He made it simple, just as FDR had. It was morning in America again. Ronald Reagan is not here, and maybe not quite anywhere now. The ghost has left the machine. Mrs. Reagan is here to invoke the memory and the hope, but what this convention needs is the sense of possibility that Ronald Reagan invoked.
Possibility is still the essence of America, the new world.
Now we argue policy as if principle were superfluous. A different kind of malaise is back in politics, a malaise that has turned prosperous. When a general like Wesley Clark respectfully objects, he is ever so diplomatically relieved of his command. Now and then on the floor of this convention, the happy fog lifts and clarity strikes. John McCain also spoke.