You can’t say this speech was a negative one, designed primarily to tear Obama down. There were of course shots at Obama, and he gave himself the best of things, but there was less of this type of sniping than there was in Obama’s speech a week ago. I think in one or two areas he should have been a bit more negative–about the Democrats’ position on domestic-security issues, for example. He said nothing about the limits of talk in foreign policy. He had one paragraph contrasting his approach to Obama’s on taxes and health care, but he did not develop a theme that he would protect America from higher taxes and bureaucratized health care.

His major theme, that he is a non-partisan fighter for the public interest, is a good one–the best one he could adopt, I think, certainly better than running on experience. And there were a lot of good elements to the speech. But I don’t think he did anything tonight to shake up the race some more.