Emotion trumps rhetoric for Obama and Dems

Speechwriters, media watchers generally give Obama high marks for getting personal.

A roaring and adoring crowd of 80,000, and a venue made for a history-making speech—Barack Obama was going to make a splash Thursday night, no matter if his address was a milestone or a misstep.

But of course, the words are what mattered in this, the most important speech to date in the presidential campaign. Here’s what the speech-watchers are saying about the Obama address:

Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal: “Where the speech—and the crowd—came alive, was in the area Obama has used so effectively in the past, specifically in his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote address,” writes Noonan, the former Reagan speechwriter. “The old ‘partisan playbook’ won’t do. Republicans try to tear Democrats down, but ‘patriotism has no party,’ ‘we all put our country first,’ ‘we must bridge divides and unite in common effort’ … All in all, a muted affair. But not one without power.”