[Deckard]

I thought it was a very impressive speech. Yes the stage management and razzmattazz was always going to appear a bit cringeworthy to some of us not used to such things, but the speech had substance, he managed to address lots of areas, tick lots of boxes, come across as human, and I felt there were a good selection of soundbites for the evening news...

"Now is the time to end this addiction, and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution. Not even close."

"John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell - but he won't even go to the cave where he lives."

"You don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq."

"So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain."

"...the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. Change happens because the American people demand it - because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership"

"What the nay-sayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me. It's been about you."

Also, after describing various struggling Americans – business owners, factory workers, young students...
" I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine. These are my heroes."

*smack*!!!

I thought he took a risk with this one though...
"If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from."

Hmm.

In short, I think he got almost everything right (including the name-check to Hillary so early on) primarily by making it about the audience, by empathisizing, by offering some specifics, and by keeping everything hooked into the theme of change and the future. I thought he laid into McCain very effectively, making him look a joke on economic issues in particular.

Most of us know Obama is not the Second Coming, and we realise that after a couple of years, we'll/you'll probably be feeling let down by him in the way that Tony "things can only get better" Blair let us Brits down. He will almost certainly disappoint when it comes to the degree of change he can realistically offer, and it would be easy, in anticipation of that, to buy into the mood of cynicism about him. But for now, at this point in time, this guy – to me at least – seems so many streets ahead of the choices America has previously had in their presidential candidates (issue of race aside), it would be a tragedy if they just let him slip by and voted in the Republican.