When I first came to know Stephanie Tubbs Jones, who died Aug. 20 of a brain aneurysm at the age of 58, she was very young. I had never seen anybody so energetic. She was bouncy and bubbly and charismatic. When she entered a room, the character of that room changed. People loved that beautiful smile she had. No other candidate on the judicial circuit at the time had that kind of appeal.

In 1998 I told her I was going to announce my retirement from Congress and wanted her to start thinking about replacing me. She did, and she won. When she got to Washington, she joined a committee that had jurisdiction over housing. She first started getting national attention for the dramatic way in which she went after predatory lenders and those who were milking people, particularly minorities, the poor and the disadvantaged. That became a real banner issue for her.

Recently, she had been an impassioned supporter of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. She explained to me why she took her position: she had given her commitment to Hillary even before Barack Obama became a candidate. She felt that she had to keep her word and be loyal and not care what other people thought. Her loyalty and her word were her bond.

By Louis Stokes, Time, August 28, 2008

Her father shot the grizzly bear whose hide is now draped over the sofa in her office. She, too, hunts and fishes. She runs marathons. She delivered her fifth child during her first term as governor. They call her husband, the reigning champion in the annual Iron Dog snowmachine race, First Dude.

Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain's surprising selection to be his vice-presidential running mate, took Alaska by surprise, too, not long ago. Though indisputably Alaskan, she rose to prominence by bucking the state's rigid Republican hierarchy, impressing voters more with gumption, warmth and charm than an established record in government.

It was a combination that dumbfounded her rivals.

"She wouldn't have articulated one coherent policy and people would just be fawning all over her," said Andrew Halcro, a Republican turned independent, who along with Tony Knowles, a Democrat, ran against Ms. Palin for governor in 2006. "Tony and I looked at each other and it was, like, this isn't about policy or Alaska issues, this is about people's most basic instincts: 'I like you, and you make me feel good.' "

"You know," said Mr. Halcro, invoking the Democratic presidential nominee, "that's kind of like Obama."

Before Ms. Palin, 44, became Alaska's first female governor, in 2006, the top line on her political resume was her tenure as mayor of Wasilla, a growing suburb of Anchorage with fewer than 7,000 residents. But even before a wide-ranging federal investigation began rattling through the Republican-controlled State Legislature over lawmakers' links to an oil services company, Ms. Palin jumped into the governor's race as an outsider calling for reform.

She already had challenged the state Republican Party's chairman, accusing him of abusing his role on a state oil and gas commission to do political work. And by the summer of 2006, Ms. Palin was taking on the governor, Frank H. Murkowski, a Republican lion of Alaska politics whose bluster and closed-door dealing had finally worn thin in the state.

Ms. Palin (pronounced PAY-lin), youthful and sympathetic with voters but bluntly critical of her party's leadership, said state government was broken, that it needed to be transparent and responsive. Stunningly, she won in a landslide, trouncing Mr. Murkowski by more than 30 points in the Republican primary that summer and rolling through the general election.

Defying Expectations

Now, after barely 20 months in office in a state that has rarely played much of a role in national politics, Ms. Palin is again challenging expectations, including those of her own party.

"Did I wake up in a parallel universe?" said Mr. Halcro, who writes a blog that is frequently critical of the governor. "I am absolutely shocked."

Whatever similarities Ms. Palin and Senator Barack Obama may have in personal appeal, they seem to have little else in common. She is a conservative Protestant and has also been a member since 2006 of Feminists for Life, an anti-abortion group. She has supported the teaching of intelligent design in public schools, alongside evolution.

She is a member of the National Rifle Association, and has said Alaska's economic future depends on aggressively extracting its vast natural resources, from oil to natural gas and minerals.

Ms. Palin said she supported Alaska's decision to amend its Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. But she used her first veto as governor to block a bill that would have prohibited the state from granting health benefits to same-sex partners of public employees. Ms. Palin said she vetoed the bill because it was unconstitutional, but raised the possibility of amending the state Constitution so the ban could pass muster.

"I don't think a Hillary person would ever move to her, based on the issues," said Jean Craciun, a strategic research and planning consultant in Alaska who has done political polling for Democrats and Republicans. "I don't think before today I would have ever heard someone call her a feminist."

This month, Ms. Palin issued a last-minute statement of opposition to a ballot measure that would have provided added protections for salmon from potential contamination from mining, an action seen as crucial to its defeat. Her intense pursuit of a pipeline to deliver natural gas from the North Slope of Alaska to market in the Lower 48 led to what her administration has claimed as a major triumph: the Legislature this summer approved her plan to give a $500 million subsidy to TransCanada, a Canadian company, to help build the project.

The State Senate president, Lyda Green, a Republican who is also from Wasilla, has repeatedly sparred with Ms. Palin in the 20 months since she became governor. Like Mr. Halcro, Ms. Green called the governor's economic policies "liberal," and said, "I'd have concerns that she'd have the same negative impact on the nation that she has on Alaska."

Ms. Green disagreed with the governor's decision to award a license and $500 million in subsidies to the Canadian company, saying there was no guarantee that even with the subsidies a gas pipeline would be built.

Ms. Green said the governor was difficult for her to deal with, a state of affairs she traces to Ms. Green's decision to remain neutral in Ms. Palin's race against former Governor Murkowski.

"There was some resentment there that some of us didn't come out and support her during the primary, and it never really got any better," Ms. Green said. "I found that if you disagreed with her or tried to amend or change something, that was sort of off-limits. She did not like being told no or to change it."

Commitment to Pipeline

Rebuffing criticism of the pipeline subsidy, Ms. Palin has cast the pipeline as a way for Alaska to "end our dependence on foreign oil." She has said she hopes the pipeline effort will show that Alaska can contribute to a new energy economy, rather than be known as the state that receives more per capita federal spending than any other.

Critics in the state complained that Ms. Palin had undercut her clean-government image by appointing as her chief adviser on the pipeline a former lobbyist for TransCanada. The adviser, Marty Rutherford, her deputy commissioner of natural resources, earned about $40,000 lobbying the state government for a TransCanada subsidiary in 2003.

Asked recently whether Mr. Rutherford's past work for TransCanada presented a conflict of interest, Ms. Palin told The Anchorage Daily News, "Going on five years later, no."

One of her most significant accomplishments as governor was passing a major tax increase on state oil production, angering oil companies but raising billions of dollars in new revenue. She said the oil companies had previously bribed legislators to keep the taxes low. She subsequently championed legislation that would give some of that money back to Alaskans: Soon, every Alaskan will receive a $1,200 check.

Appointed in 2003 to the state board that settles drilling disputes, the Alaskan Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, she became an outspoken critic of one of her fellow commissioners, Randy Ruedrich, for soliciting political contributions from the oil industry in his capacity as chairman of the state's Republican Party.

Ms. Palin's introduction to a national audience comes as little good news has come out of Republican politics in Alaska. The same corruption investigation that was brewing when she ran for office in 2006 has led to the convictions of three Republican state lawmakers, charges against still more and, most recently, the indictment of the most established and revered Alaska politician of all, Senator Ted Stevens.

The continuing trouble has made Ms. Palin's calls for reform appear all the more prescient, yet she now is facing an investigation herself. The Republican-controlled Legislature has hired an independent investigator to determine whether Ms. Palin improperly pressured the former state public safety commissioner to resign this year.

The former commissioner, Walt Monegan, has said he felt pressure from Ms. Palin's administration, and her husband, Todd, to fire a state trooper, Mike Wooten, who was going through a bitter divorce with the governor's sister. The trooper was not fired.

Mr. Monegan told The Anchorage Daily News that Mr. Palin had showed him some of the findings of a private investigator the family had hired and accused the trooper of a variety of misdeeds, including drunken driving and child abuse.

Mr. Palin told the newspaper he feared for his wife's safety and said Trooper Wooten had made threats against her and her family. The governor has acknowledged inquiries by her staff to the Public Safety Department but said she played no role in them. To demonstrate she welcomed the inquiry, Mrs. Palin asked the state attorney general to look into the accusations as well.

Born on Feb. 11, 1964, in Sandpoint, Idaho, Sarah Heath Palin was still an infant when her parents moved the family to Skagway, in southeast Alaska, after accepting teaching positions there. The family moved to Wasilla, a small, conservative and growing suburb of Anchorage where, as Mr. McCain noted, Ms. Palin was a "standout high school point guard."

The governor met her husband in high school, and she was later voted "Miss Wasilla" in a local beauty contest. In 1987, she received a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Idaho. A year later, she and Mr. Palin eloped.

The governor said Friday that she "never really set out to be involved in public affairs, much less to run for this office," referring to the vice presidency, but she rose quickly once she entered political life. "A P.T.A. mom who got involved," is how the current mayor of Wasilla, Dianne M. Keller, described Ms. Palin.

She was elected to the Wasilla City Council in 1992, then ran for mayor in 1996, she has said, because she was concerned that revenue from a new sales tax would not be spent wisely. She served two terms, through 2002.

As mayor, she oversaw the Police Department, which has 25 officers, and the city's public works projects. Garbage collection is done by private companies, and a borough government oversees firefighting and public schools.

