Noah Millman, who cops to being a registered Republican (I mention it in case any of my readers can’t stand to read anything written by a Republican or a conservative, though, frankly, if that’s how you feel, I’d be surprised to find you among my readers), decided to try to write Obama’s acceptance speech.

First, though, he tried to capture the essence of his subject—his elusiveness.

I still, at this late date, have no idea why Obama is running. I mean, I know why: he wants to be President. He’s “got game” – you don’t need more reason. But Obama has done a rather astonishing thing: he’s built an entire movement – he’s built a fundraising and organizing machine comparable to a national political party, in fact – without really standing for anything in particular. He is not, as George McGovern was, running to take the Democratic Party decisively to the left, nor is he, as Ted Kennedy was, running to restore a certain kind of liberalism within the Democratic Party, nor is he, as Bill Clinton was, running to transform liberalism into some kind of new, Third Way synthesis. Apart from his position on Iraq, he in no way distinguished himself from his rivals as representing a particular faction or even a particular worldview within the Democratic Party or the tradition of American liberalism, and Iraq he has forcefully maintained was a matter of his personal good judgment rather than an indication that he thinks about foreign policy profoundly differently from the Washington consensus. Obama has been attacked from various quarters for running a personality-based campaign, all about his own innate wonderfulness and ability to magically bind up all our political wounds and so forth. And while it’s certainly true that Obama has his lunatic supporters who think he’s the messiah, I think the real reason he’s perceived this way is that, lacking an animating cause, the candidate himself perforce became the cause. And that’s a huge problem because, in the end, a majority of voters is simply not going to vote for Obama on the basis of his innate wonderfulness.

To me, that’s about as clear an expanation—for those who really need one—of McCain’s attacks on Obama’s celebrity status—a status Obama sought in order to deflect attention from his obvious lack of stature as a credible political leader with a track record.

John Podhoretz also captures this nicely as we all wait for Obama to appear in his Temple in Invesco Field [e.a.]:

It certainly is nice to see and hear Stevie Wonder on the stage there at Invesco Field. And I know this is happening 90 minutes or more before Obama takes to all the networks with his acceptance speech. But this ellision of a pop stadium concert with a political convention does really make explicit the very problem that began Obama’s descent earlier this summer — the idea being that he is a showbiz idea of a leader rather than being a real leader.

Bingo! And McCain has exploited that weakness—the absence of steak and its replacement with the sizzle of rock star charisma and jelly-kneed fans—very effectively. Now, every time the Obama campaign plans a heavily stage-managed pseudo-event or spectacle, a lot of bloodhounds are on the case.

Maureen Dowd picked up on this:

Democrats have begun internalizing the criticisms of Hillary and John McCain about Obama’s rock-star prowess, worrying that the Invesco Field extravaganza Thursday, with Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi, will just add to the celebrity cachet that Democrats have somehow been shamed into seeing as a negative.

But elsewhere in the New York Times! we hear that Team Obama is ignoring the possible pitfalls [e.a.]:

Some aides worried about the setting overwhelming the message. But those closest to the planning said they had no regrets and were sticking to the sort of big-event politics that no other candidate has been able to match this year.

“We are leaning into this, how can you not?” said Jenny Backus, a campaign strategist working on the convention plan. “This is the enthusiasm gap,” referring to what polls show as excitement for Mr. Obama that Senator John McCain’s campaign has not matched.

Well, sure, there’s plenty of excitement for Mr. Obama among his fans. But it’s more than a little weird to watch the spotlights sweeping over Invesco Stadium, to hear the rock music, and to think that this is the Democratic convention rather than American Idol.

Karl Rove is hardly an objective voice, but he explains how this extravaganza feeds directly into McCain’s strategy to deflate the Obama Messiah:

Making your speech in front of 75,000 people at Invesco Field could add to the view that this man is a celebrity, a rock star, somebody who’s fresh in the political scene, been taken by the press clubs. And that’s been a problem for Sen. Obama. Ever since he went to Europe and made the speech that he was running for president of the United States in Europe, in Berlin, he’s been in a slide. And question is whether he will stop that tomorrow night or accelerate it. And it’s a high stakes venue, no if’s, and’s or but’s about it. …

[T]hey had the biggest rally in the history of Pennsylvania just before the Pennsylvania Democratic primary — 35,000 people were in a rally for Sen. Obama in Philadelphia, and he lost the primary in Pennsylvania by almost two to one. So I wouldn’t take his ability to generate crowds. In fact, historically, if you look at this, some of the largest crowds in presidential campaign history were those entertained by George McGovern in the final moments of his horrendous defeat in 1972.

But the show is about to start, so I’m going to kick back and enjoy it!

