Washington ? The Democrats were ruthlessly uplifting this week as they nominated a flinty Massachusetts liberal who is a war hero and a smooth Southern populist to send up against the brash George W. Bush and dour Dick Cheney on Nov. 2.

The disciplined unity and tight scripting in Boston did not thrill many in the Fourth Estate, who were unhappy that the Democrats were not once again at each other’s throats on issues of war and peace. This convention’s conventional wisdom was that the leadership papered over and ultimately betrayed the anti-Bush bitterness and anger of the rank and file.

Perhaps. But another thought occurred to me as I listened to John Edwards’ stirring address to a crowd of national delegates who actually seemed to be listening, and responding, to a Southern messenger — and message — on Wednesday night.

Political promises and speeches may bind only those who believe them, as a French politician once explained to me. But promises and speeches do reveal how the people at the top of the political profession see the aspirations, fears and expectations of those they would lead. A nation’s music is at times a matter of words.

The ruthlessly uplifting spirit of Boston ’04 was built around a convention-hall rhetoric of proud patriotism, a reverential respect for America’s military and an almost evangelical faith in the desire and ability of Americans to overcome racial and other divides.

It was not only Edwards’ accent that was Southern. So were his themes. Look at what we overcame in climbing out of poverty and racism. You have to be optimistic about human nature and the future, his stories about his family, neighbors and region said in so many words: Hope is on the way.

There is more than irony at work in the fact that two of the week’s oratorical gems in Boston came from Edwards, who was born in South Carolina (not far from where I grew up) before he moved to North Carolina, and an Arkansan named Bill Clinton.

Forty years ago, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and predicted that it would cost the Democrats the South for at least a generation. LBJ was right. But the South has made major strides in capturing the party’s agenda and rhetoric even as it has turned its back on national Democratic candidates.

The elections of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have already made that point. By picking Edwards, John Kerry has shown that he understands this, even if Edwards does not bring him North Carolina’s electoral votes. Edwards’ signature characteristic is optimism — of a particularly Southern kind.

Edwards drove the point home on Wednesday by promising that the whole nation would be talking about and seeking racial justice “everywhere, everywhere, everywhere,” if he and Kerry are elected. “This is about who we are” as a nation, he added with a passion that I took as genuine.

Clinton promised in 1992 a national dialogue on race that he failed to deliver. But Edwards comes across as more rooted and much more disciplined than Clinton (OK, not exactly Mission Impossible). He may not possess Clinton’s sheer intellectual and political brilliance — which was on display Monday night in Boston in a perfectly cadenced speech — but neither does Edwards carry that crippling load of self-centeredness.

You may gather, correctly, that I liked what I heard from Edwards on Wednesday night. What troubled me was what I did not hear, especially on foreign policy and Iraq.

He spoke only hours after at least 70 Iraqis had been killed by a car bomb in one more bloody terrorist atrocity against a population liberated from dictatorship by American troops. Yet Edwards, in a speech replete with tributes to U.S. losses and sacrifices, did not mention the day’s tragedy. He referred only in glancing terms to the price that Iraqis are paying in this joint struggle.

The convention’s other major speeches and the Democratic platform have also neglected the fate of the people of Iraq, who are being progressively left behind in the shuffle of American politics. So are Britain, Poland, Italy, Japan and the other nations that are helping in what the Democrats insist on calling the “go-it-alone” U.S. presence in Iraq.

In New York, when the Republicans gather in a month’s time, the Iraqis and the coalition partners are not likely to be ignored. The danger there will be that they will be used as props and symbols for the wisdom and resoluteness of the president. That kind of attention would be as bad as neglect.