NEW YORK (AP) -- Television commentators gushed in their first response to John Kerry's nomination acceptance speech, while warning the address will be parsed in the weeks ahead for what wasn't said.
"This is the best speech I have ever heard John Kerry ever make,'' CBS analyst Bob Schieffer said as balloons fluttered down on the Democratic National Convention's closing celebration Thursday night.
Over on ABC, political director Mark Halperin provided an echo: "The best speech I've ever seen John Kerry deliver by a mile.''
"There was no Bush bashing in this speech tonight,'' NBC anchor Tom Brokaw said of Kerry's performance at Boston's FleetCenter, "but lots of lines that brought the crowd to its feet, especially when he talked about the defense secretary and the attorney general.''
NBC's Tim Russert agreed: "The campaign is in full throttle.''
Voters will be the ultimate judges, of course, but it couldn't hurt Kerry to have the television chattering class so impressed right after the first extended speech that many Americans likely have heard from him.
Throughout the four-day convention, pundits had been building the pressure on Kerry as he prepared to accept the party's presidential nomination.
Analysis of his speech actually began two hours before Kerry delivered it, when Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly waved a printed copy and warned that there was fat that had to be cut.
Perhaps stung by criticism that they had focused too much on their own commentators instead of what was going on at the convention, the cable news networks stuck a little closer to the podium on the convention's final day. They carried the preamble speeches by Kerry's daughters and all aired the full Hollywood-produced video on Kerry's life.
The broadcast networks, which provided a little more than an hour special coverage on Monday, found their time on the air was almost completely taken up by Kerry on Thursday night. ABC and NBC aired portions of former Sen. Max Cleland's nomination speech.
Twenty years after President Reagan's re-election campaign borrowed Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA'' for its soundtrack, Kerry headed toward the podium accompanied by another Springsteen song, ``No Surrender.''
Afterward, Fox's Fred Barnes said he never had seen a Democratic convention so well-staged, but he wondered whether Kerry's address lacked a big enough policy idea that will be talked about in coming weeks.
CNN's Jeff Greenfield mentioned the lack of discussion of Kerry's career in the Senate.
"I've never heard an acceptance speech where 20 years of a person's life has been kissed off in three sentences,'' he said.
After Kelly Wallace compared it to Kerry's strong appearance when his candidacy was on the ropes before the Iowa caucuses, CNN colleague Judy Woodruff sought a larger meaning to the speech.
"I think he's beginning to make that connection that he's going to have to make if he is going to be elected,'' she said.
