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For those of you who missed President Clinton's speech, whew... you missed a good one. Talk about someone at home in front of an audience! Whether you love him or loathe him, you cannot deny that this was one of his finest moments, both in style and substance.

With startling clarity, he laid out the differences between Kerry and Bush. Here's just a small taste:

Democrats and Republicans have very different and deeply felt ideas about what choices we should make. They're rooted in fundamentally different views of how we should meet our common challenges at home and how we should play our role in the world. We Democrats want to build a world and an America of shared responsibilites and shared benefits. We want a world with more global cooperation, where we act alone only when we absolutely have to. We think the role of government should be to give people the tools and create the conditions to make the most of their own lives, and we think everybody should have that chance. On the other hand, the Republicans in Washington believe that America should be run by the right people - their people. In a world in which America acts unilateraly when we can and cooperates when we have to. They believe the role of government is to concentrate welath and power in the hands of those who embrace their economic, political, and social views, leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves on important issues like health care and retirement security. Now since most Americans aren't that far to the right, our friends have to portray us Democrats as simply unacceptable, lacking in strength and values. In other words, they need a divided America. But we don't.

And that was just the beginning. Over the next 10 minutes or so, he ran through a laundry list of domestic issues on which the Democrats and Republicans differ. After a brilliant segment in which he joked about how well Republicans in Congress have taken care of him now that he's out of office (providing huge tax cuts to rich people like him), he laid out this contrast:

Look at the choices they made, choices they believed in. They chose to protect my tax cuts at all cost while witholding funding for the Leave No Child Behind Act, leaving 2.1 million behind. They chose to protect my tax cut while cutting 140,000 unemployed workers out of their job training programs, 100,000 working families out of their child care assistance, and worst of all, by cutting 300,000 poor children out of their afterschool programs when we know it keeps them off the streets, out of trouble, in shcool, learning, going to college, and having a good life. They chose to protect my tax cuts while dramatically raising the out of pocket costs of healt care to our veterans, and while weakening or reversing very important environmental measures that Al Gore and I put in place, everything from clean air to the protection of our forests. Now, in this time, everyone in America had to sacrafice except the wealthiest Americans, and most of us, almost all of us, from Republicans to Independents and Democrats, we wanted to be asked to do our part too, but all they asked us to do was to expend the energy necessary to open an envelope containing our tax cuts. Now, if you like these choices and agree with them, you should vote to return them to the White House and the congress. If not, take a look at John Kerry, John Edwards, and the Democrats. In this year's budget, the White house to cut off all the Federal funding for all 88,000 uniformed police officers under the COP program we've had for 10 years. Among those 88,000 are more than 700 members of the NY Police Dept who put their lives on the line on 9/11. With gang violence rising and with all of us looking for terrorists in our midst and hoping they're not too well armed and too dangerous, the President and the Congress are about to let the 10 year ban on deadly assault weapons lapse. Now, they believe its the right thing to do. But our policy was to put more police on the street and to take assault weapons of the street, and it gave you 8 years of declining crime and violence. Their policy is the reverse. They're taking police off the street while they put assault weapons back on the street. Now if you agree with that choice, by all means vote to keep them in office. But if you don't, join John Kerry, John Edwards, and the Democrats in making America safer, smarter, and stronger again. On homeland security, Democrats tried to double the numbers of containers in ports and airports checked for weapons of mass destruction. It cost $1 billion, and it would have been paid for under our bill by asking the 200,000 millionaires in America to cut their tax cut by $5,000. Almost all 200,000 of us would have liked to have done that, to spend $5,000 to make all 300 million Americans safer. The measure failed. Why? Because the White house and the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives opposed it. They thought our $5,000 was more important than doubling the container checks at our ports and airports. If you agree with that, by all means re-elect them. If not, John Kerry and John Edwards are your team for the future.

And it went on from there.

Two key points about this. First of all, its incredibly detailed and substantive for a political campaign. Egad - we're actually going to talk about issues this year! (And as an aside, isn't it amazing how a great speaker can make even wonky issues like this compelling?) Second, he managed to tie the war on terror directly to the tax cuts, painting a picture that lands the Republicans squarely on the wrong side of the issue. Absolutely masterful.

But as great as that was, it was not nearly the highlight of the speech. In a section that the Republicans must have watched with a mix of horror, fascination, and grudging political respect, he put HIMSELF and Bush together in a group with draft dodgers, then compared them with Kerry, who despite his life of priviledge, stepped up and volunteered to serve. Here are his exact words:

During the Vietnam War, many young men including the current President, Vice President, and me... could have gone to Vietnam and didn't. John Kerry came from a privileged background. He could have avoided going too but didn't. He said "Send me." When they sent those swift boats up the river in Vietnam and they told them their job was to draw hostile fire, to wave the American flag and bait the enemy to come out and fight, John Kerry siad "Send Me." And then, on my watch, when it was times to heal the wounds of war and normalize relations with Vietnam and demand an accounting of the POWs and MIAs we lost there, John Kerry said, "Send Me."

Anyone who says they saw that coming is a liar. And anyone who doesn't think that was a master political stroke is an idiot. Oh to have been a fly on the wall watching Karl Rove during that section! --------