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Columbus
Dispatch…
Dems
hope Obama speech will have charisma of
2008
By Joe
Hallett and Jack
Torry
September
2, 2012
Four
years after crossing history’s threshold
as the nation’s first black presidential nominee, President Barack
Obama will
aim to rekindle the excitement that girded his journey to the
presidency,
poised to accept his party’s nomination for a second term at the
Democratic
National Convention this week in Charlotte, N.C.
The
times — and the candidate — are very
different from that August night in 2008 when Obama’s acceptance speech
presented 84,000 supporters in the Denver Broncos’ football stadium
with his
message of hope and change.
Obama
now wears the scars of governing.
Although the nation has recovered somewhat from the depths of the
financial
collapse he inherited, the economy continues to grow at an anemic rate,
leaving
the unemployment rate above 8 percent.
He
also has been rubbed raw this year by
unremitting Republican attacks fueled with unprecedented amounts of
cash for
attack ads. Just yesterday, freshly minted GOP nominee Mitt Romney and
his
vice-presidential running mate, Paul Ryan, rode their Tampa, Fla.,
convention momentum
to Ohio to blister the president’s record, appearing separately at
events in
Cincinnati and Columbus.
But
Democrats think that there is much to sell
in Obama’s record, and they expect that he will rise to the occasion
with a
stirring acceptance speech Thursday night to inspire his supporters
forward to
Election Day.
“The
president needs to lay out a vision for
the country, and to talk about how he’s going to continue this economic
recovery and help the middle class to grow,” said former Gov. Ted
Strickland, a
delegate and national co-chairman of Obama’s campaign.
“What’s
crucial for him to convey in his speech
(is) that he believes that America’s best days are ahead of us and that
he is
committed to building a country where there is shared prosperity,
individual
opportunity and a government that works for all people…
Read
the rest of the article at the Columbus
Dispatch
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