BOSTON -- At the corner of Summer and Washington streets, a block away from the Boston Common, which by Saturday was already teeming with the Democratic hordes, I saw a man wearing a blue Nader baseball cap, with a blue Nader button to match. Except for the obvious recklessness of the act, the man seemed otherwise normal, but I could not help thinking, “Something is going to happen to this guy.”
It was a passing thought, but it reinforced a feeling I've had for a while now that something truly unexpected will happen at this convention. The scouting report is that conventions have devolved into gargantuan pointlessness. There is no drama, no debate, no news, no point. The networks are bailing almost completely. And, frankly, it is hard to argue that there is any great value to these events anymore. We know the nominee, we know the running mate, we know what the pictures are going to look like when Senators John Kerry and John Edwards stand next to each other and raise their arms in triumph. To exaggerate matters, Democrats so agree on one thing -- getting rid of President Bush -- that the many contentious issues they have among themselves have been put in the basement freezer for now.
“The unity will last at least until November,” predicts former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta. Emily's List President Ellen Malcolm calls the convention “our lovefest.”
So, on paper, these four days have the potential to make cold bean soup seem interesting. Is Kerry going to stumble? No. Is Edwards going to go on too long? No. Will the Hillary and Bill Show make some people wistful and wishful at the same time? Probably. Will Howard Dean start talking nasty about the (stridently centrist and anti-Dean)Democratic Leadership Council? Only if you ask him.
But that is not exactly fireworks. Still, I'm thinking that something is going to happen, and I'm betting on Barack Obama's keynote speech on Tuesday night.
If you have the baseline doggedness and determination, there are two ways to make it in politics: smarts or charm, credentials or charisma. If you have both, you turn into a rock star (or Bill Clinton). Obama, not so long ago an unknown state senator from the south side of Chicago, has both. He is the Democratic nominee for the open U.S. Senate seat in Illinois, and after driving its nominee out of the race in June because of a sex scandal, the state GOP has yet to find a candidate to face Obama -- who, even with an opponent, looked like a hands-down winner.
He knows enough, though, not to allow himself to think that way. “I just want to make sure that we don't start thinking that we're preordained,” he says.
If he win, Obama will become only the third African American to serve in the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.
A few weeks ago, sitting in a dingy campaign office in Springfield, Illinois, about four blocks from where Abraham Lincoln lived, Obama says this about his party: “The core values of the Democratic Party, the idea of inclusion and creating ladders for success and economic security, have been on the defensive.”
He thinks the party's leaders need to be clearer about what they believe -- and to fight harder for those beliefs.
“One of the habits I see among Democrats is getting steamrolled by Bush, and then whining about it,” he says. “As a consequence, you not only look weak, you also look petty.”
Even before Obama knew he was chosen as the keynote speaker, he was thinking of his role in the Democratic Party. “I think my job, in part, is to reorient our politics so that we have a robust, proactive philosophy that is a meaningful alternative to the Republican philosophy,” he says.
To that end, he has something in mind.
“I think Bill Clinton described a broad political consensus in this country -- and did so masterfully,” Obama says. “I think Al Gore ran away from that consensus, and I think that was a mistake.”
As an orator, Obama is no Barbara Jordan, no Mario Cuomo, so he runs the risk of crashing on the high expectations. However, you get the clear sense that this is a man who has worked out his inner questions sufficiently such that big moments don't unduly rattle him. He thinks the “Republican Party has been hijacked by a bunch of ideologues,” but sees a need for Democrats to deal with cultural issues like guns, abortion, and gay marriage differently.
“In each of those circumstances,” Obama says, “you have to begin by acknowledging why people care about these issues, and walk them through to a different set of conclusions.”
On guns, for example, he says: “A lot of these guys learned to hunt alongside their fathers. So hunting for them has a same resonance as going to a baseball game for a lot of other people. It's not a sideline issue. But you have to explain to them that a single mother on the south side of Chicago has a different set of concerns that have to do with keeping her kids alive. That's a conversation you can have. They might not agree with you, but they won't think you're a jerk.”
And in these angry times, that alone might rise to the level of accomplishment. Something might happen.
Terence Samuel is the chief congressional correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. His column about politics appears each week in the online edition of The American Prospect.
