CLEVELAND (MarketWatch) — Let’s put aside the inevitable fact checking, parsing and policy analysis for a moment.

Donald Trump’s speech Thursday night was a disaster. It was the most embarrassing political appearance I’ve seen since Admiral James Stockdale showed up in 1992 as Ross Perot’s running mate. Donald Trump capped the worst convention I have ever seen with the worst acceptance speech.

Let me be very clear here. This is not a criticism of Donald Trump’s proposed policies. He’s already said he wants to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, kick out illegal immigrants, vet Muslims who want to come here, support the National Rifle Association, and so on. I expected those in the speech. Whether you agree or disagree with those policies, they were supposed to be there. He ran on that platform.

But the speech Donald Trump delivered last night was terrible in other ways.

It was boring, weird and borderline unhinged.

Read:The full text of Trump’s final-night speech

Where was the light-hearted, funny, roguish Donald Trump that we frequently saw on the campaign trail?

Where was loose, spontaneous, unscripted Donald Trump?

Where was the Donald Trump who came across as a blunt, tough-talking but candid guy?

Instead, we got this long and dreary diatribe, shouted into the microphone.

And oh boy, did he shout. His delivery was embarrassingly bad.

And what was with those odd bursts of clapping?

It felt like watching Kim Jong Il or some old Warsaw Pact dictator.

Like fading anchorman Howard Beale in the 1976 movie “Network,” Trump went from a funny crazy guy on TV to a miserable crazy guy on TV.

Donald Trump could have rocked this convention by tearing up his speech and riffing for half an hour.

He could have rocked it by taking questions from the floor.

The point of a convention speech is to reach out to the broad electorate. This speech failed absolutely. A fitting end to a stunningly incompetent convention.