The Obama page (left) and the Romney page (click to enlarge)

I wonder where the idea for the Paul Ryan banner came from?

On September 2, Zac Moffatt is digital director for Miss Romney’s presidential campaign. On September 2, he bragged on Mashable.com,

I think our online ad team is superior to theirs. It’s where we pride ourselves as a campaign to be cutting edge…. We think it’s one of our greatest strengths…I always feel that hubris of the Obama campaign is they look down on Republicans because they think we don’t understand how digital works.”

Which is interesting. Because they’ve been copying the Obama campaign.

In March, the Obama campaign put up a “quick donate” page. The Romney campaign put up its own such page in late August–and it’s almost identical to the Obama page. They even used some of the same text, including a punctuation error (a comma outside a quote mark).

Obama wording:
After you’ve saved your credit card and phone number in your BarackObama.com account, you can use your cell phone to make a donation. All you need to do is text the amount you want to give. If you text us “10″, we’ll charge your saved credit card $10. It’s never been easier to donate.

Romney wording:
After you’ve saved your credit card and phone number in your MyMitt account, you can use your cell phone to make a donation. All you need to do is text the amount you want to give. If you text us “10″, we’ll charge your saved credit card $10. It’s never been easier to donate.

The Obama site’s “Terms of Use” states that the website “including, without limitation, OFA’s logo, and all designs, text…are the proprietary property of OFA or its licensors or users and are protected by U.S. and international copyright laws.”

Another example of the Romney campaign stealing from the Obama campaign involves banners created for the separate campaigns.

So yes, they built it. Kind of like the Chinese build it–by copying someone else.

So, the conventions are over. Now we can settle back in our easy chairs and bask in an inundation of vicious attack ads for the next two months. Oh yes, one of life’s simple pleasures, and we only get to enjoy it every four years.

And while you’re at it, send a few robo-calls my way, along with people conducting fake political surveys which are just a prelude to leaving me with a plug for their candidate. So much to look forward to in the next two months.

Okay, Obama’s speech: eh. Nothing special, though it’s mostly a matter of comparing Obama with himself, his previous speeches. Some very good zingers, but nothing new from a policy standpoint. A vision for America, but mostly devoid of specifics. In other words, pretty much like all those Republican speeches last week. But as Joe Scarborough pointed out this morning, President Obama says nothing with far more eloquence than Mitt Romney says nothing.

We had music practice Thursday night and then needed to get cat food for the kids, lest they be unbearable, so we didn’t get home until 9:30–just in time for Joe Biden’s speech. So I basically heard just two speeches last night–Biden, and Obama. I missed Jennifer Granholm’s apparent freak-out, and caught some clips of some good lines from John Kerry. But that’s all.

For me, watching only two speeches, the highlight was definitely Joe Biden. They say he’s great out on the stump, mixing it up with people. He’s a real “man of the people” in the best political sense. None of the others–Obama, Ryan, and certainly not Romney–can connect with people like Biden does.

Biden’s speech told stories, basically two of them–rescuing General Motors, and killing Bin Laden. Then he brought those stories together, and honed both his attack on Romney and his praise for Obama. No shortage of hyperbole, obviously, but it was effective. The only other good storytelling I heard came from the wives, Ann Romney and Michelle Obama, as they talked about their husbands. Ann was especially effective in that way, I thought.

Now, humor me as I do some grading of the various speeches. I am, as you know, Infallible and Omniscient. Besides, I think I’m pretty much in line with what our All Knowing and Wise Pundits are saying.

Julian Castro vs. Marco Rubio. Pretty much a wash–both were excellent–but I’ll give Rubio the edge.

Michelle Obama vs. Ann Romney. Both were very good, highlights of their conventions. But Michelle Obama gave the best speech of either convention. IMHO. My goodness, how far she has come since those early sordid conservative portrayals of her an as “angry black woman.”

Elizabeth Warren vs. Condoleeza Rice. I missed both speeches, but from what I’ve heard, Condi was superb.

Obama video vs. Romney video. Hands-down, Romney’s. Unfortunately, they used that video earlier in the evening, when few people probably saw it. Instead, the Reps introduced Romney with…Clint Eastwood. Serious mistake.

Joe Biden vs. Paul Ryan. Easily Biden. Even if Ryan hadn’t included so many easily-checked lies and distortions, damaging his credibility as the fact checkers savaged him, my vote would still go to Biden. Of the four persons running for office, he gave my favorite speech.

Bill Clinton vs. Chris Christie. I really like Chris Christie, but was severely disappointed with his speech. It was very self-serving, and didn’t help Romney at all. Clinton, on the other hand, did something you seldom see in political speeches: he didn’t talk down to his audience. Rather, he tackled the details of complex subjects, trying to explain truly wonky stuff. I’m not saying he presented everything accurately. But he didn’t just utter punch lines and talking points. He took a high view of his audience, and I appreciated that. Although I liked Michelle Obama’s speech better, I think Clinton’s speech will be the one that will be remembered (maybe the only one from either convention). Besides, Clinton is obviously a rock star among Dems.

____ vs. Clint Eastwood. The Dems had no counterpart for Clint Eastwood. Good move.

Obama vs. Romney. I was genuinely impressed with Romney’s speech, and thought he did well…for Romney. Meanwhile, I didn’t think Obama’s speech was anything special…for Obama. Different measuring sticks. I might be inclined to give the edge to Romney, except for two things. One: the Eastwood introduction, which totally overshadowed Romney’s speech. Two: the omission of any mention of the troops and Afghanistan, which will haunt him throughout the election. Obama’s speech basically did no harm; there was nothing there (that I saw) that the Republicans can use against him.

