Sure, the numbers are impressive. 100,000 people in Denver, 50,000 in Fort Collins. And that was just Sunday.

But the energy of even the smaller crowds in Ohio and Pennsylvania on Monday was ear-splitting. In Canton, an all-ticket audience of 4,900 was so pumped that they screamed even when there were no applause lines in sight. When Obama walked on stage, the crowd cheered so wildly that the candidate had trouble calming them down so he could start reading from his teleprompter. "I'm so grateful to all of you for taking the time to be here today," he finally managed to say. At which point, the crowd screamed their lungs out.

In Pittsburgh, later in the day, the Penguins' hockey arena was filled with more than 15,000 of the kind of supporters that were a feature of Obama's nomination-winning run of primaries in February. They cheered his extensive thank yous at the start of the speech, and they roared when he opened his speech like this: “Pittsburgh, I have two words for you: one week.” Oratory, it ain't. “We are one week away from bringing change to America,” he continued. The crowd’s response: “Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can!"

At this rate, complacency isn’t Obama’s biggest challenge. Crowd control is.

John McCain woke up this morning in chilly Cleveland, Ohio, a state he desperately needs to win eight days from now if he is to have any chance of making it into the White House. With polls here showing him running essentially even with Barack Obama heading into the final week of the campaign, McCain spent the morning trying to shore up his economic credentials in a state that has been particularly hard hit by the nation’s financial meltdown. Appearing before a group of supporters and volunteers (including many out-of-staters here working on the senator’s behalf), McCain went after Obama’s economic policies, tying him to Democratic leadership back in Washington.

“This election comes down to how you want your hard earned money spent. Do you want to keep it and invest it in your future, or have it taken by the most liberal person to ever run for the Presidency and the Democratic leaders who have been running congress for the past two years—Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? This is a dangerous threesome,” McCain declared. It’s a line of attack that McCain and his supporters have been pursuing more heatedly in the final days of the campaign, slyly reminding voters that if Obama wins, Washington will be under one-party rule, with Democrats in control of the White House and Congress. Several McCain advisers, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, of McCain’s closest friends, believe it’s a winning argument for McCain—that voters prefer a divided government. (Indeed, McCain's "threesome" line this morning was a big crowd pleaser--perhaps a little too much, considering the subsequent giggling among some members of the audience after the fact.)

Perhaps the most interesting part of the event wasn’t what McCain said, but rather who he stood there with. Lined up behind McCain was what the senator described as his team of economic advisers, who included several people who came VERY close to joining the GOP ticket. There was Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and onetime McCain rival who stood behind the nominee; and Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO and possible California gubernatorial nominee whom McCain has come to trust as one of his closest advisers. Even Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty showed up, a dark horse candidate among McCain and his inner circle right up until decision day. Eyeing the scene, you couldn't help but wonder: How would the race be different if McCain had picked one of these three as his running mate?

Not too long ago, these folks were, as the McCain campaign might say, the biggest celebrities in the world. Network TV crews staked out their homes. Reporters scrutinized their every public statement for clues about the double super secret VP selection process. Then one day, it was over. While Romney still travels with an adviser, Pawlenty has gone back to being the solo-traveling governor whose lack of entourage sometimes led reporters to mistake him for one of McCain’s campaign advance staffers. This morning, Pawlenty was spotted in the lobby of McCain’s hotel handling his own bags, surrounded by Republican faithful who either didn’t know who he was or just didn’t care. After the event, the small pool of reporters who travel with McCain in his motorcade were waiting for the senator to board his vehicle outside the hotel’s front door when they spotted a tall dark-haired man making his way in between the vans out into the street. It was Pawlenty, alone, hailing his own cab to go back to Minnesota.

Ten months ago (a half-life in this presidential campaign)Barack Obama delivered his first closing speech. It was a week before the Iowa caucuses, in downtown Des Moines, and victory still seemed improbable.

Now Obama is delivering his final closing speech–this time in Canton, Ohio–and his aides are touting his consistency with his previousspeeches. “The themes are the same,” says one senior Obama aide. “A lot will be familiar to you.” Translation: there’s not much new here.

Is that true? To find out, it’s worth looking back at Obama’s first closer in Des Moines to see where he started.

Back in December, the senator talked extensively about the immediacy of the election. “I chose to run in this election–at this moment–because of what Dr King called ‘the fierce urgency of now,’” he said. “Because we are at a defining moment in our history.”

The defining moment, echoing FDR, was the running theme of that speech–a useful way to prod his supporters to show up and actually vote.