As I'm at Take Back America, I couldn't get a comprehensive sense of the media coverage of Sen. Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union" address. But I was struck at how effusive Michael Smerconish was on MSNBC's Hardball.

Here's a guy who in 2006 openly backed racial profiling as a response to terrorism.

Yet he praised Obama's speech, even saying that it helped him understand where Rev. Jeremiah Wright's anger comes from. Smerconish remarked:

It's almost as if he was fishing and he was casting a line in different sections of the pond and slowly bringing us all in by common experiences, by drawing upon his white grandmother and then by drawing upon Reverend Wright.

And you know, Chris, somehow, he did it without throwing Jeremiah Wright under the bus. I mean, he tried to provide some context to a white guy like me as to how could you hear this sort of language? What was his experience that caused him to offer these thoughts that are shown incessantly on programs and on YouTube ... ?

...I wrote an opinion piece in "The Daily News" this morning. I said: This is kind of a Howard Baker moment. What he did he hear and when did he hear it?

And I walked out saying to myself, You know, we've seen those clips incessantly, probably too much, and I think that he's directly answered them now.

Allow me to put a fine point on this.

What Obama appears able to do is respond to traditional, sound bite, gutter politics by adding nuance, providing context and elevating the conversation -- at least in certain circumstances.

Liberals have spent decades trying to figure out how to deal with a political landscape and a vapid media that abhors nuance and context, and searched for candidates who can speak without such complexity.

To have a leader that doesn't always have to oversimplify the message in order to be heard is quite an asset.

And it leaves conservatives with fewer and fewer weapons in their arsenal.

Watch the speech.