Flashback

"If this was McCain's answer to voter anxiety about the economy, it wasn't too impressive.

"As you've been reading -- or, perhaps, as you've noticed on your own -- economic policy has not been a big theme this week in Minneapolis. The Republicans have been campaigning heavily on McCain's character and supposed leadership skills. To the extent they recognzied the high anxiety over employment, wages, or health care costs, they have spent most of their time criticizing Barack Obama's plans for relief rather than offering their own. Only when they have made the case for more oil drilling -- or that old Republican standby of cutting taxes -- have they talked substance. And even that's been pretty thin gruel."

Jacob Heilbrunn:

"For all the hullabaloo about whether John McCain would match Sarah Palin's performance at the Republican convention, it wasn't even close. Where was the tropic thunder? McCain may have ended his speech with a Knute Rockne-like cry for Americans to fight and fight some more -- for what he never really said -- but most of his speech was a snooze, delivered in the tone of a kindly old uncle reminiscing about World War II before fretting about how those pesky Russians are stirring up trouble again."

The big buzz, really, is still all about Sarah. Michelle Cottle says the guv is deceptively effective:

"Nothing in the substance of Palin's speech struck me as particularly noteworthy. It put a high-powered spin on her exceedingly thin resume and then dished out large chunks of red meat to the faithful. Immediately afterward, the commentators I was listening too were surprised by how harsh Palin had been on Obama. But a VP candidate is supposed to be an attack dog. What, they assumed that because she resembles a grown-up Gidget that she couldn't throw a punch? Talk about a misguided sterotype. If anything, being an attractive woman means that she can be far, far more vicious than her male counterparts without coming across as brutish -- and, just as importantly, without having to worry so much about getting slapped back.

"A lot of Dems will go to bed nervous. They should. Palin is still a political lightweight who is in no way qualified to be second in line for the presidency. But she is a charming lightweight. And if George W. Bush taught us anything, it is exactly how far that can take you in American politics."

Hanna Rosin explores a question I've wondered about: how no one talks about teenage irresponsibility anymore -- referring, of course, to the pregnancy of Bristol Palin:

"What's missing from the conservative reaction is still remarkable. Just 15 years ago, a different Republican vice president was ripping into the creators of Murphy Brown for flaunting a working woman who chose to become a single mother. This time around, there's no stigma, no shame, no sin attached to what Dan Quayle would once have mockingly called Bristol Palin's 'lifestyle' choices. In fact, so cavalier are conservatives about Sarah Palin's wreck of a home life that they make the rest of us look stuffy and slow-witted by comparison. 'I think a hard-working, well-organized C.E.O. type can handle it very well,' said Phyllis Schlafly, of the Eagle Forum.

"Suddenly it's the Obamas, with their oh-so-perfect marriage and their Dick Van Dyke in the evenings and their two boringly innocent young girls, who seem like the fuddy-duddies.

"What happened? How did the culture war get flipped on its head?"

Jack Shafer looks at the McCain camp slamming the media (an effort that now includes a Sarah Palin fundraising letter bemoaning her unfair treatment):