Speaker of the House Paul Ryan addresses the delegates. Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker

After the drama of the

Wist wasn’t the only business figure to endorse Trump and laud his ability to expand economic activity. Dana White, the burly president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which features ripped men and women punching, kicking, and grappling in an octagonal ring, told of how Trump helped him get his start, back in 2001. “It was basically considered a blood sport,” White said. “Nobody took us seriously. Nobody except Donald Trump. Donald was the first guy that recognized the potential.” White recalled how Trump had hosted U.F.C.’s first two events at one of his hotels, cutting a deal “that worked for everyone,” then showing up and sitting in the first row.

Natalie Gulbis, a professional golfer, spoke highly of Trump’s motivational skills, and Kerry Woolard, who runs the Trump Winery, which grows grapes on two hundred acres on the former Kluge estate, in Virginia, recalled how Trump bought the business out of bankruptcy and rebuilt it. “He isn’t a wide-eyed dreamer,” she said. “He’s someone who sees things that others don’t.”

That was good to hear. But it was left to Paul Ryan and Trump’s son Donald, Jr., to explain how Trump’s distinctive economic philosophy would be applied to the world beyond construction, kickboxing, and winemaking. In the event, however, they did nothing of the kind.

Ryan delivered an impassioned appeal for party unity, describing Hillary Clinton as a figure from the past and saying, “2016 is the year America moves on.” He also defended traditional Republican economic principles, such as cutting taxes on businesses and encouraging people in poverty to work. But he barely mentioned Trump's most distinctive policy proposals, which wasn't really surprising.

In embracing protectionism, defending labor unions, promising to protect Social Security, and saying that people on Wall Street don’t pay enough in taxes, Trump has trashed much of what the Ryan Republican Party stands for. Although Trump did unveil a fiscal plan that adheres to the precepts of "voodoo economics”—big tax cuts combined with vague spending cuts—he barely ever mentions it, and generally gives the impression that he ordered it up like a takeout meal.

Trump, Jr., spent a good deal of time on economic issues, but not the ones that his father usually focusses on. He lauded free-market competition, saying that “it’s what the other party fears”; criticized the Dodd-Frank financial-reform bill; accused the Democrats of creating “a regulatory state on steroids”; and called for more choice in public education. It sounded more like a piece in National Review or Commentary than a speech by his father, and, sure enough, as my colleague Amy Davidson has noted, it was revealed that his speechwriter had recycled some language from his own book and from an article he published in the American Conservative.

The key point about Trump, Jr.,’s speech was that it didn’t sound very Trumpian, and, therefore, didn’t convey much more information about what a Trump Administration would actually do about the economy than the previous speakers had. Perhaps Trump will reveal all when he addresses the Convention on Thursday.

I am joking, of course. Beyond promising to bully China and other countries into redoing trade treaties and pledging to reopen shuttered steel plants, Trump has said very little of substance on the subject. But we are not to fear. Magical thinking will take care of things.

“We need someone who knows how to build things, who knows how to create jobs, and who knows how to negotiate,” the final speaker of the night, Kimberlin Brown, an actress who appeared on daytime soaps and now also runs an avocado farm, declared. “Donald is the most qualified man in America to turn things around.”