Covered Wagon, Medicine Show

Some brief notes on Day 3:

I love how Hardcore Harry Reid can be simultaneously quiet, calm, and viciously radical. I hope some novelty company's hard at work right now creating bottles of "Doc McCain's Magic Offshore Oil Elixir."

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John Kerry joins that group of former nominees, last chaired by Al Gore, of which one must ask: "Why couldn't you act this way four years ago?"

(One must also ask of Kerry, as we can almost never resist it, "Why the long face?")

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Clinton did exactly what I'd wanted him, too, except that I wish he'd been a touch more personal in his accounts of Obama's abilities and intentions. As my creative writing teachers used to say, "You're telling where you should be showing."  I would have loved for Clinton to draw us in a little more personally.  "Y'know, Barack and I had a long talk about the occurance rate of AIDS in China -- and by the way, have ya'll seen that Michael Phelp? -- and Barrack said, and now this was in the middle of some very sloppy loose-meat sandwiches in a great cafe in Davenport, Iowa, but Barack said, and he's wiping his mouth a little bit where the sauce has got to him, he says..."

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I'm worried about Jim Lehrer.  He's off his game.  He was getting facts wrong on Wednesday, and then saying one thing was going to happen ("We'll now see Bill Richardson come to the stage...") that never actually happened, or he'd say something ominous or portentous and then just stop talking, like "Now...."

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If there's any candidate I'd want to have a beer with, it's Joe Biden.  My wife suspects he cusses like sailor when the cameras are off.   I bet he'd tell you some stories, man, that would make a  French weave of your hair plugs.

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On MSNBC, Keith Olbermann adroitly pointed out that almost every major speaker has shown McCain a measure of respect as a soldier and a statesman, and argued that there would be far fewer Republican  speeches that granted similar warrants upon our Democratic candidate.