KERRY SPEAKS
After a shaky, nervous, fumbling start, John Kerry got comfortable and got rolling. He showed much more passion and enthusiasm than I thought he could muster. And he delivered his speech better than I thought he could. It was short on specifics, of course, but if filled with specifics I'm sure I'd have complained about a laundry list. He spoke about goals that, for the most part, I agree with, but offered no real plan and didn't say what he was really going to do. He's going to "reward" companies that don't move jobs overseas, which seems to me to mean rewards are coming to every single one of our employers. In the next breath, he tells us he's going to close corporate loopholes and eliminate tax breaks for companies, so I don't know how he plans to "reward" U.S. based companies.

He's going to expand the military by 40,000 troops, but I can't tell how. Hire more recruiters? And he's apparently going to eliminate deployments of the national guard and reserve troops. Don't know what the purpose of the reserves and national guard will be if that's the case.

He wants to cut the deficit in half by eliminating part of Bush's tax cut, then says he'll use that same money to "invest" in job creation, health care and education. No mention of what the nature of these investments will be.

But in the big picture, I don't know how this speech will be perceived. It may be seen as hopeful and optimistic about what it can be. But much of his formulation of that theme was built around describing a negative and saying he won't do that. It seemed a negative structure to me, but I'm not disposed to like the policies that he'll propose. Maybe he closed the deal on those undecideds who don't like Bush but need to like Kerry. We'll see what the polls say right before the Republicans put on their show.