I kind of cringed and grimaced and finally clicked the Play button. It was a natural reaction for me. I won't say I'd been disappointed before - I had low expectations then as now, and it's come out as expected. The Great Race Speech? For me trite, unwatchable, even though I watched a fair bit. But anyway, post-Unity, I had to give it a try. And I did. For about 5 minutes. And as I got bored, I skipped ahead a bit to let it play. And it got grating. And I clicked Stop. And I almost went on to something else, but I forced myself to hit Play again. And then it slowly happened. Acceptance. The line about McCain betting 10% on change. The framing of the woman taking a day off to care for a sick child worrying about losing her job. About us not being whiners. Of assisting up and coming businesspeople. And just how he would drop the big words and say something simple, and look relaxed, and it came out more forceful than when he tried to explode. At times looking less cocky but more composed and imposing as a result. I liked the way he acknowledged his grandmother and the help of loans and scholarships and the Clinton 90's, but these came after the acceptance. I didn't like his use of the $5 million middle class smear - twisting your opponent's words mercilessly and unfairly is not the way, whoever the opponent. I don't trust his goal of oil independence in 10 years or the effectiveness of the substitutes. I hate the simplistic, self-defeating, and reality-and-economics-denying habit of dismissing offshoring. And I can't imagine where we would get all the money to pay for all of this change.

But still, for 10 minutes or more I was watching him and liking a good bit of what he was saying, not turned off, encouraged, accepting. So while much room for improvement, he definitely has come a long way.

C+