The things that impressed me about the speech

I've done some TV pundit work, and it is not all that fun. I was on a Spanish TV show after McCain's speech at the Republican Convention, and, for the life of me, I could not come up with anything thoughtful to say about the speech. I probably looked like a stuttering fool. I'll leave most of the punditry to those poor souls on TV tonight.

But there are two lines that really impressed me about President Obama's speech tonight that I want to quickly sound off on.

The line about every American needing to go to college was extremely courageous, more so coming from a Democrat. This is a subtle acknowledgment from the president that our economy should depend on white collar jobs. That is the only way we'll compete in the global economy. The alternative to this would have been to adopt protectionist, populist language to please some in the Democratic base. I'm glad the president didn't go that route.

A complement to that line was the reference to reducing agriculture subsidies, which will also require a lot of political capital. We should be helping small farmers, but we shouldn't be subsidizing large agriculture firms.

And finally, is it me or does Bobby Jindal sound like the love child of LeVar Burton and Christopher Walken?

10: 37 p.m. UPDATE: Better yet, from my friend Kate: I "had no idea Bobby Jindal was really Kenneth from 30 Rock."