Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for Friday, September 5th, 2008.

I'm David Plotz here in Slate's Lavett, Washington Bureau.

And joining me from St. Paul, from his hotel room at the Crown Plaza, is John Dickerson, Slate's chief political correspondent.

Hello, John.

Hello, hello.

And from Slate's headquarters in New Haven, Emily Bazelon.

I get to be the headquarters. I like that.

Welcome, Emily.

So it's going to be an all-Saraphaelan gab fest today.

We are going to do Sarah Palin and John McCain and then more Sarah Palin and more John

McCain until we're sick of talking about them.

And then we'll talk about what Barack Obama thinks of Sarah Palin and what your mother-in-law thinks of Sarah Palin.

And then we'll do some cocktail chatter at the end.

So, John, you were at the convention, you were both conventions, and you were at McCain's not so rousing speech last night.

What did you think of the convention as a whole and the speech in general?

I guess the convention of the whole was a lot more interesting than any of us would have thought coming into it.

Leaving Denver, we all thought, well, you know, we went from the exciting convention to what's going to be the more boring one, and that was true also the Republicans who were here, or who were coming to St. Paul. They thought, well, we have to, you know, could have a rousing cheer for this guy, John McCain, who much of us haven't liked. But then Sarah Palin changed everything. And, you know,

Republicans here were exciting, you know, excited. They weren't going crazy. We were all trying

to figure out who this new person is. The campaign was firing back at the press for asking the

most simple and direct and reasonable questions. So it added this kind of crazy, rollicking feel to the week. And then it was all let down by a rather

lackluster speech, which we can talk about more later. But clearly Sarah Palin was the story and also,

you know, gave the best speech and rallied the party here for the last 60 days of the election.

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