From my vantage point Bush's speech last night was just okay.  It contained the now-standard outline of the administration's policy of aggressively fighting terrorism and promoting democracy abroad.  It had the usual programmatic touches on the domestic side - though I think most were surprised how light those touches were given some of the pre-speech spin.

Bush's delivery was solid and steady - pretty much par for the course - and he did a decent job of containing his anger and embarrassment when Democrats jumped on his line about failing to enact Social Security reform.  The final minute of the speech was by far the best - for those who were still paying attention at that point.

What I really want to talk about, however, is Tim Kaine.  Finally, Democrats showed some political intelligence. After two years of putting forth the hapless Nancy Pelosi along with a counterpart from the Senate (Daschle in '04 and Reid in '05), Democrats resisted calls from the foamy left for a Jack Murtha led suicide mission and instead selected the new Governor of Virginia. And Kaine delivered.

There's an old adage in sports: play smarter, not harder.  Kaine did that last night, deftly choosing not to try and "out tough" the President on national security and avoiding the NSA issue altogether, instead attacking the administration for incompetence and lack of results across a spectrum of issues: from Katrina to Iraq to deficits to education.  And he did it without looking mean or unreasonable. To the contrary, most people who watched probably came away with warm feelings about Kaine  - and more importantly, his message.

Kaine's address is important because it is a carbon copy of the pitch Mark Warner is going to make in 2008. In a nutshell, it can be boiled down to four words: less ideology, more results. While Republicans will continue to try and highlight stark differences on national security, Warner is going to try and blur those same lines.  He'll do this partly out of personal necessity - he lacks any significant foreign policy experience - but also because it is smart strategy. 

The American people don't want a 180-degree turn in foreign policy and they're going to be very suspicious of candidates who've expressed sympathy for the "retreat and defeat" mentality of the hard left.  What I think the American public can be convinced of, however, and what Mark Warner (or some other pragmatic Democrat) has a decent chance of selling, is that he can do a more effective job of adminstering the core of our policy and producing better results than another Republican could.

In the end, the strength of that argument would obviously depend on which Republican opponent Warner might face in a general election, but he'll certainly have a better chance of making that case than any of the other current Democrats considering a bid in 2008.