Insight

Barack Obama's performance Thursday night should silence the doubters about his candidacy. Obama came out fighting. His fluid, tough and forcefully delivered speech indicates that he will be a formidable and potentially devastating opponent in the fall presidential debates. Anyone who can't see that just doesn't get it.

The John F. Kennedy experience suggests that even after Barack Obama's speech, many doubts will remain. After all, Kennedy needed his historic Houston speech on the separation of church and state, a strong performance in the first televised debates and a last-minute call to an imprisoned Martin Luther King Jr. to win a narrow victory. That suggests that even with his strong debate performance Obama may need all of his oratorical skills and the millions being spent to generate massive turnout to complete his historic quest.

In 1988, when Vice President George H.W. Bush said, "Read my lips: No new taxes," I was there. In hotel bars that night and in the weeks that followed, the buzz from the press — I thought unfairly — was that there was no way Bush would not be able to keep his word.

Barack Obama has pledged to cut taxes for 95 percent of American families. Yet the media don't seem to challenge him as they challenged the Bush 41 — who simply said he wouldn't raise taxes, not that he could cut them despite a large deficit.

It could be that the press have seen that tax cuts can work, and lead to revenue increases. But I think a larger factor is a change in the media. We expect politicians to pander, not lead. Like the public, we no longer demand that they make difficult choices.

Making a case that he would be the superior commander in chief, Barack Obama caricatured Republican John McCain as a bellicose adventurer "grasping at the ideas of the past." McCain, he charged, "stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war." Actually, Obama stands — unfortunately, not alone — in his stubborn refusal to acknowledge that improvements on the ground in Iraq were fostered by the surge that McCain urged and that Obama opposed. But Obama left no doubt of his commitment, one that we share, to vigorous international engagement, the fight against terrorism and the urgency of promoting prosperity in the developing world.

The race is far from over, but Barack Obama has a bare two months to convince Middle America he is not as liberal as his record shows him to be. In the process, he has to manage the very tricky track of not being accused of flip-flopping.

He's already run right into that obstacle on taxes, on offshore oil drilling and on surveillance issues and has failed miserably to keep his liberal base energized as a result.

Being a Democrat means never having to feel embarrassed. Every spare bit of convention paraphernalia and signage in Denver hectored people about being "green." Yet convention officials zipped around town in big, black SUVs. Don't worry, though, the Democrats assure us, they're hybrids. To highlight this fact, each SUV had the word HYBRID stenciled under the door panels in giant letters.

Of course, if the Democrats really cared about the environment, Obama wouldn't have given his acceptance speech in front of 75,000 people at Invesco Field. Just think about the impact: transportation for 50,000 extra attendees, additional power usage for the giant stadium, the need to create redundant logistical systems for setup, credentialing, security, etc. I suppose it's a small price to pay for what blogger Scott Johnson playfully dubbed the Democratischeparteitag der Einheit und Starke, or "Democratic Party Rally Day of Unity and Strength."

It was a good national convention for the Democrats, who made history by nominating Barack Obama for president and closed ranks behind him in convincing fashion. …

With passion and an occasional touch of humor, Obama lamented the failures of the Bush administration, outlined the fundamental concerns of middle-class voters and laid out an agenda for more equitable economic policies. He also spoke with confidence and authority on the need for stronger diplomacy and wiser use of the American military abroad. …

But Republicans this year also chose a strong candidate, Sen. John McCain, who holds considerable appeal to political independents. And he is not the carbon copy of George W. Bush that many Democrats have tried to claim.

But the impressive Democratic convention will put some pressure on McCain and his party as Republicans gather this week in St. Paul. They have a tough act to follow.

I've learned never to under-estimate some Democrats' ability to form a circle and start shooting at each other. But the policy differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are so slight, and the differences between the two of them and John McCain so stark, that it's hard for me to believe that hostility toward Obama — especially from middle-age white women — will turn out to be a critical factor in this election. This isn't 1968, when the party split over the war in Vietnam, costing Hubert Humphrey the election against Richard Nixon.

As Democrats tell it, America has become a cruel, jobless wasteland. And only through the miracles of government, as performed by Barack Obama, can we as a nation be well again. Far from uplifting, the Democratic convention played out like some unholy mongrel of a PBS pledge drive and a Jerry Lewis telethon. Every single pol has a tale to spin about one or many sad-sack citizens getting the shaft — courtesy of George W. Bush, and by extension, John McCain. ... (The Democrats') vision is so divorced from reality and fundamentally bleak one wonders whether Joe Biden was plagiarizing Dickens (when he spoke at the convention).

This story has a long way to go. Barack Obama must still convince a doubtful public about his readiness for the White House. But his success suggests that a giant step has been taken toward achieving Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of a country where an individual is not judged by the color of his skin. Obama's challenge is to show the country that the content of his character measures up to the greatness of the prize he seeks.