By: Politico

Next week, Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, will deliver his acceptance address in front of 76,000 fans at a stadium normally reserved for the Denver Broncos. It’s hard to overstate the magnitude of Obama’s challenge as he seeks to communicate his core themes: grass-roots change, a new politics, and unifying the country after eight divisive years under President Bush. And he will need to rebut Sen. John McCain’s argument that “he’s the biggest celebrity in the world” and unable to meet the challenges of economic and overseas crises.

Obama and his team have the advantage of hindsight. They can look to some of the biggest bombs and stunning successes of acceptance speeches past and draw on these historic examples as they prepare to use his address to frame Obama as the true agent of change in this campaign.

For starters, Obama’s advisers should recall just how easily single catchphrases in convention addresses have come back to haunt Democrats in recent decades. Democratic nominees George McGovern and Walter Mondale also sought to transform American politics, but their change-making addresses at their respective conventions badly backfired.

In 1972, McGovern eloquently declared that now was the time for America to “come home.” His tag line in support of change was used to portray him and other Democrats as isolationist liberals for years thereafter.

By the same token, Mondale in 1984 promised change when he vowed to level with Americans and declared forthrightly that he would raise their taxes should he win the White House. Mondale’s words were “disastrous,” as author Michael A. Cohen argued, because they “served to reinforce the image of [Democrats] as … tax-and-spend liberals.”

But four other candidates — all challengers like Obama — succeeded in establishing themselves in their convention talks as change agents in sync with the American people’s mood, in ways applauded by the traditional media, and their speeches helped them frame the fall campaign on their own terms. As upstarts seeking to unseat the other party from the White House, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton set the bar that Obama will now aspire to reach with his speech.

In 1932, Roosevelt broke from tradition to accept his party’s nomination in person at the convention. As Obama must do, Roosevelt clearly explained his decision to dispense with “foolish traditions” because he was seeking to lead during “unprecedented and unusual times.” Recasting the Democratic Party as the champion of working Americans against the malefactors of excessive wealth, FDR forcefully vowed to establish “a new deal” and help Americans to resume their “interrupted march along the path of real progress.” Obama must find a way to frame his large convention speech setting on favorable terms to reinforce his transformational message and, as Roosevelt did, connect with millions of Americans seeking change to help them through uncertain times.

Another key element in successful “change” convention addresses was the ability to tap the nation’s mood, put forward bold ideas focused on the future and cast the political party as the place for common-sense experimentation and political reform. In 1960, Kennedy bluntly proclaimed that “the old era is ending,” “the world is changing” and “our concern must be with the future” and with unleashing the forces of “invention, innovation [and] imagination.” As Kennedy repeatedly used words such as “old” and “new” (“a new generation of leadership…to cope with new problems and new opportunities”), Obama also needs to find language that will invoke “change” as the election’s key reference point.

In 1980, Reagan’s savvy convention address portrayed his party as the vehicle to rebirth “the American tradition of leadership.” Reagan promised to shrink the size of government, venerate individual freedoms and entrepreneurship, and bring to the White House Roosevelt’s style of optimism and buoyancy about America’s future.

In 1992, Bill Clinton offered a window onto an additional element in any successful change-seeking convention address: He fused his own biography with his campaign theme that he understood people’s pain and would fight to open doors of opportunity to ordinary Americans. So, too, Obama will need to reintroduce himself to Americans, explaining why his life story is consistent with his call for unity, economic fairness, a successful, timely withdrawal from Iraq and changing the culture of Washington.

Finally, any successful convention address framing the election as a referendum on change must include a blistering portrayal of the other side as the party of stale ideas and failed leadership. Reagan, for instance, vilified then-President Jimmy Carter for living in a “make-believe” world and championing tired liberal policies of the past that had caused stagflation and undercut U.S. power abroad. In 1992, Clinton also made mincemeat of then-President George H.W. Bush. The incumbent, said Clinton, couldn’t comprehend ordinary people’s problems and was aloof and out of touch with his constituents’ lives.

By the same token, Obama must channel Reagan’s and Clinton’s attacks and find language that will tar McCain as a champion of threadbare ideas and Republicans as the party stuck in the past. In the end, the greatest convention addresses have weaved biography, political attacks, forward-looking ideas and hopes for economic revival into a coherent, convincing thematic narrative. Obama’s challenge in his address will be to answer the critics of his decision to deliver his speech at a stadium and reinforce his image as the real agent of change in this election — and not the much-hyped celebrity upstart that McCain’s own convention address will almost surely make him out to be.

Matthew Dallek writes a monthly column on history and politics for Politico and will teach at the University of California’s Washington program this fall.

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