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Tuesday 6 January 2009

Not a great speech but an effective one

On a night which will live long in the memory, Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president. His acceptance speech was in parts stridently populist but in others presented Obama as the great conciliator. The speech as a text was not one of Obama’s best but it was delivered with the passion that he is often said to lack. When he thundered ‘Enough!’ about the last eight years the crowd was momentarily taken aback.

This convention has been criticised for not being harsh enough on John McCain, Obama set about correcting that with surprisingly harsh attacks on his opponent. He repeatedly accused McCain of being out of touch and ruthlessly demagogued the comments of McCain and his advisers on the economy. On national security, he questioned McCain’s temperament as well as his judgement. Obama has clearly decided that he needs to go blow for blow with the McCain campaign.

Obama attempted to soar above partisanship he had been indulging in when it came to a string of hot button issues including abortion and gun control, presenting himself as someone determined to find the decent, commonsensical common ground. There was also some fine talk on family—‘programmes can’t replace parents’—and fatherhood. (Both topics have huge appeal to independent voters and are issues where Obama leads by example). Obama ended with one of his patriotic paeans of praise invoking Martin Luther King which considering the night fell rather flat. There then followed fireworks and a through milking of the applause of the adoring crowd which ran the risk of appearing too triumphaIist.

Indeed, I expect we will see footage of the crowd doing Mexican waves earlier in the night in a McCain ad before too long. The expectations for Obama’s speech tonight were huge. The speech might not have met them in terms of soaring rhetoric but the contrasts it drew with McCain were effective. It also signals that we are going to see a more pugnacious Obama between now and November 4th. Whether that is compatible with his ‘post-partisan’ appeal is going to be one of the determinants of the election result. PS See Fraser's verdict on Americano.

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