A parade of speakers in St. Paul, including Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a Hispanic businessman, an Arizona educator, and President Bush (speaking from the White House via video link) hailed the prospective nominee John McCain for his courage as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, his 26 years in Congress, even his decision to adopt a child from Bangladesh.

Partisan rhetoric was, for the most part, muted. “John McCain doesn’t speak the language of service. He has lived a life of service,” said Bachmann, presumably in reference to the too-eloquent Democratic nominee Barack Obama. In a clumsier swipe, President Bush averred that if McCain’s North Vietnamese captors could not break his resolve, the “angry left” could not either.

The crowd of 20,000 people responded with rapt attention and the occasional standing ovation, even as the last two speakers of the evening worked hard–Bush loyalists might say too hard–to distinguish the nominee from the man he hopes to succeed.

Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson noted with a hint of admiration that the party’s new standard bearer once dated a stripper. (The TV cameras mercifully spared us Cindy McCain’s reaction to her husband’s taste in female company.) Thompson reminded the Republican faithful that young Congressman McCain bucked Ronald Reagan on the wisdom of sending U.S. troops to the Middle East, an observation that seemed to send a ripple of unease through the crowd. And Thompson described the federal government, run for the last eight years by the already-forgotten incumbent, as “wasteful and too often incompetent.” No one was heard to object.

The solution to the “nightmare” of contemporary Washington, said lapsed Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman, was John McCain. Among the Arizona Senators’ many accomplishments, Lieberman explained, was his hostility to “corrupt Republican lobbyists”–some of whom were no doubt itching to exit the premises in search of strippers unfamiliar with public service. Lieberman added kind words for the various legislative accomplishments of Bill Clinton, the former Democratic president who warmly endorsed Obama just a week ago—and the confused crowd responded with applause.

To be fair, it has not been an easy convention for the GOP rank and file. On Monday, Republicans who pride themselves on traditional family values had to learn to scratch the phrase “illegitimate child” from their vocabularies, lest they be taken as less than loyal to prospective vice president (and grandmother) Gov. Sarah Palin. Last night, they began to learn another lesson: that McCain’s campaign slogan, “Country First,” also means “We got no brand.”

Jefferson Morley is National Editorial Director of the Center for Independent Media.

The challenges facing the Palin family are a matter of public record. Bristol Palin has gotten two traffic tickets in the past 15 months, according to Alaska court records. She was stopped for speeding in June 2007 and ticketed for failure to exercise “due caution” in February 2008. So the girl is careless behind the wheel. She has engaged in premarital sex and gotten pregnant. Those aren’t mortal sins, nor are they necessarily an indictment of Palin’s parenting. They are fairly normal for American families with teenagers and almost any parent of adolescents can only sympathize. But the facts of Palin’s  life raise questions about two key points of the conservative domestic policy agenda.

For one thing, Bristol Palin’s bump is living proof that abstinence education doesn’t work, even among the families most invested in its success. One legitimate public policy question now facing Palin is: should teenagers be taught about birth control, in addition to abstinence?

Bristol Palin’s pregnancy also bring home the reality of her mother’s total opposition to abortion under any circumstances.  Gov. Palin’s position is clear:  she wants criminalize the decision of any other young woman who, in Bristol’s situation, chose to terminate her pregnancy. Another question for the would-be vice president: If a teenage girl made a different choice than Bristol, should she go to jail? If so, for how long?

The conversations of the faithful were crowded with anxieties about slipping poll numbers, soft messaging, elusive unity, and the omnipresent Clintons. Memories of disastrous Augusts (John Kerry in 2004, Al Gore in 2000 and Michael Dukakis in 1988) pinched the party’s imagination.

Sen. Barack Obama accepts the Democratic nomination at Invesco Field (Photo: Flickr/Barackobamadotcom)

Tonight those hemmed-in feelings dispersed into the breezes of mammoth Invesco Field where an adoring throng of 84,000 cheered Barack Obama as he accepted his party nomination with a speech — none too lofty and none too soft — that reinfused his historic campaign with sense of history and horizon that had seemed lacking in recent weeks.

Early on Obama declared “enough,” and that word resonated throughout his 48-minute speech. So did the phrase “Now is the time.” Those simple sentiments bookended a comprehensive indictment of the presumptive Republican nominee as honorable but clueless (“It’s not that John McCain doesn’t care. It’s that he doesn’t get it.”) and a challenge to his own party (“Democrats, Democrats, we must also admit that fulfilling America’s promise will require more than just money.”)

Tough talk on Afghanistan (“we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights.”) was combined with tender feelings toward his grandmother (“She poured everything she had into me.”)

After delivering a laundry list of specific policy proposals, Obama returned to the post-partisan message that enabled him to prevail over the more traditional style of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. “These — these are the policies I will pursue,” he declared. “And in the weeks ahead, I look forward to debating them with John McCain.”

“But what I will not do,” he went on, “is suggest that the senator takes his positions for political purposes, because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other’s character and each other’s patriotism.”

“I’ve got news for you, John McCain,” he finished. “We all put our country first.”

Obama thus put a partisan edge on his postpartisaship. He both sharpened the choice facing voters 68 days from now without closing off his ability appeal to Republicans and independents. He again demonstrated the political agility that brought him to this historic occasion and almost certainly restored his supporters’ confidence that was a little shaky just a few hours earlier.