The national conventions are political shows staged to influence voters. Soon, we can measure the bounce that the two tickets have received from their gatherings. But the more important question is whether the conventions establish arguments that are sustainable—over the course of the campaign and, for the winning ticket, over four years of governance. Four years ago, John Kerry's convention produced a narrative that proved unsustainable. George W. Bush's convention produced one that was sustainable until Katrina and the 2005-06 meltdown in Iraq—yet that may be redeemed in history by the success of the surge and the rapid response to Gustav.

How do you run for president as the candidate of the party of an unpopular president? We had one answer last year from Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who had actually served in the cabinet of the widely detested incumbent Jacques Chirac. He campaigned as the candidate of change who would reform France's headed-toward-bankruptcy welfare state. We had another answer from John McCain this week in St. Paul. The steps include:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his acceptance speech to the 1936 Democratic National Convention before a crowd of 100,000 people at Franklin Field in Philadelphia—one of three acceptance speeches given at stadiums (the other two were John Kennedy's in the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960 and Barack Obama's at Invesco Field in Denver last week). As Roosevelt was approaching the podium, out of view of the spectators, he reached out to shake hands with the elderly poet Edwin Markham and fell. Helpless to rise on his own, Roosevelt was furious; his speech text flew out of his hands. But aides quickly helped him rise and, on the arm of his son James Roosevelt, made his way to the podium and began speaking to the 100,000 in the stadium and a nationwide radio audience. But the pages of his speech text were out of order. Quickly, without a hint of irritation or hesitation, he reshuffled them while he was speaking. He was a pro. (You can read a good account in Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s The Politics of Upheaval, somewhere around page 567; I can't recall the exact page number).

Sarah Palin's speech to the Republican National Convention last night was a home run. A star was born. While the Obama campaign has attempted to disparage it by saying that it was written by a former George W. Bush speechwriter, Matthew Scully—and thus link it to the McCain=Bush meme that was one of the chief ideas thrust forward in their convention in Denver last week—it cannot be dismissed as such. Scully reportedly had written a generic draft that could have been used by whichever vice presidential candidate McCain had chosen. But once Palin was the choice, she and Scully reportedly worked together and produced a draft that was brilliantly designed to promote the McCain-Palin ticket, and not to look backwards and justify the Bush administration. This will surprise no one who knows the independent-minded Scully (who left the Bush team to write a book on the responsibility human beings have to animals) and a woman who was described, by Fred Thompson on Tuesday night, as the only major-party nominee, with the possible exception of Theodore Roosevelt, who knew how to field-dress a moose. According to accounts I heard, they worked together quite satisfactorily and produced a text that reflected the VP nominee's convictions and the ticket's political imperatives.

ST. PAUL—The levees in New Orleans were not breached, and Republicans had the first night of their convention on the second night of the convention. The convention managers have had to rearrange the order of speakers and the schedule, and they managed to come up with an effective presentation.

ST. PAUL—In thinking about Sarah Palin's nomination, let me note a phenomenon: the woman who spends much of her adult life as a stay-at-home mother, and then takes a position of leadership and does better at it than her previous background might suggest. Example one: Katharine Graham, who took over as head of the Washington Post and Newsweek in the most wrenching of circumstances and performed more than ably. She tells the story better than anyone else in her elegantly written memoir Personal History. Example two: Madeleine Albright, who performed credibly for four years as Secretary of State. (I haven't read her memoir Madam Secretary.)

The Republican National Convention was mostly rained out Monday. But it did one thing that may prove to be of great significance in the 2012 cycle and beyond. As part of the rules it adopted, the convention authorized the party to appoint a commission with authority to change the delegate selection rules. This is a departure from past Republican practice. Up to and including 2004, the Republican National Convention was the final authority on delegate selection rules, and the party had no legal authority to change them over the next four years, as the national Democratic Party has had. The perspicacious Marc Ambinder has the details. Ambinder sees this as a power grab that will antagonize the grassroots of the party; I have a somewhat different take.

Unfortunately, the Republican commission will have no authority to displace Iowa and South Carolina as the first primaries in the schedule. It will, apparently, have authority to allow earlier caucuses to compete with Nevada, if not Iowa, on the theory that national convention delegates are not actually selected in precinct caucuses (technically, these caucuses only select delegates to county or state conventions, who in turn select the actual national convention delegates).