"This is really rural America," said the deputy city clerk, Jamie Newman, who added that town residents were still reeling from the news that the woman who just six years ago served as their mayor could now be vice president of the United States. "Frankly, everyone is in shock."

Ms. Keller said that Ms. Palin had three major achievements as mayor: She cut property taxes, increased the city sales tax by half a percent to support construction of an indoor ice rink and sports complex, and put more money into public safety, winning a grant to build a police dispatch center in town.

Although she would later criticize Congressional earmarks like Alaska's infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," proposed for the town of Ketchikan at a cost of about $400 million, as mayor she began the practice of making annual trips to Washington to press for them on behalf of their town.

A Fresh Family Tableau

Ms. Palin's family presents Mr. McCain, who turned 72 on Friday, with fresh and wholesome campaign imagery. It also presents some potentially delicate issues. Mr. Palin, in addition to being a champion snowmobile racer, is an oil production operator on the North Slope, working for BP, a company that has had to make major repairs since a spill on the slope temporarily shut down production there in 2006.

In addition to Ms. Palin's $125,000 state salary, Mr. Palin earned $93,000 last year running his own commercial fishing business and working part-time at BP's oil production facility, according to her public financial disclosure reports.

Although Ms. Palin once said that her husband would quit his job at BP if she were elected governor, she later backed away from that. He took a leave from the company after she won, but went back to work there last year, saying his family needed the money. And the governor now says that because Mr. Palin is not in management, it poses no conflict with her own dealings with the petroleum industry, a major force in Alaska's politics and economy.

Mr. Palin, who is part Yu'pik Eskimo, also received a few hundred dollars in dividends as a shareholder in two benefit corporations representing Alaskan Natives and $10,500 from the Iron Dog snowmobile race, which he has won several times. The Palins reported no debts other than the mortgage on their home.

The couple have five children - Track, 19; Bristol, 17; Willow, 14; Piper, 7; and Trig, 4 months. Track joined the Army last year, a fact Ms. Palin mentioned in her introduction to the Republican ticket on Friday. Trig, who was born in April, has Down syndrome, which Ms. Palin seemed to allude to only obliquely on Friday, after she described him as a "beautiful baby boy" then shifted from there to her selection as Mr. McCain's running mate.

"Some of life's greatest opportunities," the governor said, "come unexpectedly."

Ms. Palin and her husband knew during her pregnancy that there were complications, though the boy's condition was not revealed publicly until after he was born. Anti-abortion groups have praised Ms. Palin and her family.

"It speaks volumes about her personally and about how she walked her talk," said Serrin M. Foster, president of Feminists for Life, an anti-abortion group.

Three days after giving birth, Ms. Palin was back at work.

By WILLIAM YARDLEY, The New York Times, August 29, 2008

Senator John McCain spent the summer arguing that a 40-something candidate with four years in major office and no significant foreign policy experience was not ready to be president.

And then on Friday he picked as his running mate a 40-something candidate with two years in major office and no significant foreign policy experience.

The selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska proved quintessentially McCain - daring, hazardous and defiantly off-message. He demonstrated that he would not get boxed in by convention as he sought to put a woman next in line to the presidency for the first time. Yet in making such an unabashed bid for supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, he risked undercutting his central case against Senator Barack Obama.

"Here's what I'm worried about," said Ed Rogers, a Republican lobbyist and former aide to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. "McCain had to protect his reputation as an opponent of status quo Washington. He had to pick someone with the shortest Washington resume. He did that. He picked someone the right wing is going to be happy about. But it's a gamble."

"The question is," Mr. Rogers continued, "what does it do to the argument that Obama's not ready?"

The question is particularly acute for Mr. McCain, who turned 72 on Friday and would be the oldest person elected to a first term as president if he won in November. His campaign now needs to convince the public that it can imagine in the Oval Office a candidate who has spent just two years as governor of a state with a quarter of the population of Brooklyn.

But Ms. Palin, 44, brings clear assets to the ticket. The "gun-packing, hockey-playing woman," as the Republican strategist Karl Rove described her, instantly bolstered Mr. McCain's wobbly conservative base, which rejoiced over the selection of an anti-abortion evangelical Christian.

Her reputation as a reformer who took on her state party over corruption and wasteful spending could reinforce Mr. McCain's own maverick appeal.

Her personal narrative as a working mother raising five children, including an infant with Down syndrome, with a husband who belongs to a union, might prove attractive to working-class voters in swing states who have been suspicious of Mr. Obama. And her presence on the ticket will allow Republicans to argue that Mr. Obama would not be the only one to break barriers if elected.

"He's chosen a Washington outsider who will be an ally for him in shaking up the way things are done," said Ron Nehring, chairman of the California Republican Party. "This is someone with solid conservative credentials but solid credentials as a reformer. And it's clear after watching today's event, no one is going to push Sarah Palin around - not Barack Obama and not Joe Biden," the Democratic vice-presidential candidate.

In picking a running mate without deep experience but who would make history, Mr. McCain chose someone who in some ways resembles Mr. Obama. At the same time, by choosing Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware as his running mate, Mr. Obama tapped a longtime Washington hand with even more time in the Senate than Mr. McCain. Just as it might be harder for Mr. McCain to attack his opponent over his level of experience, it might be tougher for Mr. Obama to paint his rival as a creature of the capital.

The selection of Ms. Palin offered clues to how Mr. McCain would govern: holding deliberations to a tight circle of advisers, looking beyond the obvious options, taking risks and relishing surprise.

Yet if he disregarded more conventional prospects, like former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, it might be that Ms. Palin was still the fallback from a more audacious decision that Mr. McCain ultimately eschewed.

In the end, he passed over two of his best political friends, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and former Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania, knowing their support for abortion rights would inflame conservatives at next week's Republican convention.

Ms. Palin has been a rising star on the right since she beat an incumbent governor in a Republican primary in 2006 and then a former Democratic governor in the general election. With an approval rating around 80 percent, she is among the most popular governors. But her success has come on a small stage. The 115,000 votes she received in winning the governor's office two years ago barely eclipsed the 80,000 people who packed a football stadium in Denver on Thursday night to watch Mr. Obama's acceptance speech.

Democratic strategists compared her selection to those of Geraldine A. Ferraro in 1984 or Dan Quayle in 1988, suggesting that the decision reflected desperation by Mr. McCain. "He feels a little like Walter Mondale," said Jim Jordan, a Democratic political consultant. "He's a respected Washington lifer who's run into political forces that are bigger than himself. And he's responded by making a decision that feels panicky."

Some Republicans, though, distinguished her resume from Mr. Obama's by arguing that Ms. Palin's executive experience as governor was more valuable than Mr. Obama's legislative history. The "not ready" argument against Mr. Obama, they suggested, will focus more on judgment than pure experience. And they maintained that Ms. Palin would get the better of Mr. Biden, predicting that the veteran senator, who is known for his slashing attacks, would have a hard time not looking as though he was being condescending to a woman.

"In a way, McCain has set a trap on the experience argument," said Scott Reed, who managed Bob Dole's presidential campaign in 1996, "because if they start picking on her on experience, it's going to backfire with women."

DENVER - In unveiling Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as Senator John McCain's running mate, the campaign is portraying her as a champion of ethics reform for taking on members of her own party whom she saw as beholden to special interests.

But just a few weeks ago she became the subject of a state ethics investigation.

This month, a bipartisan panel of state legislators appointed an independent investigator to look into whether Ms. Palin had fired a top law enforcement official in her administration because he had failed to dismiss a state trooper who was involved in a divorce with Ms. Palin's sister.

State Senator Hollis S. French II, a Democrat and former prosecutor who is directing the inquiry and picked the independent investigator, said his sense was that the inquiry would probably not turn up a "smoking gun on the governor" but that it "certainly has the possibility of giving her an ethical black eye."

The questions began in mid-July, shortly after Ms. Palin fired Walt Monegan, the public safety commissioner and a former Anchorage police chief. Ms. Palin said she had wanted to take the department in a different direction.

A week later, however, Andrew Halco, a former state legislator who ran against Ms. Palin for governor in 2006, published a lengthy article on his blog highlighting a bitter back-and-forth between members of Ms. Palin's extended family and the trooper, Mike Wooten. Ms. Palin's sister, Molly McCann, was divorced from Mr. Wooten in 2005 and was locked in a bitter custody dispute.

An internal police investigation conducted in 2005, prompted by complaints from Ms. McCann and her family, eventually resulted in Mr. Wooten's being suspended for illegally shooting a moose and using a Taser on his stepson, although most of the complaints were dismissed.

A judge in the couple's custody case questioned the family's motives for filing the complaints. "It appears for the world that Ms. McCann and her family have decided to take off for the guy's livelihood," the judge said, according to a recording of a hearing.

The McCain campaign issued a statement on Friday saying, "Governor Palin has been fully cooperative in this situation and has nothing to hide."

The inquiry by the Legislature centers on what Mr. Monegan later described as pressure from members of Ms. Palin's administration and her husband, Todd, to fire Mr. Wooten. The governor herself also raised the subject of Mr. Wooten with him, Mr. Monegan has said.

