US Politics / Chicken Dinner / 29 August 2008 /

Barack Obama may be deploying history as a subsitute for achievements but the Republicans will have to be careful if they accuse him of lacking substance, writes Chicken Dinner.

If sport and politics have always been slightly uncomfortable bedfellows, what about sports stadiums and politicians? Surely if there's one building a modern politician should never be seen in, it's the sporting arena. Mass gatherings beneath the floodlights and a sea of ecstatic admirers smack of personality cults and stage managed spectacle. For Barack Obama, whose opponents from both inside and outside the Democratic party have recently been taking him to task for being great at presentation but short on substance, the decision to close the Democratic convention with a mega-speech at Denver's Invesco Field, home of the Denver Broncos, was a risky one.

Nonetheless, the candidate doesn't seem to have disappointed the 84,000 who gathered at the stadium for his 47-minute show. Amongst all the little flags, Oprah Winfrey declared herself so moved that she "Cried (her) eyelashes off." Betfair punters were slightly less enthusiastic , although Obama's price for being next President of the USA shortened slightly to [1.6], while John McCain drifted a fraction to [2.78]. He gets his chance to rouse the rabble at the Republican convention next week.

Obama worked hard to dampen McCain's claims that he is just a hollow celebrity by delivering a speech "heavy on specific policy points, themes of broad values, and empathy for the daily challenges faced by many," according to CBS News.

Organisers also went "heavy" on the fact that the event was 45 years to the day on which Dr Martin Luther King made his "I have a dream" speech in Washington, and certainly in the absence of accomplishments - Obama's political rise has been so vertiginous he has barely had time to achieve anything else - history is a powerful substitute. It anchors Obama in something more substantial than he can provide from his own record.

But the Republicans may also want to be careful about how far they go with the celebrity insult, as celebrity is not in itself a bad thing. To many ordinary people, celebrity is something they aspire to and would welcome into their own lives in a heartbeat. The Democrats ought to be able to show that the President needs to be a celebrity - like it or not, he's the most famous man in the world, and needs to be able to handle a big stage, something of which George W Bush had not the faintest inkling, much to America's disadvantage.

If McCain then tries to push this distinction between a celebrity and an "ordinary person", the former being unable to understand the latter, according to the Republicans' own negative Obama campaigning, then McCain is also going to have a tough time proving his own "ordinary" credentials. Not being able to remember how many houses he owns didn't help, and telling reporters "I'll have my staff get to you," just compounded the impression of off-hand superiority.

More importantly, this convention signals the beginning of the most frantic and vital period of campaigning. Monday is Labor Day in the States, a public holiday that brings an end to summer, after which Americans can focus more closely on their credit card bills, mortgage payments and tuition costs for their children, and wonder which candidate seems to charting the most reliable course through the sea of red ink.

On top of that, there's the world beyond the US to consider again, with a considerable percentage of the population related to men and women serving overseas, and for whom foreign promises will play a considerable role in determining who gets their vote. Between now and election day on November 4, individuals somewhere in that wider world could also be planning painful reminders of why the US is overseas in the first place, reminders that could soon make Obama's razzmatazz look very misplaced.

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