Obama is a greatly gifted orator whose words offer little beyond vapid leftist bromides. He won local and state elections giving zero push-back to the Chicago machine that raised him up. Now, on the national stage, with utterly no tangible (as opposed to electoral) accomplishments, he has beaten a Clinton, for heaven’s sake. He has bewitched a fawning national press. And there he was last week accepting the Democratic nomination before 80,000 in the Broncos stadium on a stage fashioned by Britney Spears’ set designer — the whole hosanna scene suggesting the main player’s ascension to Olympus.

McCain is hardly Obama’s rhetorical equal. Yet his achievements and experience run circles around Obama’s, and McCain embraces the preferable political philosophy — by far. His party, under Reagan a vehicle for ideas and reform, has grown leaden and too-often corrupt. And his president’s popularity seems each day to set new records for low.

So?

So with Obama getting maximum attention, McCain had to do something. He needed to change the campaign dynamic. Simultaneously he needed to fire up Republican partisans and — to invite further consideration by independents — somehow break public fixation on the Obama spectacle.

Do we know what she believes, or has said, about anything?

Try these Palin quotes: (1) “You can be a reformer and a conservative.” (2) “America needs leadership devoted to the public interest — not to the special interests.” (3) “I believe in a strong military and sound energy policy.” And (4) “It’s nonsense not to tap a safe domestic source of oil” — and America has those sources in abundance.

Will McCain’s Statue-of-Liberty pass — his Palin pick — work?

Obama-bound bloggers and pressies will do all they can to see that it doesn’t. Yet so far it evidently has, big-time. Stay tuned.

And long-term?

With an Obama defeat, or a one-term McCain presidency, don’t bet against a tilt pitting Sarah Palin against Hillary Clinton — or maybe against that other Clinton with dynastic potential, Chelsea — in 2012.