Matt Cooper reports from Denver: When Barack Obama walked on stage last night to accept the presidential nomination of his party, the music of U-2 echoed through Invesco Field. It was "City of Blinding Lights." The music stopped before the first words of the song played but the lyrics are telling:

The more you see the less you know.
The less you find out as you go

The speech may have been soaring and a masterpiece, as Pat Buchanan called it, but it also added another piece in the puzzle of trying to figure out what an Obama presidency would be like.

During this convention week, I spoke with people as diverse as Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary, and occasional Obama adviser, who sees a continuation of many Clinton policies--investment in education and infrastructure and deep concern with deficit reduction and income inequality.

I also spoke with labor leaders who saw in Obama a fighter who would lash out at free trade and who would offer a progressive agenda more like the Great Society than the Clinton years.

My guess is that America, and that includes a lot of folks on Wall Street and in businesses across the country, will embrace what they heard last night.

Obama's plans for providing universal health care would help relieve some of the oppressive burden of medical costs from business. His tax hikes aren't really more onerous than the Clinton years, which saw 22 million new jobs. He did not sound anti-trade notes in his speech and he moved energy up his agenda, embracing Al Gore's plan to end dependence on Mideast Oil in a decade.

The most populist line of the night came not from Obama but from an Indiana man, Barney Smith, who was one of the average Americans who spoke before Obama. "We need a president who puts Barney Smith ahead of Smith Barney." Of course, Smith Barney is a division of an ailing Citigroup and not much of an icon of wealth and prosperity anymore.

Obama's speech was more specific than the many he gave during the primaries, less about transforming politics--although that was there--and much more about how he's going to help you, the middle class.

Tuition tax credits, access to health care plans modeled on the one congress has, capital gains tax elimination for start ups. (He left out that he wanted to raise the capital gains taxes on those earning over $250,000.) There was a lot of meat to chew on and not a lot for business to be scared of.

What Obama hasn't offered is an overarching theory of how the world works. If you think about Ronald Reagan and his heirs there was a simple formula: lower taxes, less government, deregulation. Thus, prosperity. For Clinton, cutting the deficit and investing in education and worker retraining meant an America that was ready for globalization.

Obama's overarching vision has primarily been about politics, not economics. We know he wants more comity and less lobbying, greater unity and transparency in Washington. He's primarily been a political reform crusader, but not someone who's offered an Obamanomic view of the world.

That may or may not be a failing. I suspect that Obama is flexible and pragmatic, a bit like the Franklin Roosevelt of 1932. Little in that Depression-era campaign would have suggested the radical nature of the New Deal but FDR, upon taking office, adapted to the bank runs that met him after his inauguration and came back with an agenda that was more radical than what he showed to voters.

My guess is that if the economy goes off a cliff, and more Democrats are there to back him up in Congress, he'll move more in an FDR like direction. And that would not be a bad idea. We need a financial regulatory system that keeps up with our world. With the mortgage crisis, we've seen what happens when we don't have that.

But on the day of Obama's speech, new GDP figures showed the rate of growth over three percent. If the mortgage crisis works itself out, and oil prices come down, and growth is sustained, I think you'll see a less activist Obama. Either way, he remains a protean figure.

Of course, he's not nearly as mercurial as John McCain who now embraces the tax cuts he once called irresponsible and advocates dumping the Alternative Minimum Tax without a way to pay for it.

Compared to McCain, Obama is Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes rolled into one. McCain is making gestures towards fixing the economy, but few of his economic ideas have any force other than keeping rates constant. His health care plan? It has none of the compelling aspects of, say, the plan Mitt Romney brought to Massachusetts. He was AWOL on the mortgage crisis, slower than even the Bush administration to come up with ideas to ease the credit crunch. He famously once said he didn't know much about economics and I believe him.

Obama, for whatever his lacking in an economic vision, offers one that's more complete and not, I'd argue, threatening to business.

Matt Cooper

Get ready for the Republican convention in St. Paul with these:

-- Where to Eat in the Twin Cities.
-- How to Party Like a Rockstar TV Star With Republicans.

And get a recap of what happened with the Democrats in Denver with these stories:

-- Obama Gets Down to Business.
-- Are Obama's Donors Tapped Out?
-- Google's Schmidt: "They Have Guns and We Don't"
-- Why Does Everyone Want In on the Act?
-- I'm T. Boone Pickens and This Will Save America.
-- The Election According to Mr. Burns.
-- The Portfolio.com Capital Index.