Persuade, Not Electrify: What Obama Has to Do
By RICHARD STEIER
Four years ago, Barack Obama, an Illinois State Senator running for a U.S. Senate seat, gave a keynote address at the Democratic Convention that was so powerful that it became his first step on the road to the White House.

On Thursday night, Mr. Obama will make a speech accepting his party's nomination that will go a long way toward defining himself for a nation that is suddenly focused on who he is and what he believes, and toward determining whether voters take a broad jump into the future with him.

In 2004, Mr. Obama sounded inspiring, a wonderful thing to be for a young politician on the rise. But as a candidate for President, he has found that strength hammered by his opponents as a liability, starting with Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries and continuing with John McCain. The Arizona Senator and presumptive Republican nominee is as willing to concede Senator Obama's oratorical gifts as the man he has dubbed "The One" has been to give him his due as a Vietnam War hero. But that is the credit that is supposed to make the American public accept as fair criticism the second half of Mr. McCain's argument: that Mr. Obama, while a gifted speaker, lacks the experience to lead.

TIME TO BRING IT ON HOME: Sen. Barack Obama, one prominent supporter says, has a gift for 'giving us the words to want to do better,' but it is more important for him to present in concrete terms why he is the best-qualified to lead the country when he addresses the Democratic National Convention and a national TV audience Aug. 28.

Can't Beat Him on Issues

It is the strongest case that can be made against him. The one based on their contrasting positions on the paramount issues like the economy and the war in Iraq is shaky because polls indicate far more Americans are in sync with Mr. Obama than with Mr. McCain.

To overcome it, Mr. Obama has to be able to communicate to those who have remained immune to his soaring rhetoric so far, and so inspiration probably isn't enough this time around. After all, John Kerry followed Mr. Obama four years ago with a good, forceful speech aimed at countering the caricatures of him as a flip-flopper by explaining why a willingness to examine the complexity of issues was the antidote for the just-do-it impulsiveness of President Bush. In the end, however, the negative attacks on Mr. Kerry — with the flip-flopper image one of the more effective ones — were enough to counter Mr. Bush's lousy first term in the minds of a slim majority of voters.

"I think 'persuade' is what he has to do," said Bill Lynch, a political consultant who played a key role in getting David Dinkins elected as New York's first black Mayor 19 years ago. "One of his problems is going to be the speech he made four years ago and how to surpass it. I would pick up from where he left off in 2004 in Boston."

As a prelude to making the case for Mr. Kerry's election at that convention, Mr. Obama explored several themes that figured prominently in his campaign this year, starting with his own biography as a mixed-race child of a black father from Africa and a white mother from Kansas. He made an appeal pitched more at the TV audience than the assembled delegates based on the premise that those who lived in what "pundits like to slice-and-dice into Red States and Blue States" tended to share many of the same values. "There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America," he said.

Focused on Economy, Health Costs

He spoke of workers in Illinois losing their jobs at a Maytag plant because its operations were moving to Mexico, of a man "who was losing his job and choking back tears, wondering how he would pay $4,500 a month for the drugs his son needs without the health benefits he counted on.

"Go into the [white-] collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don't want their tax money wasted by a welfare agency or the Pentagon," Mr. Obama continued. "Go into any inner-city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can't teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white."

Speaking of what were then 900 Americans who had died in Iraq, he said, "When we send our young men and women into harm's way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they're going, to care for their families while they're gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world."

Eloquent, powerful rhetoric. Mr. Lynch said, however, that a reprise would not be enough; that as the candidate Mr. Obama has to provide details to go with the lofty words.

"He's gotta reach out to moderate Democrats and independent Democrats," he said during an Aug. 20 phone interview. "He's gotta give real definition to what he means by change — what he will do as it relates to energy, what he will do as it relates to the economy and health care. I think he's gotta get real specific this time."

Stress Economy, Regain 'Clinton People'

Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran political and union consultant who was involved in President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign, suggested the specifics boil down to two primary pieces of business: "Economy, economy, economy, and get the Clinton people back."

Unlike four years ago, he said, Senator Obama doesn't need to thrill his audience with the breadth of his vision, explaining that "people equate charisma with vision. If he has a speech about non-tangibles, it ain't gonna work. Working America, or what's left of it, needs a clarion call. The trip to Berlin was for young people; the older people didn't understand [what Senator Obama was seeking to accomplish]."

For all Mr. Obama's talk about running to win in all 50 states, Mr. Sheinkopf said, the race figured to be decided in four places that historically have tipped the balance in close elections: Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and western Pennsylvania. All four of them are white, male and heavily Catholic, he said, a demographic that was not kindly disposed to Senator Obama during the primaries but one that he might persuade because his economic case is more compelling than Mr. McCain's.

