Reading Romney's Speech

Wee gymnast is unimpressed.

OK, I wasn't going to watch it, because Mitt gives me the creeps.

But I'm going to read it.

The first bit is just awful.  That "better future stuff"?  Poorly written, like a hack screenwriter writing a generic speech for a generic candidate in a movie that has nothing to do with politics.

I think this sums it up:

The second part about the problems of the last four years was better.  I don't know how it sounded (thank God) but it reads well.  This was the campaign message Romney had been working on since winter.  Obama was a nice guy over his head.  Not surprising that this was strong.

I get the paean to Neil Armstrong, but after a convention dedicated to chanting, "You didn't build that" the best example Mitt could come up with was a massively expensive government program.

The tribute to his parents was nice, but I couldn't help thinking what a fine candidate George Romney would have been.  As opposed to, say, his son.  The pander about Mexico was just one of a great many panders to women and dusky hued Latinos.  I can't imagine them working.

He did a good job talking about his Mormon faith without talking about his Mormon faith.  That was always going to be a tricky act, and I think he pulled that off well.

I thought his stuff about Bain was borderline lies.  A plucky small business?  Please.

When it got into policy specifics, well, that's when the lies started.  "War on coal and gas" - lie, America's producing more gas than ever before, which is depressing coal prices.  "His" cuts to the military - lie, that was part of the deal Paul Ryan voted for.  Medicare cuts - lies.

I guess we can praise him for not bring up the welfare stuff.

His Five Point Plan is a joke.  There's not one specific in it.  It's a series of aspirations without any roadmap how to get there.

Then he goes back to the apology lie, before picking fights with Russia and China.  That will work...

And then he ends with a nice, uplifting vision of America.  But again, generic.

We stopped inviting politicians to speak at our graduation ceremonies, because they usually just give a stock speech.  It's not necessarily a bad speech, but there is nothing resonant about it.

Romney gave a speech that had a good, pointed criticism of the Obama years, but was otherwise generic and bland with no specifics.

He needed to offer America a shot of whiskey and he gave them an O'Douls instead.