Dubya, Grandpa Freddie, Droopy Joe

The President had a 8-minute cameo tonight, but it'll play nicely as 16 30-second ads. He told us all about how John McCain will stand up to the angry left, because, you know, it's 1971 and the hippies are holding a sit-in on the South Lawn and over at the Lincoln Memorial. And he said we need a President who will "remember the lessons of 9/11," probably because they bumped Rudy Giuliani tonight.

After Bush's understated appearance (of course, more overstated than the McCain campaign wanted), Fred Thompson ambled onstage and told a very unknown story: apparently, John McCain was a POW in Vietnam and he was held hostage for 5 1/2 years. I know, I didn't have a clue either. Glad for Thompson to tell me the whole story in excruciating detail, because McCain is so reluctant. I don't even understand where Thompson managed to get that series of pictures from McCain's POW days that were displayed on the 40-foot screen behind him. Maybe he found them in a Google image search. Thompson said that "being a POW isn't a qualification for President, but it reveals character," so I guess everyone can go ahead and agree with Wes Clark now.

(Also, we're back to McCain telling his captors the Green Bay Packers defensive line instead of the Pittsburgh Steelers; they're in Minnesota so I'm surprised he didn't claim it was the Vikings.)

When Thompson wasn't clearing his throat - really, that was half the speech - he was giving that down-home folksy wisdom we all loved during his 10 minutes running for President. He pushed the abortion and tax issues hard, as expected. And in a telling moment, he tried to rehabilitate Sarah Palin, which is great. They have to rally around her now and it is clear that they will. She's not going anywhere; no Eagleton scenario here. And the culture war issues rejected by the majority of the country, are back.

Joe Lieberman then got cheers in the audience for telling the assembled that McCain is nothing like that bastard George W. Bush, and that Clinton worked with Democrats better than Obama would. OK, the cheers were kind of wanting. You could have written his hard wank of a speech about a month ago all by yourself - about how good people of both parties should come together in the spirit of bipartisanship and put country first and fall behind a good soldier who represents the best of America. It's impossible to even rebut it because it's so deeply silly, the whole "my party left me" nonsense, the whole "we can all agree to do whatever John McCain says" stuff.

Now I'm watching the St. Paul police firing tear gas and concussion grenades at protesters.

Chris Matthews called it "a very effective night."

UPDATE: Here's the Obama campaign on Bush:

"Tonight, George Bush enthusiastically passed the torch to the man who's earned it by voting with him 90% of the time, and who will continue this President's legacy for the next four years – his disastrous economic policies, his foreign policy that hasn't made us safer, and his misguided war in Iraq that's costing us $10 billion a month. The man George Bush needs may be John McCain, but the change America needs is Barack Obama," said Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.