Here are three little words you’ll hear over and over during the Republican National Convention that starts Monday in St. Paul: ready to lead.

No, it’s not exciting. It’s not a teary Bill Clinton mouthing “I love you” to Hillary during her speech at last week’s Democratic National Convention. Nor is it the adulation Democrats showered on their presidential nominee Barack Obama in Denver.

And that suits the Republicans fine.

If the Democrats’ convention was mostly about larger-than-life egos and healing the party’s rift, the Republicans hope their convention turns the conversation to who’s right for the Oval Office.

They believe they can sell voters on John McCain as ready to lead the country. They’ll tout his experience and hammer at Barack Obama as unprepared.

That leads to interesting questions to ponder during the GOP’s convention. What does it mean to be ready to lead the country in 2009? How important is the resume and experience and how important is vision and the ability to inspire?

Democrats have cast McCain as President Bush’s heir, and Republicans have painted Obama as a celebrity who lacks experience. In new ads, the McCain campaign is using Obama’s running mate Joe Biden’s remarks when he ran against Obama in the primaries.

“I think he can be ready, but right now I don’t believe he is,” Biden said then, and, “The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.”

Republicans started laying the groundwork for their transformative convention during the Democrats’ week in the sun. In a series of media interviews, high-profile Republicans in Denver stressed in nearly the same words that McCain is “tested, ready and right on the issues.”

They’ll try to finesse the issue of McCain’s age – he just turned 72 – into an advantage. People may feel more safe with a grandfatherly figure in the Oval. Even more challenging is the argument that Washington is broken and McCain, a long-time Washington veteran, can fix it.

Much of the pitch is standard Republican fare. McCain wants lower taxes, less government spending and a strong military, and he’s better able to deal with the Russians, Iraq and Iran, his backers say.

The Democrats may yet rue giving away half their convention to the Clintons with primetime speeches on two of the four nights. The Republicans will hear from President Bush and Dick Cheney, but they’ll get the unpopular duo out of town after the first night. Expect all four nights to be devoted to raising doubts about Obama, his character and his abilities.

The overall theme of the Republican convention is “Country First,” and each night will highlight aspects of McCain’s biography, including his years as a POW in Vietnam and in the Senate. They’ll likely try to paint McCain as a reformer and Obama as a radical.

In a sign of things to come, Republicans were discounting Obama’s Invesco Field extravaganza even before it happened. Romney said that “when the issues are not with you, you go with celebrities and fanfare.”