Just how many people in America are paying attention to the Democratic convention? It’s hard to say, of course, but early indications are that more people tuned in (to the networks, at least) to see Hillary on Tuesday than to watch the action with Biden (and with Bill Clinton) on Wednesday night:

All the broadcast networks’ numbers fell, with NBC holding the largest audience, based on Nielsen’s overnight metered household ratings from 55 markets. NBC brought in a 4.1 rating/7 share, slipping 16% from Tuesday’s numbers.

ABC’s audience declined 24% to a 2.9/5, while CBS dropped by 11% to a 2.4/4.

I’ve only done a bit of convention-watching myself. If I’m representative of the population, the excellent entertainment provided by the Dems for an hour last night may have been for naught.

Here’s what you missed, according to David Gergen, speaking last night on CNN immediately after the end of the onstage events [e.a.]:

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I thought it was a fine speech [by Biden]. It was a serviceable speech. I don’t think it’s a memorable speech. It will never make Bill Safire’s anthology.

But what was most important in the speech, Anderson, and what I think worked both in the hall and on television was the tableau that unfolded here over the past hour.

And that I thought the Democrats had their best hour of television of the convention starting with the moment they rolled out that Spielberg film on the veterans, on honoring the Veterans in a poignant way, moving on to Beau Biden’s speech, which I thought was a home run.

That was a remarkably good speech. And then when the cameras went to Michelle Obama and you saw her tearing up as she heard again the story of the loss of the family early on, I thought that was a revealing moment for television viewers, some of whom have thought she’s an angry woman. That wasn’t an angry woman you saw tonight. She was very human.

And I think it was consistent with her own speech earlier in the week. And then Joe Biden gave a good speech. It was a solid speech but then — but what I think really helped was Barack Obama coming on. And then, it was as if the Democrats brought it all together tonight for the first time.

And I must tell you, I think the importance of tonight is that perhaps the Democrats have begun to reverse the momentum of the campaign.

John McCain has been coming on very strong against them; he’s caught up with them. They desperately needed to reverse momentum if they were to win in November. I think they started to turn it. My one single voice, it’s really the voters who counts about this, it’s the public who counts on this. We’ll wait to see what they did. But I think tonight and tomorrow night if they can reverse momentum, the Republicans will have their chance to take it back next week but I think that’s very, very important as a potential opening for the Democrats to reverse the momentum

Well, it might reverse the momentum if a lot of on-the-fence voters were watching the Dems celebrate themselves, but that doesn’t seem to be the case (outside the blogosphere, that is).

Plus: attentive readers will note that Gergen, the ultimate spouter of inside-the-Beltway conventional [no pun intended!] wisdom, says that the Dems need desperately to reverse the momentum. That should worry Obama fans—oops!—I mean: Obama supporters; they’re in love and so they’re not attentive to the arrows being slung at him from all directions.

And the arrows are coming fast and furious. Obama isn’t oblivious to them. Quite the contrary.

But first things first: he’s got a really big shew to put on tonight, folks!\

I don’t have the patience to read commentary on the convention, which, despite my better instincts, I did watch for a couple of hours last night. Having watched, I feel compelled to note what I picked up in Biden’s call-out to “traditional” Dems—especially because it was so weirdly out of place in the current left/liberal/progressive/Dem “discourse” about foreign policy.

Biden is a total hawk:

And for the last seven years, the administration has failed to face the biggest — the biggest forces shaping this century: the emergence of Russia, China, and India as great powers; the spread of lethal weapons; the shortage of secure supplies of energy, food and water; the challenge of climate change; and the resurgence of fundamentalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the real central front in the war on terror.

Ladies and gentlemen, in recent years and in recent days, we’ve once again seen the consequences of the neglect — of this neglect with Russia challenging the very freedom of a new democratic country of Georgia. Barack and I will end that neglect. We will hold Russia accountable for its actions, and we will help the people of Georgia rebuild. [and the crowd roared ---ed.]…

Al Qaida and the Taliban, the people who actually attacked us on 9/11, they’ve regrouped in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan and they are plotting new attacks. And the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has echoed Barack’s call for more troops. …

Doesn’t this rather sound as if Biden is on the warpath?

Who’s the warmonger now?

It’s all rather odd.

The only other pundit I’ve read who has noted the foreign policy confusion among Dems is Matt Welch, who wrote this before Biden’s speech at the convention:

All We Are Saying Is, Make Smarter War
Will Democratic foreign policy be built by the hawkish Madeleine Albright?

Here’s one reference to the foreign policy part of Biden’s speech that (spectacularly) misses the obvious:

Looking abroad, Biden slammed McCain repeatedly for his poor judgment on everything from Iraq to Iran to Afghanistan to international diplomacy: “Again and again, on the most important national security issues of our time, John McCain was wrong, and Barack Obama was proven right.”

Biden did a lot more than slam McCain’s judgment. He laid out an aggressively interventionist foreign policy under an Obama administration.

Are pundits trying to hide this, or didn’t they notice?