Denver Dispatches - Erik Tarloff - 29 August

This will be my final post, and it will, of necessity, be short, since I have to leave for the airport soon.

My wife and I watched Obama's acceptance speech in Al Gore's sky box. The atmosphere, like the atmosphere in the other sky boxes Laura and I visited last night, was festive and congenial. Nevertheless, one had to wonder what Gore was thinking and feeling. His own speech had I thought, been excellent --- it was one of the most serious and principled of the convention --- and the love that welled up in that mammoth crowd (said to be 84,000 strong) when he made his entrance, and the approval that greeted his every salient point, must have been gratifying to him. But bitter-sweet as well. History has been capricious and sometimes downright nasty to Al Gore. However, although the Democratic Party can be tough on its also-rans, subjecting them to scorn and recrimination, Al Gore, after a season in Purgatory, has seen his reputation redeemed. He seemed to be a better speaker, too, partly, no doubt, as at the last convention, because he was forced to go faster than usual by the short amount of time he had been allotted. As my friend Chris Caldwell observed in 2004, Gore "had to speak at the speed of his intelligence." Which meant stepping on applause lines time after time, but also avoiding the syrupy sanctimoniousness that sometimes mars his standard speaking style.

Obama's speech ws a triumph. It wasn't as eloquent or as elevated as the one he delivered in Boston four years ago, the one that thrust him onto the world's stage. This one had a different purpose, setting out to say three simple things: 1) I'm like you, I've had the same problems you've had, I know what you're going through; 2) Despite my elegant appearance and demeanour, I'm one tough son of a bitch, and if John McCain doesn't know that yet, he will before this campaign is over; and 3) I may be untraditional, but a president can look like me, and I can look and feel just like a president. And he conveyed all three things magnificently. I don't imagine there's much happiness in Republican circles this morning. Whatever displays of bravado they've been managing for the benefit of the press and their own supporters, they know there's only one way for them to beat this guy, and win or lose, it won't be pretty.

Because at this stage, there's only one genuinely unresolved issue in the campaign. And that issue is race. The country despises Bush, both the man and his policies. Over the last two years, polling results consistently confirm this. The Democrats enjoy a large majority in terms of public support. Obama's gifts are manifest, his youth and energy compelling, his rise phenomenal. Meanwhile, John McCain has run a campaign that has bordered on the incompetent, has policy prescriptions that veer toward the incoherent, and seems to have aged visibly and alarmingly in the eight years since his gallant first campaign for the presidency. If Obama were a white man --- a white southern governor, say --- this contest would already be over. So the only question remaining is whether Americans are ready to make what Norman Mailer would have called an existential choice, to risk an outcome without precedent that will redefine the country and the world. I don't know the answer. But I do know that if we wake up on 5 November to learn that John McCain is the president-elect, the depression that follows will be abiding; something noble and courageous and large-spirited in the United States will be gone, hopelessly lost for a generation.