Even if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool, can’t-budge-me-no-way Obama supporter, the Sarah Palin speech last night deserves to be watched in full, if only because it’s a watershed moment in American history.

(If we’re intellectually honest, as much or more so than Obama’s DNC speech — gender being a binary, objective thing, whereas race is a thing of gradation and of perception. MLK’s amazing dream was, after all, about the content of one’s character one day subsuming everything else).

Each segment has its great features, but if you’re hard-pressed for time, segments one (after the first 2+ minutes of applause) deserves special mention, as does segment five. Part two is also good (I won’t spoil the self-deprecating and seemingly opportunistic joke — it’s good.)

One of the things that impressed me most was her multi-dimensionality. I don’t know how better to say it than that she’s a whole person: tough but loving, facile with detail but also with the big picture, highly aware of her role but the antithesis of narcissistic. Just watch her:

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

Part Five:

UPDATE: The Obama campaign said, Palin’s speech was “written by George Bush’s speechwriter and sounds exactly like the same divisive, partisan attacks we’ve heard from George Bush for the last eight years.”

Here’s the thing though, and, once again, it is brilliant. It was divisive, but not of the American people! In fact, I have seen few political speeches more genuinely inviting and uniting. As I wrote last Friday (before had heard or read a word from her), she “helps get Reagan Democrats to pay attention again”. I’m even more convinced of that now. She never had to resort to the word ‘uniting’ or ‘united’ to make the convincing case that the big tent is open for business — again.

Instead, the speech made it clear that Barack Obama himself is a divisive and narcissistic figure — the author of  “two memoirs but not a single major law or reform”, even at the state level. Pitbull with lipstick. Go watch part two.

Frankly, who cares if Bush’s speechwriter is behind it? We writers are adaptable creatures. If that’s the best Obama can muster, he is truly doomed — grasping at ad hominem attacks one removed.

Oh, and don’t miss the bit (in part IV or V, I think) in which she talks about McCain as a POW. Galvanizing.

UPDATE II: William Kristol, calling it simply “The Speech” had this to say (H/T: Paragraph Farmer):

I’ve heard one or two Palin skeptics acknowledge that it was a good speech, but then say–well, another nominee could have given a similarly good speech. Actually, no. The speech was so effective because it was given by someone who is, at once: a relative unknown, an executive not a legislator, a real reformer, a middle American who made it on her own, an outsiderwho was greeted with hostility by the D.C. establishment–and, yes, a woman. Obviously, another nominee could have given a good if different speech. But what made last night’s speech special–what may have made last night an inflection point in this campaign, and even in American politics beyond Nov. 4–depended on the peculiar combination of qualities Sarah Palin brought to the table. Her speech was as far as a speech could be from being a generic one. Only Sarah Palin could have given it. The fact that she had the help of an excellent speechwriter, Matthew Scully, doesn’t change the fact that this was in a precise way, and I’d almost say a profound way, Sarah Palin’s speech.

UPDATE III: Speech transcript here.