I stayed over at Matt’s place last night. When I got home this morning to change for work, there was a voicemail from my mom. My parents fled to California this week to escape the Republican Convention; my dad works in Penn Plaza (right above Penn Station and right next to Madison Square Garden), and my mom works near Union Square (which turned out to be the site of many protests). My mom’s message said, “I’m just calling to say hi… We’re sitting here watching TV, and I’m watching George Pataki speak at the Republican convention, and it’s probably the worst speech I’ve ever seen someone give at a political convention. Just wanted to know what you thought of it.”

I love my mom.

Anyway, yes, Pataki’s a horrible speaker, and although he’s been elected three times as New York’s governor, he’s the quintessential mediocre machine politician. As for last night’s speech, the only states whose citizens he praised as helping New York in the aftermath of 9/11 just happened to be swing states: Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania. That was artless. And watching him ask each of those state’s delegations to stand up made me feel like I was watching a high school graduation ceremony.

After Pataki’s speech, there was a long pause of several minutes while the convention waited for the TV network coverage to kick in, and then they showed the traditional introductory video of the candidate. Except they must have lost the footage, because it was replaced with an oatmeal commercial. Was that former Senator Fred Thompson narrating, or was it Wilford Brimley? I wasn’t sure.

As for the main event, my main impression of Bush’s speech is that it went on about 20 minutes too long. He led off with a recitation of domestic plans, which I actually found interesting, because I’d never heard it before. It was transparently Clintonesque, though, and there’s no way to fund all these new programs he proposed. While he spoke, I watched the backdrop behind him: all these little boxes, each filled with an image of an American flag, bringing to mind the divided America that he’s helped foster over the last few years.

Then he turned to foreign policy, during which I largely tuned out, especially once the clock in Matt’s apartment ticked past 11 p.m. and I was hearing nothing but more empty rhetoric.

I was surprised that two protesters managed to get past security. And they even made Bush stumble over one of his lines. How did they get in? I wonder if there are Republican Convention credentials available on eBay? Oh look, there are. (Okay, that pass was good only for Monday. I don’t know how the protesters got in. But if you don’t want that, there’s the RNC Macaroni and Cheese, so you can, redundantly, “have a part of history which is currently being created right now!”)

About an hour later, Kerry gave a speech in Ohio that was, as usual, painfully inarticulate.

So it’s over; the delegates and protesters go home, we New Yorkers get our city back, and the fall campaign season officially begins. It’s still summer right now, but soon, lawns across America will crunch with leaves, high school football teams will practice outside in the chilly air, kids will plan their Halloween costumes, the pundits will parse what happened during the presidential debates, and we’ll obsess over daily tracking polls.

It’s going to be nerve-wracking and depressing. I love it.