Daniel Finkelstein

Here is what Sarah Palin and her speechwriter had on their side: a cheering crowd, a big occasion, low expectations and the ability to use lines and stories that she had rehearsed a thousand times but her audience had never heard. Yet the speech would have failed had it not been for one other advantage – Sarah Palin is a natural.

I have written speeches for dozens of politicians. It is, believe me, quite possible to write a bad speech that lets down a good speaker. It is, however, almost impossible to write a good speech that makes a bad speaker look talented. Those who worked on the script did a solid, professional job – the arguments were clear, the jokes serviceable, the applause lines paced correctly. They resisted the temptation to make themselves look good with flashy rhetoric while making her look unnatural.

What made it a triumph was Mrs Palin’s ability to deliver it. Part of this ability was technical. She faced the audience squarely, she spoke clearly, she was too disciplined to ramble. And like Barack Obama, Mrs Palin had mastered a modern speaking skill that is harder than it looks – she could use an Autocue. In Philadelphia in 2000 George Bush read his speech as if he was watching a video tennis game.

Her real skill was more than technical. She had charm and she could make the unreasonable sound momentarily reasonable.

Watching her, it was possible for the first time to understand why in some interminable meeting someone in the McCain camp had blurted out: “Hey guys, how about we try that woman from Alaska, whatsername, as running-mate?”

Daniel Finkelstein, former political speech writer

Andrew Billen

Sarah Palin’s best line was the one that was not in the transcript and may have been spontaneous. “By the way, do you know what they say is the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick.”

It had been applied liberally to Mrs Palin’s pleasing face, less hockey mom than Dr Melfi from The Sopranos or the Specsavers model, a sexy lady who knows it but won’t show it.

Her hair was down but her neckline was up. More importantly, her teeth had not only been whitened, but sharpened, the better to sink into Barack Obama, that serial autobiographer with his “Styrofoam Greek columns” and his “self-designed presidential seals”. The hall loved the small-town gal for that.

If Mr Obama has an overdeveloped sense of theatre, her performance was panto. He wanted to raise income tax. Boo! Raise payroll taxes. Boo! Raise the death tax. Boo! Her sister had opened a service station. Cheer! Her son, Track, was going to war. Cheer!

Her husband, Todd, got a standing ovation, although whether for being a world champion snow machine racer or a little bit Inuit was not clear. Maybe just for endurance: “We met in high school and two decades and five children later he’s still my guy.”

For a curtain call she was joined on stage by her ever-growing family and John McCain. “And what a beautiful family,” he enthused. That’s right, Senator. Drag them into it.

Andrew Billen, television critic

Bronwen Maddox

You could kill a bear at 200 yards with Sarah Palin’s voice. It is a weapon for which you should need a licence. I heard it first on the radio and winced; an octave higher than Hillary Clinton’s, it made a screech out of: “I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country”.

Seeing the performance in full, however, you have to acknowledge its power, which has made her the superstar of the Republican convention. She joins those women such as Diana, Princess of Wales and Carla Bruni who were picked to fill a gap at the side of a prominent man and promptly upstaged him.

It takes an aggressive charm to deliver heavy punchlines, one after the other, relaxed and secure in the applause. She was arch but stopped the right side of flirty. And she looked great; who else would dare wear grey for her big speech? It is a relief from the brick-orange trouser suit of Mrs Clinton and the blocks of red, blue and fuchsia in Congress.

The effect was bullying, however. You would not want to be on the Parent Teacher Association with her. Everything was a lecture, delivered with index finger raised. Osama bin Laden has made that his hallmark too, and Margaret Thatcher sometimes, but it is not, for good reason, a common political technique.

Nor is passing a baby with Down’s syndrome around cheering crowds.

Her sarcasm was plain nasty. And her railing at the media, at all Democrats, at Washington, was disingenuous. Mrs Palin portrays herself as the innocent outsider but she is a very worldly queen of her domain.

Bronwen Maddox, Chief Foreign Commentator

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