Just a few random thoughts on Barack Obama’s speech last night:

-- Well and good to go on the attack and not wait around like a dope for the right-wing hate machine to rip him apart as John Kerry did four years ago.

-- But how about a little something on the so-called War on Terror? Four years ago Bush and the Republicans presented themselves as the party of 9/11. They were the ones who were going to protect us from terrorists, and you can bet they will do it again. Yet Obama had hardly a word to say on the subject. Incredible.

-- Fine, he wore a flag lapel pin.

-- How about that weird backdrop – an arc of mock-classical columns with imitation mullioned windows in between, so that on television, in close-up, it looked like he was standing in front of some random window panes with one puny little flag directly behind him, as if growing out of his head? Doesn’t he know that these occasions call for an absolute massing of flags? Not window panes.

-- His opening was hardly enthusiastic: “Thank you – thank you so much – thank you – thank you so much – thank you – thank you – thank you – thank you so much,” as 80,000 people cheered and waved their “CHANGE” signs. Couldn’t he have pumped a little? Not his style, I guess. He looked no more fired up than if a row of feed-store owners in Iowa were handing him their business cards.

-- At times when talking about something serious, he seemed to be half-smiling, or trying to suppress a laugh, as if he were seeing a friend off-camera who was making funny faces at him. Was half of him amused at the performance of the other half?

-- It was a lot of people to address at a great distance and still try to sound natural. Aristotle thought a good population for a city-state was the size that could hear a man speak to them all at once. In his day that would have been the number of people in just one bank of bleachers at Ivesco Field.

-- He talked about many things, but what did he not talk about? First, protecting this country from terrorists. Second, the fact that his speech as the first African-American candidate for president chosen by a major party came on the anniversary of the great 1963 March on Washington. Third, torture. The fact that President Bush has promoted and encouraged the torture of prisoners of war and that John McCain, after earlier opposing the practice, now supports it.

I will have more to say on these solemn matters in my column in the Sunday Gazette, which I encourage you to buy.