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About That Speech
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This is the view from Invesco Field I missed out on.
Wow. What a week. Now it’s time to get back to the real world. I crashed back to earth early Friday morning. Sorry for the time gap, I’ve been working and moving non-stop since Friday morning.
The whole time I’ve been thinking about Obama’s speech, but every time I got a chance to check the news all I saw was a lady named Sarah Palin?
Instead of spending the weekend dissecting and analyzing the complexities of Obama’s speech, the news media has focused almost entirely on the surprise nomination of Alaska first-term Gov. Sarah Palin for Vice President. The announcement by Sen. John McCain was made the morning after 38.4 million Americans, by the far the most ever for a convention acceptance speech, watched Obama speak at Invesco Field.
The pick by John McCain definitely injected some excitement into his campaign, but it’s already starting to get creepy. Just talking about Sarah Palin and the morning after makes me uncomfortable.
Back to Obama. The speech was exactly what I thought it should have been. He rode the biggest wave of criticism that fell on his campaign all the way to shore. The speech answered specific questions about the “change” mantra that inspired 75,000 people to show up. Obama left the chanting and the sloganeering to the other speakers and went straight for the hard stuff. He spoke about specific programs he’d create to get America on the right track to deal with 21st century problems.
Former Hillary Clinton attack dog, and communications director, Howard Wolfson said the speech was exactly what he needed to hear from the Obama campaign. Wolfson said, “No one in recent history had attempted to have this kind of political conversation with 75,000 people. Barack Obama pulled it off.”
Because of the speech’s specific narrative, it was a great speech to watch while enjoying a beer with friends. Which is exactly what I did. I had a ticket to get inside Invesco Field, but after a crazy week of non-stop action, and only talking to strangers, I decided I’d rather watch the most anticipated political speech of my lifetime with my friends, at a bar.
It wasn’t like I didn’t want to go. But the thought of waiting by myself for five hours for the show to start, while trying to drum up appropriate conversations with like-minded strangers, just didn’t appeal to me at that point. Instead, I settled into a bar stool next to my politically irreverent pals, and about 50 other young people, and listened to the “Next President of The United States of America” speak about the future of the country we will inherit. I spent a lot of the time talking, candidly, with my friends about the meaning of such a speech, its historical implications, the actual outcome of Obama’s policy goals, and many other various topics. I said we would always remember where we watched Obama gave this speech. We will, and I won’t regret a thing.
So what did you think about the speech? It got rave reviews from people paid to analyze these types of things. Even staunch MSNBC conservatives like Joe Scarbrough and Pat Buchanan were unashamed to praise the speech. But the hired pundits, as is their nature, quickly moved on to the next topic. If you were at a watch party, and perhaps missed some of the context, here’s a link to watch the speech again, in its entirety.
In the next two months leading up to the election I’m going to dedicate one post a week to examining the goals Obama presented for this country during his speech. I’ll tell you what he plans to do, what McCain plans to do, what Denver politicians plan to do, and what you can do to help out.
The news media may be infatuated with Sarah Palin, but I’ve got a feeling we’ll be talking about this speech long after we’re done talking about her.
