DNC - In speech, bringing lofty words down to earth
Good, great or something else, Senator Barack Obama’s acceptance speech Thursday night unquestionably confronted two of his greatest challenges.
One was to help voters, in emotion-laden language, to connect his promise of “change” to more earthly policy proposals, the other to show he could take the fight to Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama’s own image and the best way forward for the nation.
Mr. Obama showed real fire, and directed memorable fire at his opponent, even on Mr. McCain’s signature issue, national security. “If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander in chief, that’s a debate I’m ready to have,” he said.
Mr. Obama is a natural speechmaker, as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton reminded voters (in a negative way) throughout their primary battle. He has always excelled at making the best case for himself, never more so than in his breakthrough speech — probably his best one yet — at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
And if this convention was dominated by the legacy of the Kennedy family on Monday night, and by the contributions and complications of the Clintons on Tuesday and Wednesday night, the spotlight shifted forward to the next generation of leadership when Mr. Obama took center stage.
It is almost a cliché of this election that many Americans, despite a 20-month-old campaign, still lack a strong notion of who Mr. Obama is. In the most personal sense, his speech was not particularly illuminating on this score. He spent far more time talking about struggling Americans whose hopes he related to than wearing his emotions on his sleeve or reaching across history’s divide to talk about race.
But Mr. Obama’s purpose, obviously, was to open a direct channel between his candidacy and the personal lives of Americans, rather than open up about himself.
This was no more true, in fact, than on the matter of race. Rather than call out biases, as John F. Kennedy did in the part of his 1960 acceptance speech that dealt with anti-Catholicism, Mr. Obama sought to transcend race and find a plane of unity. Invoking the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, he recalled “Americans from every corner of this land” crowding together before the Lincoln Memorial, and the common embrace they experienced.
He repeated Dr. King’s words: “We cannot walk alone.”
Reaching his hand out this way, it seems likely, will not be enough to solve his political problems in the counties of western Pennsylvania and southern Ohio, where he performed so poorly in the primaries this spring. But just as likely, it seems like a start.
Mr. McCain has portrayed Mr. Obama as a politician who, no matter his promise, is not prepared for the presidency. And he has arguably been effective in doing so, given the tightness of the race despite so much American anger over the economy and widespread American disappointment about the state of the world.
Mr. Obama, in directly challenging the “celebrity” image that Mr. McCain has tagged him with, turned to his own portrayal of the “heroes” to whom he related: the unemployed factory worker who reminded him of his young adulthood in Chicago, the woman trying to start her own business who reminded him of his grandmother, who rose to a management job after years of losing promotions because she was a woman.
In doing so, Mr. Obama tackled what has become a problem for him: winning over working women — especially working-class and minimum-wage women — and blue-collar men who are skeptical that he understands the struggles of people like themselves. His paean to measuring economic progress based on whether “the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off to look after a sick kid” was a direct plea to these voters: I am one of you, and John McCain is not.
Time and again, Mr. Obama took the fight to Mr. McCain. Even on national security, which is not Mr. Obama’s area of expertise, the former law professor sought to school the former Navy hero in how to win a war.
“You don’t defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq,” he said. “You don’t protect Israel and deter Iran just by talking tough in Washington. You can’t truly stand up for Georgia when you’ve strained our oldest alliances. If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice, but that is not the change that America needs.”
Mrs. Clinton once said that Mr. McCain had real experience while Mr. Obama’s candidacy had been the sum of so many speeches. Mr. Obama’s journey over the last 20 months has introduced him to many of the American archetypes — real people — that he described in this speech. On Thursday night, the speechmaker showed, in words, that he was also a man of experience, and a man who wanted to give something back to the people who gave it to him.
Bron: The New York Times
One was to help voters, in emotion-laden language, to connect his promise of “change” to more earthly policy proposals, the other to show he could take the fight to Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama’s own image and the best way forward for the nation.
Mr. Obama showed real fire, and directed memorable fire at his opponent, even on Mr. McCain’s signature issue, national security. “If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander in chief, that’s a debate I’m ready to have,” he said.
Mr. Obama is a natural speechmaker, as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton reminded voters (in a negative way) throughout their primary battle. He has always excelled at making the best case for himself, never more so than in his breakthrough speech — probably his best one yet — at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
And if this convention was dominated by the legacy of the Kennedy family on Monday night, and by the contributions and complications of the Clintons on Tuesday and Wednesday night, the spotlight shifted forward to the next generation of leadership when Mr. Obama took center stage.
It is almost a cliché of this election that many Americans, despite a 20-month-old campaign, still lack a strong notion of who Mr. Obama is. In the most personal sense, his speech was not particularly illuminating on this score. He spent far more time talking about struggling Americans whose hopes he related to than wearing his emotions on his sleeve or reaching across history’s divide to talk about race.
But Mr. Obama’s purpose, obviously, was to open a direct channel between his candidacy and the personal lives of Americans, rather than open up about himself.
This was no more true, in fact, than on the matter of race. Rather than call out biases, as John F. Kennedy did in the part of his 1960 acceptance speech that dealt with anti-Catholicism, Mr. Obama sought to transcend race and find a plane of unity. Invoking the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, he recalled “Americans from every corner of this land” crowding together before the Lincoln Memorial, and the common embrace they experienced.
He repeated Dr. King’s words: “We cannot walk alone.”
Reaching his hand out this way, it seems likely, will not be enough to solve his political problems in the counties of western Pennsylvania and southern Ohio, where he performed so poorly in the primaries this spring. But just as likely, it seems like a start.
Mr. McCain has portrayed Mr. Obama as a politician who, no matter his promise, is not prepared for the presidency. And he has arguably been effective in doing so, given the tightness of the race despite so much American anger over the economy and widespread American disappointment about the state of the world.
Mr. Obama, in directly challenging the “celebrity” image that Mr. McCain has tagged him with, turned to his own portrayal of the “heroes” to whom he related: the unemployed factory worker who reminded him of his young adulthood in Chicago, the woman trying to start her own business who reminded him of his grandmother, who rose to a management job after years of losing promotions because she was a woman.
In doing so, Mr. Obama tackled what has become a problem for him: winning over working women — especially working-class and minimum-wage women — and blue-collar men who are skeptical that he understands the struggles of people like themselves. His paean to measuring economic progress based on whether “the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off to look after a sick kid” was a direct plea to these voters: I am one of you, and John McCain is not.
Time and again, Mr. Obama took the fight to Mr. McCain. Even on national security, which is not Mr. Obama’s area of expertise, the former law professor sought to school the former Navy hero in how to win a war.
“You don’t defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq,” he said. “You don’t protect Israel and deter Iran just by talking tough in Washington. You can’t truly stand up for Georgia when you’ve strained our oldest alliances. If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice, but that is not the change that America needs.”
Mrs. Clinton once said that Mr. McCain had real experience while Mr. Obama’s candidacy had been the sum of so many speeches. Mr. Obama’s journey over the last 20 months has introduced him to many of the American archetypes — real people — that he described in this speech. On Thursday night, the speechmaker showed, in words, that he was also a man of experience, and a man who wanted to give something back to the people who gave it to him.
Bron: The New York Times
posted by Filip at 10:46 a.m.
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