compiling questions, a la lisp

[Pete Shinners]

I've become quite comforable with python, and can understand why
simple compiling of python bytecode doesn't really create much
speedup.

I've been talking to some folks on the net (not sure how savvy
they are) that raised some questions i cannot answer.

these folks say that the LISP language (which i know nothing about),
can be compiled natively and provide a substantial speedup. these
people have said that after looking at python, it looks similar to
lisp, in that everything must be looked up in dictionarys before
use, etc. they wonder why compiling python natively doesn't do much
while compiling lisp does.

personally, i assume this is because parts of lisp are more static,
so less things need to be checked at runtime. is this the reason?
what is the biggest difference between lisp and python which makes
lisp more agreeable with native compiling?

second, i've heard other people mention that a python to lisp
converter would not be difficult, and then that code could take
advantage of the native compilers, and this get an increase in
speed. this seems a little odd to me, the same things that are
holding python code running native are not going to 'disappear'
when running under a lisp environment... are they? i assume
the answer to this question is the same as the previous, but
is there anything that would keep this from being beneficial?
python to lisp, and then to native code?