He just won a huge comeback victory in the New Hampshire primary and he’s blowing it by reading, READING!, his victory speech, and doing it very badly. This comes on the heels to two eloquent, off-the-cuff with no notes concession speeches by Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.
UPDATE: He just read “return our property” when he meant to say “return our party.” Man, this is pretty lame.
LATER: OK, he might have delivered that pretty lamely, but his remarks at the end on the necessity of the war on terror salvaged it.
UPDATE: Rich Lowry at The Corner disagrees with me, quite dramatically:
Excellent, hitting all the McCain themes—character, restoring faith in government, victory in the war in terror, respect for opponents, service to a cause greater than self, patriotism. You have to love any speech that prompts people to start chanting, “USA, USA.” Mark Salter hit a home run, and McCain delivered it very well (how could he not, given the circumstances?).
I agree with him on the substance of the speech, but the delivery was dreadful. Were we watching the same speech?
UPDATE: If I’m crazy, I’m not the only one:
But one of the oddest moments of the night came during a panel on MSNBC, after McCain’s victory speech, in which the Arizona senator rambled on a bit, looking down at the podium as he read.
First MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough mocked McCain, followed by the rest of his panel.
Howard Fineman joked that it appeared as if every McCain adviser offered a sentence, “and he read them all.”
The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel said “it deflated his victory,” and The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson dubbed it “not a good performance.”
