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| Democratic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama makes his acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver's Pepsi Center (Photo: barackobama.com) |
By Zenitha Prince
Washington Bureau Chief
DENVER (August 28, 2008) - In the glare of a world-sized spotlight, Sen. Barack Obama stood, a lone figure in a sea of 84,000 crammed into Invesco Field at Mile High, faced with a daunting task—giving a speech that would firmly define his American roots, lay out his agenda for change and offer a forceful challenge to rival Sen. John McCain and the Republican Party.
“…Next week, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third.”
“Tonight I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great nation—enough!” Obama declared, stunning the crowd into a moment of silence.
“This moment, this election, is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive,” he said. “Because next week, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third….On Nov. 4 we must stand up and say: ‘Eight is enough.’”
In past weeks, Obama has been dogged by attacks from McCain and the GOP, who have equated him to everything from an airhead celebrity to an egotistical messiah-wannabe, and his supporters have been clamoring for a more hard-hitting response.
On Thursday, in his speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president, while Obama did not take a red meat, attack dog approach—saying he refused to descend into petty attacks against his rivals “character and patriotism”—he certainly established that he was no pushover.
“He clearly said, I’m not going to let these folks attack me and not fight back,” said U.S. Donna Edwards, D-Md., who earlier this year survived a grueling congressional race. “And I think all of us left that stadium hopeful about the future and convinced that Barack Obama will be president in January 2009.”
Throughout his speech, Obama counteracted the attacks against him and offered stark contrasts between himself and McCain.
On national security: while Obama had the foresight to oppose the Iraq war, has called for a timetable for troop withdrawal and has called for resources to be redeployed to the eradication of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, he said, McCain seems prepared to perpetuate a misguided war. “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 to loud applaude
The GOP candidate has also painted the Illinois senator as aloof and elitist, a belief that has distanced many voters. “His biggest challenge as the first African-American running for president is to convince those recalcitrant working-class Whites, those 18 million Hillary Clinton voters, those coal miners in Appalachia and farmers in Kentucky that he is on their side and really understands their issues,” said J. Terry Edmonds, former White House speechwriter for President Bill Clinton.
Obama answered that challenge with stories of his mother, who survived on food stamps and later died from cancer when her insurance wouldn’t cover treatment; and stories of his grandfather, who fought in Gen. George S. Patton's Army and his grandmother who rose from a secretary to middle management. "I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine," he said. "These are my heroes. Theirs are the stories that shaped me.”
John McCain, on the other hand, doesn’t know what happens in the lives of ordinary Americans, Obama asserted. "Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under $5 million a year?....How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people’s benefits or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement?....Because John McCain doesn’t get it.”
Accused of being too intellectual, Obama also faced the task of outlining his platform in simple, direct terms. “In addition to high rhetoric, he needs to put meat on the bones and say exactly what change means,” said Edmonds. “His language has to be a mixture of the poetic and prosaic but with much more emphasis on the prosaic.”
And that’s what Obama did, spelling out his agenda to: cut taxes for 95 percent of working families and capital gains taxes on small businesses; reduce dependency on foreign oil within 10 years while investing $150 billion in renewable energy; improving sick days and family leave; reforming bankruptcy laws so that CEOs aren’t favored; invest in early childhood education and make college education affordable; resurrect foreign diplomacy and end the war in Iraq among other policies.
“He laid out a clear agenda for the country that is in a critical time and he touched on all the issues that this country will have to confront,” said John Jackson of Boston.
And for those voters who see him as a stranger, he gave a clear picture of who he is and what he stands for, said Charles Perko, 24. “They know now, and if they don’t, [it’s because] they’re not willing to listen,” said the Colorado School of Mines student.
Obama’s policies and life experiences spoke directly to their experiences, said several attendees, including Joanne Maniche, who grew up with a single mother like Obama did. “Barack is everyman,” she said. Beside her stood Christine Yancey, who, with tears streaming down her face, said that like Obama, she had to fight insurance companies to get her mother hospitalized and treated for lymphoma. “That hit home to me,” said Yancey, who urged Obama on like a church mother on Sunday morning during his speech. “I know he understands the pains of the working-class community.”
However, it was Obama’s reference to the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech—a risky move some thought, since it could prove too overtly racial—that really moved the crowd.
In cadences that flowed like a finely timed waltz, Obama referenced King’s words during the historic March on Washington, conjuring a vision of ordinary citizens—in this age—from all creeds, races and backgrounds working together to rebuild a nation whose promise had been a source of hope to so many.
“And as I looked around the stadium I saw African Americans, I saw Latinos, I saw Whites who had some doubts about their country over the past four years—money spent in the war, the lives lost, what happened with [Hurricane] Katrina—and saw people once again proud to be Americans,” Jackson said. “And, if a campaign can restore that, imagine what four years in the White House can do.” |