Peggy Noonan wrote an excellent op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, this before the selection of Joe Biden for Vice Presidential nominee. She discussed many topics, but the part about the acceptance speeches struck me as being spot on:

Mr. Obama's upcoming convention speech will be good. All Obama speeches are good. Not as interesting as he is—he is more compelling as a person than his words tend to be in text. But the speech will be good, and just in case it isn't good, people will still come away with an impression that it must have been, because the media is going to say it was, because they expect it to be, and what they expect is what most of them will see.

I suspect everyone has the convention speeches wrong. Everyone expects Mr. Obama to rouse, but the speech I'd watch is Mr. McCain's. He's the one with the real opportunity, because no one expects anything. He's never been especially good at making speeches.

The pressure during the convention is clearly on McCain. Obama is "The Great Orator" and will deliver an amazing speech, with all they hype surrounding not only the historic implications of being possibly the first African-American President, but also the fact that the speech will be held at Invesco Field, in front of some seventy-thousand supporters. Obama is expected to deliver, but McCain is a forgetful old man who isn't eloquent, and isn't fond of speeches. I don't expect McCain to have near the production value that Obama will, but if he stays on message and is to the point, he can rally the conservative base. The die-hard partisans will only see greatness in their respective candidate, but for the undecided and the independents, the speeches offer real promise compared to the plethora of attack ads.