There must be a lot of sour stomachs among Democrats in the wake of Donald Trump’s acceptance speech Thursday night. He did what he had to do: we saw a convincing portrait of a man whose essence remains the same but who has been simultaneously (and seemingly contradictorily) both softened and tempered.

His entrance was pure Trump, glitzy and over-the-top showbizzy, with flashing lights and his name spelled out in giant illuminated letters:

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Frankly, I was both impressed and appalled. My personal style is the very opposite of brash and exaggerated, but this is Trump, the man who has his name in big red letters on the side of his personal 757. He remains who he was, but he has also been transformed and made more human by nearly having his head exploded into pink mist by a high-powered bullet, as happened to his widely revered, almost sainted predecessor, John F. Kennedy.

The first half hour, in which he offered his personal account of being nearly assassinated, was absolutely riveting. He prefaced his comments with the remark that he would never again speak of this because it is too painful. That was his signal that he was opening his heart, that the man who had just treated us to an impossibly flashy display of pure ego with his name in giant letters was also a deeply feeling human being, aware that “I should not be here…”

The crowd's response, which was to break out in repeated chants of “Yes, you should,” was both touching and reassuring. It was a perfect moment.

Trump quickly added that he was only spared by “the grace of Almighty God.” The widespread notion that it was a true miracle that he happened to tilt his head to the right at exactly the right millisecond to let the bullet miss lethal parts of his brain and instead hit the top of his right ear enrages and terrifies Democrat partisans. James Carville resorted to a barnyard epithet to express his anger that vast numbers of people are seeing the man he regards as a threat as on a divine mission.

The first half hour of the speech was perfect. Trump went on to return to form for another hour, in a version of his usual campaign rhetoric, extending past midnight Eastern Daylight Time. This was far too long for my taste, and I found myself wishing that he would wrap it up to let his heartfelt account of his near-death sink in. My colleague Andrea Widburg says that he must have been carried away by the energy and adoration of the crowd with him in the arena and lost sight of the vastly larger television audience. I think that she’s right.

But I also suspect that a lot of people tuned out once he recounted his experience in the first person and that the many people (around the world) who will watch excerpts will see the optimal minutes.

It was a truly historic speech that did exactly what it had to do.