The Note: Enter John

ST. PAUL, Minn., Sept. 4, 2008— -- ST. PAUL, Minn. --

Sen. John McCain has gotten the scrambled race he wanted when he turned to Gov. Sarah Palin. So this is his party now -- what does he do with it?

John McCain's convention gets to be about John McCain again (or maybe for the first time), as one of the strangest political gatherings in memory comes to a close Thursday in St. Paul with Cindy and John as your highlights.

McCain's teammate in this endeavor capped a weeklong journey from obscurity -- across Quayle Quarry and Eagleton Pass and back (no wonder Trig's hair was out of place) -- with a powerful speech that keeps her in the image game.

To wear out some imagery, the hockey mom knows how to lace up the skates -- and can deliver a check into the boards, lipstick intact.

The speech wasn't soaring or specific, but it didn't have to be. It wasn't perfect or polished, but neither is she (and that's the point).

We stayed earthbound with Sarah Palin. Yet a beleaguered party has found its inspiration -- a person who makes Republicans proud to call themselves Republicans again, even if she's someone that the "elite media" (more unpopular at the RNC than Harry Reid?) doesn't quite know what to do with. (That applies maybe even to those who have yet to learn the perils of the hot mic.)

"Ms. Palin's appearance electrified a convention that has been consumed by questions of whether she was up to the job, as she launched slashing attacks on Mr. Obama's claims of experience," Elisabeth Bumiller and Michael Cooper write in The New York Times.

"Palin pitched herself as the product of small-town America and laced her address with sarcastic digs at Sen. Obama. She said it is his experience, not hers, that is lacking, and she embraced the role of leading the attack against the Democratic ticket," Michael D. Shear writes in The Washington Post. "Palin focused on almost every tactical misstep Obama's campaign has made, painting a caricature of the Democrat as an out-of-touch elitist and a lightweight celebrity with no sense of what matters to average Americans."

Even Sen. Joe Biden was impressed -- well, sort of.

"She had a great night. I thought she had a very skillfully written, and very skillfully delivered speech," Biden, D-Del., told ABC's Robin Roberts on "Good Morning America" Thursday. "I was impressed by the speech, but I was also impressed by what I didn't hear spoken. . . . They were good, funny lines -- I'm glad they weren't about me."

Biden doesn't like the "sexist" press treatment: "The truth is, some of the stuff that the press has said about Sarah and that others have said about the governor, I think, are outrageous."

(As for whether Palin's attacks on Obama mean Biden will go after McCain: "I'm not going to change my tone, because the way I feel about John McCain is the way I feel about him.")

This, McCain could live with: "Palin's speech may overshadow even Mr. McCain's performance, with Republicans saying it was the most important event of the four-day convention a chance, for better or worse, to set the conventional wisdom on her for the rest of the campaign," Stephen Dinan writes in the Washington Times.

So if the GOP has found its hero, what of its longtime favorite antihero? McCain gets his night -- and with it turns a corner. (And might he roam the hall during his speech? That's the big rumor inside the convention hall -- around that renovated-overnight, theater-in-the-round stage, per ABC's George Stephanopoulos.")

McCain will seek to "recalibrate the central message of his campaign and the line of attack he plans to use against Sen. Barack Obama in the two months before Election Day," Shear and Robert Barnes write in The Washington Post. "McCain will seek to recast the Republican Party's brand in his own maverick image, staking his claim to the presidency on a depiction of himself as a political renegade in an attempt to overcome what he will paint as his opponent's more ephemeral call for change."

Said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., summing up the message: "Wake up! We're a party in retreat. We need to regroup, change the way we are doing business."

It's Mark Salter's night: "The speech delves into some of Sen. McCain's heroics as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and episodes from his personal history, but it isn't completely a biographical address, Mr. Salter said," Elizabeth Holmes writes in The Wall Street Journal. "One big challenge is Sen. McCain's delivery. Although he excels in the informal setting of a town-hall meeting and in back and forth with questioners, Sen. McCain tends to be wooden when speaking from a prepared text."

"The key: reasserting his credentials as a maverick who's often willing to buck his party while also framing a fall campaign that challenges Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, over who could really change Washington," McClatchy's Steven Thomma writes.

"What has yet to play out is which McCain will show himself most during the long run to Election Day -- a McCain who will push and prod his party into rehabilitating a brand that has suffered during the last four years, or a McCain who will need to position himself more in line with the party and make peace with fellow lawmakers that he frequently angered," CQ's Jonathan Allen writes.

McCain has no doubts about his partner: "The people of Alaska have vetted her," McCain told ABC's Charles Gibson. "She has been in charge and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities."

And, taking it right to Obama: "I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America."

And Cindy McCain leads the charge in labeling her treatment: "I think it's insulting. I think it's outlandish. . . . But because she's a woman, they've decided to pick on her. And I think it's wrong," Mrs. McCain told Diane Sawyer, on ABC's "Good Morning America" Thursday. "In my opinion, what's going on right now, I truly believe, is sexism."