Sarah Palin makes John McCain look even older than he is. And he seemed more than willing to play that part on Thursday night. By the time he slogged through his nearly 50-minute acceptance speech - longer even than Barack Obama's - you half-expected some brazen younger Republican (Mitt Romney, perhaps?) to dash onstage to give him a gold watch and the bum's rush.

the speech's central argument, that the 72-year-old McCain will magically morph into a powerful change agent as president, is a non sequitur.

more fraudulent

is the contrast between McCain's platonic presentation of his personal code of honor and the man he has become

McCain has fled

with his

embrace of Sarah Palin.

don't know a lot about Palin

except

she's better at

a speech than McCain

and

she defends her own pregnant daughter's right to privacy

even as she

would have

gov

intrude to police

reproductive

choices

of all

women