Stadium site for speech raises stakes: sink or soar

Huge venue increases rewards, risks

By M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published August 28, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Photo by Associated Press / 1960

In the Los Angeles Coliseum, John F. Kennedy formally accepts the Democratic presidential nomination on July 15, 1960.

Photo by Rusty Kennedy / Associated Press/1980

Called the Great Communicator, Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan gives a two-handed thumbs-up sign as he stands before a cheering Republican National Convention on July 17, 1980, in Detroit's Joe Louis Arena.

The stadium is the message. And that's a risky proposition for Sen. Barack Obama.

Even before he says a word accepting the Democratic Party's presidential nomination tonight, he is making a big statement with his choice of venue: a massive, open-air football stadium instead of a smaller, boxed-in basketball arena.

Choosing 75,000-seat Invesco Field at Mile High over the much smaller Pepsi Center implies that Obama's movement can't be contained in a conventional arena.

In essence, it says he won't be boxed in by his party's established traditions. It suggests he's trying to reach people who've been on the outside looking in.

But raising the roof also raises expectations, and the stage is set for a bigger triumph or a bigger flop, rhetoric experts say.

In politics "there's this thing called 'expectancy violation theory,' " said Jennifer Mercieca, an assistant professor who researches rhetorical and political theory at Texas A&M University.

Set expectations high, and a candidate had better deliver, Mercieca said.

"If they aren't blown away by his oratorical skills," she concludes, "they could be disappointed."

When he steps to the microphone tonight, Obama is inviting the belittling "rock star" or "celebrity" comparisons from Republican rival Sen. John McCain.

But with risk comes the possibility of huge rewards: Obama has the opportunity to create direct comparisons - for better or worse - to two of the more revered Americans of the past half-century: former President Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. After all, Kennedy accepted his nomination at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and King delivered his famed "I Have a Dream" speech exactly 45 years ago today in front of a sea of people in Washington.

Those are tough acts to follow, but Mercieca thinks the stadium-size "show of force" also could help beat the public's expectations for what most modern political conventions have become: heavily scripted events designed to manufacture images of people-powered movements.

"We live in a hyper-mediated age," she said. "We're so used to pseudo events and fake news and manufactured 'reality' TV. We're a much more skeptical population than we were before. . . . You can't fool the eye with 75,000 people."

Charles E. Morris III, associate professor of communications at Boston College, said the Invesco setting is meant to play on Obama's rhetorical strength, "namely his talent for creating effervescence."

"His opponents understand this well, thus their efforts to depict it as the superficial effect of celebrity," Morris said.

Based on Obama's track record - he has drawn massive crowds from Iowa to Oregon to Berlin - the setting seems right for the candidate's "inevitable crescendo," Morris said.

But what about those words?

Some people, including civil rights veteran Jesse Jackson, expect Obama, the first biracial nominee, to embrace history and build on the dream.

"And we should seize this transformative moment to turn in a new direction. Not just a new convention, but a new direction," Jackson told the Rocky in a June interview.

But if Obama is looking for a template, he need not limit his options to Democrats. Rhetorically, he might want to look to a Republican as his role model, said John M. Murphy, associate professor of communications at the University of Illinois.

In 1980, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan took on weakened Democratic President Carter. But the former "B-movie actor," as the Democrats gleefully branded him, assured the public that he was more than Hollywood glitz.

"What his acceptance speech did do was convince people that Reagan was substantive," Murphy said. "It went a long way to convince people that he wasn't just an actor or an after-dinner speaker."

Reagan did it by weaving back and forth between detailed discussions of issues like the economy, national security and budget issues, and soaring, optimistic rhetoric about restoring the greatness of America.

"Can anyone look at our reduced standing in the world today and say, 'Let's have four more years of this'?" Reagan told the Republican delegates in Detroit.

The key theme Obama might borrow from Reagan is "restoration," Murphy said, "because 'change' can scare people," but restoration means change that brings back fundamental values that Americans of all political stripes generally agree upon.

