John McCain lived up to his billing tonight, although during first third of his speech it almost sounded like McCain was building up to anouncement that he was backing fellow soldier John Kerry:

So it is, whether we wished it or not, that we have come to the test of our generation, to our rendezvous with destiny.

We must, whatever our disagreements, stick together in this great challenge of our time.

But of course the biggest line of the speech was McCain’s blast of Michael Moore: “And certainly not a disingenuous film maker who would have us believe that Saddam’s Iraq was an oasis of peace when in fact it was a place of indescribable cruelty, torture chambers, mass graves and prisons that destroyed the lives of the small children held inside their walls.”

The line drew a long ovation. And guess what? McCain was right. And I’ve warned of this since day one. Moore hurts the Dems much more than he helps. And McCain’s number one goal of this speech was to securely tie the rantings of Michael Moore to the Democratic Party. Because of the failure of more Democrats to slam Moore from the beginning, that knot will be difficult to untie.

Dateline NBC has quite a scoop this week. Stone Phillips will have an exclusive on the bipolar disorder that until recently seriously hampered Jane Pauley (who’s launching a new talkshow this week). I wonder if she’ll admit that her disorder was the direct result of a former employer who insisted on hiring less experienced and dumber broadcasters to replace those who weren’t quite as hot?

We have seen this trend coming. News outfits morphed in TV magazine outfits which dumped the idea of foreign news and substantive issues for the much less expensive covering of meaningless nonsense, celebrities and stories within a block or two of their main offices.

But I didn’t think it would come to this. Now they’re covering their own.

What’s on next week’s Dateline?

Bill from editing is selling his minivan and here’s how you can help…

We’ve all become familiar with the GOP strategy of governing towards the extreme while conventioning back towards moderation. And we knew they would parade out a series of keynote speakers whose politics may not be exactly in line with the Party godfathers. But, I have to admit I’m surprised at just how far they’re willing to stretch their so-called big tent with this latest list of scheduled speakers.

At this point, it’s probably too late to question the networks’ decision to only broadcast three hours of each convention. And I’m not even sure, with 24 hour cable news, that it makes all that much of a difference.

But who among the network heads picked tonight as the night to skip altogether? Maybe I am just a political geek, but Rudy and McCain sounds like quality programming to me.

The latest poll numbers from the Wash Post show that while the race is still a dead heat, President Bush has already erased most of Kerry’s post-convention bounce and increased his leads in the areas of security, leadership and the war on terror. He is weaker on topics such as the economy and Iraq.

Also, the Swift Boat ads (along with the prior strings of attacks) seem to have taken an indirect toll. Bush is viewed as more trustworthy and honest than Kerry by a 47-41% margin (that’s a 12 point swing since the Dem convention ended). A similar swing has emerged on the question of which candidate would make a better commander in chief.

How bad are these trends for Kerry, especially considering the GOP hasn’t even brought out the primetime speakers yet? Pretty bad. Not because of the overall splits which still depict an incredibly tight race. But because a significant number of Americans who are dissatisfied with the direction the country is headed still haven’t come over to Kerry and the Dems.

It will be interesting to see how the Republicans play to their strengths throughout much of this week as they portray their man as being tough on terror. Meanwhile, they will largely ignore their own cultural positions which turn the stomachs of so many voters.

By the end of the week, Team Kerry will be left with a pivotal question. Should they stay moderate and continue to highlight Kerry’s military record, or should Kerry hit the Republicans on the very topics they obviously want to avoid?

Several months ago, I sat among a group of Democratic insiders and funders in California and listened to Bob Shrum answer a series of questions. He talked a lot about the pace of the Kerry campaign and explained that Kerry would let Bush’s own record and struggles hurt him for awhile. Then, around the time of the convention, he would kick things up a few notches and make this a campaign about himself, not just his opponent.

The strategy made some sense to me at the time. But I really thought that Kerry would’ve picked up the pace a whole lot more in the last month or so.