Peggy Noonan

The vibe of this convention has been weird. There has been a constant sense of something impending, some doom about to be delivered. What everyone is hungry for, hopeful for, will be so grateful for, is: a sparkling opening at 8 p.m. that will chase the clouds away. A great Christie speech, a line, a joke that lets the crowd let out its pent-up roar. An Ann Romney speech that leaves delegates saying, at 1 in the morning in the bar of the Hyatt, “We did the right thing. We picked the right one.”

We are in Florida, we are near the cape, Neil Armstrong left us this week, and TV has been full of old videotape of rockets lifting. Now more than ever delegates are saying, “Light this candle. Come on and light this thing.”

It is good that Joe Biden is going to the Republican National Convention to hold high the flag of his party. People make fun of his gaffes, of his embarrassing verbal forays, but he’s no fool and he knows how to take it to the other guy. The speech he is working on, to be given in the heart of downtown, just across from the convention site, will be stirring and stentorian: “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Tampa, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, ‘Ich bin ein Tampon.'”

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I wish that were mine. It came in the mail from a Hollywood screenwriter, one of the gifted conservatives who quietly toil there.

This, amazingly enough, is how the campaign feels at the moment: both neck and neck and wide open. A week ago a longtime elected official, who’s been making the rounds in his swing state, told me he thought the national polls were correct and yet wrong. Americans aretelling pollsters they’ve already made up their minds, they know who they’re for. But, he said, he’s seeing a number of people who don’t feel fully satisfied with their decision, who aren’t certain they’ve made the right choice. They may change their minds. “Ten or 15%”, he guessed, “are still persuadable,” still open to argument.

If he is right, that’s big. It would be in line with the singular nature of this election year, and would explain what has been, so far, a fervor deficit.

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So, Tampa. No one can guess the highlights in advance, but some hopes:

That Gov. Chris Christie brings his Garden State brio, that he is bodacious, funny and pointed, and that people say, the next day, “Man, Obama—Christie really opened up a can of Jersey on him.”

That Sen. Rob Portman, whom many thought would, like Mr. Christie, have been a very solid vice presidential nominee, will get the best kind of revenge, which is constructive revenge. He is well placed to do for Mitt Romney what Ronald Reagan did for Barry Goldwater in 1964, which was make the case better than the nominee ever did.

It would be good to see Sen. Marco Rubio and talk about the meaning of things, the meaning of politics. He’s a young man in the big game. Why?

Paul Ryan will be exciting, somehow you know that in advance. But he should perhaps keep in the back of his mind something that hasn’t been mentioned much. People are saying—not as a criticism, not as a compliment, but musingly—two words: “He’s young.”

They’ve just had a bad experience with young, with President Obama. Mr. Ryan stands for big change in terms of programs, and people will be inclined to want some years in such a person. So he and his people should consider that 42 can be a plus or a minus, and think about how to enhance the former and lessen the latter.

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How will voters judge Mr. Romney’s speech? The answer comes in some questions:

Is it fresh? Is it true? Does it substantiate—add substance to—what we think we know of Mitt Romney? Does it deepen and broaden our understanding of him? Does it make us, as we listen, begin to see him as a possible president? Presidents are in our face 24 hours a day now. Is this someone we’d let in our living rooms for four years? Can he inspire?

Free advice is worth the price, and here goes:

If you want to lead America, you have to speak to the fix we’re in, and that means addressing spending. But economic probity has a friend called economic growth, and that is what people care so much about—jobs, opportunity, the competitive advantage conferred by good policies. Are we a vital nation able to grow, to take on our true size again?

Emphasis is everything. Emphasize dynamism.

Mr. Romney shouldn’t just repeat what he thinks but tell people why he thinks it, what life has taught him that formed his views.

He shouldn’t shy away from religion. Why should he? This is America. It was in the practice of his faith that Mr. Romney came, as a bishop of the Mormon church, to become involved in helping those with lives very different from his own. In an interview Thursday night on the Catholic network EWTN, he told anchor Raymond Arroyo that as a “small-p pastor” he learned a great deal about those who feel under siege, lonely, left out. What did he learn? How did his church help him learn it?

