Parries → Ebullience, please 

A President of the United States must be ebullient. If during an election neither candidate displays ebullience, he or she who demonstrates characteristics closest to it wins. I’ve wanted McCain to win, mainly because I view things from a Middle Eastern perspective, and believe that McCain will confront the bad guys more steadily, craftily and with a will to win than will Obama, whom I suspect will instead seek to elide the conflict and thereby ineluctably worsen it.

But to my mind McCain has performed disastrously at the three presidential debates, and even with our new wide-bandwith internet age, these are still the main event. He has seemed ill-at-ease, frustrated and rude, winning an ebullience quotient of approximately zero. These debates are not negotiations; there is no treaty to sign at the end. All they are about is how the candidate makes you feel while he speaks. McCain made me wince.

Why could we not see at the debates a McCain like we saw at the Al Smith dinner? How much more charming, dignified, grown-up, amusing he was here, and what’s frustrating is that reporters say this is more representative of how the man actually is. Even via the low-res YouTube video of the speech, the hilarity among the good and the great was infectious, the stately room electric with the presence of the greatest among them.

Stature plus hilarity = ebullience. How about the Republican campaign stop producing ads and instead spend its coffers running this speech in its entirety everywhere?