In other words, a naturally straightforward man was trying to perform a dance that his many detractors have long argued would prove too nimble for him.

But the senator from Arizona did well. Contrary to the grave Conventional Wisdom of the mainstream pundits over the previous week, his task was made immeasurably easier by the out-of-the-ballpark success of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's speech the previous night.

For Palin scathingly skewered the lack of experience of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois compared with her own record over the past years in running Alaska. She also won the rapturous support of the conservative and devoutly Christian traditional core base of the modern Republican Party. As a result, she freed McCain to go back to the centrist mainstream of American politics and society, where he has always been happiest and most appreciated by the general public.

McCain delivered the first half of his speech somewhat stiffly. He appeared, amazingly enough for such a veteran senator and eminent figure on the national stage, a little shy, though that may have been no bad thing for him. But he delivered a well-crafted argument, contrasting himself with Obama concisely and clearly. And he took the high road throughout.

The extraordinary ad hominem animus and even pettiness of so many Democratic and liberal attacks on Palin over the previous week rebounded to McCain's advantage Thursday night. Those attacks already had given Palin the opening to deliver a far more stinging attack on Obama's competence and record Wednesday night at the convention than McCain has ever felt free to do himself.

Therefore, McCain was free to take the high road with his speech Thursday night, and, as a consequence, he was able for the first time in this entire marathon campaign to challenge Obama for "the vision thing," as former President George Herbert Walker Bush famously described the uplift of rhetoric and hope.

McCain appealed not to old-fashioned patriotism but to a renewed and purified 21st century version of it. Like President Ronald Reagan, he offered a patriotic vision that was generous, can-do, tolerant and inclusive. Clearly, McCain was appealing to independent and centrist voters who are fed up with partisan politics. He made clear he will work with anyone, and his long record of bipartisanship in the Senate gave credibility to that pledge in a way no other current GOP major figure could hope to match.

McCain knew he also had to retain a conservative base that he needs but that has never trusted him -- which is why Palin is so hugely important for his prospects.

Also, like most of the other speakers at the convention, McCain had to pretend that President George W. Bush, the man who beat him for the Republican presidential nomination eight years ago in what was often an exceptionally ugly campaign, did not exist and that the past eight years were delivered courtesy of some other party.

To have any hope of victory in November, the Republicans under McCain need to at least appear to remake themselves, but actually doing so to any great degree would almost certainly split the party. That was the dilemma McCain faced.

As analyst Michael Gerson wrote Thursday: Since by all rights the Republicans should lose in November, McCain, to have any shot of winning, needed to deliver a speech that made people say, "I never heard a Republican say that before."

McCain, in fact, took a slightly different and arguably far more effective tack in his speech, however: It appeared calibrated to make centrist swing voters, hard-core Republicans and even many Democrats say, "I've never heard that from any Republican since Ronald Reagan."

McCain therefore took care to avoid being as combative in tone as his fellow Republicans in St. Paul had been before him. He promised to work with whoever has the best ideas. And he offered the promise of "change, change, change" with far more credibility and conviction than was expected of him -- although it should have been no surprise, given his feisty independent record during his decades in the Senate.

A year ago McCain was written off as a feasible presidential candidate. He was out of money and struggling to get any traction, while former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney seemed to have the inside track and Republicans were begging for "real" conservatives -- a definition that to them excluded McCain -- to enter the race.

But McCain proved his legendary Scotch-Irish grit. He didn't let those obstacles stop him from outworking the opposition. He earned his party's nomination for president the hard way.

Now the conventions are over and the real campaign finally begins. McCain still has an uphill battle against the charismatic, superlatively organized and tactically masterful Obama. But he comes out of St. Paul riding high, clearly in contention and with a far better chance of an upset victory than anyone imagined.