Hillary Rodham Clinton recited her lines and hit all of the chalk marks when she assumed center stage at the Democratic National Convention in Denver on Tuesday, but something seemed to be lacking.

Her speech was crafted and approved by the Obama team, but for some strange reason the junior Senator from New York never managed to achieve the maximum response from the planned applause lines. Was Clinton’s delivery less than perfect or were her supporters in the convention hall sitting on their hands? Whenever Clinton spoke about her personal experiences during the past campaign, there was a greater degree of emotion in her voice. When speaking of Barack Obama, she resorted to a flat monotone.

Predictably enough, the mainstream media lauded Clinton’s performance and pronounced the Democratic Party united for the fall campaign. Then why was the assembly hall so quiet? You might hear louder applause from polite spectators during a professional golf tournament.

While no one can deny that Clinton did what was asked of her, she certainly did so without a great deal of enthusiasm. One might conclude that she privately relishes the prospect of challenging an incumbent Republican President McCain in 2012 rather than waiting for another turn at bat in the 2016 election. Portions of her canned speech nevertheless bordered upon the absurd. When Clinton decried job losses for Americans who have seen their blue collar manufacturing positions outsourced to foreign countries, she neatly omitted to admit that her own husband, former President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, was the chief executive who signed the North American Free Trade Agreement into law.

A tip of the hat to the Gateway Pundit for publicizing the fact that Michelle Obama could not resist an opportunity to wink at her radical friends on the lunatic left wing fringe of the political spectrum. In one of her comments, Michelle Obama paraphrased the late Saul Alinsky’s “Rule for Radicals.” So much for the unveiling of a kinder, gentler Michelle Obama. During her speech Obama took a page from Alinsky’s book while speaking of “the world as it is and the world as it should be.”

Toned down and stripped of some of Alinsky’s harsh rhetoric, Michelle Obama nonetheless betrayed herself as someone far more like the caricatured Angela Davis look a like on the cover of the New Yorker magazine than a devoted middle class wife and mother. There is more of Eldridge Cleaver to the Obamas than the warm and fuzzy Ward and June Cleaver images that David Axelrod is trying to peddle to gullible voters. The Obamas and their handlers must have thought that the paraphrased reference would appeal to their hard core leftist friends while the simpletons who might otherwise cling to their guns and their religious beliefs would be too stupid to recognize the remark as sugarcoated rhetoric taken directly from an avowed Communist such as Alinsky.

Perfecting a message and selling a candidate takes a skillful marketing. This is doubly the case in the instance of Barack Obama who has no discernible record. Complicating matters is the fact is that much of his back story is pure fiction. Like many beneficiaries of affirmative action, Obama is proud to point out the successive positions and honorific job titles that he has held without referencing what he specifically accomplished in any of his various roles.

Obama will not be the first candidate to resort to distorting the truth to achieve his electoral ambitions. When Obama lies about his mother’s heartland childhood in Kansas (Stanley Ann Dunham was born there, but her parents moved to Washington state shortly afterwards), he is following in the footsteps of President Clinton, “The Man from Hope.”

Clinton was, of course, actually born in Hope, Arkansas, but he was raised in Hot Springs which enjoyed a reputation for having as many brothels and gambling dens as it did mineral baths and spas. Al Capone was a welcome visitor to Hot Springs during Prohibition. Clinton’s putative father died before his birth, but his mother, the oft married Virginia Cassidy, was hardly a struggling single mother nor was her Billy an impoverished youth. Omitted from the description of Clinton’s high school years to be found in his campaign biography were his membership in a local country club and his string of new cars provided to him from an uncle’s auto dealership.

The point of this observation is that the crucial question becomes one of investigating a candidate’s bona fides. If you accept Obama’s manifold myths, you will be voting for him. If you can see through the fables, you cannot vote him in good conscience. Radio commentator Michael Medved exposed one of Obama’s frequently repeated lies when he took exception to Obama’s claim that he has been engaged in public service for over two decades. Unfortunately, that calculation would require Obama to be credited with public service experience while attending Harvard University. Another lie that has been convincingly refuted is that Obama knows the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers simply as neighbor with children enrolled at the same school as Obama’s two daughters. In reality, the children of Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, are all adults.

The floor show will be over in a few days. Remarkably, Obama has not enjoyed a quick bounce in several polls as is customary during a convention. His selection of Senator Joseph Biden as his running mate has not paid much in the way of dividends either.

Many Americans are not willing to drink the Kool Aid right now. Much remains to be done, but John McCain is definitely in the game as the election approaches.

Daniel J. Kelley is a regular contributor to “The Chicago Daily Observer.”