Obama's speech

Obama's acceptance speech tonight at Invesco Field prompts two important questions:

1. Is it going to rain? (Luckily—and more than a few PR folks are going to be breathing a sigh of relief—no.)
2. Is it going to come off the way Obama wants it to? (A much more difficult question.)

As the New York Times reports, Obama wants the address to follow the example of John F. Kennedy's 1960 acceptance speech, which was also given outdoors at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (home of the USC Trojan football team). That address invited Americans to embark on a "New Frontier," a metaphor that defined his candidacy and the early 1960s.

Peter Gage, one of the Obama planners, said he studied photographs of Kennedy’s speech at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the only other such address to be held in an outdoor stadium in the modern television era.

Mr. Gage said the circular stage in Denver was inspired by Kennedy’s. A Sky Cam above the field will provide bird’s-eye views. Mr. Obama’s family will sit on seats on the floor before him, along with voters from swing states. The goal is to highlight ordinary people, and then mobilize them to work for the campaign.

Now that rain is out of the forecast, Obama's aides are buzzing about the technical details of the speech: Will it make Obama look elitist? Will the "Temple of Obama" backdrop constructed by party staffers to make him look "presidential" make him look narcissistic instead? Will he sound like he is talking out of a tin can? Will the strategy of having all of the people in the stadium send text messages—a tactic that seems too cute by half—crash the cell phone system?

The concern here is that the speech risks becoming a technical event instead of a rhetorical one. Is the Obama campaign as worried about what he will say in his speech as they are about packaging its scene? Certainly, the tone and presentation of the address are going to be essential to its reception—and a gaffe here would no doubt be serious and repeated throughout the campaign—but few remember what JFK looked like when he spoke. They remember what he said, how he captured the imagination of an uncertain, post-war America with a vision of a new possibilities, and how his speech transformed a presidency into Camelot.

Pittsburgh, the fifth-poorest city?

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported today on the recent U.S. Census report that shows that Pittsburgh is the fifth-poorest city in the country, behind Detroit, Cleveland, Miami, and Buffalo.

Median income is $32,363, though this figure may be inflated because of the presence of wealthy neighborhoods. The national median income is $50,740, or a little over 1.5 times that of the typical Pittsburgher.

In an interesting example of how a statistical picture can change depending on the scope of the data surveyed, the Tribune-Review's article on the same census report completely omits the city's overall ranking in comparison to other major cities and instead looks at Allegheny County itself, where the median income has actually risen 3.3 percent since 2006 to $46,401.

Where the Post-Gazette finds despair in the wings:

"With $4-a-gallon milk prices and history-making high gas prices, we need policy makers to focus on health and economic policies that create jobs, reduce poverty and provide access to health care for all to strengthen families," said the Rev. Neil Harrison, executive director of Lutheran Advocacy Ministry in Pennsylvania.

The Tribune-Review finds reason to celebrate:

"I think it's generally good news for the region," said Harold Miller, president of Future Strategies, a Downtown management consulting firm.

While the median income remains above the 2008 federal poverty guidelines (and, in the case of Allegheny County, well above the poverty guidelines), the income figures don't look as good when compared to what Diana Pearce calls the “self-sufficiency standard”: the minimum income a household needs to live on its own without help from public or private charity.

While Pearce's measurements are subjective and controversial, they are important in establishing the gap between the desperately poor and what is often called "the working poor," the folks who work hard—often at more than one job—but are always falling behind. The 2008 version of her report for Pennsylvania suggests that while a single person with a child earning Pittsburgh's median income would be barely self-sufficient, anyone else would be struggling:

1 adult, 1 schoolage child: $31,075
1 adult, 1 preschooler, 1 schoolage child: $44,849
2 adults, 1 preschooler, 1 schoolage child: $49,573

In contrast, Allegheny County, with the exclusion of Pittsburgh, has much different—and much better—numbers:

1 adult, 1 schoolage child: $33,315
1 adult, 1 preschooler, 1 schoolage child: $46,184
2 adults, 1 preschooler, 1 schoolage child: $52,958

Taken together, the stories and statistics suggest an extraordinary and growing disconnect between the city and the surrounding county in terms of both economics and overall perspective: Residents of Ross Township, which borders the city, recently lost a bitter dispute over a housing development designed for people making $24,800 and $37,200 a year, which just so happens to be the income of the typical Pittsburgher. And the conflict between the city and the surrounding county is only likely to get worse as Pittsburgh gets poorer and looks to its region for help.

David Brooks gets it right

Last week, as Michael Moore begged Caroline Kennedy to nominate herself as Obama's running mate, David Brooks hoped for Joe Biden. "Biden’s the one," he wrote. "The only question is whether Obama was wise and self-aware enough to know that." His hopes, of course, were confirmed, and while Brooks tends to be more conservative than Obama, Obama's decision to add Biden to the ticket may have earned him some begrudging respect.

The same seems to be true for this week, as the Democratic convention seeks to launch Obama down the road to the White House. While he recognizes Obama's dip in the polls, Brooks urges Obama not to give into the Democratic advice-mongers and chattering classes who want him to change directions. This is good advice, and not just because the same folks who are urging Obama to change are the same ones who sent Stevenson, Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry into the toilet. It's because Obama represents a completely different sort of politics:

At the core, Obama’s best message has always been this: He is unconnected with the tired old fights that constrict our politics. He is in tune with a new era. He has very little experience but a lot of potential. He does not have big achievements, but he is authentically the sort of person who emerges in a multicultural, globalized age. He is therefore naturally in step with the problems that will confront us in the years to come.

