CLEVELAND _ The balloons have dropped, the smiling family members have embraced, and Donald J. Trump has accepted the Republican nomination for the presidency. Here are our first impressions from Trump's 75-minute address.
_ A tempered tone
Trump's improbable run has been propelled by the aura of unpredictability; his seemingly improvised, and often outlandish, riffs at campaign rallies turned them into cable news staples.
But Thursday night, Trump stuck largely to the teleprompter and deliberately veered away from potentially inflammatory moments. When audience members at one point began to protest Hillary Clinton by chanting the convention's most popular refrain _ "Lock her up!" _ he waved them off.
Trump offered a milder alternative: "Let's defeat her in November."
_ But signature policies remain
Trump revisited themes he has hit on for more than a year, including building a wall on the Mexican border and pursuing populist trade policy.
The unifying thread was "America first" _ the core theme of Trump's candidacy that calls for a rejection of globalization and a turning inward to prioritize America's needs. The phrase was popularized by pre-World War II isolationists, notably Charles Lindbergh, and Trump has revived it, though he appears to have been unaware of its history when he first embraced it.
_ Man of the people
Trump's gilded lifestyle makes him an unlikely avatar for the everyman. But that's exactly how Trump positioned himself to viewers.
He aligned himself with laid-off factory workers and residents of hollowed-out manufacturing towns _ "the forgotten men and women of our country ... people who work hard but no longer have a voice."
"I am your voice!" he declared more than once.
This is one of the more remarkable aspects of the Trump phenomenon: In an election season defined by voters' antipathy towards the elite, a billionaire with no qualms of flaunting his wealth has effectively channeled their alienation.
_ It's bleak out there, America
For four nights, convention speakers portrayed the U.S. as a grim dystopia: impoverished and ridden with violence. Trump doubled down on that desolate outlook, portraying himself as the only savior from continued hardship.
"Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation," Trump said at the outset of his remarks, mentioning recent upticks in crime rates and high-profile killings by immigrants in the country illegally.
It all adds up to a country on the brink. Trump, billing himself as the "law-and-order" candidate, says he will save it. Such phrasing _ evocative of Richard Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign _ is relatively new for Trump, as he seeks to capitalize on Americans' anxieties over racial tensions and violence.
_ A rebuke not just of Democrats, but also the GOP
The villains of Trump's speech were unambiguous: Clinton and President Barack Obama. But the address also contained an implicit rejection of President George W. Bush and the modern Republican Party.
Trump bemoaned "15 years of wars in the Middle East" started under Bush and supported by Trump's own running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, a congressman during the Bush years. Trump slammed trade deals championed by the party's business wing, which Pence also backed.
And he made practically no mention of the social issues that galvanize the party's conservative base, such as opposition to abortion.
On LGBT issues, he positioned himself to the left of the party's conservative base, making a point to mourn gay and lesbian victims of terrorist violence.
"As a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said," he ad-libbed at the crowd's positive response.
He did thank evangelicals for their support, but his address contained little of the overt courting of social conservatives that have defined GOP presidential candidates in recent elections.