Mr. Monegan, who did not return telephone calls on Friday, told The Anchorage Daily News that Mr. Palin had showed him some of the findings of a private detective the family had hired to investigate Mr. Wooten and accused him of a variety of transgressions, including drunken driving and child abuse.

Mr. Palin told the newspaper that Mr. Wooten had made threats against his wife and her family.

As part of her efforts to demonstrate that she welcomed the Legislature's inquiry, Ms. Palin asked the state's attorney general to look into the accusations as well. Ms. Palin initially denied there had ever been pressure applied to Mr. Monegan.

This month, however, she released an audio recording of a top aide's questioning of a police lieutenant about why no action had been taken against Mr. Wooten. Ms. Palin also disclosed there had been more than two dozen inquiries from members of her staff to the public safety department about him, but she said she had played no role in the inquiries.

Excerpts of the audio recording released by the governor showed Frank Bailey, the state's director of boards and commissions, pushing Lt. Rodney Dial in February about Mr. Wooten.

"Todd and Sarah are scratching their heads, 'Why on earth hasn't this, why is this guy still representing the department?' " Mr. Bailey said to the lieutenant.

By Michael Luo, The New York Times, August 29, 2008

People organizing demonstrations related to the Republican National Convention said that members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department had detained dozens of people on Friday night inside a building in St. Paul that was being used as a protest-planning headquarters.

People who had been inside the building said that officers entered shortly after 8:30 p.m., saying they had a warrant and instructing the occupants to lie on the ground.

"They handcuffed all of us," said Sonia Silbert, 28, from Washington. "They searched everyone."

At 11 p.m., police officers stood in front of the building. People who emerged one by one told similar stories about what had taken place inside. They said they had been searched and questioned and photographed before being released. Jordan Kushner, a member of the National Lawyers Guild, said the two-story brick building had been rented by a nonprofit organization and was being used by several groups planning protests.

People who had been inside said that teach-ins and legal training had been conducted there and that the space was also a repository for such items as computers and bicycles. Mr. Kushner said he believed that the police had read a warrant aloud but said he had not seen the document.

The R.N.C. Welcoming Committee, one of several groups organizing demonstrations, issued a statement late Friday night that was read aloud outside the meeting place by a woman named Sarah Coffey. She said that the officers had cited fire violations as the reason for their visit and added that they had "detained over 50 people in an attempt to pre-empt planned protests."

Spokesmen for the St. Paul police could not immediately be reached for comment.

By COLIN MOYNIHAN, The New York Times, August 30, 2008

The images are seductive in their simplicity: close-up, larger-than-life photographs of the faces of American soldiers between tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. The faces are horizontal in complete repose, the eyes wide and gazing vacantly.

The New York-based photographer who took the pictures, Suzanne Opton, had hoped to show five of them - one on each of five billboards - around Minneapolis and St. Paul during the Republican National Convention, which opens there Monday. "It's about engaging the public," Ms. Opton said. "We just felt that people don't know the sacrifices made by the military and a small handful of families."

Ms. Opton's photographs, part of a series called the Soldier Billboard Project, have been displayed on billboards in Syracuse, and one was on a billboard in Denver during the Democratic National Convention. But the company that owns the Minneapolis-St. Paul billboards, CBS Outdoor, part of the larger media conglomerate, canceled her contract last week, having decided that the pictures sent a confusing and inappropriate message.

"When we looked at the images," said Jodi Senese, the company's executive vice president for marketing, "the soldiers depicted clearly looked to us like they were representing deceased solders."

Separately, the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board on Thursday denied a group of political activists a permit to create a large antiwar video billboard near the Capitol in St. Paul. On Friday, the group, True Blue Minnesota, won a stay from a judge who is not expected to issue a final decision in the case until Tuesday or Wednesday, meaning at least a partial victory for the activists, who never planned to have the billboard in place for more than the four days of the Republican convention anyway.

Still, the two disputes have raised concerns among some that Republican sensibilities are taking precedence over the public discourse that Ms. Opton says she had in mind and, in the case of True Blue Minnesota, even over free-speech rights.

"One gets suspicious about it," said Susan Reynolds, co-director of the Soldier Billboard Project.

Ms. Reynolds said her suspicions were all the greater because the CBS Outdoor contract, signed Aug. 8, was not canceled until last week, leaving the project with little time to find an alternative billboard company.

Ms. Senese, of CBS Outdoor, said that in the days just after the contract was signed, the company was vetting business concerns regarding the project and so did not concentrate on the art itself.

"We don't object to the program or the art," she said. "Our only concern is that people driving on highways at 55 or 60 miles an hour, seeing an image like this popping out of nowhere, it could be disturbing."

"Gigantic, larger than life," she said, "just heads with blank eyes staring out at you. It's haunting and very provocative in a museum, but on a highway it's consumed differently."

As for the rejection of True Blue Minnesota's video billboard, Nancy Stark, who is on the staff of the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board, said size, not content, was the reason. The board, Ms. Stark said, has longstanding rules against oversize signs.

"The vote was not based on content," she said. "It was being reviewed as to how it fit with the rules."

But one board member, State Senator Sandra L. Pappas, Democrat of St. Paul, disagreed.

"It was very, very strange that this would not be granted," Ms. Pappas said. "I was pretty shocked and appalled, and spoke up strongly. The images that they were going to portray were very antiwar and critical of the administration. I don't think there was any justification for denying it."

The court is to decide next week whether the board's decision was content-neutral.

The photographs of the soldiers were taken by Ms. Opton at Fort Drum in upstate New York in 2004 and 2005.

"I wondered, 'Can we see it on a person's face when they've seen something unforgettable?' " she said in an interview. "What I wanted to do was take an intimate and vulnerable picture of a soldier."

"They may look troubled," she continued, "but it's not easy to be a soldier. Why should that be hidden from us?"

By Susan Saulny, The New York Times, August 29, 2008

BEAVER, Pa. - Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr. set off on their first joint cross-country campaign trek on Friday, arriving in the critical battleground of western Pennsylvania on the opening stop of their formal kickoff to the general election.

As the glow of their nominating convention was quickly overtaken by the announcement of the new Republican ticket, the two Democrats stayed purposely low key. They toured a biodiesel plant, stopped for ice cream and staged only one public event on their first day together as they returned to their task of trying to persuade voters beyond the Democratic activists in Denver to support their campaign.

"My argument is not with John McCain the man, but John McCain the presidential candidate and where he wants to take this country," Mr. Obama said, amplifying the criticism he had leveled at his Republican rival one night earlier in his acceptance speech.

It was the seventh day of the Obama-Biden partnership, but the first chance for the two men to spend an extended period of time with each other. Joined by their wives, they will travel across Ohio and Michigan on a weekend bus tour before going their separate ways on Labor Day to maximize the exposure of the Democratic ticket.

Pennsylvania is among the states where the campaigns of Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain are vigorously competing. Mr. Obama lost the primary there to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, but Democrats enjoy an edge in registered voters in the state, largely because of the competitive presidential primary in the spring. Aides said Mr. Obama faced a challenge of making voters there comfortable with his candidacy, a task that Mr. Biden began taking on the moment he arrived here.

"My name is Joe Biden," he yelled to the crowd. "And I'm from Scranton, Pennsylvania!"

One day after Mr. Obama spoke before 80,000 at the stadium, and a television audience of at least 40 million, the ticket's arrival here was considerably different from recent postconvention trips. There was no Mississippi River boat tour that Al Gore conducted eight years ago, and the bus tour was far shorter than Senator John Kerry's bus tour four years ago.

Instead, Mr. Obama and his running mate simply greeted voters here in Irvine Park, arriving without considerable pomp and fanfare. Earlier, they sat for their first joint television interview, which will be broadcast on Sunday on the CBS program "60 Minutes."

Since Mr. Obama introduced Mr. Biden as his running mate last Saturday in Illinois, the two have spent little time together, with the exception of a few high-profile appearances at the convention in Denver. So the weekend trip was intended to be a joint strategy session, in addition to a rollout of their new partnership.

The industrial states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan are critical pieces of the electoral battleground, where Mr. Obama has deployed hundreds of campaign workers. Mr. Biden reminded voters of his Pennsylvania blue-collar roots as he introduced Mr. Obama to an audience, estimated by the local police at 8,000 people, that spilled out of a downtown park..

The evening rally was a stark reminder that for the next two months, Mr. Obama must go to the voters, unlike on Thursday evening, when the voters went to him and filled Invesco Field in Denver.

"It was a great honor, and it was a humbling experience," Mr. Obama said, speaking without the trappings of live music, fireworks or confetti. "Because I was reminded that this election is not about me; it's about you."

By Jeff Zeleny, The New York Times, August 29, 2008

At least 40 million Americans watched Senator Barack Obama accept the Democratic nomination for president Thursday night, a record for convention viewership that exceeded even the expectations of his aides.

The historic speech by the first African-American presidential nominee of a major political party reached 38.4 million viewers on 10 broadcast and cable networks, Nielsen Media Research said Friday. PBS estimated that an additional 3.5 million had watched its prime-time coverage.

