Barack Obama succeeded in creating one of the most powerful tools of persuasion last night, he created a spectacle. A speech can be given by almost anyone at any time or place but a spectacle, a dazzling moment in time when an audience transcends their own self and becomes one with the collective whole to receive a message can be timeless. It is also powerful and dare I say dangerous.

I watched last night as an independent observer, a critic who was looking for substance over style. The giant crowd, the blinding lights, the history lost on me, the music and the fireworks, the tightly choreographed display were all kept outside of my mind.

I heard a good speech that was light on specifics and made major claims like “every dime has been accounted for” when Obama spoke of his economic policy. It was a claim Clinton attacked; McCain will too. I heard a claim that received much applause, that McCain was unwilling to take the fight to bin Laden’s cave let alone the gates of hell. I didn’t know what it meant or how Obama would be different. That was most of his foreign policy section.

Yet to those who were in attendance, including the parade of media hosts and pundits, the spectacle transcended.

Night four had all of the energy, the attacks, the power that was lacking in the first three days. In total you can see the creation of a wave in this ceremonial display. Let the audience build, let the networks guess, let the nation wonder. All for the sake of creating the spectacle and allowing the wave to overtake them.

I turned to MSNBC knowing they would drink the Kool Aid; they drank a gallon each and then some. Chris Matthews was screaming his adulation as Keith Olbermann did not even fight the urge to show his partisan stripes. I turned to FOX; they were the lone critical voice, as I knew they would be. I turned to CNN where they too were caught up in the thunder of the audience and swept away by the moment.

Will it all matter?

Today the media is as giddy over their candidate as they were when he was a relative unknown well over a year ago. He could have read the phone book and they would have declared it a triumph.

Yesterday the historic importance was there; it always will be. Regardless of the words spoken at Invesco Field yesterday this will always be “the first.” It will always be the moment when America did something spectacular in terms of healing its racial divide. To deny that would be more than watching as an independent observer or critic, it would be to deny the very nature of our reality.

Tomorrow is what matters. The Republicans will run their own convention, they will fight back against the message presented yesterday, they will return Obama to this realm and remove him from the transcendent experience that the media and his supporters have transported him to. Quite simply and frankly they will remind people Senator Obama is a bureaucrat, a politician, a partisan and not a preacher or a prophet.

Experience is a relative thing. If George Bush had given that speech on that stage he would have been lauded endlessly by academia as a coming of age demagogue. As someone whom is schooled in rhetoric and only recently parted from the academic world I know all too well the joy and excitement that will fill the liberal arts college classrooms in the coming weeks and many of the ivy leagues as well. I know the abandon and the way this speech will be ignored for what it is. A powerful spectacle, a powerful piece of propaganda by a politician running to win.

It was a dynamic moment, a decent speech, dare I say a little over dramatic but still an important moment in history. Day four was everything it needed to be and then some but it was also, in the end, just a speech by a politician, one that was very familiar to all of the speeches he has given thus far.

Now it is time for the Republicans to counter as the nation wakes up, shakes off the funny feeling that they witnessed something that their mind is still comprehending and get back to the business of creating solutions to problems.