As an outside observer, I found it pretty funny how hard the McCain camp tried to keep Bush away from his own party's convention. I halfway thought that they were going to tell Bush and Cheney that there was an urgent crisis that required their personal attention somewhere in Antarctica.
They finally settled on a truncated speech by Bush over CCTV. It was pretty funny watching him try to judge how long to pause after the applause lines. The crowd (which may have contained every last citizen who still likes Bush) seemed to try really hard to fill up the places where he paused too long, and to cut short applause when he didn't allow enough time.
(I had a picture in my mind's eye of McCain, shears in hand, hunting around backstage for the cable with Bush's feed...)
Thompson's speech was very well received. He presented the McCain bio, which is a very compelling story. And he told some good-ole-boy homilies about the Obama tax plan. (The PBS commentators pointed out that his performance tonight was much better than anything he did while he was promoting his own candidacy.)
Lieberman's speech was very creditable. His reception appeared to be awkwardly warm, which was probably to be expected.
--SCC
