Joe Scarborough talks sense

Last night, the "journalists" on Chris Matthews' panel giggled with glee at the brutality of the speeches by Miller and Cheney:

JON MEACHAM, MANAGING EDITOR FOR “NEWSWEEK”: If I taught at the Kennedy School, I would take these two speeches as urtext of partisan rhetoric.

I think it was a brilliant tactical night, one of the most brilliant in the age of television.

It somehow took Joe Scarborough to inject some sense into the proceedings:

SCARBOROUGH: I find it remarkable.

We are three days into this convention, and we have been talking all year about how this election is going to be about George W. Bush. The Republicans, with their ad campaigns, the third-party attacks, this convention, three nights into this convention, this convention remains about John Kerry.

I can‘t remember a major presidential election where you have an incumbent that makes the central focus of their convention about the other guy, about the challenger. It is a radical departure from politics as usual. And what does it say about what they think George Bush has done over the past four years, and, more importantly, what the American people think of George Bush?

It says they're worried. And let's hope they've got good reason to be worried.