DNC vs. RNC. I thought most everything about the Democratic convention was done better. The stage crafting, and the on-messaging of the speakers, was impressive. I generally liked the RNC videos better. Every keynote speaker (that I heard) at the DNC was superb. At the RNC, on the other hand, Chris Christie was a disappointment, there was the Clint Eastwood fiasco, and the only thing people are saying about Romney’s speech is that he didn’t talk about the military. Big blunders.

The biggest blunder at the DNC was that idiotic platform vote. Leaving “God” and “Jerusalem” out of the platform could have haunted Obama throughout the rest of the campaign, just as Romney’s omission of the military will be continually thrown in his face. But I’m still amused that the Democrats had a chance to fix their platform blunder–albeit in a thoroughly clunky and dishonest way, in front of the entire nation–because Republicans immediately and indignantly pointed out the error. If they had just held their tongues for a couple days, they would have had a couple of mighty weapons to use in the remaining two months.

There were lots of speeches earlier in the evenings, and I enjoyed pretty much all of the ones I heard. Unfortunately, unless you were watching C-Span, you would have missed many of them, because the cable networks felt it was much more important for you to hear shallow banter and talking points from their On TV Every Single Day Ad Nauseum pundits.

So that’s how I saw it. Just sitting here on a lazy Friday morning typing stuff off the top of my head.

Okay, here are some miscellaneous thoughts from Wednesday night of the DNC convention. I was at a Tin Caps baseball playoff game (our local Fort Wayne minor league team), and we didn’t get home until near the end of Elizabeth Warren’s speech. So I missed most of the night, and the rest of my life will be diminished and incomplete because of it. Yet, I will plunge ahead with some musings, knowing that the masses are hungry for ever more political fluff. So hereby be ye edified.

(For the sarcasm challenged: most everything that follows is written with my tongue firmly embedded in my cheek. Don’t, as some folks tend to do, take me for a Democrat apologist.)

Bill Clinton, clearly, is a rock star. Clinton made the case for Obama and his record far better than Obama has ever done (while cleverly, in pure Clinton style, further polishing his own legacy). I’m not agreeing with everything he said, by any means. He threw around all kinds of data. I figure half is verifiable, a quarter is fuzzy, and a quarter is just wrong or misleading (call it Ryanesque). But he’s a masterful speaker, with no comparison in the Republican party (who they gonna call, GW Bush?). He clearly energized the crowd. Whether it ultimately matters–beats me.

Clinton had a lot of good lines, including, “No president — not me, not any of my predecessors — no one could have fully repaired all the damage [President Obama] found in just four years.”

The speech was a case of information overload. Very wonky, getting into complicated policy details. People won’t remember the details, but they will know that there are answers to the Republican talking points against Obama (like Medicare and Welfare). And most people won’t check to see if Clinton’s answers were accurate (as they won’t check to see if the Republican accusations are accurate).

At one point the crowd was chanting “Four More Years.” I think they were actually wanting another four years for Clinton.

Another good line: “Though I often disagree with Republicans, I never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate our president.” This resonated with me, because I mostly live my life around Republicans (though I might soften “hate” to merely “despising” the President).

The platform fiasco…don’t know what to say about that, except: stupid stupid STUPID. I couldn’t care less about using “God-given” in the platform. Does that refer to Jehovah God, to Allah, or to Eloihim, the god Mitt Romney worships? I’d just as soon leave it out, since we’re a pluralistic country that, theoretically (many conservative Christians disagree), doesn’t put one religion over another. But politically, the platform committee (and platform committees tend to represent the extreme edges of their party) seriously blundered. An unforced error, as somebody put it.

Regarding the Jerusalem thing, I’ll quote Joe Kelin: “Whoever took the usual language about Jerusalem being the capital of Israel out of the Democratic platform is an idiot.”

Conservatives also blundered in making a big stink about these omissions while the Democrats still had a chance to fix them. If they had just held their tongues for a couple days, they could have pummeled Obama with this “removing God from the platform” charge for the rest of the campaign, and Jews and evangelicals would have been hopping mad about the Jerusalem sleight. So I guess Obama should send Brett Baier and the other folks at Fox News a “Thank You” note for alerting them to these serious omissions while they could still fix them. Not only that, but they gave Obama the chance to personally intervene and thereby display his support for these platform issues (at least, that’s the storyline). But still, damage was done, and it was totally a case of the Dems shooting themselves in the foot.

The voice vote, obviously, was a joke. In declaring that the vote had passed by a two-thirds majority, Antonio Villaraigosa looked at the crowd and told them something he absolutely did NOT believe. As we all know, Republicans would never ever play games like that.

I also have to ask: is Obama running against Mitt Romney, or against Paul Ryan? Since Romney won’t commit himself to specifics, it’s hard to target him sometimes. Thus, Ryan commands the spotlight.

I’m a believer in the need for austerity. I’m not finding that in anything being proposed by either party, so I don’t have much hope of the debt and deficit being slashed anytime soon. The Democrats won’t cut programs, and any savings from cuts made by Republicans will be offset by diminished income because of huge tax cuts. As Clinton said, it’s about arithmetic.

President Obama speaks tonight. As a leader, as an explainer, and as a charismatic presence, I wonder if he will look small compared to Bill Clinton.

That’s enough. Go ahead and rip me to shreds.