Barack Obama and John McCain appeared this evening at an annual event in New York called the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner. This is a fancy, white-tie affair where the tradition is for the candidates to sup together like they're old pals and then get up and deliver funny speeches.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. The other night, these two men were sitting across a table concurring that it was important to talk about the issues…and here they are acting like they're on a Dean Martin roast of LaWanda Page. In one way, it was nice that they were civil and jocular with one another and said some unambiguously complimentary things. (There was also a little knifing but it was good-natured knifing.)
On the other, there's a tinge of hypocrisy for them to be quite this buddy-buddy. It also bothers me to think there's someone, somewhere who might be motivated (or more motivated) to vote for a guy — any guy — because he did a good job of reading a speech that someone else wrote. That's not unlike, "I'm going to vote for George W. Bush because he seems to me like the kind of guy it would be fun to have a beer with." You hate to see that kind of reason cancel out the vote of someone who actually thought about issues.
All that said, the speeches at the Smith Dinner were rather funny. Each man had some good lines and it's a shame the folks who thought of them will probably get zero credit. Video of the dinner was shown on Larry King Live this evening (that's where I saw it) and there's a rerun of that show in three hours. The dinner also reruns on C-Span at 12:33 AM and then at 6:11 AM. Both times are Eastern and since they're on C-Span, they're approximate.
You may also be able to watch it on this page of the C-Span website. It isn't up yet but that's where it will be when it is. Whether the video there will actually work is another question. I can only get about one out of every five videos on the C-Span site to play on my computer.