Rupert Cornwell: So is Obama the saviour of his party?
The Independent
Thursday, 28 August 2008
Finally, the warm ups are over – Ted Kennedy and his farewell call to arms, the Clintons and the latest episode of America's favourite political psychodrama. Even the uncertainty about whether the engaging but irredeemably prolix Joe Biden can keep control of the word count will have been resolved when this article appears. Here in Denver, we've at last got around to the one thing that matters. Barack Obama.
Given the breathless build up that precedes them, and the no less breathless analysis that follows them, you might think convention speeches can decide presidential elections. Almost always, however, they are instantly forgotten. But the speech Obama delivers tonight may be the exception. An angst hangs over the gathered representatives of the Democratic party, as seemingly tangible as the Rocky Mountains etched on the city's western horizon. Their foreboding is simple: have we picked the wrong person – and is it possible we are going to lose the most winnable election in a generation.
Every delegate can reel off the advantages that should make their man a certainty to be behind the Oval Office desk come next January: a desperately unpopular Republican President, an unending war, a lousy economy, a gnawing sense of national decline. Even Mother Nature may be about to cooperate, by delivering a major hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico in the midst of the Republicans' own convention next week, almost three years to the day after Katrina. No wonder in the "generic" polls that measure broad party preference, Democrats have a huge lead, of 12 per cent or more.
But when it comes to specifics, i.e. Barack Obama versus John McCain, their man is running only level. Now McCain might be the best Republican option in this inauspicious year, but he's not exactly a superb campaigner. He's old, a dismal public speaker, and distinctly gaffe-prone. The reason he is holding his own is that people simply don't yet have confidence his untested young opponent is up to the job. Tonight is an opportunity to overcome those doubts, in a prime time speech in which the candidate will have the country's undivided attention. And rightly so. For not only this convention, but this entire election, is now about one thing only: Barack Obama.
(Continued here.)
Thursday, 28 August 2008
Finally, the warm ups are over – Ted Kennedy and his farewell call to arms, the Clintons and the latest episode of America's favourite political psychodrama. Even the uncertainty about whether the engaging but irredeemably prolix Joe Biden can keep control of the word count will have been resolved when this article appears. Here in Denver, we've at last got around to the one thing that matters. Barack Obama.
Given the breathless build up that precedes them, and the no less breathless analysis that follows them, you might think convention speeches can decide presidential elections. Almost always, however, they are instantly forgotten. But the speech Obama delivers tonight may be the exception. An angst hangs over the gathered representatives of the Democratic party, as seemingly tangible as the Rocky Mountains etched on the city's western horizon. Their foreboding is simple: have we picked the wrong person – and is it possible we are going to lose the most winnable election in a generation.
Every delegate can reel off the advantages that should make their man a certainty to be behind the Oval Office desk come next January: a desperately unpopular Republican President, an unending war, a lousy economy, a gnawing sense of national decline. Even Mother Nature may be about to cooperate, by delivering a major hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico in the midst of the Republicans' own convention next week, almost three years to the day after Katrina. No wonder in the "generic" polls that measure broad party preference, Democrats have a huge lead, of 12 per cent or more.
But when it comes to specifics, i.e. Barack Obama versus John McCain, their man is running only level. Now McCain might be the best Republican option in this inauspicious year, but he's not exactly a superb campaigner. He's old, a dismal public speaker, and distinctly gaffe-prone. The reason he is holding his own is that people simply don't yet have confidence his untested young opponent is up to the job. Tonight is an opportunity to overcome those doubts, in a prime time speech in which the candidate will have the country's undivided attention. And rightly so. For not only this convention, but this entire election, is now about one thing only: Barack Obama.
(Continued here.)
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