For those voters, Mr. Sheinkopf said, the election could pivot on how Mr. Obama answered a two-part question: "Am I gonna have a job? Do you have a plan?"

VP Choice Makes a Statement

State Sen. Diane Savino, who will be at the convention as a Clinton delegate, said Mr. Obama had already made an important statement about himself and his priorities with his selection of Joe Biden as his running-mate.

"Dick Cheney has taught us that the second-in-command really matters — he's been the policy-maker for this administration," she said prior to heading out to Denver.

"There's a couple of things he has to do," she said regarding Mr. Obama's acceptance speech. "One, he has to unite the party. The second is he has to make people feel comfortable with his liabilities — that he's young and inexperienced. And so I think the tone has to be one of confidence, not inspiration."

She continued, "He has to lay out a very clear plan for what his presidency will be: economically, on foreign policy, and addressing the corrosive nature of government and the effect it's had on people's confidence in government the last few years. It's not enough for him to say, 'I'm a Democrat and they're Republicans.' He's gotta say why he's a better choice. He's gotta go beyond the core Obama voter who's going to vote for him no matter what. He's gotta speak to the Hillary voters who are a bit skittish about his inexperience, and other potential Democratic voters who have questions about him."

Asked whether she harbors any doubts of her own, Senator Savino replied, "The only reservation I have is that he's young."

'Swing Voter' in His Camp

For another convention delegate, Correction Officers Benevolent Association President Norman Seabrook, there is no ambivalence about the about-to-be Democratic nominee. And his opinion carries slightly more weight because he has shown an uncanny knack for backing winning candidates while criss-crossing party lines, and in some cases getting behind them in situations where their chances seemed long at best.

In giving the support of his heavily minority union to Governor Pataki's re-election bid in 1998, Mr. Seabrook seemed motivated more than a bit by pragmatism: he wanted a Variable Supplements Fund created for his members, and a year later Mr. Pataki signed a bill into law over the vehement protests of his fellow Republican, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The COBA president's decision to back Mr. Bush for President in 2000 seemed like it might be a continuation of the favor-trading with Mr. Pataki, but by 2004, Mr. Seabrook had become sufficiently disillusioned with Mr. Bush's first term that he sat out that campaign.

But just as he endorsed Michael Bloomberg at a time during the 2001 mayoral campaign when the Republican nominee was trailing his Democratic opponent, Mark Green, by double digits in the polls, Mr. Seabrook also got behind Senator Obama last year at a time when Ms. Clinton was being proclaimed the "inevitable" Democratic nominee.

A Convert in California

He first met him 16 months ago at the California State Democratic Convention, which Mr. Seabrook attended with a delegation of correction officers from that state. The person who introduced Senator Obama to the audience looked into the wings in bewilderment when he did not appear, Mr. Seabrook recalled, and then the Senator entered from the rear of the convention center in San Diego as the sound system played the old O'Jays hit, "Got to Give the People What They Want."

"The place erupted in a way I have never seen in my life," Mr. Seabrook said last week. Five months later, last September, COBA became the first city union to endorse Mr. Obama, and, according to Mr. Seabrook, the first one outside the state of Illinois to do so.

But stagecraft and even his way with words do not explain how far the candidate has come, he contended. Mr. Seabrook said the Senator had immersed himself in what had made dynamic leaders of John F. Kennedy, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ronald Reagan, and taken something from each of those diverse men in an attempt to create a "cloth of unity."

"He is simply reaching out and giving us the words to want to do better," the COBA leader said. "When you can look a man in the eye and feel what he's saying, that makes a difference."

He said the impression Senator Obama made on him then and in subsequent meetings was similar to the one left by Mr. Bloomberg.

Cites Early Opposition to War

Questions about his lack of experience should be swept away by his having opposed the invasion of Iraq at a time when virtually every one of this year's candidates for President supported it. "The judgment he had on the war was absolutely on point," Mr. Seabrook said.

"I think that Senator Obama needs to stay on message of moving America back to the forefront, getting back the respect that America once held in the world community," he continued. "He needs to talk about the deficits, make it absolutely clear that the Constitution will be upheld and we will not be going into unnecessary wars where we lose thousands of young men and women."

And ultimately, in a time of economic uncertainty, Mr. Seabrook said, Mr. Obama must reassure his audience that the changes he will bring will have a lasting impact for both their needs and aspirations. The question Americans are waiting to have answered, he suggested, is, "What do you bring to the table that ensures that my child can get a college education, that we can pay our mortgage, our food bills, our heat?

"It's not about what's good for the left or good for the right," Mr. Seabrook concluded. "It's, 'What's the best way to move forward?'''