2016

This was a memorable convention, but for the wrong reasons.  All week the media was teased about a mystery speaker.  But the mystery was not the speaker but the speech.  Michael Moore said it best in today's Daily Beast.  "Speaking to Invisible Obama last night, in a performance that seemed to have been written by Timothy Leary and performed by Cheech & Chong, Clint Eastwood  was able to drive home to tens of millions of viewers the central message of this year's Republican National Convention: "We Are Delusional and Detached from Reality. Vote for Us!"

Fittingly, this bumped an excellent biographical video of Romney out of prime time.  Over the three days Romney seemed more a party crasher than a party leader.  Never in the modern history of staged conventions has a nominee's name been so infrequently invoked.  Marco Rubio, charged with introducing Romney, did not let that task interfere with his opening speech of the 2016 presidential campaign.  In this he was merely following the precedent of the speeches by Chris Christie and Rick Santorum.

With the help of speech writers, speech coaches, ample rehearsal time and two teleprompters, Governor Romney gave, what is universally acclaimed, as the best speech of his life.  Sadly, it was still the least memorable speech ever given by a nominee.  But the bar was low.  Whereas the president had to prove he was born in America, Mitt merely had to prove he was born.  His sometimes touching stories about his parents, his sons and his wife, did enough to dispel the internet rumor that he is an automaton financed, and built, by the Koch brothers.  That is just as well, since they might have asked for their money back.

The speech had another distinction.  Never in the history of the republic, during a time when our armed services are engaged in a conflict, has a major party nominee failed to mention the war or thank the troops who are in harm's way.