McCain Is Aware Of All Oratorical Traditions

How shall I describe John McCain's acceptance speech?

Pathetic. Weak. Fumbling. A disgrace to the tradition of public speaking. His exhalations did not so much inspire as slowly expire. McCain appeared not so much the old soldier as the old relative, prattling on to his irritated relatives at a family function. McCain's shaky delivery, his feeble grasping for a peroration, his half-hearted gestures to a domestic policy, all of these were mere preparation for the truly galling moment - when he justified claim to the people's office based not on his vision of a common future, but on his personal sufferings forty years past. Themeless, formless, a long-winded ramble of patriotic appeals, a last attempt to revive his never-deserved reputation as a reformer, his jettisoning of a party while hewing to that party's disastrous policies - this was the best case for John McCain? With no real purpose, or rather many purposes - to rally a dispirited base, to reach out to independents (older voters, I suppose?), co-option of the desire for change? Rather than doing any one of these things well, he did them all poorly.

McCain is fortunate that oratorical skill alone does not determine the outcome of elections, but one must ask oneself - do we really want this exhausted shadow of a man to lead us through the wreckage his political allies have wrought?