I haven’t seen a night like that since July 14 when the Texas Ranger’s Josh Hamilton hit 28 dingers in the home run derby at the All-Star game in Yankee Stadium. I mean, wow! I could spend several pages enumerating the high points of that speech, but I want to focus on the issue of experience.

Some might say the line of the night was when Governor Palin said; “I guess being the mayor of a small town is like being a community organizer; except you have actual responsibilities.” Great line and the first part of it is true. The second half, though, is not true and leaves her open to attacks (like the one David Plouffe, the Obama campaign manager, has already sent out this morning-after). The comment denigrates community organizers and volunteerism by association. What she should have said is, “….except you’re actually ACCOUNTABLE.” Now that statement IS true. Many community organizers have a laundry list of responsibilities. But the organizers are seldom the people ACCOUNTABLE, and accountability is the difference in the QUALITY of the experience that we should be talking about.

Many pundits, talking heads, commentators, citizens and village idiots are comparing the experience of Palin and Obama. We can admit that Obama has marginally more quantitative experience. He was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996, the same year Sarah Palin became Mayor of Wasilla. She left office in 2002 while Obama continued in the State Senate until he started work in the US Senate in January of 2005. He then spent roughly two years engaged in active legislation before deciding to run for president. Sarah Palin became governor of Alaska in 2006 and has governed for roughly two years before being selected as McCain’s VP.

The case the McCain campaign started to make last night andwhich it needs to make more often on behalf of Sarah Palin is that she has EXECUTIVE experience. She has been responsible AND accountable. The political offices she has held have made her the final arbiter in decisions on how to govern. She has had to choose. It’s been her name on the line. If government didn’t perform, the citizens were going to blame her; and that’s fair. She’s been IN CHARGE. Barack Obama has never had that type of experience. He’s been a “suggester,” (and not a prolific one, at that). This is also true of John McCain, in fact, and is why our nation hasn’t elected a Senator to the White House since 1960. When it comes to ACCOUNTABILITY, there is NO comparison. Sarah Palin has the better qualitative experience.

I thought Rudy Giuliani’s speech was an excellent prelude to Governor Palin’s. He spent several minutes regaling the experience of Senator Obama and how it is devoid of decisiveness. He pointed out that as a state senator, 130 times Obama voted “present.” He wouldn’t even decide “yes” or “no.” “It’s not good enough to be present, you have to make a decision,” Giuliani said. These are points the GOP needs to hammer home for the next 61 days. Giuliani recounted Obama’s ever-shifting thought process on the skirmish between Georgia and Russia—once again illuminating the Senator’s inability to formulate a position on his own and have it be worthy enough to stick with. (Give him credit, he knows when he’s talking trash and he’s willing to change his position, but that’s not really awe inspiring, is it?)

Instead, the most telling line of the night from Governor Palin was, “The American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of self discovery, ” and this is what Barack Obama has made it. He is just now learning to make decisions. He has said as much in the last few days when he has talked about how running this campaign (isn’t that done by his campaign manager?), with it’s large staff and huge budget, is his executive experience. This is all he has. Meanwhile, Governor Palin has overseen a $12 billion budget and 29,000 state employees in the largest state in the country, which also happens to be the only state that borders one of our country’s greatest adversaries—Russia.

But let’s now get to brass tacks: Obama has limited experience and NO executive experience, but Palin doesn’t have a lot of experience, either. Senator McCain, you picked her. Now live with it. The McCain campaign needs to turn this negative into a positive. America keeps saying it wants “change” and new blood in Washington DC. Well here it is. She’s an outsider. She’s not jaded by years of experience operating within the system. She has fresh ideas and is uncorrupted. She doesn’t have the putrid stench of Washington’s insider politics on her; she wears the fragrance of Alaska’s wide-open spaces. She is a breath of fresh air.

Let the democrats make your point for you, Senator McCain: every time they say “inexperienced” you translate that for America as “outsider.” Sarah Palin is a great choice for the McCain campaign precisely because of her experience….and lack of it.