The ratings dwarfed the audience for the Summer Olympics and the season finale of "American Idol" in May, and added to what was already a sense of buoyancy within the Obama campaign that the night had gone better than planned.

Despite Republicans' advance ridicule of the enormous venue, Invesco Field, and the set, an elaborate, columned backdrop, Democrats went to bed having heard terrific reviews of the final night of their convention. Indeed, the backdrop, initially derided as resembling a Greek temple - playing into the Republican line of attack that Mr. Obama-s supporters had deified him - turned out to be something of a hit; television reviewers and commentators praised the overall staging.

"The stagecraft was so phenomenal," Andrea Mitchell said on MSNBC, adding, "I don't know how they could have done it any better."

The four-night convention was the most-watched since 1960, when Nielsen began measuring the events. The 10 p.m. hour, Eastern time, from Monday to Thursday was viewed by an average of 22.4 million households, Nielsen said, surpassing by half a million the Republican convention of 1976, previously top-rated.

The comparisons with prior conventions come with a number of caveats: convention coverage is shown on more channels now, and the coverage is shorter, at least on the broadcast networks.

Regardless, Thursday night's record was surely impressive. The television audience for Mr. Obama's speech was half again as large as the viewership for the acceptance speeches by President Bush and Senator John Kerry in 2004.

"Obama had an opportunity to get his message across to a record-breaking crowd of millions of American voters, and he used it effectively," said Bill Burton, a spokesman for the campaign.

Demonstrating the gradual shift in the political news audience from broadcast to cable, CNN attracted more viewers than any of the broadcast networks during the 10 p.m. hour on Wednesday and Thursday. (Fox News Channel defeated the broadcasters during the Republican convention in 2004.) Mr. Obama's speech, which he gave in that hour, reached 8.1 million viewers on CNN, 6.6 million on ABC, 6.1 million on NBC, 4.7 million on CBS, 4.2 million on Fox News, and 4.1 million on MSNBC. Other viewers watched on additional channels.

Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN/U.S., said the high cable ratings were partly a result of 18 months of intense campaign coverage.

"We've approached the election like a very long baseball season," Mr. Klein said. "We've developed relationships with viewers, so they know they can depend on us."

Mr. Obama's speech drew an especially high number of African-American viewers. Excluding sporting events, Nielsen said, the speech ranked second in black viewership among all programs over the last decade. Only a Michael Jackson special in 2001 did better.

After an initial burst of coverage on the network morning programs, the images from Thursday night were quickly overwhelmed by conflicting reports about Senator John McCain's likely running mate that completely took over news coverage on cable.

That sort of repetition from the previous night is ordinarily what presidential campaigns count on to spread the better moments of their nominating conventions to those who did not watch them. But Mr. McCain's unexpected selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska left no room for a look back at the night that had passed, although online the speech had been viewed more than 300,000 times on YouTube by Friday evening.

By Brian Stelter and Jim Rutenberg, The New York Times, August 29, 2008

DENVER - Good, great or something else, Senator Barack Obama's acceptance speech Thursday night unquestionably confronted two of his greatest challenges.

One was to help voters, in emotion-laden language, to connect his promise of "change" to more earthly policy proposals, the other to show he could take the fight to Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama's own image and the best way forward for the nation.

Mr. Obama showed real fire, and directed memorable fire at his opponent, even on Mr. McCain's signature issue, national security. "If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander in chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have," he said.

Mr. Obama is a natural speechmaker, as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton reminded voters (in a negative way) throughout their primary battle. He has always excelled at making the best case for himself, never more so than in his breakthrough speech - probably his best one yet - at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

And if this convention was dominated by the legacy of the Kennedy family on Monday night, and by the contributions and complications of the Clintons on Tuesday and Wednesday night, the spotlight shifted forward to the next generation of leadership when Mr. Obama took center stage.

It is almost a cliche of this election that many Americans, despite a 20-month-old campaign, still lack a strong notion of who Mr. Obama is. In the most personal sense, his speech was not particularly illuminating on this score. He spent far more time talking about struggling Americans whose hopes he related to than wearing his emotions on his sleeve or reaching across history's divide to talk about race.

But Mr. Obama's purpose, obviously, was to open a direct channel between his candidacy and the personal lives of Americans, rather than open up about himself.

This was no more true, in fact, than on the matter of race. Rather than call out biases, as John F. Kennedy did in the part of his 1960 acceptance speech that dealt with anti-Catholicism, Mr. Obama sought to transcend race and find a plane of unity. Invoking the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, he recalled "Americans from every corner of this land" crowding together before the Lincoln Memorial, and the common embrace they experienced.

He repeated Dr. King's words: "We cannot walk alone."

Reaching his hand out this way, it seems likely, will not be enough to solve his political problems in the counties of western Pennsylvania and southern Ohio, where he performed so poorly in the primaries this spring. But just as likely, it seems like a start.

Mr. McCain has portrayed Mr. Obama as a politician who, no matter his promise, is not prepared for the presidency. And he has arguably been effective in doing so, given the tightness of the race despite so much American anger over the economy and widespread American disappointment about the state of the world.

Mr. Obama, in directly challenging the "celebrity" image that Mr. McCain has tagged him with, turned to his own portrayal of the "heroes" to whom he related: the unemployed factory worker who reminded him of his young adulthood in Chicago, the woman trying to start her own business who reminded him of his grandmother, who rose to a management job after years of losing promotions because she was a woman.

In doing so, Mr. Obama tackled what has become a problem for him: winning over working women - especially working-class and minimum-wage women - and blue-collar men who are skeptical that he understands the struggles of people like themselves. His paean to measuring economic progress based on whether "the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off to look after a sick kid" was a direct plea to these voters: I am one of you, and John McCain is not.

Time and again, Mr. Obama took the fight to Mr. McCain. Even on national security, which is not Mr. Obama's area of expertise, the former law professor sought to school the former Navy hero in how to win a war.

"You don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq," he said. "You don't protect Israel and deter Iran just by talking tough in Washington. You can't truly stand up for Georgia when you've strained our oldest alliances. If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice, but that is not the change that America needs."

Mrs. Clinton once said that Mr. McCain had real experience while Mr. Obama's candidacy had been the sum of so many speeches. Mr. Obama's journey over the last 20 months has introduced him to many of the American archetypes - real people - that he described in this speech. On Thursday night, the speechmaker showed, in words, that he was also a man of experience, and a man who wanted to give something back to the people who gave it to him.

By Patrick Healy, The New York Times, August 29, 2008

DENVER - John McCain's risky choice of Gov. Sarah Palin gives him a running mate who doubles down on his maverick image, may appeal to "hockey moms" and other women, and counters Barack Obama's aura of new-generation change. But he may have undercut his best attack on the Democrat.

If Obama is an empty suit, as McCain has suggested, is Palin suited for the Oval Office herself?

She is younger and less experienced than the first-term Illinois senator, and brings an ethical shadow to the ticket. A governor for just 20 months, she was two-term mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of 6,500 where the biggest issue is controlling growth and the biggest civic worry is whether there will be enough snow for the Iditarod dog-mushing race.

"On his 72nd birthday, is this really the one-heartbeat-away he wants to put in the White House?" said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the No. 3 Democrat in the House. "What does this say about his judgment?"

It says that McCain wanted to add a reform-minded politician to his ticket, and an abortion opponent to boot. It says he needs more women to back him over Obama, who just welcomed a passel of Hillary Clinton voters into his fold but remains shaky with white males. And, finally, it's a recognition of how vulnerable McCain is despite polls showing it's close.

He put his money down on a darkhorse to try to change the race.

A suburban mother and PTA member who described her fisherman husband as a proud union member and "champion snow machine racer," Palin brings to the ticket the blue-collar, everyday-American qualities that Sen. Joe Biden brought last week to Obama's ticket - with a distinctively Alaskan twist.

The pick earned McCain praise Friday from evangelicals and other social conservatives who have been skeptical of him. "Conservatives will be thrilled with this pick," said Greg Mueller, a conservative GOP strategist.

The price for that support could be high. Palin's lack of experience undercuts GOP charges that Obama is not ready to be commander in chief. McCain said in April that he was determined to avoid a pick like Dan Quayle, the little-known Indiana senator whom George H.W. Bush put on his ticket in 1988. The choice proved embarrassing.

Quayle "had not been briefed and prepared for some of the questions," McCain said while discussing his vice presidential search. He was clearly aware that, as a septuagenarian, the decision he made about a running mate would be "of enhanced importance."

Four months and one birthday later, McCain's announcement of Palin made clear the paucity of her experience.

"As the head of Alaska's National Guard and as the mother of a soldier herself," the statement said, "Gov. Palin understands what it takes to lead our nation and she understands the importance of supporting our troops."

It is true, as the statement said, that Palin has a record of bipartisan reform. She has a growing reputation as a maverick for bucking her party's establishment and Alaska's powerful oil industry. Palin campaigned on ethics reform in the 2006 GOP primary to defeat incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski, who served 22 years in the U.S. Senate before winning the governor's seat in 2002.

