The biggest drawback to the success of Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin's speeches

The only real problem I see after Wednesday's successful night for the Republicans is that John McCain's speech is doomed to be a letdown tonight. He gave a good speech at the 2004 convention but has been remarkably poor in all the speeches I've seen him give this year. Some people know how to deliver a speech and some don't. Word has it that there will be people up on the stage with him to give him the atmosphere of a town hall meeting without the questions. It sounds pretty gimmicky to me. I never like it when politicians use people as a backdrop. The big question seems to be whether he uses a teleprompter or looks down at his speech on the podium. He is not very good at either of them.

His speech will be a much more serious affair. Now that Sarah Palin has taken on the role of attack dog, McCain can leave that job to her and stay away from attacks on Obama. At the Democratic convention they seemed to have those roles reversed with Biden giving the uplifting speech and Obama giving a combination of an angry attack on the Republicans with a laundrylist of the typical Democratic policies that they've been promising for years. And Joe Biden seemed to have left that attack job to the top of the ticket. Perhaps that is just one more indication that the Democratic ticket should be reversed.

I just fear that McCain can't do half as good a job selling himself as speakers such as Thompson, Lieberman, Giuliani, and Palin have done for him.