both got to the big dance and they both "won" it once.

Every speech I have ever seen Al Gore do included some very funny jokes. "But you know the old saying: you win some, you lose some. And then, there's that little-known third category," is only the latest. But every time some pundit comes on afterwards and acts surprised that Gore can be funny.

TPM has a good summary of the tone of the convention and some good thoughts on the balance between Bush bashing and Kerry boosting.

Among Democrats, the rejection of this president is so total, exists on so many different levels, and is so fused into their understanding of all the major issues facing the country, that it doesn't even need to be explicitly evoked. The headline of Susan Page's piece in USA Today reads: "Speakers offer few barbs, try to stay warm and fuzzy." But the primetime speeches were actually brimming with barbs, and rather jagged ones at that. They were just woven into the fabric of the speeches, fused into rough-sketched discussions of policy, or paeans to Kerry.

We have moved into a whole new realm of Bush bashing. It's zen bashing.