Morning After Thoughts

Aside from Obama, the Democrats had a decidely mixed night. I thought Ron Reagan was serious, graceful, and impressive; Andrew Sullivan thought he was "excruciating"; Ramesh Ponnuru thought it "was not nearly as contemptible as [he] had expected it to be," which I guess is a kind of praise.

The Republicans would be really wise to avoid criticizing Ron Reagan. Partly, that's because it would look callous. But mostly, that's because stell cell research is a losing issue for them, and the more attention they give it, and the more vindictive they look while doing so, the bigger of an albatross it becomes.

Ted Kennedy definitely didn't help the cause at all. And I've heard the audio: there's no question that he referred to "the shirt round the world" (instead of "the shot heard round the world"). Howard Dean's speech was an uninspired medley of one-liners he'd used to great effect during the campaign. If saying "you have the power" once doesn't get people cheering, then surely repeating it five times will, right?

Meanwhile, I like Teresa's speech more and more as I look back on it. Candidates for First Lady could do quite a bit worse than have participated in marches against Apartheid in Johannesburg in the late 50s. You do get the impression, nearly every time she speaks, that she's still very much in love with John Heinz. I dig that. Laura Bush certainly isn't capable of expressing that sort of emotional complexity (or has been trained not to), and Hillary, let's face it, is a bloodless apparatchik. Maybe Teresa doesn't "play well in Peoria" [those fucking cliches again!--ed.]; I don't care, and I don't think I'd like the sort of woman who would.