Would it be soaring rhetoric? Or meat-on-the-bones policy stuff?

Well, it was a little bit of both, and a whole lot of history, when America's first major-party African-American presidential candidate formally accepted the Democratic nomination Thursday night before a football-stadium crowd of 80,000.

With so many viewing choices, there aren't too many cultural events that most of America shares these days. But channel after TV channel showed this huge bit of history, coming on the anniversary of King's "I Have a Dream" speech, while at watch parties throughout the country, blacks wept with pride as they remembered the bad old days of segregation and hopelessness.

The dream, a big part of it anyway, came true Thursday night. Now, all of America's children can truly grow up believing they could be president.

Whatever that particular ceiling is made of, Barack Obama has smashed it.

His sweeping acceptance speech outlined an Obama presidency of tax cuts and investments in education and new-age fuels and health care for all and equal pay for women.

He also talked of self-reliance and responsibility and the need for parents to take over parenting from the television.

He didn't say exactly how he would make all those investments and tax cuts with the federal government already hundreds of billions in the red each year. He didn't say what the government should do about "equal pay" beyond outlawing discrimination, which it already does. And his calls for self-reliance and personal responsibility don't jibe very well with his repeated calls for government succor. Mr. Obama invites comparisons to John F. Kennedy, but seems only to tell us what our country can do for us, standing Kennedy's philosophy on its head.

In that respect, Mr. Obama is in good company. That's all that most of our politicians do anymore is promise us more stuff -- with money borrowed from China.

We're also deeply troubled by the details of Mr. Obama's legislative record -- which we'll explore in an editorial tomorrow.

For now, however, all Americans should share in Barack Obama's historic ascendancy to the pinnacle of his party.

All of us who are eager to move on from a troubled racial past have been dreaming of this since King's speech 40 years ago.

Or twice the length of Rip Van Winkle's long slumber.