The promise of America  

Before it's completely forgotten, I should also say something about Obama's convention speech. I think it was tremendously important, probably for several reasons, but especially because Obama laid out a serious case for liberal values and liberal policies, a case which hadn't been made convincingly by any national candidate in my lifetime. Obama still hasn't honed his message to the point where it can compete with the simplicty of Ronald Reagan's transformative anti-government message or the anti-intellectualism that went with it. But he showed that he has both the ability and the will to stand up and fight that fight. I've always supported him on the off chance that he'll be able to crystallize the liberal message in a transformative way that makes people believe in the power of government again, and Thursday night he came as close to doing that as anyone has come in a long, long time.