The Dauphin

Edwards' speech was good if not great; so far the third best convention speech after Obama and Clinton, and certainly the best vice presidential acceptance speech of my lifetime. The content was pure populism, but it was hidden under a veneer of Reagan-style sunny rhetoric and North Carolina twang. I was a bit surprised to see the entire MSNBC panel splooging themselves over Edwards (especially Andrea Mitchell), but astonished to see the Fox panel doing the same thing. Interestingly, Edwards' tough-guy-on-terrorism line ("you cannot run, you cannot hide, we will destroy you"), while impressing Bill Kristol enormously, seemed a bit phony to the MSNBC commentators. (I think one of them said "he's too pretty to say something like that.") The problem with the line, however, had nothing to do with Edwards' appearance---the problem is that it drew only tepid applause (and I might even have heard a couple of boos.) The rhetorical climax of the speech, and the part that I assume will get the most coverage, was the "hope is on the way" refrain, which cunningly targeted pretty much every swing-voter demographic.

Now, the conventional wisdom is that the definitive moment for Edwards is his debate against Dick Cheney. Let's assume that's true. The nice thing about the vice presidential debate is that its dynamics are the reverse of those of the presidential debates four years ago. For Edwards, a draw with Cheney, or even a slight defeat, will be reified (through media echo) as a victory. And I don't think there's any danger that he'll be made to look like Dan Quayle.

Btw, how hot was Cate Edwards last night? [How old is she? Are you allowed to say that?--ed.] Seriously though, if the family-of-the-candidates factor means anything to middle America, Cate beats the Bush girls by a million points, while Mary Cheney is probably ashamed to show her face in public. Those Edwardses are just so button-cute.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan has three separate posts today splooging all over the Edwards speech. I think that's a good sign. Andrew makes a point that I missed; namely that the populism was tempered by a pledge to be fiscally responsible, and he put Bush in the (probably) untenable position of having to defend tax cuts for the rich against both deficit reduction and domestic initiatives on education, prescription drugs, health care, etc.