Cindy McCain

In the spirit of Cindy McCain's speech, I will try to type this post very slowly, very deliberately, with a good helping of lethargy. If I can draw it out, make it fairly dreary, and even stilted, I will know that I captured the sense of her presentation. But it's hard to do, since I've been a pretty good touch typist since 8th grade.

For the first time for me, she really looked like another Cindy, Cindy Brady. That was distracting to me, because I was thinking of the Brady Bunch most of the way through.

Besides that, the difference between Cindy's soft-focus, cliche-packed presentation and Gov. Palin's was stark. The crowd was into it, of course, but you couldn't say she blew the roof off the place, or she hit it out of the park. She hit a pleasant double and finally stood on base without scoring. She even used the baseball metaphor, about her husband, saying, "I hit a home run with John McCain," in snagging him away from his first wife. That's what I was thinking of, then as well when she got into his honesty and integrity and in what a superlative father he's been. I suppose if you have enough families you eventually get it right!

For the most part, it was a thoroughly Republican presentation. Puffy, bloated, riddled with chromosome-challenged moments.