Looking Forward To Obama

We missed a good chunk of last night's convention, but we liked what we saw!

Hillary interrupting the roll call to request unanimous consent was terrific stagecraft.

Bill Clinton's speech was wonderful. Our correspondent at the convention confirmed that Bill's speech was "hugely well-received" on the convention floor by delegates of all stripes.

We missed a speech that John Kerry gave, but our correspondent said it was probably one of Kerry's best ever. (Despite Kerry's evident pre-speech nervousness--he said it was easier to come up with a speech when he was the nominee.)

We did watch all of Joe Biden's speech and it made us feel a lot better about his selection as the Veep candidate. Biden's mom was terrific on television. We loved when she was caught on camera mouthing "that's true" to her seatmate when Biden spoke of being sent back out, after being beat up by an older kid, to "bloody his nose."

Our correspondent also had the good fortune to be talking to Biden, at a post-speech party, when Michelle Obama walked up. "She's quite tall," our correspondent tells us. Interesting--we couldn't tell that on television. Mrs. Obama told Senator Biden that she, too, was impressed with his mom and wanted to meet her, so off they went to find her.

As for the continued media fascination with disaffected Clinton supporters, our correspondent suggests it is way overblown, certainly based on what he's seen on site. At the outset, there was some visible tension, but by the end, he says, most delegates had seen the wisdom of being united against the common foe: McCain and the GOP.

He noted Maureen Dowd's column yesterday focusing on alleged continued infighting between the Obama campaign and Clinton loyalists, and said that while some of that is just natural and to be expected in any campaign, it's more in the nature of legitimate disagreements than any kind of mean-spiritedness.

We're confident that divisions lurk in the Republican Party too. No doubt, many evangelical leaders are disappointed with McCain's selection, and there are surely campaign staffers from Romney, Giuliani and other 40 candidates who disagree with some of McCain's strategic calls, but evidently the media has no interest in this.

Tonight, it's Obama's turn, and he'll have a huge crowd. It should be a good show.