Hillary Clinton's speech didn't radiate optimism. That's a good thing.

Instead of peddling more gratuitous buoyancy, Clinton rightly acknowledged America's fears and struggles

Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention
(Image credit: Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images)

The best thing about Hillary Clinton's acceptance speech on Thursday night was that she distanced herself, if only modestly, from the expansive optimism of Barack Obama's rousing speech on the previous evening.

As commentators across the ideological spectrum pointed out, the president seemed to be making an overt effort to portray the Democratic Party as a party of optimism, patriotic uplift, and unabashed American exceptionalism. Taking a page from Ronald Reagan's playbook, Obama spoke in lofty tones about the idea of America and explicitly rejected Donald Trump's dystopian vision of a country suffering from a wide range of ills and in need of a strongman-savior to make the country "great again." For Obama, "America is already great. America is already strong."

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.