My Take from Monday’s “Morning Joe” on the stakes for the nominee-presumptive’s acceptance speech:

HALPERIN: “We live in an era of hype where we make a lot of events seem bigger than they are or should be. His convention speech is huge because he must argue conservative principles to the center of the country. That is what effective Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, as a convention speaker, both did, and Bush 41 did as well in his convention speech in ’88. He’s got to go out and make the conservative case to the country in a personal way. It’s going to be a huge, huge opportunity with great peril for him because he’s never given a speech like this.”
…
“There’s one analogue for Romney: Bush ’88. Out of nowhere. None of us thought he could do a speech like that. Peggy Noonan wrote him a great speech. There are very smart people working on Romney’s speech but Bush 41 stepped up and just changed everyone’s impression of him. And he was down 17 points. And he gave his speech and made a big deal. Romney’s got to do the same thing. Out of the blue, out of the blue. His best speeches: his announcement speech in New Hampshire when he announced for President, his speech on the night of the New Hampshire primary, his speech to the NAACP. He’s given some decent speeches…. This would be out of the blue if he pulls it off.”