Written by: Beck

Michelle Malkin just wrote to say she's linked me. It's four or five posts down the page, but I'm still enormously flattered. Welcome to Malkin's regular readers!

Back to the coverage...

(Ret.) General Merril McPeak, paraphrased: "Kerry's involvement in Vietnam is a huge thing for me." I wonder how true that is for most vets.

Hey, he was just asked that very question. Answer: "Yes, it's a historic groundswell in terms of... I speak for an awful lot of professional military people." Of course, the same was probably true of Bush Sr. when he ran against Clinton. Funny how that shoe is on a new foot.

Update: Gen. McPeak, when asked what makes a great commander in chief, "You have to have both the courage and confidence... and the conviction." My response: by that logic, pretty much every member of the US Marine Corp would make a great commander in chief.

Mark Shield: McPeak endorsed Bush in 2000. Shield makes a good point about the strength of that particular credential.

Jim Lehrer: McPeak was a supporter of Howard Dean before he supported Kerry. Well, so much for the value of those credentials.

Al Sharpton, interviewed from the floor: When asked about his speech's length, "I told them I wanted to expand the speech. They knew I was going to do that." When asked about not mentioning Bush by name, "Yes, that was deliberate."

Update: Howard Dean being interviewed now, asked why he thinks Kerry is going to be right on the war when he himself opposed it, "My campaign was about balancing the budget...whatever differences I had with the Kerry were very small relative to the differences between us and Bush." So right, though not necessarily for the reasons Dean's thinking.

More Dean: Asked about our commitment to Iraq, "Kerry's position and my position are not that different. Not that differently, neither is George Bush's. Bush adopted our strategy after Kerry won the nomination." Yep, my head just spun around. Fortunately, I brace for that any time I hear Dean speak.

"I think everybody understands that you can't [pull out of Iraq]. What I advocate is pull out the reserves." Sure, all hell wouldn't break lose if we pulled out 40% of our forces right now.

Update: Dean, asked how to handle the insurgency, "These are mostly foreign fighters who were not in Iraq prior to the invasion, despite what Bush has said."

Asked what he meant by saying Democrats shouldn't be ashamed of being Democrats, Dean: "People think Clinton won because he moved to the center... Democrats sprang up who thought that winning required acting like Republicans... The way to win elections is to energize the hell out of your base."

Asked if the Democratic party is a party of liberals, "My goal is to restore the word 'liberal...' If it takes a liberal to balance the budget... Some people have called me a liberal... Some people have turned the word liberal into a dirty word..." This kind of baffles me too. Why are liberals so afraid of being called liberals? "What I am is fiscally conservative and socially progressive, and if that makes me a liberal than so be it, but I'm running--uh, and I'm running for John Kerry." Slip up there. He started to lapse back into standard campaign rhetoric as though he were still going for office himself.

To be honest, I get more of a feeling of sincerity and integrity from Dean than from just about anyone else showing at this circus. Though I disagree with a whole heck of a lot of what he has to say, at least he seems to believe it unlike, for instance, John Kerry.

Update: After speaking on "internationalism," when asked what to do in situations where a situation arises when Americans must act alone, "It is not bad to act unilaterally, but it is much better to act as Clinton did to begin a dialogue, as in the case of Kosovo, than to act unilaterally." This after using Kosovo as an example of when acting unilaterally is necessary.