One of my guiding principles in writing this blog is to try to talk about things that other people aren’t talking about, but I have to break that rule to mention Senator Obama’s speech in Philadelphia yesterday.

In reading the papers this morning, the experts have all passed judgment on the speech’s content—it was magnificent, and I hope and expect that my boys will read about it when they take American history in school ten years from now. But not enough attention has been paid to how brave the speech was. It broke every rule in the political campaign handbook.

The political experts tell you to keep it simple. They also tell you that when confronted with an associate making offensive statements, quickly and succinctly distance yourself and try to move on. Senator Obama refused to do any of that. Instead, he gave an extraordinarily nuanced speech containing a number of single sentences which taken out of context—not that the Republicans would ever do that—could be used against him. He gave a speech that can only really be appreciated if you sit down, turn off American Idol, and listen for 30 minutes. And again, he didn’t have to do any of that to deal with the political problem that prompted the speech.

Although I think both Democratic presidential candidates would make good presidents, I was one of the first elected officials in Delaware to endorse Senator Obama when Joe Biden withdrew from the race. And when people asked me why, I told them that it wasn’t because of the stirring speeches that he gave at his rallies. Instead, it was because of the one-on-one interviews I had seen him give, where I was so impressed by the fact that he wasn’t tossing out poll-tested one liners in response to questions, but instead was giving thoughtful, candid answers that revealed him to have a superior intellect and a generous heart. The speech that he gave yesterday in Philadelphia was really the culmination of that, and it was an implicit challenge to Americans to demand much more of their political candidates. Let’s see how they respond.