"She's exactly who I need," said McCain, who passed over several more experienced candidates - mostly men. "She's exactly who this country needs to help me fight the same old Washington politics of `Me first and Washington second.'"

The campaign put out a statement saying what McCain did not: "She is ready to be president."

She has an ethical issue as well. Alaska lawmakers are investigating whether Palin abused her power in firing a public safety commissioner. Lawmakers say they want to know whether Palin was mad at the commissioner for not firing an Alaska state trooper who went through a messy divorce and ongoing child custody battles with Palin's sister.

Palin is 44, Obama 47. She served in her statehouse 20 months. Obama served in his statehouse for eight years. Obama and Palin are running less on their resumes than on they are on their promise. The promise of change and new politics.

The difference: Obama wants the top job, Palin the No. 2. But experience is something that matters to all voters - whether Republican, Democratic or independent. And, as McCain has suggested himself, his 72nd birthday is a reminder that age matters, too.

By Ron Fournier, The Associated Press, August 29, 2008

BOSTON - John McCain's search for a running mate was remarkable in that it was carried out in secret, concluded with a bang and conducted in sharp contrast to the freewheeling style of his early presidential campaign or his hard-charging Navy days.

The Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting spirited his ultimate choice, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, first to Arizona and then to Ohio on a pair of secret corporate jet flights. When her family joined her Thursday night, they stayed in a hotel under an assumed name.

And when it came time to announce Palin's selection on Friday morning in Dayton, Ohio, the news came as a surprise not only to the public, but also to members of her own staff 4,000 miles away in Anchorage.

"Nobody knew about his announcement this morning except (a traveling aide) and the governor's chief of staff, who found out about this last night," said Sharon Leighow, a Palin gubernatorial spokeswoman.

That was precisely McCain's intention.

After securing the Republican presidential nomination in February, the Arizona senator set out to find a running mate who would not only bolster his chances of winning the White House in November but also soothe those concerned that his age might place a question mark over his presidency. He announced the selection of Palin, 44, on his 72nd birthday.

If McCain were to win the general election, he would be the oldest first-term president upon being inaugurated in January.

"The fundamental principle behind any selection of a running mate would be whether that person is fully prepared to take over and shares your values, your principles, your philosophy and your priorities," McCain said on Feb. 8, the day after Mitt Romney, his closest primary rival, quit the race.

McCain also was determined to conduct the search with discretion. He tapped a famed Washington attorney, Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr., a one-time White House counsel to President Reagan, to lead the search. He also limited those with direct knowledge of his deliberations to his wife, Cindy, and a handful of aides including campaign manager Rick Davis and senior advisers Mark Salter and Steve Schmidt.

Schmidt, who assumed control of the campaign's day-to-day operations this summer and instilled a missing sense of discipline, would tell those who asked about the process: "I don't talk about the veep."

In recent weeks, however, McCain and his team began to conduct political soundings as they narrowed their list.

He felt out social conservatives by raising the specter of picking a running mate who favored abortion rights.

"You know, Tom Ridge is one of the great leaders and he happens to be pro-choice," McCain said in an interview with The Weekly Standard that became public Aug. 13. "And I don't think that that would necessarily would rule Tom Ridge out," said McCain.

Conservatives and evangelicals howled in protest at the thought of McCain teaming up with the former Pennsylvania governor.

McCain also hinted at an "unconventional pick," according to advisers, triggering speculation he might try to underscore his independent streak by tapping Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. The Democrats' 2000 vice presidential nominee who calls himself an independent senator announced he would not attend his former party's convention in Denver but instead speak next week at the Republican National Convention.

This time, bedrock Republicans complained. They questioned picking someone to be a heartbeat from the presidency who was not even a member of their own party.

Then, last Saturday, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama created a political opening for McCain.

In tapping Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware as his running mate instead of his closest primary rival, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Illinois senator opened a gulf between his ticket and some of disaffected women who had labored to make Clinton the first female president. They were angry she had not even been formally vetted by Obama for the No. 2 spot on the ticket.

McCain, who had first met Palin last February at the National Governors Association meeting in Washington, decided to call the governor last Sunday while he was in Phoenix and she was attending the Alaska State Fair.

Davis, the campaign manager, had been speaking with her throughout the selection process.

"John McCain followed her career and admired her tenacity and her many accomplishments," spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker said Friday in a statement. "She was scheduled for a high profile speaking role at our convention and included in the VP selection process because of his admiration for her strong reform credentials."

On Monday, Palin had a previously scheduled interview with CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo, who was in Alaska to report a piece about the oil industry. At the end of their session, Bartiromo asked Palin if she was going to be McCain's running mate. While the governor had previously dismissed the idea as a longshot, on this occasion she revealed she had spoken with McCain several times and the party ticket might benefit from some diversity.

"She gave a slightly different answer and left the door slightly open, as opposed to shutting down all the speculation up front,'" said Leighow, the Palin spokeswoman, who was in the room.

On Wednesday, Palin and her longtime political aide, Kris Perry, flew from Alaska to Flagstaff, Ariz. They were met by Schmidt and Salter at the home of Bob Delgado, chief executive officer of the Hensley Corp., the family business owned by Cindy McCain.

On Thursday morning, Palin and Perry met with McCain and his wife, who had returned overnight from a trip to the country of Georgia, at their family's retreat in Sedona, Ariz. About 11 a.m., as they sat on a deck on the same day that Obama was to accept his own party's nomination, McCain formally invited Palin to join him on the GOP ticket.

The senator then headed off for Phoenix and Dayton, Ohio, while Palin, Perry, Schmidt and Salter flew separately to Middletown, Ohio, about 25 miles away.

The diminishing time before McCain's rally Friday, at which he was expected to not only announce but be joined by his running mate, prompted furious speculation throughout Thursday.

There was an early morning Lieberman boomlet, but he remained on vacation on Long Island, N.Y. In the afternoon, attention shifted to Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who had been at the Democratic National Convention but then abruptly canceled interviews so he could go home.

And throughout the day, there was an undercurrent about Romney, the former Massachusetts governor. Once McCain's most bitter rival, he had raised over $20 million for the senator since dropping out of the race and spent Thursday flying up and down the California coast to meet with his donors and encourage them to support McCain.

As attention focused on those better-known members of the short list, Palin's family flew out of Anchorage on a Gulfstream jet. It touched down in Middletown about 10 p.m. Thursday.

Rather than risking being seen coming to McCain's hotel, the Palins and McCain's aides continued to the nearby Manchester Inn and Conference Center, where they checked in under another name. It was then that Palin's children, who had been told they were going to Ohio to celebrate their parents' wedding anniversary, also on Friday, were told for the first time that their mother would be a nominee for the vice presidency.

By GLEN JOHNSON, Associated Press, August 29, 2008

To most people, the sight of tens of thousands of federal and state officials, journalists, lobbyists, celebrities and well-heeled donors gathering for conventions in Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul may look like political events.

But to corporate America, they are marketing opportunities.

More then 170 major corporations - including Google, Best Buy, Pfizer, FedEx, Allstate, AT&T ans Hewlett-Packard - are spending millions of dollars at the two conventions to promote their brands and their political agendas, creating a trade-show atmosphere away from the podium.

General Motors, for example, is providing 700 hybrid and flex-fuel cars as the "official vehicle provider" to shuttle politicians around. To show off just how "flex" some of these vehicles are, G.M. has teamed with the Molson-Coors Brewing Company to power cars with "waste beer," or beer that is damaged during production and turned into ethanol.

Beer and driving usually do not mix. But this unusual combination is part of the automaker's effort to establish its "green" bona fides at a time when G.M. and other Detroit automakers are seeking financial support from Congress to build more fuel-efficient vehicles.

"Given the white-hot attention to the conventions," said Greg Martin, a G.M. spokesman, "this is a good chance to showcase our vehicles to a wide range of delegates and opinion leaders whose influence extends beyond Washington and their communities."

AT&T set up in the parking lot of the Pepsi Center in Denver to give conventiongoers a chance to try out the new iPhone. Coca-Cola was handing out Dasani water to people standing in security lines at Invesco Field.

Union Pacific has a new hybrid locomotive on display, part of a 30-car fleet it is using for parties at both conventions. A Minneapolis company that makes a fire retardant called FoamPro will have six fire trucks emblazoned with an elephant logo at the Republican convention.

"For companies, conventions are an attractive place to be," said Giovanna Torchio, director of business development at Jack Morton Worldwide, a marketing agency. "You have a concentrated group that have multiple roles and share a passion."

Major corporations help bankroll the conventions, too. A total of $112 million in private money was raised through the sale of sponsorships by host committees at both conventions to finance them. This compares to $16 million in federal money available to each venue to cover convention costs. (Each venue receives an additional $50 million in federal antiterrorist money, but it is earmarked to pay for security.)

Donations to the host committees are tax deductible, and they come with a promise of political access that is harder to come by under new ethics rules passed by Congress last year.

Corporations are banned from making direct political contributions, but they can write six- and seven-figure checks and receive V.I.P. credentials to the convention floor, invitations to private events with members of Congress, and space to set up logo-plastered booths at convention events. (They can even put their logo on key cards at the hotels where delegates are staying.)

