Iris responded to my post on the President’s address at the Democratic convention, underscoring that citizenship was the central theme of Obama’s speech at the Democratic Convention. Although I didn’t emphasize this, I agree and want to expand upon her point today by highlighting the president’s words and adding a few reflections. The citizenship theme, the way it was presented and imagined, not only tied the Democratic Convention itself together. It promises to make coherent the Obama campaign and contribute to the possibility of a transformational second term of the President Obama, as Andrew Sullivan explores in his Daily Beast essay today. It also has provided a way to read the day to day events of the campaign, such as the joint appearances of Romney and Obama on last night’s Sixty Minutes.
As I have emphasized, the way the president presented himself, his serious demeanor and mode of address was as important as the content of his address. Non-verbal communication mattered. But so did the verbal. The President told a simple story with a beginning and a middle, inviting his audience to write the end. Vote. Stay active. Engage in citizenship responsibilities to your fellow citizens and country. It’s all there in his words.
He told a personal story:
Now, the first time I addressed this convention in 2004, I was a younger man, a Senate candidate from Illinois, who spoke about hope — not blind optimism, not wishful thinking, but hope in the face of difficulty; hope in the face of uncertainty; that dogged faith in the future which has pushed this nation forward, even when the odds are great, even when the road is long.
But the personal had a political – public message:
Eight years later, that hope has been tested by the cost of war, by one of the worst economic crises in history, and by political gridlock that’s left us wondering whether it’s still even possible to tackle the . . .
Read more: The President’s Speech: Citizenship and the American Story
