CHARLOTTE—The roll of states is underway as I write this, the official nomination of Barack Obama just moments away. But my ears are still ringing from Bill Clinton’s nominating speech.

Last night I watched Michelle Obama from the press gallery. Tonight, I was on the convention floor. The crowd was enthusiastic about the warm-up act, from Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. But her voice couldn’t fully carry the hot rhetoric over the din. Then Clinton came on stage. He had the crowd at “hope.” Throughout the address, which clocked in at nearly an hour, delegates were cheering and pumping their fists. And if it was a bit more Springsteen than Green Day, with middle-aged fans remembering the old times more than youngsters celebrating the new, it still felt like a rock concert.

But Clinton’s ultimate goal wasn’t revving up partisans. It was winning over swing voters. And although I can’t say for sure whether he accomplished that, something tells me he did. He did it in a quintessentially Clintonian way—with a few zingers and “aw shucks” smiles, but mostly with detailed explanations of policy and substance.

The speech was as substantively thick as any I’ve ever heard and reminded me of the State of the Union speeches Clinton would give during his presidency. Those speeches were famously interminable, chocked full of enough ideas to fill two presidencies, let alone one. The pundits would inevitably pan the speeches: He was boring, he didn’t have lofty themes. Then the polls would come in: The public loved it. And while I assume some people really were listening for the details, most just appreciated the effort. Substance was a proxy for empathy, seriousness, and honesty.

So it was tonight, although the circumstances were a little different. Clinton had to focus on the past as much as the present and future. He had to tell a story about what had happened to the country in the last four years, what Obama had done, and why that reaction had put the country on the right course even if so much work remained to be done.