This is Obama's brand, and while Brooks may not buy into it, he understands its importance. The Clintons were candidates of late modernity, providing triangulating wonkish solutions to the American post-industrial bureaucracy. Obama is a postmodern candidate—Brooks says as much in calling him "the 21st century man"—and his candidacy's strength lies in the ways that it speaks to the new age of media and culture. Obama has such a following amoung younger Americans precisely because he emerges out of their cultural context, but this strength among younger voters can translate as a weakness for those who are uncomfortable or unfamiliar with what is often called "the postmodern turn," which is at once style-driven, image conscious, technologically saavy, and fluid.

For instance, the concern over establishing Obama's identity among voters—who he "is"—is in many ways an attempt to force a modern answer onto a postmodern question. Within a modern perspective, identity is a fixed issue and part and parcel with personhood. If one has no "identity," one is not a person, and to refuse to declare an identity seems both strange and disturbing. On the other hand, postmodernity rejects the notion of a fixed identity altogether and instead leaves it as a perpetually open question.

The slipperyness with which Obama treats his understanding of his own identity—it's unclear whether he himself knows who he "is"—reflects the postmodern milieu. To force an identity on him—whether it be a wonk, populist, or a fighter—as many Democratic pundits are doing is to provide a response that is, in many ways, culturally out of date. Postmodern politics is not concerned about identity but is constantly transcendent and constructive, acknowledging differences and seeking spaces of common ground. This is the politics that Obama owns, and this is the politics that he should pursue. As Brooks says:

So as I’m trying to measure the effectiveness of this convention, I’ll be jotting down a little minus mark every time I hear a theme that muddies that image. I’ll jot down a minus every time I hear the old class conflict, and the old culture war themes. I’ll jot down a minus when I see the old Bush obsession rearing its head, which is not part of his natural persona. I’ll write a demerit every time I hear the rich played off against the poor, undercutting Obama’s One America dream.

I’ll put a plus down every time a speaker says that McCain is a good man who happens to be out of step with the times. I’ll put a plus down every time a speaker says that a multipolar world demands a softer international touch. I’ll put a plus down when a speaker says the old free market policies worked fine in the 20th century, but no longer seem to be working today. These are arguments that reinforce Obama’s identity as a 21st-century man.

Brooks gave good marks for last night. Whether the rest of the convention will continue to play out that way is anyone's guess.

The coolness of civic republicanism

Throughout the campaign, Barack Obama's critics and opponents have charged that his campaign is more about celebrity than substance. Clinton did so when she complained that his soaring rhetoric was really all fluff, and McCain did so when he compared Obama to Paris Hilton (and, perhaps not-so-accidentally, the anti-Christ).

From the perspective of many, the stigma of a celebrity candidacy is something to be overcome, and if celebrity is confused with stupidity or vacuousness—style over substance, as Cicero would put it—it certainly is. But over the weekend, Matt Bai in the New York Times Magazine suggested that celebrity and the presidency are not mutually exclusive.

Who’s to say that Americans are misguided for craving a little cool in their candidates? It’s not simply that ours is a country of celebrity-seeking robots (although there may be some truth to that as well). Perhaps it’s more that Americans are weary of a political system that has all but ground to a halt, and every four years they search for the galvanizing personality who stands a chance of dislodging it. The infatuation with star quality reflects, on some level, the yearning for the next Roosevelt (Theodore or Franklin) or Kennedy (John or Robert), some reformer with the dynamism and charisma to renew dialogue at home and kinships around the world, to tell us the truths we need to hear without telegraphing defeat.

Bai isn't describing something new but rather a fundamental aspect of the tradition of American political rhetoric that, in many ways, we have forgotten. Throughout the nineteenth century, American presidents and politicians—Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Webster, William Jennings Bryan—drew from the tradition of the rhetoric of the Roman Republic, particularly the rhetoric of Cicero. This rhetorical style, what Robert Hariman describes in terms of civic republicanism, idealized politicians who stood "in the breach" of history in the service of the republic.

The best politicians in the civic republican tradition (whether they were Cicero fighting to preserve Roman government against Ceasar's dictatorship, Lincoln defending the principles of the Union, Bryan trying to keep farmers from being crucified "upon a cross of gold" by the gold standard, or FDR flying to speak to the Democratic National Convention when getting on a plane was considered both unprecedented and dangerous) took on the status of cultural heroes, demigods in the political pantheon, the ultimate of "cool." Of course, civic republican orators, like all celebrities, certainly tended toward egocentrism—no one could have accused Cicero of humility, for instance—but theirs was an egocentrism with the country at heart.

So Obama's sweeping rhetorical prowess is in many ways actually the norm of American politics, not the exception. Celebrity has always been a part of American politics. If Obama stands out as unusual, it is because American presidents have moved away from the civic republican tradition, becoming more managerial and policy-centered instead. As long as Obama stands within the civic republican tradition—speaking to American ideals, bridging the gaps between ideological divisions, emphasizing substance instead of style—he should not be confused with another Paris Hilton or Britney Spears, as a "celebrity" in the crassest sense. Rather, he should be understood as following in a deeper American tradition in which sweeping, grand rhetoric was placed fully in the service of the republic. With Obama, the old has become new again.