Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, is a big personality and an engaging, entertaining speaker. Her address to the Republican National Convention on Wednesday no doubt rallied the party’s socially conservative base, which had always regarded Sen. John McCain with suspicion.

But as often is the case with such addresses, she offered few details about what a McCain administration would do. And it was difficult to guess from her speech how she would run the government if John McCain, now 72, dies in office.

She offered not a word on the disastrous budget deficit or the corrupt health-care “system” that is bankrupting many citizens.

Sadly, her listing of countries from which we obtain oil is not a substitute for foreign-policy experience, of which she has almost none. Her drill-drill-drill strategy for meeting our energy needs (very lucrative for Alaskans) would deepen our fossil-fuel dependence. The ignored truth is this: There is no way to end our dependence on foreign oil without ending our dependence on oil.

Governor Palin didn’t mention that she’s a global-warming denier, that she opposes stem-cell research and would set back science education by teaching creationism in public schools. She also didn’t note, of course, that she opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest.

Some Americans might be put off by the image of a noisy social conservative who harasses librarians over their book selections but whose own family displays the ambiguities of some sexual matters that come to mind. Meanwhile, while some viewers were moved by the relentless televising of her infant child with Down syndrome, others saw this as her using her children as a campaign prop.

You’d never have known from listening to Ms. Palin that Republicans have been running this country for most of the past 26 years. Rather than address some of her party’s shortcomings, she tried to revive the “culture war” with self-pitying riffs on how mean the big media allegedly are to small-town working folk.

Her much-hyped latter-day opposition to the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” is dishonest given her support of the infamous boondoggle before it became the subject of national public anger. And as mayor of Wasilla, she played the federal-welfare game as well as any other master pol from Alaska or West Virginia. Mr. McCain, who has made much of his opposition to pork, has a running mate who hired lobbyists to reel in $27 million in federal earmarks for a town of 6,700.

Whether the blue-collar persona she engagingly presents will distract a stressed middle class from pinning at least part of its decline on Republican policies remains to be seen. Americans are besieged by rising health-care costs, stagnant or falling real wages and a White House and Congresses (Democratic and Republican) that have all too often showed themselves obsessed with rewarding rich friends. We didn’t hear anything about that on Wednesday night. We have a couple of months in which to see if her personality and personal story will trump all else.

Sarah Palin has shown herself as someone to be reckoned with. If only her positions were as convincing as her speaking ability and her speechwriters’ acumen.