Oral Exam

Third, will the venue of Obama's speech—the reverberating vastness of Invesco Field- undermine its content? The McCain campaign has effectively painted Obama as a celebrity with fans instead of a leader with convictions. A rock-concert setting—with glowing cell phones and fainting, screeching teenagers—would tend to confirm this image.

This McCain strategy works if Obama's speech is weak—if it consists of strained, self-absorbed, self-important platitudes that sound like second-rate Sorensen. Obama is fully capable of that kind of speech, as we saw in his overreaching Berlin remarks. But he is also capable of something much grander, as we saw on the night of his Iowa primary victory.  A great speech will transcend any setting—even if the stadium is empty and knee-deep in rain.

MICHAEL WALDMAN

When the Democratic Convention is tweaked for being overly efficient with high production values, it's come a long way! If the explosions are only in CGI, then the Democrats should really breathe a sigh of relief.

First, a fond word for this dinosaur institution. For years, pundits have moaned that conventions play little real role. That's silly. With parties atomized, candidates self-nominating, and much of the work of politics subsumed in the slog of fundraising, these gatherings are the only time when "the party" can be said to exist in one place. So much of our rhetorical tradition comes from conventions. Partly that's because orators are allowed to ham it up—to use humor, anger, pathos, and mawkish sentiment in ways that would be inappropriate to a dignified Inaugural Address. Lincoln declared that a "house divided will not stand" at the 1858 state Republican convention in Springfield, Ill.  William Jennings Bryan's 1896 "cross of gold" speech (actually, a statement about the party platform) laid out a century's worth of populist economic arguments. It was at the 1932 convention, the first addressed by a nominee, that Franklin Roosevelt first pledged "A New Deal for the American people," and Kennedy's "New Frontier" was proclaimed at the 1960 gathering. Nothing George H.W. Bush ever said in office was as memorable as his 1988 convention speech. "Read my lips: no new taxes" probably won him the 1988 race, and helped lose him the 1992 race when he broke the pledge. (It didn't help when he pointed to his derriere and told reporters, "Read my hips.")

This one is different from other recent Democratic gatherings, for a few reasons.

For starters, it's the first Democratic convention held in the post-conservative era. The Democratic Party has been unified by the fiercely held view that Bush is a disastrous president. (Sorry, Mike. I like the speeches though!)  Now it appears the country agrees. This seems more than an electoral downtick, but that the powerful conservative surge that began as a backlash to the 1960s—what Sean Wilentz has dubbed The Age of Reagan—seems emphatically over. This will be reflected in speeches that are less timid, more robustly partisan than we have heard in years. The bizarre edict in 2004 that speakers not criticize Bush and Cheney won't be repeated.  Ironically, this time the nominee will gain points if he persuades voters he is not a "different kind of Democrat."

Also, far more than any time since 1980, you'll see the drama of conflict and reconciliation played out in the big addresses. By its nature, this convention will be less scripted and stage-managed than many recent ones. We won't just parse the Clintons' words, we'll squint for their facial expressions and tone of voice. We'll scan the crowd to see if the Hillary delegates cheer or scowl. I thought it a bit much when Hillary referred to Greek drama to describe the convention, but she was onto something.

I agree that the atmospherics of the Invesco Field speech are tricky. For one thing, it's harder to give a good speech outdoors. It has been done before—not just JFK, but also FDR's "rendezvous with destiny" before 100,000 people in Philadelphia in 1936. But, the political challenge is harder. Obama will want to soar rhetorically. But he must do so while emphatically spelling out his vision for governance—what he would want to do as president. He needs to impress, not with the loft of his peroration, but with the passion of his concern over economic anxiety. Obama is a sharp and substantive guy, but too often, when he reaches the policy sections of his speeches, he switches into rote. The best leaders meld policy goals into a broader narrative of the country and its mission—and the best place to do that can be a convention speech.

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