The effusive left-wing media reaction to last night’s Obama acceptance speech was to be expected. Even some conservatives got caught up in the moment.

As passions have cooled, the praise has become more tempered. Very few people can recite one memorable phrase from the speech. This morning on MSNBC’s pathetic Morning Joe, Peggy Noonan actually took The Hack Whose Name Will Not Be Mentioned to task. Ms. Noonan didn’t name him, but said his description of the speech as a symphony was “fatuous.” That was quite kind.

The problem with the speech wasn’t its delivery, which was excellent. It was workmanlike in the way speeches given by liberal Democrats tend to be: “everyone will be happy. I’m here to help you. Move along now.”

The real problem with the speech was the visual. The temple, with giant live portraitures of Obama, evoked the worst memories of Stalinism and simultaneously managed to convey a sense of crass commercialism.

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If the following report from the Politico is true, and for all we know Obama could disprove it with his announcement, the presidential election is game, set, match:

There’s one Democrat who would seem to have little or no chance of being picked by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to be his running mate – his former opponent, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

But it’s not for the reason you think.

Obama has often said, most recently on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on July 27, that Clinton “would be on anybody’s short list.”

But apparently not his.

“She was never vetted,” a Democratic official reported. “She was not asked for a single piece of paper. She and Senator Obama have never had a single conversation about it. How would he know if she’d take it?”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12713.html

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The incomparable Peggy Noonan is right. There has been a perceptible shift in the presidential election.

She just may be a little later than we normally would expect her to be in noticing it.

In today’s online Wall Street Journal, Noonan writes:

This thing is moving. Things are shifting around a bit. That’s what I see looking back at the past four weeks…

For the first time the idea began to take hold that John McCain can win this thing. You saw the USA Today-Gallup poll this week, with Mr. McCain gaining six points since late June among those Gallup dubbed likely voters. Mr. McCain took the lead, 49% to 45%. Among registered voters, it’s still Barack Obama, 47% to 44%. A poll came out saying people are tired of hearing about Mr. Obama. Mr. McCain took the lead in YouTube hits. Small stuff, and there will be a lot of twists and turns before this is over, but there’s movement down there beneath the crust of the Earth…

There’s a thing that’s out there and it’s big, and latent, and somehow always taken into account and always ignored, and political professionals always assume they understand it. It has been called many things the past 50 years, “the silent center,” “the silent majority,” “the coalition,” “the base.” The idea of it has evolved as its composition has evolved, but the fact that it’s big, and relatively silent, and somehow always latent, maintains. And watching that McCain event—vroom vroom—one got the sense it is perhaps beginning to pay attention to the campaign. I see it as the old America, and if and when it reasserts itself, the campaign will shift indeed, and in ways you can even see from 10,000 feet.

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Promoted from the diaries by Erick.

If there ever were a vapid celebrity it was Andy Warhol. Yet he did manage to utter one memorable line: “In the future, everyone will have 15 minutes of fame.” It was remarkably insightful for the time. In fact, it was understated. A close friend said the line today would be “in the future, everyone will have 15 minutes of privacy.”

We now talk of “Clinton fatigue” and “Bush fatigue” because after eight years a media-saturated public wants to see a new face. Celebrities, in an attempt to attract attention, indulge in self-destructive behavior as their fans grow weary after too many MTV appearances. It seldom works, “it” being both the attempt to relaunch a career and the rehab and counseling.

Therefore, it is a surprise to see Sen. Barack Obama embrace celebrity and the cult of personality. It can’t last long in 2008, and indications are it has started to wear thin.

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The Obama campaign and its left-wing legacy media sycophants are furious. Sen. McCain told the truth when he claimed Obama preferred to lose the Iraq War than lose the election. Some label this a “false charge.” Most of these critics say it is “over-the-top” or “harsh stuff.” This is reminiscent of many denunciations of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, wherein honest and accurate accounts of events that exposed a left-wing candidate were dubbed “Swift Boating,” as if nomeclature somehow turned objective fact into an unfair smear (as an aside, I look forward to the story about John Edwards’ illegitmiate child being awarded the “Swift Boat” label, which I expect to happen as soon as this sordid matter gets dragged into the mainstream).

Ben Domenech and Confederate Yankee have both posted excellent blogs about an interview Sen. Obama gave with Terry Moran of ABC News. Yet there is a nugget buried within one graf that deserves to be explored:

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Ever since Newsweek released a poll that showed the general election virtually tied, many Obama supporters have pointed to opinions about the senator’s religious background as the cause of his problems. Broadcast bloviators and many print journalists attribute these “smears” to the “right-wing,” “Republicans,” “conservatives,” ad nauseum. In fact, the editor of the New Yorker, which published the tasteless and banal parody cover of Barack and Michelle Obama, said it was to counter “right-wing stereotypes.”

Riiiiight.

Of particular concern to the navel-gazing Left is the following from the Newsweek poll:

39 percent believe he attended an Islamic school as a child growing up in Indonesia.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/145737

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