One of the lighter moments of The West Wing last season was when President Bartlet was to throw the first pitch at a baseball game. With security threatened at almost every turn, the Secret Service urged him to wear a bullet-proof vest. Charlie had his doubts that his boss could throw the baseball to the plate, so they spent the day practicing.

Flash forward to real life. John Kerry is at the Yankees-Red Sox game getting set to throw the first pitch to a military man back from Iraq. If you don't look too athletic, the next parts don't apply. But Kerry prides himself as being an athletic guy, so these do apply. If you don't want to look like an idiot when throwing a first pitch, you must do at least these two things. You must stand on top of the mound. Don't step up to the front of it. Second, don't one-hop the ball or throw it above the catcher's head.

So what did Kerry do? Stepping up amid cheers and boos from the Boston crowd, site of the Democratic National Convention, he stood in front of the mound, looked at the catcher and threw weakly toward the soldier, one-hopping the ball and having it pass the soldier. That's what is called a wild pitch. Hopefully, he was wearing a vest, since that can mess people up.

Day 1 of the Democratic National Convention saw a positive spin on the Democrats' view of the world today. But under the bright lights and the nice words, you could feel the presence of a greater being in the house, that man being Bill Clinton. As the overseer of the greatest economic expansion in American history largely due to the rising growth of the Internet and e-commerce, Clinton was and still is an eloquent man who fought for what he believed in even if he was morally challenged. He has earned respect from even this Republican. But listening to the speeches tonight, most, including Clinton himself, have been looking at the period of 1993-2001 and saying, look at what we did then, and think about what we can do now. No doubt those years were very good. But that's a good argument to try to re-elect Bill Clinton to the presidency, something I wouldn't be opposed to if it weren't for that Constitution. None of the speakers made a convincing argument to try to connect that to the potential presidency of John Kerry. I'm sorry but John Kerry is no Bill Clinton. If Kerry believes he can ride the coattails of Clinton to a victory, he is sorely mistaken. Voters will be disappointed. Clinton's theme song was not to stop thinking about tomorrow. Kerry can't use the Clinton years as a base for his campaign. Use Clinton to attract a crowd and then communicate his own dreams and ideals for a brighter future.

Some notes about tonight. The rising podium is scary. It's noisy and it seems like it can drop any second to the floor. Hillary Clinton is not the orator her husband is. And do you know who's running for president on the Democratic side? If you heard Hillary, she only mentioned his name probably 100 times.

On MSNBC, Tim Russert tells of the joke Al Gore had to cut out.

Gore says Bush's war on terrorism is like a drunk man looking for his keys. So the guy is looking around and asks a friend to help him find it. "I think I lost it over there," he remarks. So the friend asks, "why are you looking here then?"

"Because the light is over here."

I agree with Jon Stewart sitted next to him.

"Well, that wasn't even funny."