It was a speech with mile high expectations. Leave it to Barack Obama to exceed them. Think about the pressure Obama was under to deliver this speech. He needed to motivate and inspire without using soaring rhetoric or coming across like Zeus. He needed to make this speech about others not him. He needed to make this speech about his love for America. And he needed to offer more details about what his type of change really means. And oh by the way, he had to do it with 84,000 people watching him in person and millions of Americans tuning in on television. Guess what? He not only pulled it off. It may have been close to flawless.
I have covered many of his speeches before. Yes, he's really good at making speeches, but with the stakes so high and the stage so big, I can't recall a better one he's ever delivered.
Look, let's keep this real. We all know his politics. He's liberal. Boom. That's it. Plain and simple. But here's the rub. He's not JUST reciting the liberal playbook from past elections. There is definitely some of that, maybe a lot of that but he's going beyond that and talking about faith and values. The McCain campaign is going to need to figure out pretty quickly how to deal with it.
Obama has made clear since day one that he is not afraid to talk about issues that have usually been reserved for Republican candidates. In his speech last night he brought up the issue of abortion and instead of reciting the pro-choice platform, he spoke of potential common ground. Same on guns. Or how about how he talked about the responsibility of fathers and how parents need to turn off the TV. His vision of parental responsibility and shared responsibility makes his speech stand out more.
Obama had a few challenges in this speech. First off, he had to really lay out his vision of change. He offered more specifics in this one speech than he usually offers in any of his stump speeches. He was able to give Americans a sense of what "change" means. Second, he desperately needed to confront the patriotism issue. People in this country needed to hear more rah-rah pro-American rhetoric Thursday night. Obama didn't disappoint. He used the word "America" a whopping 52 times and never referred to how we need to "change the World." It wasn't about the World vision last night. It was about his vision for America. This wasn't a speech about him. It was a speech targeting ordinary Americans. Smart move.
Look, if you're the McCain camp, you've got to be thinking that you have some real problems on your hands. It's not just the fact that Obama can pack an 80,000 seat football stadium. The real problem is that the Obama campaign has been super organized from the beginning. That's how they beat Hillary Clinton. They had a better ground game. When you combine great organizational skills with a candidate who can inspire people that makes for a deadly one-two punch. The RNC and the McCain campaign have their work cut out for them.