He must use humor, for three reasons. One is that wit breaks through and sharpens all points. Another is that it is natural to him. Before the voting in Iowa, he wryly told a friend that the caucuses were like the LaBrea Tar Pits: “No one comes out the way they went in.” On a conference call recently, he asked a question of his staff. No one answered. Mr. Romney waited. “Bueller? Bueller?” he said, in a perfect imitation of Ben Stein.

Third, President Obama can’t stand to be made fun of. His pride won’t allow it, hisamour propre cannot countenance a joke at his own expense. If Mr. Romney lands a few very funny lines about the president’s leadership, Mr. Obama will freak out. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?

A small point with practical significance. Convention crowds are revved up. They want to stomp and cheer. During Mr. Romney’s speech, they’ll go crazy applauding and yelling. This is fun in the hall but tedious for the viewer at home. At some point Mr. Romney should signal, by his demeanor and through his text, that everyone should calm down so he can talk to America. Applause line, cheers, applause line—that’s not political discourse, it’s a ticket to nowhere.

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Finally, the big broadcast networks plan to give the Republicans (and the Democrats) only one hour a night of TV coverage.

They used to give all night, long as it took, and treat the proceedings with respect. What they give now, to the people of a great democracy fighting for its economic life in an uncertain world, is . . . an hour a night? For a national political convention?

This is a scandal. Mock them for it. This isn’t Edward R. Murrow in charge of the news, it’s Gordon Gekko in charge of programming.

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Much is uncertain, no one knows what will happen this year, how it will turn out. But when I think of Mr. Romney’s speech I find myself thinking of Alan Shepard.

It’s May 5, 1961, in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and everyone’s fussing. This monitor’s blinking and that one’s beeping and Shepard is up there, at the top of a Redstone rocket, in a tiny little capsule called Friendship 7. Mission Control is hemming and hawing: Should we stay or should we go? Finally Shepard says: “Why don’t you fix your little problem and light this candle?”

That’s what a good speech and a good convention right now can do. There’s a great race ahead. Make it come alive. Come on and light this candle.

Americans are not ideologues. They think ideology is something squished down on their heads from on high, something imposed on them by big thinkers who create systems we’re all supposed to conform to. Americans are more interested in philosophy, which bubbles up from human beings, from tradition and learned experience, and isn’t imposed.

Lately we are hearing a bit about ideology, but the work of a great political philosopher, Edmund Burke, is more pertinent. Burke respected reality, acknowledged human nature, and appreciated political context. In “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” he wrote, “Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.”

That’s what Republicans and especially conservatives in this heady moment have to keep in mind: the circumstances.

Here are America’s as the election unfolds: We are in economic crisis. People are afraid. Unemployment is high. Half the people in the country receive some sort of monthly check from the government—Social Security, veterans benefits, educational aid, disability, welfare. Why this is and what it portends is debate for another day. What is important now is that a lot of people don’t feel they can afford to lose anything of what’s coming in.

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Normally, Republican candidates for national office get to be either stupid or evil. That’s how the media and Democrats tag them. But they won’t be able to tag Paul Ryan as either, because he’s too well known as smart and decent.

So they will attempt to tag him as an ideologue, and this may take on some force. He’s “extreme,” “radical,” his policy prescriptions are driven not by his knowledge of life as its lived but by abstractions, by something he read in a book or saw on a flow chart. And he wants to cut everything. He’s a mad-ideologue-bean counter.

Republicans know how meaningful this campaign became when Mr. Ryan was picked: He changed its subject matter just by showing up. And he is right in his central insight, which is his central political reason for being: America, to be strong again, must get its spending and revenues more closely aligned. It is irresponsible of the Democrats to ignore and punt and play with this great challenge.