The companies also see the conventions as good networking opportunities with other businesses, and a chance to provide story fodder to the 15,000 members of the news media.

Most companies at the conventions are already skilled Washington hands. A report from the Campaign Finance Institute, a Washington nonprofit organization that studies money and politics, found that the 173 donors to the host committees - mostly corporations but also several trade unions - have contributed $180 million to federal candidates and spent $1.3 billion in lobbying federal officials since 2005.

At both conventions, the biggest corporate presence is Qwest, which has donated $6 million in telecommunications services to each host committee and is the "official telecommunications provider." The company's chief executive, Edward A. Mueller, hosted an invitation-only reception at the Denver Art Museum.

"At the Super Bowl, $6 million will get you two 30-second spots," said Steven Davis, Qwest's vice president for public policy. "These are weeklong events, with tens of thousands of people and millions of television viewers."

One popular marketing theme is "green." Xcel Energy, an electric and natural gas utility that gave $1 million to each venue, has a display called the "Green Energy Frontier," with solar panels, a full-size wind turbine blade and a solar home.

"Being a utility, we don't have a lot of product to show," said Steve Roalstad, an Xcel spokesman. "But we want to show that what we do affects people."

Camco International Ltd., a company based in Britain, was named the "official carbon adviser" in Denver, where it promoted its carbon offset programs. Around 20 Camco employees were working at the convention, and some of the company's executives were to appear on a panel discussion on climate change.

Coca-Cola was named the "official recycling provider," and was sending an 18-wheel tractor-trailer - with the Coke logo splashed on the side and a recycling display inside - to both conventions. Scattered throughout both events are recycling bins provided by Coke.

About 150 Coke employees are promoting recycling and offering free samples of the company's vitamin water, lemonade, tea and Coke Zero. In Denver, Coke sponsored a reception for Latino delegates, and another one for diplomatic and international politicians at the Denver Art Museum.

One trade group, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, decided not to become a convention sponsor. But it still had a presence in Denver, and was spending nearly $2 million to promote its agenda of using more coal. The group was handing out brochures at the airports, putting advertisements in convention publications and running advertisements on CNN.

"We will be engaged in guerrilla marketing," said Joe Lucas, a spokesman for the group. "We did not look to the host committee to provide us with opportunities. We are having our own brand ambassadors interact with conventiongoers."

By Leslie Wayne, The New York Times, August 28, 2008

DENVER - When Gordon Davis, a top fund-raiser for Senator Barack Obama, made partner at his white-shoe law firm in New York in 1983, it was a vastly different world for aspiring black professionals like him.

At the time, there were just five black partners at major law firms in New York, Mr. Davis recalled. That group had a tradition of taking each new partner out to an intimate congratulatory lunch. Today, more than 200 take part in the ritual at the Harvard Club.

The change over just a few decades offers a glance at the advances that have enabled a cadre of black elites like Mr. Davis to emerge as a force in the most successful fund-raising operation in presidential campaign history.

Mr. Obama's acceptance of his party's nomination on Thursday, on the 45th anniversary of the speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington, signifies a powerful moment of arrival for blacks. But the milestone is especially telling for this upper-crust group, which has mobilized like never before to raise mountains of cash to power his campaign.

"There's a sense of not only pride but of a point in the culture we're a part of, the society we're a part of, that this is different," said Mr. Davis, now a partner at Dewey & LeBoeuf. "It's a measure of how far we - and I don't mean just black people - how far this country and the business world have come."

There are 57 blacks out of the roughly 300 people on the Obama campaign's national finance committee. Each member commits to collecting at least $250,000, a formidable task that typically requires deep business networks, something relatively few blacks had until fairly recently.

The list of top Obama bundlers includes John W. Rogers Jr., the founder of Ariel Investments, the country's first black-owned money management firm; William E. Kennard, the first black chairman of the Federal Communications Commission; and Mr. Davis, who drove across the country 45 years ago as a newly minted college graduate to take part in the March on Washington, and went on to serve as the first black parks commissioner of New York City and the first black president of Lincoln Center.

Mr. Kennard and Mr. Rogers are among a half-dozen black bundlers who have raised more than $500,000 for Mr. Obama, putting them in a select group of just three dozen fund-raisers.

Most of Mr. Obama's major black donors are new to big-money political fund-raising, but there are signs that at least some could go on to become players in Democratic circles. Some, for example, have already begun flexing their muscle by raising money for politicians who endorsed Mr. Obama early on.

At 67, Mr. Davis is something of an elder statesman for the group. Most are part of a younger generation that has benefited from the new vistas opened by the civil rights movement but had not participated directly in those struggles. Like Mr. Obama, they have learned to navigate white-dominated fields, climbing through the ranks by earning approval not among fellow blacks but among whites. Yet they remained keenly aware of the sanctums that were still inaccessible.

Now they have witnessed a breakthrough at the highest levels of the political realm, a culmination in many ways of the long struggle for acceptance that many of them have spent their professional lives waging.

"When you grow up living in a white corporate world, there's always a part of you that thinks, 'Gee, if I sold out,' or 'How can I do this and also stay true to myself and true to my own identity,' " said Jeh Johnson, another top fund-raiser and New York lawyer who today serves as the informal chairman of the group of black law partners.

Of Mr. Obama, Mr. Johnson said, "Here we have a guy who's running for president and managed to do it in the political world and managed to do it so well."

When Mr. Johnson became the first black partner in 1994 at his firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, he was part of a wave of blacks earning the same distinction at other major New York firms. What was happening in law was unfolding elsewhere in corporate America, on Wall Street and in other rarefied circles, with blacks finally penetrating the ranks of money and influence in increasing numbers.

"This is now a situation where many of us have arrived at a certain level - lawyers, doctors, professional people," said Ralph Dawson, who is in charge of African-American donor outreach for the Democratic Party and is himself a black law partner. "And all of that is coming together around this very special individual."

Valerie Jarrett, a close friend of Mr. Obama and one of his most trusted advisers, pointed out that her experience had been vastly different from that of parents’ generation. Her father, who was the first black medical resident at his Chicago hospital, was asked to enter through the back door on his first day of work, she said.

"There hasn't been the kind of overt, in-your-face discrimination my parents experienced," said Ms. Jarrett, who is now the chief executive of one of the country's largest real estate firms.

Nevertheless, stories of slights, or a nagging sense of "otherness," are prevalent even among this accomplished group.

Mr. Kennard, who was general counsel to the F.C.C. before he became chairman in the Clinton administration, recalled his first day on that job. He deliberately went in early to his new office. When he arrived, a secretary asked in a snippy voice whether she could help him.

"There was just a tone in her voice, 'You're really not supposed to be here for an appointment that early,' " said Mr. Kennard, who more recently became the first black partner at his private equity firm, the Carlyle Group, and who sits on the board of The New York Times Company. “I said, 'Well, yes, I'm the new general counsel.' Her jaw dropped and she said, 'You're the new general counsel?' "

Indeed, for all of the signs of progress, there remain feelings of frustration about what has not been accomplished.

Mr. Rogers, who was a crucial early supporter of Mr. Obama when he first ran for the Illinois Senate, and helped connect him to others in the black business community, said he looked around at his industry and still saw few black faces at the highest levels.

"I think the good news is, once Barack is elected," Mr. Rogers said, "he is going to be a beacon of hope for all of us."

By Michael Luo, The New York Times, August 28, 2008

DENVER - Barack Obama and John McCain headed across the country Friday, campaigning for the first time with their new running mates, after Mr. Obama had accepted the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday with a withering attack on Mr. McCain, arguing that he represented a continuation of policies that undermined the nation's economy and imperiled its standing around the world.

Mr. McCain announced on Friday that that he had chosen Gov. Sarah Palin, a solid conservative who has been governor of Alaska for just two years, as his running mate. The choice caught Republicans by surprise, and - as designed by Mr. McCain's advisers - eclipsed Mr. Obama's acceptance speech that he had delivered the night before.

Mr. McCain set out campaigning with Ms. Palin as Mr. Obama left this city to campaign for the first time with his vice presidential candidate, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware.

The speech by Senator Obama, in front of an audience of nearly 80,000 people on a warm night in a football stadium refashioned into a vast political stage for television viewers, left little doubt how he intended to press his campaign against Mr. McCain this fall.

In cutting language, and to cheers that echoed across the stadium, he linked Mr. McCain to what he described as the "failed presidency of George W. Bush" and - reflecting what has been a central theme of his campaign since he entered the race - "the broken politics in Washington."

"America, we are better than these last eight years," he said. "We are a better country than this."

But Mr. Obama went beyond attacking Mr. McCain by linking him to Mr. Bush and his policies. In the course of a 42-minute speech that ended with a booming display of fireworks and a shower of confetti, he offered searing and far-reaching attacks on his presumptive Republican opponent, repeatedly portraying him as the face of the old way of politics and failed Republican policies.

He said Mr. McCain was out of touch with the problems of everyday Americans. "It's not because John McCain doesn't care," he said. "It's because John McCain doesn't get it."