George Will said recently that, “Americans want a common man to be president. But they also want an uncommon president.” By this he meant that we want our president to be someone who understands what life is like in America for the common man and the common family. However, we also want someone who is smarter and more capable than we are. I know I share that latter sentiment. I love my friends, but I don’t want any of them to be president. I’ve set the bar a little higher (sorry fellas).

This idea will be put to the test during this extraordinary presidential election. Over the last 18 months, watershed events have been followed by landmarks that have been succeeded by historical firsts. Last Friday (the timing of which can only be described as strategically brilliant) John McCain introduced Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. This was a landmark event for the Republicans since Governor Palin became the first woman to run as a vice-presidential candidate in the party. But her inclusion is a historical first for another reason: never has someone so common, so blue collar, so working class, been a candidate on a major party’s presidential ticket. Maybe I’m jaded by over-exposure to Hillary Clinton or unimpressed having seen Geraldine Ferraro on the Democratic ticket in 1984, but I think Sarah Palin’s identification with these common and rural roots is almost as significant.

Jeff Foxworthy said that redneck just means a “glorious lack of sophistication” and we are all guilty of it at some point in our lives. Rednecks rejoice! Our candidate has arrived.

Parents have been telling their children since our nation’s independence that in America you can grow up to be anything you want—even the President. For two centuries women and blacks must have known this was a lie--until last week. We now know that any man or woman regardless of race color or creed can have an opportunity to run for president. But what of people from lower and middle class? Hasn’t it also been true that you had to have money to run for president? You had to come from the finest education? You needed to hob-knob with America’s elite, creating a network of power brokers and influence peddlers to propel you into the upper echelon of America’s political structure?

Many candidates were raised in modest circumstances, but their early drive and ambition begat success and opportunities not afforded to everyone. Even Barack Obama, who was raised modestly, was able to parlay his strengths and ambition into an education at Columbia and Harvard. Now THESE are presidential credentials and they opened the door to law firms and politically minded people who would help propel Senator Obama to where he is today.

So as the gender myth exploded on a stage in Dayton, Ohio, on Friday, August 29, 2008, so, too did the money myth. Governor Palin and her family represent the elimination of the last perceived barrier to access to political power in the United States. Educated at the University of Idaho (yawn), this “hockey-mom,” pageant queen, sports reporter and fisher-woman, married a man who is a member of US Steel Workers union and who works the oil fields in northern Alaska. This is hardly the Political A-team I’d pick to do combat with the likes of the Clintons or Bushes.

Does this fact mean anything important? Yes, two things, in fact—one certainty and one possibility. Certainly, any American child, even one from modest economic roots, should now be able to believe that there are no barriers to success in America, save those that are self-created. The possibility created by Governor Palin’s place on the ticket rests in what the Republicans do with this exciting fact. Can the GOP media marvels turn Sarah Palin into a greater identification between working class Americans and their party? Can Sarah Palin and her family attract the common American citizen by saying, without qualification, “vote for me. I am one of you. I GET it. I understand YOU.”

Then it will be up to the American voters to decide whether that inspires us or scares the hell out of us.

You've got to give credit where credit is due: Hillary Clinton is an excellent orator. She DELIVERED that speech extremely well. James Carville seemed ready to serve papers on his wife Mary and propose immediately to the NY Senator. Gushing though he was, Mr. Carville was dead on. Hillary Clinton can give a speech and she made those who preceded her look amateurish.However, the speech itself probably did little. She certainly had nothing to say that might sway Republicans to rethink their party affiliation. Furthermore, absent too were talking points that independents might find attractive. The speech seemed to have two purposes. First, convince her supporters to vote for Obama. But who else were they going to vote for? Those people involved enough in politics to be at or watch on tv the DNC convention are also likely to be people who will value their vote and not stay at home. Those who might elect not to vote at all, certainly were not in attendance and might well have been watching America's Got Talent and missed the speech completely. Secondly, and more importantly to Mrs. Clinton, the speech was littered with reminders of why she should remain relevant in the Democratic Party. This was a "You Picked the Wrong Guy" speech. Will we remember her or this speech in 4 or 8 years? I suspect not. The speech didn't brand itself with any tag lines that might survive the next few years. But it was a hell of an effort.