But Republicans must understand, also, that the race probably just became more of an uphill battle, because Paul Ryan has been very specific about what must and can be done. Americans will give Romney-Ryan a fair hearing, but everything has to go right now, everyone has to bring their A game.

Republicans should keep this picture in mind. There’s a woman on a porch in eastern Ohio and she has a dog and likes guns and supports the NRA and sees herself as more or less conservative. She assumed she’d vote for Romney and not that big loser in the White House. But she’s hearing about Ryan and she’s hearing the word “cuts.” She knows spending is out of control and she’s worried about deficits and debt. But she’s on disability and her husband’s illness is being handled by Medicare, and she’s wondering: “Do these guys really understand my life? Do they know how it is for us?” She’s getting concerned, and not only for herself but her neighbors and friends. People are not just protective of themselves, they’re loyal to others.

Ryan is associated with the word cutting. Republicans will have to make people believe the word to associate with him is “saving,” that the Romney-Ryan ticket wants to save entitlement programs that aren’t sustainable, that will in time collapse unless we impose ruinous taxes or continue with ruinous deficits.

Republicans have just a few weeks to get across—on the stump, at the conventions—that they’re trying to save Medicare, not kill it, that they’re the lifeguard, not the shark.

Advice?

Go for broke on your fidelity to the safety net and your insistence on saving it. The other guy does nothing but talk, pose and let the crisis worsen.

Stick together. Romney and Ryan on the stump were dynamic and drew huge crowds. They look stronger, more substantive together. Now they’ve split up, which is standard: You can cover twice as much ground that way. But there’s nothing standard about this year. They should break precedent and campaign together. It’s Ryan with Romney, Romney with Ryan. They balance, enhance and moderate each other. One is long accused of being an opportunist, the other charged with being an idealist. Keep them together, it’s an interesting package.

The more you see of Paul Ryan, the more you understand and appreciate his thinking. Get him doing long interviews, not short ones—full hours on the Sunday shows, sit-downs with Bret Baier and Charlie Rose. This is high risk. He does high risk.

With all the PAC money floating around, we’ve entered the Golden Age of mudslinging. When Democrats run the spot where a young guy throws grandma in the wheelchair off the cliff—well, don’t wait for that ad.

Republicans should do their own spot, now—one that’s comic and sweet. Grandma in the wheelchair is speeding on a downward slope toward a cliff. She looks terrified. Suddenly a young guy who looks like Clark Kent—that is, like Paul Ryan—springs forward, puts his body between the wheelchair and the edge, and stops it. She looks up at him, smiles, touches his face with her hand. He smiles, turns the chair around and begins to push her back to safety. “Romney-Ryan. Trying to get things back on firm ground.”

Answer the “Does he understand my life?” question head on. How many of Mr. Ryan’s constituents are on some kind of benefits? They keep electing him by healthy margins. There must be a reason. Find them. “My name is Kate, I receive the Social Security I earned, and my husband receives the veteran’s benefits he earned. In these hard times we rely on them to live. We would never trust things to someone who didn’t have our interests at heart. We’ve trusted Paul 14 years. He never let us down. He won’t let America down.”

Republican ads have to be clever, funny or moving. A central fact of this political year is that everyone’s spending billions on ads, yet campaign consultants fear no one’s watching them anymore—there’s too many, they’re propaganda, people use them for bathroom breaks. That sound you hear after the Obama attack ad is not cheers, it’s toilets flushing.

Romney-Ryan should spend some money the old-fashioned way, not only on 60-second spots but on half-hour and full-hour live, voter-in-the-round question-and-answer sessions. And, of course, speeches. In 1976, Ronald Reagan was finished in the North Carolina primary until he borrowed the money to buy a half-hour of airtime the night before the voting. He ran a taped speech that turned everything around. Speeches are powerful! And Paul Ryan was once a speechwriter. For Jack Kemp, God bless him.

Mitt Romney just threw a long ball. Fine. The GOP will have to play an audacious, longball game.

An old cliché of politics has never been truer: “They don’t care what you know unless they know that you care.” Or, it’s the circumstances, stupid.