The Speech. (You Know Which One.)

It’s been nearly 24 hours, and I still haven’t decided if I like Barack Obama’s acceptance speech.

I personally wanted to see a lot of the inspiring oratory of the type that launched Obama to national prominence in 2004. We saw flashes of it, mostly toward the end. But what we really saw was a lot of policy, with specific policy goals and plans to meet them, of the type that some observers said put crowds to sleep when Obama ran for smaller offices.

Still, in this context, that may have been what he needed. Policy is substance, and Obama showed plenty of it Thursday night, and it did look presidential. He answered the critics who are unsure of his qualifications, particularly on the strongest area of concern, foreign policy, and after that he laid out a case to let him lead.

This speech may well have been directed not at me -- heck, we all know I’m going to vote for him anyway -- but rather at the people who haven’t made a decision yet. I’m hoping that’s the case, and I have a good feeling that it is, because Obama does not really make wrong strategy moves.

It didn’t hurt that he was surrounded by who knows how many thousands of adoring followers -- I’m guessing it had to be at least 80,000. The normally enthusiastic chants of “Yes We Can” were magnified toward the end into a growling thunder, giving the die-hards a taste of the Obama idolatry that’s so coolly seductive.

All in all, he certainly didn’t hurt his cause on Thursday night. It’s just that I’m still wondering how much he helped it.