Day four of the Democratic National Convention found me grousing about the house as the event moved outdoors to Invesco Field in order to accommodate the over-capacity crowd of 80,000 believers. Though I had been impressed by the major speeches leading up to Obama’s acceptance, it looked a little like one of those Day On the Green concerts Bill Graham used to host at Oakland Stadium: I was expecting the frisbees to come out at any second.

“It’s a little too fucking peace-and-love,” I said to my wife as we waited for the star of the show. Stevie Wonder singing I-don’t-know-what with a choir of busboys (“I want you all to remember I love you very much,” Stevie told the crowd before he sang a note), followed by Michael McDonald doing his Ray Charles impression on “America the Beautiful.” (Seriously, guys: Michael McDonald? I think the Dems were so worried about the backlash Kerry suffered using A-list stars in 2004 that they went to the second page on this one.)

The appearance of Susan Eisenhower helped; first, she’s an Eisenhower and though Republicans don’t revere that name the way they do Reagan’s (he was the first to warn us against “the military industrial complex,” remember) she had gravitas — and a pink suit! “She doesn’t look like she’s out of a Black Eyed Peas video,” Paul Begala cracked on CNN. Then Al Gore gave a good speech — or wrote a good speech. He delivered it in such speed I thought maybe he had to go the bathroom, but he raised the perilous issue (of course) of global warming, reminding us of what’s really at stake.

And then came Obama’s speech, weighted with more expectations than almost any address in modern political history, and what can I do but add to the chorus of acclaim? Sure, he inspired and connected with a massive crowd, but more importantly he was substantive (listing actual changes he intends to implement if elected) and he came out swinging. Of the Bush legacy (lies, torture, cronyism, cynicism) he said simply, “We are a better country than this.” And then, most satisfying of all, he answered each of John McCain’s low-ball, sleazy assertions and innuendoes — that he’s a celebrity only, that he’s unpatriotic — with fireball returns. 

Watch the speech, if you haven’t already, and forward it to your friends. Then suit up for battle: By picking Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, McCain his signaled both his own cynicism (“Women will vote for a woman, even if she’s opposed to a woman’s right to choose”) while aligning himself with the base of the GOP. The Motown act we should have seen yesterday was the Isley Brothers, doing what shall be the real theme of this election: “You got to fight the powers that be.”