Tough talk from Chris Christie

>>> for nearly 50 years, we carried them all to new levels of comfort and security and dignity, even affluence. remember this. s some of us in this room today are here only because this nation had that kind of confidence. it would be wrong to forget that.

>> that, to may ears, was and still is the best keynote address ever. mario cuomo , then the governor of new york delivering a moving and eloquent statement of what it was to be a democrat at the height of the reagan era. you have to agree with the content of the speech to recognize its power. it was clear statement of what cuomo and his party believed government's role should be. you listened and you knew what the -- who the democrats were and how they wanted to govern. it was so strong in fact, if you take out the references to the soviet union , it could still stand today as the definitive statement of democratic values. i even joked to a friend a few weeks you a go, democrats that invite cuomo to charlotte give an updated speech, he could pull it off. speaking about all of this last night as i watched chris christie 's keynote speech , i heard republicans say it was the pep talk they were looking for. heard democrats ridicule it as an exercise in narcissism in 2016 ambition. i heard a lot of people what i was say before the speech. christie who reads from a prepared text is a lot different and less exciting the christie who covered for the jabs of reporters and hecklers and town hall questions. my verdict, technically proficient and i doubt it will help mitt romney in the fall or in the future. it was for gettable. important the republican party it was a giant wasted opportunity. problem isn't really christie talks so much about himself, it is that he talks so little about what his party actually believes in. he told us over and over that we face big problems as a country and we need real leaders to tackle them and leaders who aren't afraid to tell the country the hard truths polling be damned. who is against that? he didn't spell out what the hard truths actually are. here is an example. christie mentioned the slow economy and deficit and mentioned education as major problems. what should we do about them? well, take a look.

>> it is simple. we need politicians to care more about doing something and less about being something.

>> so that's the secret. jonathan, really smart political blogger put it, nothing wrong with a big themes type of keynote speech . there is a difference between big themes and cliches. christie 's problem is his party's problem. policy has been almost incidental to what they do. the result is when we heard from christie last night. million different ways of saying we are going to do something different. without ever once saying what that something is.