I’m pressed for time again so this is going to be short and ugly… Overall I think John McCain delivered a great speech last night. Unfortunately the under card left a lot to be desired… I knew it would be hard to top or even match Wednesday night’s lineup but jeez, I just about fell asleep waiting for the main event!
The one thing I didn’t hear last night that I was hoping he would touch on is correcting Bush’s poor monetary policy. As the Wall Street Journal noted yesterday morning:
In debates over the Bush economic record, the dollar’s decline and its companion rise in prices are the great missing links. Democrats don’t mention it because they’d rather indict the Bush tax cuts as a way to justify a huge new tax increase. Wall Street and big business don’t talk about it because they’ve been complicit in urging devaluation. And the media mostly ignore it because so few of them even think about monetary policy. The mystery is why more Republicans don’t regret it because the political consequences have cost them dearly.
I was hoping McCain would seize on the dollar’s troubles… It would have allowed him to draw a clear policy distinction between himself and Bush. And it would have and highlighted one of the chief causes of our economic problems.
Ed Morrissey has a good analysis of McCain’s speech here and a convention recap here.
For videos and transcripts see here.