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:
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