And he went so far as to attack the presumed strength of Mr. McCain's campaign, national security. "You know, John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of hell, but he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives," he said.

The speech loomed as arguably Mr. Obama's most important of the campaign to date. It was an opportunity to present himself to Americans just now beginning to tune in on this campaign, to make the case against Mr. McCain and to offer what many Democrats say he has failed to offer to date: an idea of what he stands for, beyond a promise of change.

To that end, he emphasized what he described as concrete steps he would take to address the anxieties of working-class Americans, promising tax cuts for the middle class and pledging to wean the country from dependence on Middle East oil within 10 years to address high fuel prices.

With the speech, Mr. Obama closed out his party's convention here and prepared for a quick shift of public attention to the Republicans as Mr. McCain moved to name his running mate and his party got ready for its convention in St. Paul on Monday.

He delivered it in a most unconventional setting, becoming the third nominee of a major party in the nation's history to leave the site of his convention to give his acceptance speech at a stadium. In this case, it was Invesco Field, set against the Rockies and about a mile from the arena where he had been nominated the night before. His aides chose the stadium to signal a break from typical politics and to permit thousands of his supporters from across the country to hear him speak.

And it came on a night that offered - by the coincidence of scheduling - a reminder of the historic nature of the Obama candidacy: 45 years to the day after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech on the Mall in Washington. Mr. Obama is the first African-American to be nominated for the White House by a major party, a fact that, for all its significance, has been barely mentioned over the course of this four-day gathering.

Even in invoking the anniversary of the King speech, Mr. Obama only alluded to race. But he quoted a famous phrase from Dr. King's address to reinforce a central theme of his own speech. "America, we cannot turn back," Mr. Obama said. "Not with so much work to be done."

Mr. McCain marked the occasion of the speech by releasing a television advertisement in which, looking into the camera, he paid tribute to Mr. Obama and his accomplishment. "How perfect that your nomination would come on this historic day," Mr. McCain said. "Tomorrow, we'll be back at it. But tonight, Senator, job well done."

The advertisement stood in stark contrast to a summer of slashing attacks on Mr. Obama by Mr. McCain that apparently contributed to the tightening of this race. And the softer tone did not last; Mr. Obama was still on the stage, watching the fireworks, when Mr. McCain's campaign issued a statement attacking him.

"Tonight, Americans witnessed a misleading speech that was so fundamentally at odds with the meager record of Barack Obama," said Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for Mr. McCain.

In his speech, Mr. Obama scored Mr. McCain for raising questions about his patriotism, and trying, he said, to turn a big election into a fight on small squabbles.

"I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain," Mr. Obama said, an American flag lapel affixed to his left lapel. "The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag."

"So I've got news for you, John McCain: We all put our country first," he said, prompting the crowd to break into a chant of "U.S.A., U.S.A."

Mr. Obama looked completely at ease and unintimidated by his task or the huge crowd that surrounded him. And he chastised Mr. McCain for trying to portray him as a celebrity, an attack aides say has been particularly damaging, offering a list of people who he said had inspired him, from his grandmother to an unemployed factory worker he met on the campaign trail.

"I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine," he said. "These are my heroes. Theirs are the stories that shaped me. And it is on behalf of them that I intend to win this election and keep our promise alive as president of the United States."

Mr. Obama delivered his speech on a day of considerable political churn. Even as Mr. McCain was paying tribute to Mr. Obama on television, his aides disclosed that he made a choice for vice president.

Mr. Obama's audience began lining up to go through security and enter the stadium eight hours before he was to speak. As seats filled, they watched a series of musical performances, including by Stevie Wonder, who sang, "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours."

But the table for Mr. Obama was also set by speeches from some of the best-known Democratic leaders. They were led by Al Gore, the former vice president who confronted a question that has, fairly or not, hovered over Mr. Obama as he struggles in his contest with Mr. McCain.

"Why is this election so close?" Mr. Gore asked. "Well I know something about close elections, so let me offer you my opinion. I believe this election is close today mainly because the forces of the status quo are desperately afraid of the change Barack Obama represents."

Mr. Obama used much of his speech to link Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush - a line of attack that his aides view as their strongest going into the fall - and signaled that he saw next week's Republican convention, when Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush are to appear together, albeit briefly, as a way to press that line of attack.

"Next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third," he said. "And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look just like the last eight. On Nov. 4, we must stand up and say: 'Eight is enough.' "

Speaking in generally broad terms, Mr. Obama offered a contrast between Republican and Democratic views of the role of government.

"We measure the strength of our economy not by the number of billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500," he said, "but by whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a business, or whether the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off to look after a sick kid without losing her job - an economy that honors the dignity of work."

The outdoor acceptance speech was by any measure a risky gambit by a campaign that has shown a taste for taking chances and breaking with convention, as his aides acknowledged. Bad weather could have soaked the moment. Mr. Obama's first question to aides when they proposed this was, "Will it rain?" It did not; the day was dry, if hot.

When John F. Kennedy held his outdoor rally at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in June 1960, half the seats were empty, as a dispatch in The New York Times noted in dismissively describing the event as a "fresh air vaudeville." The stadium here was packed by 5:15 mountain time, three hours before Mr. Obama was to take the stage, after a week in which Democrats and Obama supporters had been hustling for tickets.

By Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny, The New York Times, August 29, 2008

NEW YORK (CNN) -- John McCain's brilliant but risky "Hail Mary pass" choice for vice president, Alaska Gov. Sarah "Barracuda" Palin, has the political world saying first: Who? And then: Why?

The "who" is a young, articulate, smart, tough, pro-life woman who is the governor of our northernmost state. She is conservative and a mother of five, including a son in the Army who is set to be deployed to Iraq on September 11. Her youngest child has Down syndrome.

The "Barracuda" nickname came from her aggressive basketball play on the state championship basketball team. She is a hunter, pilot and lifetime member of the NRA.

She is blunt, outspoken and charming. And don't assume she can't stand toe-to-toe with Joe Biden. She is a great debater. And she was runner-up for the Miss Alaska title, won Miss Congeniality in that contest and plays the flute.

She also has a compelling story and is a most interesting choice. She will be known by all in 24 to 48 hours in this instant media world, and I am betting she will be well-liked.

The "why" is she is a governor and outside the Beltway. Conservatives love her, and she shares John McCain's value system. She is also known for taking on the establishment and ethics is her forte.

She defeated the longtime senator and Republican governor in a primary and then went on and defeated the former Democratic governor.

I don't believe people vote for vice president but only for president. That said, I think she is every bit as good a choice as Biden. Alaska has three electoral votes, and so does Delaware, so that part ends up being a wash.

I think the potential for her to attract women voters is immense. And I am betting, win or lose or draw, she is a future star of a party in desperate need of young people and women role models.

And by the end of this campaign, she too will be a celebrity, and her life will never be the same again. I hope that's all for the good.

Speaking of celebrities, Barack Obama proved why he is one at Invesco Field, home of the Denver Broncos, last night before 85,000 crying, cheering adoring fans. And what's wrong with that? He is a real talent, and he excites and inspires his supporters.

Those of us who are not supporters need to step back and quit watching in awe and prepare for battle. Obama's natural and developed speaking style is unchallengeable.

I've been in politics for 40 years. I had the privilege of serving Ronald Reagan as his White House political director and campaign manager, and during those years, I heard him give hundreds of speeches.

And no one was ever better. His words enlightened, gave comfort, inspired and made Americans feel good about themselves again. He also had a core of beliefs developed over a long period of time that led to a very effective agenda.

The Democrats now have their own version of an RR orator. And, like Reagan, Obama's speeches are his own words. Whether he will be elected president or will have the accomplishments RR did, only time will tell. But his gifts of speech and ability to inspire his supporters are impressive and should not be underestimated.

Saying all that, and putting the emotion of "mile-high Denver" euphoria aside, Ronald Reagan became a great president because of his many other skills. He knew where he wanted to take our country and had the courage to stick to his beliefs.

We still don't know what Obama and the Democrats want, other than George Bush back in Crawford Texas, and their party controlling both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

We now know the tickets: Obama-Biden, McCain-Palin.

Biden is an asset as a foreign policy adviser. Palin will be an asset on domestic and energy issues. All have compelling stories. But ultimately, this race is about McCain's experience and world view and Obama's ability to excite his base.

We have one more exciting convention (now with a new player in Gov. Palin) and then 60-plus days to go at full speed. The winner gets the toughest job in the world, with the most difficult agenda we as a nation have faced in decades.

By Ed Rollins, CNN, August 29, 2008

MONACA, Pa. - Barack Obama's spokesman fired off a fast criticism of Republican John McCain's new running mate Friday, but the Democratic candidate himself quickly stepped in to offer her congratulations and praise.

Obama, who is eager to win over female voters who backed his rival Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primaries, blamed the mixed messages about McCain's choice, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, on campaign aides with a "hair trigger."

He and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, followed up with congratulatory phone calls to Palin.

McCain made his surprise announcement moments before Obama flew from Denver with Biden and their wives. Fresh off Obama's nomination acceptance speech before 84,000 people Thursday night, the foursome launched a three-day bus tour of crucial industrial states, which began with a visit to a biodiesel fuel plant near Pittsburgh.

