<p>John McColgan</p>

In the opinion of this cheerful, partisan observer, the summers two political conventions could hardly have gone better.

The winds of change are blowing, Mitt Romney blustered as Hurricane Isaac forced the cancellation of Day One of the Republican Convention, but inwardly, Mitt must have been praying, Why now, God? And I suspect Romney might have whispered that same prayer more than once as he spent too much of his convention week trying to deflect the outrageous comments of a Republican Senate candidate who had declared that women who have been raped dont get pregnant because their bodies can somehow fight off unwanted sperm.

That despicable contention must have come as a news flash to God, to the medical community, and to rape victims throughout the world, but it didnt draw sufficient ire within the Republican Party to force Congressman Akin out of his Senate race.

On a subject that is only slightly more favorable to Republicans, namely Paul Ryans plan to overhaul Medicare, neither Republican running mate was offering any clear explanation as to why Romney had accused President Obama of stealing 716 billion dollars from Medicare while Ryans budget which was approved by every Republican in the House had included those very same cost reductions and decreases in payments to providers. When a reporter from Fortune magazine turned to Eric Cantor to untangle that contradiction, the House Majority leader offered this response: The assumption was that, um, the, the, ah, again I probably cant speak to that in an exact way, so I better just not. Elegantly stated, Eric.

Then there was the moment that was planned as the highlight of the convention, when the not-so-surprise speaker, Clint Eastwood, was supposed to make Mitts day. Oh, Clint made Mitts day, all right, and his rambling, bizarre, sometimes vulgar speech to an empty chair was the biggest news of the convention, overshadowing even the acceptance speech of the nominee. On the whole, considering that conventions are carefully scripted, the series of debacles that constituted this years Republican pageant did nothing to boost public confidence in Mitt Romneys ability to manage anything.

Contrast that with the Democratic Convention, where the biggest snafu of the week was a dispute over whether the words God and Jerusalem should be inserted in the party platform a dispute which, by the way, President Obama won when the words were included.

The convention deliberately showcased excellent speeches by women including First Lady Michelle Obama, Sister Simone Campbell of the Nuns on the Bus, Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, and Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. But the most memorable speech of all, surpassing even President Obamas solid acceptance speech, belonged to President Bill Clinton.

According to Clintons folksy analysis, the Republican case against Obama boils down to this: We made this mess, and you havent cleaned it up fast enough. Clinton urged voters to be patient, and he acknowledged that he had faced a similar drop in public support in the early 1990s before the recovery from that less drastic recession had really begun to take hold.

He reminded voters that Democratic administrations had created almost twice as many jobs as Republican administrations in the last 52 years, even though Republican presidents had governed the country for a majority of those years. Clinton explained the Democratic success in job creation with one word: arithmetic. Trickle-down economics doesnt work as well as building the economy from the ground up and from the middle class out, Clinton contended. The crowd loved it, and Eric Cantor should have been taking notes on how to frame an effective message.

Romney himself probably knew that Clinton had hit the nail on the head, because by Sunday morning on Meet the Press, Romney was tacking so hard toward the political center that his own party found itself in uncharted waters. Amazingly, after months of pledging to repeal Obamacare on his first day in office, Romney was now claiming that there were parts of the law that were good and that he wanted to keep. And even more surprising was Romneys announcement that he didnt want to lower taxes for the wealthy, and that he would pay for tax cuts to the middle class by eliminating deductions for high earners.

A lot of Republican listeners must have been asking themselves, What did he just say? Who is this guy? Your guess is as good as mine, folks. With every day that passes, we seem to know less about Mitt Romney than we do about his tax returns or his secret bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.

Perhaps that imaginary guy in Clint Eastwoods empty chair was actually the Republican nominee.

John McColgan writes from his home in Joseph.