Denver Having followed Barack Obama around on the campaign trail quite a bit, I found tonight’s big speech to be of the middle-rank, at least by his own standards. At his best, Obama is a riveting orator–his Iowa caucus victory speech was gob-smacking in the brilliance of both its rhetoric and delivery. When Obama does not have his fast-ball, his speeches tend to be unkindly exposed, like when you catch a magician in a trick. Tonight he was neither at his best nor his worst. Two observations: First, the speech came insanely over-promised, both by the setting (not only a stadium, but in front of that grandiose set) and the puffery about him pouring his heart and soul into it with monkish fervor. The crowd loved it and him. Yet from where I was sitting in the 100 level, it seemed to me that the audience was more energetic and excited when he first stepped on stage than it was when he finished. Partly, that may be because this wasn’t the speech they expected. Many of the people in the crowd came with an eye toward witnessing history and Obama’s speech was more political than historical. As such, he grounded it more in making his explicitly political case for the presidency than in the histrionics of the moment. There was only one passage which reached for the rhetorical heavens:
The crowd went nuts for this passage, but it was the only one to arouse serious passion. (There was an excited, but not rhapsodic, response to his allusion to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which, interestingly enough, excluded mention of either the title of the speech or King’s name. This isn’t a criticism; I thought it was the most elegantly phrased passage of the entire convention.) Second, Obama’s speech represents a departure from the way he has constructed the argument for his candidacy. Up until this week–tonight, even–the Obama campaign rested on Hope / Change. He has now found a second act: economic populism. Following along, I saw the speech break into twelve fairly distinct sections. Eight of them were principally concerned with economic populism. The other four were about personal responsibility, foreign policy, patriotism, and bridge issues. This new vector may prove very fruitful for Obama. It certainly seems like the smartest direction for his campaign. But one issue was extremely notable in its absence: the surge. Obama went to some lengths to inoculate himself from attacks Republicans will make next week in terms of his judgment, his experience, his foreign policy toughness, his elitism, and his patriotism. He completely elided his miscalculation on the surge, suggesting that he has not yet figured out how to square this particular circle.
