Like clockwork, the PBS historian/pundits were enthralled by the Obama acceptance speech. Peniel Joseph declared “Barack Obama has really catapulted America into its 21st century multicultural future, whether Americans are ready for it or not.”
Richard Norton Smith thought Obama demonstrated the agility to escape any pesky attempts to label him as a liberal: “Over and over, he talked about common ground on issues that have been so divisive – abortion, gun control, gay rights – and implicit in all this is the search for a more civil, more workable if you will kind of government. It’s going to be very difficult, it seems to me, for people pin him with the label ‘conventional liberal’ or maybe even ‘conventional Democrat.’ Mark Shields chimed in that Obama “did acknowledge the desire for common ground there, for reasonable – not the traditional knee-jerk liberal position on them.”
Michael Beschloss said Obama’s address was better than John Kennedy’s convention speech in 1960: “I think it’s going to be a very powerful help to his campaign.”
David Brooks was the only skeptic, saying he was “not wowed” by the speech as he has been by Obama speeches in the past, that “it was a mistake to go outside,” that the speech was too long and was “a bit of a disappointment.” Earlier, Brooks said the idea of McCain picking Mitt Romney as his running mate “scares the devil out of me.”