As predicted earlier, the RNC got back on track yesterday afternoon. Just as I hit the floor, the delegates were standing still for a panoramic convention photo. "Please, don't move," the moderator pleaded with them. This massive game of Red Light, Green Light went on for a minute or so, while the 360 camera did its stuff. Then the delegates were allowed to drop back into their seats and relax. An interlude of New Age music came blasting out of the speakers, followed by Journey's "Don't Stop Believing." Back and forth swayed the placards: "Country First" (in blue) and "Service" (in brown). Even more touching was the profusion of handmade signs up in the bleachers. "Raising McCain," read one. "McCain Is Purpose Driven," declared another, alluding to the candidate's suave performance at the Saddleback Forum. Then came a short video presentation, with rapid nods to the Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation, Barbara Bush (thunderous applause), and Ronald Reagan (even more thunderous applause). "America is a love story," intoned the narrator, who turned out to be none other than Robert Duvall.

In a way, the modern convention is a tribute to our diminishing attention span. The big guns are still permitted some quality time on the podium. But generally, these events seem to have been scripted by MTV. So the speech by Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota was an exception to the rule. He dwelled on the urban blight that had disfigured Saint Paul by the time he became mayor back in the mid-1990s. "Crime was rising," he recalled. "And downtown, we had sex shops and the nation's only failed McDonald's." ("Oh, we have one of those too," said a woman in the West Virginia delegation.) By association, at least, these sins were laid at the door of those moral relativists, the Democrats. Then Coleman sounded the battle cry for November: "We'll paint the entire Mississippi watershed John McCain Red. And we'll win the White House!"

Much applause. Then the pace picked up again. Victoria Blackstone led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance. Miles McPherson, a former defensive back for the San Diego Chargers and now the founder of the Miles Ahead Ministries, shared a prayer and a homily with the audience. His text for the day was from Isaiah 66: "The heavens are my throne, the earth is my footstool. What kind of house can you build for me; what is to be my resting place?" (The verse offers its measure of affirmation. It also promises to punish evil in a manner that made me think twice about the pulled pork sandwich I had the other day: "They who eat swine's flesh, loathsome things and mice, shall all perish with their deeds and their thoughts, says the Lord.")

Next up was Ashley Gunn, a junior at the Wharton School of Business and founder of Students Aiding Indigent Families (SAIF). This nonprofit buys homes, renovates them, then sells them to poor families at a discount. Since 2005, SAIF has put a roof over the head of five families while generating more than $100,000 in revenue--an impressive performance for a graduate student, and all accomplished, Gunn assured the crowd, "without the aid of government spending!" Here was the crucial point. Good works were aided and abetted by the free market. Elephantine entitlement programs, of the type so beloved by a certain political party, accomplished nothing. "Government is not a philanthropic organization," Gunn reminded the crowd. "Government is not a church." There were speeches aplenty to come: Fred Thompson's cracker-barrel oration (with a heartfelt biographical sketch of the candidate) and Joe Lieberman's hop, skip, and jump across the aisle. But sometimes it's the small things that draw the partisan lines most sharply. And Gunn's speech, which came and went in an instant, made one thing (as a great Republican liked to say) perfectly clear: compassion is supposed to be an individual affair. Group hugs? Leave that to the Democrats.