How to Speak Heartland

Two portions of last night's program lacked that Heartland energy. The first was the video of President Bush. He checked off the boxes that needed checking where McCain was concerned, and made a gratuitous swipe at the "angry left," but the whole spectacle went awry: Unable to react to the crowd in real time, Bush began to seem out of touch even with his own party. The second was the speech by Joe Lieberman, who may not be a Democratic senator anymore, but is dull enough to be mistaken for one. He wore a sober suit and a patterned tie (if you look closely, the dots are little Benedict Arnold heads), and mildly requested, in his mild away, that all right-thinking Democrats and independents transcend petty partisanship and vote for McCain.

It's hard to say how effective this might be with people who haven't seen much of Lieberman since he ran with Al Gore. But Democrats should at least be glad that the party apostate isn't, say, Joe Biden; somebody with that kind of fire could have done real damage. As it was, Lieberman seemed an almost comic coda to Thompson's weighty address. He's been unpopular for a long while now, and suddenly he has something that makes everybody to want to be his friend. Eight years ago, Lieberman could have been the vice president of the United States. Last night, he was more like McLovin.

© 2008