Hitchens nails it, in a piece on Barack Obama’s failure to surge ahead of John McCain even as McCain seems to flounder: Why is Obama so vapid, hesitant, and gutless? (Title of the day.)

Here’s a swift test. Be honest. What sentence can you quote from his convention speech in Denver? I thought so. All right, what about his big rally speech in Berlin? Just as I guessed. OK, help me out: Surely you can manage to cite a line or two from his imperishable address on race (compared by some liberal academics to Gettysburg itself) in Philadelphia? No, not the line about his white grandmother. Some other line. Oh, dear. Now do you see what I mean?