I'm a writer and, in my better moments, a musician.
One of the things that I look for, in good writing and in good music, is thematic unity.
That is, does the entire piece, of writing or of music, hang together? Does the author or composer keep coming back to the main point, but in different ways? Does almost every word, or every note, reinforce the main idea?
If you have thematic unity, you pack a powerful punch.
Did President Obama pack some thematic unity tonight?
More below the forward-with-caution signal.
Two of the moments that will be tweeted and discussed tonight are the President's "horses and bayonets" line and his "the 1980s are calling."
Both play with the one word that the Obama campaign has made its theme of the campaign: FORWARD.
If you're trying to urge people to move forward, you have to show how the other side would take us back.
"Horses and bayonets" does this with military spending. It made Romney look like he wants to invest in the cavalry units that charged their last in the early days of WWII.
(Note also the subliminal link to Mrs. Romney, the equestrienne.)
And President Obama had one for foreign policy too.
"The 1980s are calling, and they want their foreign policy back." Get it? They want it back. As in the opposite of forward.
(By the way, if the 1980s are calling, do you think they're calling on a land line?)
To help tie it together, there was the President's remark about the economic policy of the 1920s and the social policy of the 1950s. Again, the President portrayed Romney as the voice of the past, the man who would lead us backward, to the same old mistakes that we've been through before.
Thematic unity. It made every word President Obama said count that much more.
Any other examples?
Remember: Forward! (Not back.) To meet the future! (Not the past.)