There’s something in the air in Tampa, and it’s not rain.

You can feel it in the hotel elevators and while on line for coffee at Starbuck’s.

At first I confused it with good manners — I’m not staying with theNew York delegation but with effusively nice Midwesterners instead. But that’s not it either.

What I’m feeling in Tampa is unmistakable optimism. It is as palpable here as I’m told the doom was in St. Paul in September 2008.

I’m at the Republican National Convention — if it ever gets going — and I’m beginning to think, with increasing confidence, that MittRomney may very well be our next president. If we Republicansdon’t screw it up.

There’s no cockiness among the party stalwarts. Just hushed excitement that things are trending Romney’s way. Even the cynics — and they exist — are holding their breath. The bluish color in their lips at breakfast gives them away.

One three-word phrase I keep hearing over and over, and this is spoken with genuine incredulity, is “He’s got nothing” — with the “he” being President Barack Obama. Therein lies the stinging summation of where the Obama campaign is right now. Obama seems to have nothing — zippo — to run on, only anger at those pernicious 1 percenters, half of whom probably voted for the president in the first place.

It’s an extraordinary thing when one considers the promise with which Obama barreled into the White House four years ago. Back then, his messaging crackled with hope and clarity. Today we are seeing a man who appears scornful and washed out. Indeed, there is no message and zero vision from Obama in 2012.

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