The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

Goodbye, Britney and Hello, Boot Scootin'

There was no Britney in Barack Obama's convention speech, which was a loaded triple-bacon burger of substance, quite restrained in its use of emotion, lest anyone accuse him of blinding us with mere rhetorical skill born of clear thinking, in a text he wrote himself. There were a few funny lines but a bunch of important ones, and several that distilled the election:

On energy policy, it was brave of him to say, as he did, that "Washington's been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years, and John McCain has been there for 26 of them. In that time, he's said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil as the day that Senator McCain took office. Now is the time to end this addiction, and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution. Not even close.'' A lot of people don't want to hear that, but it's true and must be said.

And on terrorism, it was bold to suggest that John McCain—who, as you might have heard, was a POW in Vietnam—is going to follow the Bushie playbook of talking tough but marching off in the wrong direction: "John McCain likes to say that he'll follow Bin Laden to the Gates of Hell—but he won't even go to the cave where he lives. ... You don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq.''

But for me, the most important passages of all were these: First, he said that he welcomes a big fat fight over policy differences (and even "temperament''—meaning that all of you who worry he's gonna be too nice to McCain can put your shoulders down). "But what I will not do,'' he said, "is suggest that the senator takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism. The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America—they have served the United States of America. So I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.''

Which is not only right but smart, because he's calling McCain out and at the same time reminding us why he caught our eye in the first place, at the convention four years ago, when he talked about how blue and red (and green and orange) voters really are tired of those tired and wasteful divisions.

Then he went beyond that generality of "c'mon, people now, smile on your brother ...'' and spelled out what common ground would look like: "We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country. The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than for those plagued by gang violence in Cleveland, but don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free of discrimination. Passions fly on immigration, but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers.''

Each of these sentences contains hot-button words that most political consultants would urge clients to avoid at all costs, but that's what was so impressive; he is betting that voters really are smart enough and grown-up enough to want the common-sense approach they always say they want.

Then, in what I took to be a wry underscoring of this theme that patriotism isn't a red or blue thing, the note he ended on, literally, was from a country song, Brooks & Dunn's "Only in America," which George W. Bush played constantly on the campaign trail in '04. Even as a fan of country music, however, I hope this was a one-time joke; "Boot Scootin' Boogie'' just holds too many bad memories.