Murphy said Obama might have avoided that term "restoration" in the primaries against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton because it might have encouraged people to think back on President Clinton's more prosperous, peaceful tenure. But it's a reassuring term he shouldn't avoid now.

If Democrats are skittish about borrowing themes from a Republican nemesis, they might remember that Reagan, the conservative, was borrowing liberally from one of their party's great figures.

Reagan spoke of "a great national crusade to make America great again," much as one of his heroes, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, ended his famous "New Deal" acceptance speech in 1932 by announcing "a crusade to restore America to its own people."

In the midst of the Great Depression, "FDR was entering the election in a point of extreme crisis, economic breakdown" and turmoil across the globe, Mercieca said.

Facing the Democratic delegates in Chicago, Roosevelt said he wanted the party to "break foolish traditions," signaling that this would be a new party under his leadership, Mercieca noted.

That, she believes, is what Obama has been trying to say all along.

The policies in Roosevelt's acceptance speech and in Reagan's acceptance speech 48 years later could not be more different. One pledged a big government New Deal. The other spoke of dismantling federal programs. But timing is everything, and each address seized the moment in history.

"What makes a speech great is when it responds to the moment perfectly," Mercieca said. "And I think most acceptance speeches respond to the moment adequately."

It's not a coincidence that few political party acceptance speeches earn high rankings on the lists of great political rhetoric. Too often, candidates become distracted by internal party business or get bogged down in laundry lists of issues meant to please various factions of their coalitions.

Sometimes, even the most artfully phrased, poetic speech can miss the tone the country wants to hear.

Bob Shrum, a legendary Democratic speech writer and avid student of history, said that's what might have happened in 1952, when Adlai Stevenson gave a well-crafted, self-deprecating speech announcing he would accept the Democratic nomination.

"I accept your nomination and your program," Stevenson began. "I should have preferred to hear those words uttered by a stronger, a wiser, a better man than myself."

Stevenson's speech was poetic, and it referenced a famous Biblical passage - a great speech, if he had delivered it in 1852 instead of 1952. But it didn't exactly give Cold War voters the uplifting confidence in a leader they generally like to have.

Hope, optimism, confidence, inspiration: The experts agree these are the essential elements of a great acceptance speech. Policies? They're not always remembered, though an apparent mastery of tough topics - and a clear direction - are essential if someone wants to appear "presidential."

Above all, a nominee's speech must leave people thinking the candidate is up to the job, "so that we can imagine 'President Obama' at the end of the speech," Murphy said.

The stage is set. It's at the 50-yard line of a giant stadium. It's time to see if the junior Illinois senator can handle the ball.

Some lines famous, some infamous

MISSES

* "I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty."

Democrat John Kerry, 2004

A Vietnam veteran, Kerry thought he had a catchy introduction, and he included a salute for effect. But it practically invited the so-called Swift Boat attacks on his war record.

* "Taxes will go up. And anyone who says they won't is not telling the truth to the American people. I mean business. By the end of my first term, I will reduce the Reagan budget deficit by two-thirds. Let's tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."

Walter Mondale, 1984

No Democrat will ever use such a line again, Mondale told the Rocky Mountain News recently.

* "I accept your nomination and your program. I should have preferred to hear those words uttered by a stronger, a wiser, a better man than myself."

Democrat Adlai Stevenson, 1952

Humility is not always what Americans want in a leader; Stevenson was swamped by Dwight Eisenhower in the general election.

HITS

* "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people. Let us all here assembled constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of competence and courage. This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms. Give me your help, not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people."

Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1932

This speech outlined a bold, if vague, New Deal.

* "For those who have abandoned hope, we'll restore hope, and we'll welcome them into a great national crusade to make America great again!"

Republican Ronald Reagan, 1980

Reagan, often invokes the Democrat he once idolized, FDR .

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