BARACK Obama lights up a stage. When he strode before the cameras to accept his party’s nomination Thursday night, you saw him ignite pure triumphalism among the Democrats … That incandescence obscured the menacing signs under which his party’s convention had begun three days earlier.

Tuesday had dawned uncharitably with a much-publicised new poll from The Hill newspaper: 52 per cent of likely voters saying the US is in “worse condition” now than in September 2008 — and 54 per cent saying the president doesn’t deserve another term…. the president’s Treasury Department announced, uncomfortably, that the national debt [is] up 50.7 per cent since he took office. By Thursday night, though, Obama was instilling sheer confidence at a gathering more successful than it might have been …

A week earlier, Romney and running mate Paul Ryan cast themselves as The Serious Ticket … They levelled with voters about their nation’s low-growth economy and their government’s high-growth spending. Democrats crafted a different mission statement — ours is The Empathy Ticket … Democratic speakers asserted their nominee’s connectedness to middle-class Americans….

No need for us to speculate on whether Americans were in a buying mood Thursday night: in the coming day’s polls … voters will deliver their aggregate yea or nay on these two conventions…. And now, enough of conventions until 2016. Bring on the debates, starting Oct 3. Put these candidates side by side, take away their teleprompters and let’s see what happens.—(Sept 7)