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August 29, 2008

My friend Joscelynn is hilarious, "I was nervous for a minute that Barack Obama would turn down the nomination. That would have been so embarrassing."

Republicans spent most of the week wanting me to be exasperated that the stage resembled a Greek temple. Unlike, say, every iconic building in the District of Columbia? The Founders quite consciously sought to emulate the classical world, so its unsurprising that a politician would use such symbolism as a backdrop. No, the exasperating part of the Obama campaign is not the staging but the importation of the mysticism one would find in an actual temple.

To give Obama his due, he avoided most of the nauseating, numinous rhetoric that has characterized his campaign. He did depart into some typical doubletalk when he said, "the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington." And thence from Washington . . . what? Change, one might assume, flowing from the Federal City and back again like some vast spiritual tide.

But again, the speech was more practical than lofty, which is to say that it was an ordinary, Democratic speech. As far as that goes, it was not bad. Obama delivered some decent (in the full sense of the word) swipes at his opponent, put in some Democratic boilerplate, and made a few policy prescriptions. And he lied through his teeth. Obama is a gifted speaker; giving voice to this speech must have been easy, as it required little of him. But it failed to impress me.

He was, of course, trying to be impressive. Maybe he tried too hard. Probably the best summary of the effort comes from Ross Douthat:

The whole thing felt schizophrenic - part Clintonian laundry-list, part McCain-bashing polemic, part "beyond red and blue" peroration - and watching it I was left with the impression that Obama would have been better off just sticking with the high-flown inspirational style that got him here, and waiting for the debates to recast himself as the meat-and-potatoes guy who can throw a punch and get down into the policy weeds. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, and you can see what Obama and his speechwriters were trying to do - namely, have the best of both worlds, by being soaring and substance-oriented, combative and post-partisan. But the substance was predictable, thin, and rife with pandering, the combativeness felt faintly inappropriate, and the speech didn't soar nearly as much as it should have. It was a historic evening, for Obama and for America, and there were moments that gave me shivers just watching on TV - but if you didn't go in sold on the Democratic nominee, I think it was ultimately something of a letdown.

Posted by Zach Wendling at August 29, 2008 07:11 AM

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Posted by: Jerry Doodle at August 29, 2008 09:27 AM | permalink

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