If we didn't know better, we'd suspect all this was a Republican plot cooked up in the dead of night by Karl Rove, who'd gathered all these dignitaries in some cellar at the beginning of the week and put them up to it - the E. J. Dionnes and Maureen Dowds and their fellow trendsetters What possessed them? We can think of only one explanation for their rush to judgment, and away from good sense: incipient panic. Now, having heard from Sarah Palin, we can understand the reason for it. She was everything they must have feared in a Republican candidate for vice president, and then some.

They say a president's first important decision is his choice of a vice presidential candidate, that whom he picks says a great deal about his judgment. Any more questions now about John McCain's judgment? Or about Sarah Palin's? She went out on that vast, empty stage and took it - and the country - over.

Yes, her speech was well written, well delivered, well crafted. But it was the small touches that impressed the most - the womanly touches of someone who knows who she is. And how to project it. The way she waved only one arm at a time; no two-armed Nixonian sign of triumph for this contender, thank you. The occasional biblical allusion, as if it were no big deal, just the way she naturally talks, and thinks - and there's no cause to be embarrassed about it. And when she demolished her opponents, she was nice about it. As mom would say, she went out there and just niced 'em to death. Cut Œem off at the knees and they thought they were being seated for dinner.

It's hard to think of anything a pro would change about her acceptance speech. Or her delivery of it. Most important, the speech was in character: completely devastating, completely ladylike. But not just anybody could have given it. You have to be Sarah Palin to talk like Sarah Palin.

There was no end of small touches to admire. Her oblique reference to her current family problem (if you've got a family, you know there's always a current one) and blessing. The way she spoke not just for Wasilla, Alaska, but for all the Wasillas - the Midways and Springfields and Pine Bluffs and Walnut Ridges. In short, for the small-town America in all of us, whether we live in one or not. Because the small town is inseparable from the American psyche, imbibed with Mark Twain if not through actual experience. There's a Hannibal, Mo., down deep in all of us. And who's more of a community activist than a good mayor of a good small town?

Yes, all in all, a masterful speech, one worthy of - and this is high praise - Barack Obama. And she didn't even need those faux Greek columns.