The Audacity of Hope

said that a convention wouldn’t change that, although I did suggest that the more
Democrats could encourage participation from people who felt locked out of the
process, the more we stayed true to our origins as the party of the average Joe, the
stronger we would be as a party.
Privately, I thought my original 1996 quote was better.
There was a time when political conventions captured the urgency and drama of
politics—when nominations were determined by floor managers and head counts and
side deals and arm-twisting, when passions or miscalculation might result in a second or
third or fourth round of balloting. But that time passed long ago. With the advent of
binding primaries, the much-needed end to the dominance of party bosses and
backroom deals in smoke-filled rooms, today’s convention is bereft of surprises. Rather,
it serves as a weeklong infomercial for the party and its nominee—as well as a means of
rewarding the party faithful and major contributors with four days of food, drink,
entertainment, and shoptalk.
I spent most of the first three days at the convention fulfilling my role in this pageant. I
spoke to rooms full of major Democratic donors and had breakfast with delegates from
across the fifty states. I practiced my speech in front of a video monitor, did a walkthrough
of how it would be staged, received instruction on where to stand, where to
wave, and how to best use the microphones. My communications director, Robert
Gibbs, and I trotted up and down the stairs of the Fleet Center, giving interviews that
were sometimes only two minutes apart, to ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and
NPR, at each stop emphasizing the talking points that the Kerry-Edwards team had
provided, each word of which had been undoubtedly tested in a battalion of polls and a
panoply of focus groups.
Given the breakneck pace of my days, I didn’t have much time to worry about how my
speech would go over. It wasn’t until Tuesday night, after my staff and Michelle had
debated for half an hour over what tie I should wear (we finally settled on the tie that
Robert Gibbs was wearing), after we had ridden over to the Fleet Center and heard
strangers shout “Good luck!” and “Give ’em hell, Obama!,” after we had visited with a
very gracious and funny Teresa Heinz Kerry in her hotel room, until finally it was just
Michelle and me sitting backstage and watching the broadcast, that I started to feel just
a tad bit nervous. I mentioned to Michelle that my stomach was feeling a little grumbly.
She hugged me tight, looked into my eyes, and said, “Just don’t screw it up, buddy!”
We both laughed. Just then, one of the production managers came into the hold room
and told me it was time to take my position offstage. Standing behind the black curtain,
listening to Dick Durbin introduce me, I thought about my mother and father and
grandfather and what it might have been like for them to be in the audience. I thought
about my grandmother in Hawaii, watching the convention on TV because her back was
too deteriorated for her to travel. I thought about all the volunteers and supporters back
in Illinois who had worked so hard on my behalf.
Lord, let me tell their stories right, I said to myself. Then I walked onto the stage.