The presidential nomination acceptance speech in front of 75 000 people at Denver’s Mile High stadium was undoubtedly the most important of Barack Obama’s life. Since the last one, that is. Or, maybe, only until the next one.
Obama owes his political success to many things. To being right about Iraq when so many in his party were wrong. To the audacity with which he has seized his opportunities. To his optimistic message and his inspiring personal story. His campaign organisation has been mostly brilliant, too (although it stumbled once or twice before and at Denver) — a byword for its mastery of internet fundraising, voter registration and its strategic discipline.
Mostly, though, Obama’s rapid climb up the political ladder has been marked by rung after rung of notable speeches. Words are the lifeblood of politics, but it is hard to think of a politician of the modern era whose mastery of the seemingly old-fashioned art of political speechmaking has propelled him further or faster than Obama.
The speech that launched Obama on the national stage was the one delivered in Boston on July 27 2004 to the last Democratic convention before this one in Denver.
Obama was an improbably junior choice to deliver the primetime keynote speech in Boston. At the time, though it was only four years ago, he was still only an Illinois state senator running for the vacant US senate seat in his home state.
Obama had caught the attention of the political world with his youth and eloquence and he was certain to win the senate seat — as he duly did. So John Kerry’s convention organisers gave him the high-profile opportunity to present himself on the national stage.
Obama did not disappoint. ”Let’s face it,” he began, ”my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely”. Then he outlined the now familiar story of his Kenyan father, his mother from Kansas, his African name (Barack, he reminded them, means ”blessed”) and his upbringing in Hawaii. He stood before them, he believed, with a story that ”is part of the larger American story” and believing that in no other country was such a story even possible”.
Then, after paying tribute to Kerry, Obama set out the vision that has since become his hallmark, of an America of shared, non-partisan values and national unity.
Negative campaigners were always trying to divide Americans from one another, he said. ”Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.
”The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats,” he went on. ”But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach little league [school baseball] in the blue states and, yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the red states.”
In the end, said Obama, the question was facing America was a simple one: ”Do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope?” Hope, he concluded, was something substantial.
It was ”the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs” just as it was ”the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too”.
It was an electrifying speech, which no one who heard it will ever forget. And it launched Obama into instant national, and even international renown. More than any other event, it is why Obama is where he is today.
Now, after Thursday night’s very different address in Denver, Obama’s career is a tale not of one speech but of two. Not just of the heady speech in Boston four years ago, but now also of the less rhetorical speech he delivered in Denver as he claimed that leadership.
On Friday morning, his mind will be partly focused on what he hopes will be the next truly major speech of his life: on January 20, when the skinny kid with the funny name stands on Capitol Hill and delivers his inaugural address as the 44th president of the United States. – guardian.co.uk