As the plane was lifting off from Denver, Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton issued a statement calling Palin an abortion-rights opponent and "the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience."

Soon thereafter, with the plane over the Midwest, a spokeswoman gave reporters on board a much kinder statement from Biden and Obama.

"Her selection is yet another encouraging sign that old barriers are falling in our politics," their statement said. "While we obviously have differences over how best to lead this country forward, Gov. Palin is an admirable person and will add a compelling new voice to this campaign."

After touring the steamy biodiesel fuel plant, Obama offered reporters still another comment on Palin.

He has not met her, he said, but "she seems like a compelling person. Obviously a terrific story, personal story. And I'm sure that she will help make the case for the Republicans. Unfortunately, the case is more of the same," an allusion to his theme that McCain will continue Bush administration policies.

Palin's selection, Obama said, "is one more indicator of this country moving forward. The fact that you've got a woman" as the "vice presidential nominee of one of the major parties, I think, is one more hit against that glass ceiling."

Clinton often says she made "18 million cracks in the glass ceiling," a reference to the number of votes she won in primaries as she sought to become the nation's first female president.

Asked why Burton's statement had been far more critical of Palin, Obama said, "I think, you know, campaigns start getting these hair triggers. And the statement that Joe and I put out reflects our sentiments."

In his telephone call to Palin, Obama "told her she would be a terrific candidate," campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs said later. "He also wished her good luck, but not too much luck."

Spokesmen said Biden also called Palin to congratulate her.

In Monaca, Obama, Biden and their wives stopped at an industrial warehouse where chicken fat is converted to tractor fuel. The visit made two things clear: Western Pennsylvania, where Clinton easily bested Obama in the primary, will be hotly contested in the fall campaign, and energy will be a top campaign issue, because the two parties disagree over which new energy sources should be pursued hardest.

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press, August 29, 2008

DENVER - That was one more bravura performance from Barack Obama on Thursday night, and 85,000 supporters in the football stadium here - and no doubt millions watching on television - were ecstatic over the oratorical flights of the newly crowned Democratic nominee.

If you listened closely to the 46-minute address, however, you heard two speeches crushed somewhat jarringly together.

The first half, one suspects, was the speech that Obama felt he had to give: a traditional partisan appeal that, for all his sonorous cadences, read like it could have been stitched together randomly from speeches delivered on any given day from rank-and-file Democrats on the floor of the House of Representatives.

There were denuciations of outsourced manufacturing jobs and promises to save Security Security and frequent baiting of John McCain for being the candidate of the rich and a weakling against Osama bin Laden.

The second half sounded like the speech Obama wanted to give: a plea for a new brand of politics, one in which politicians don't attack each other's motives or character and Washington calls a ceasefire in such drearily familiar fights as abortion and gun control.

Obama did not acknowledge the two halves of his address - the partisan top and the post-partisan close - much less try to reconcile them. Blurring inconsistencies under clouds of polished language is the right of any politician. What's more, a convention acceptance speech is not the time for a seminar.

Even so, it was notable that Obama's speech offered countless rhetorical stanzas but not much in the way of a sustained argument aimed at convincing people who are not already enthusiasts, or for whom the charge that McCain would represent four more years of George W. Bush does not by itself close the deal.

He chided McCain for being a slave to his party's orthodoxy. But Obama did not find occasion to challenge any Democratic orthodoxies, or highlight places where he breaks from his party's interest groups.

Indeed, he made almost no effort to place himself in any particular spot on the Democratic ideological spectrum. The result was to leave a default impression that he is a standard post-Clinton Democrat - wary of big business and the ill effects of globalization and free trade, motivated most intensely by antipathy to Bush and the Iraq war.

The speech included some moments of plain hypocrisy - nothing out of bounds by the standards of normal campaigning but out of step with his pleas for a more unifying and less manipulative style of politics.

Obama said, "What I will not do is suggest that the senator takes his positions for political purposes," because "the times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook."

Over the course of this year, Obama and other Democrats have suggested frequently that McCain abandoned his once independent positions in order to appease conservatives in his race for the Republican nomination.

He also invoked most of his party's favorite gotcha moments against McCain. The thrusts were well-turned and mostly above the belt (though sometimes a bit distorted). But there is nothing more familiar than making politicians pay for their gaffes. This is precisely the same practice that Obama denounced last spring as old politics when it was used against him after he slipped by saying poor white voters "cling" to guns and religion because of job losses.

Obama accused McCain of considering everyone worth under $5 million as middle class - a reference to a clumsy comment McCain recently made at a forum. He said McCain wants to privatize Social Security, which is somewhat misleading. McCain has supported allowing workers to put a small percentage of their Social Security taxes in private savings accounts - but not privatizing the program.

He said McCain "has said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investment in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels." That's not entirely true: McCain has been supportive of measures in all of these areas though he has also voted against many Democratic versions of these plans.

The speech was more programmatic and less biographical than many of Obama's most celebrated speeches. Notably, he touched only glancingly on his history-making status as the first African-American nominee.

The speech also highlighted a contrast between Obama and the last Democrat to win the presidency. Even on big occasions like acceptance speeches or State of the Union addresses, Bill Clinton usually aimed for a conversational tone. More often than not, he also liked to pretend he was grappling genuinely with the other side's honest positions, if only to show why they were wrong.

Obama strives for a more elevated and elegant tone in his language. But his basic case is more straightforward denunciation. "For over two decades, he's subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy - give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else," Obama said of McCain.

This may not go far toward creating a new brand of politics, but it will please many of the Democratic elected officials here. In interviews all week, many of Obama's colleagues said his most important job was to be a fighter - to tie McCain to Bush at every turn, and to show that, when hit over his patriotism or his credentials as commander in chief, he will hit back harder.

If those Democrats were right - if that was indeed Obama's most important job - than the speech that wrapped up the 2008 Democratic convention probably succeeded both as both rhetoric and as politics.

Still, even the finest phrases don't change the reality that it's hard to practice new politics and old at the very same time.

By Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris, Politico, August 29, 2008

DAYTON, Ohio - In a surprise move, Senator John McCain chose Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate on Friday, McCain officials confirmed, shaking up the political world at a time when his campaign has been trying to attract women, especially disaffected supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In choosing Ms. Palin - a 44-year-old conservative and self-described "hockey mom" who has been governor for less than two years - the McCain campaign reached far outside the Washington Beltway in an election in which the Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama, is running on a platform of change.

Ms. Palin, a former mayor of the small town of Wasilla, an Anchorage suburb, and one-time beauty pageant queen, first rose to prominence as a whistle-blower uncovering ethical misconduct in state government.

The selection amounted to a gamble that an infusion of new leadership - and the novelty of the Republican Party's first female candidate for vice president - would more than compensate for the risk that Ms. Palin could undercut one of the McCain campaign's central arguments, its claim that Mr. Obama is too inexperienced to be president.

The choice of Ms. Palin stands in sharp contrast to the selection of the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, a veteran lawmaker and chairman of Foreign Relations Committee.

But Ms. Palin ran as a change agent when she was elected as governor of Alaska in 2006, and in a move that might have appealed to Mr. McCain, she took intense criticism from members of her own party for turning the spotlight on the failures of Alaska Republicans, some of whom had been beset by corruption scandals.

She was elected Alaska's chief executive after fighting off a comeback bid by a former Democratic governor. Her victory came after she had helped uncover misconduct in the administration of Gov. Frank Murkowski, whom she later trounced in a Republican primary.

Ms. Palin opposes abortion rights, which could help pacify social conservatives in a party whose members were wary as rumors swirled that Mr. McCain might pick a running mate who did not.

But she differs with Mr. McCain on a controversial environmental issue that centers on her home state: she has been pushing for a new pipeline that would pump trillions of cubic feet of natural gas from the North Slope to the lower 48 states in the hope of delivering Alaska another economic boom. Mr. McCain's opposition to drilling - even after he changed positions and began advocating for off-shore oil drilling - has upset many Republicans.

For its part, the Obama campaign was dismissive of the selection.

"Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency," Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said in a statement. "Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies - that's not the change we need, it's just more of the same."

The choice of Ms. Palin was a closely guarded secret, and she flew under the political radar for months as Mr. McCain searched for a running mate. Much of the public discussion in recent days had focused on Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and Mr. McCain's one-time rival for the Republican nomination; Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota; Tom Ridge, the former governor of Pennsylvania and Homeland Security secretary, and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democrat-turned-independent who was former Vice President Al Gore's running mate in 2000. Social conservatives were relieved and highly pleased.

"They're beyond ecstatic," said Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition. "This is a home run. She is a reformer governor who is solidly pro-life and a person of deep Christian faith. And she is really one of the bright shining new stars in the Republican firmament."

Ms. Palin is known to conservatives for choosing not to have an abortion after learning two years ago that she was carrying a child with Down syndrome. "It is almost impossible to exaggerate how important that is to the conservative faith community," Mr. Reed said.

Whether her selection will improve Mr. McCain's appeal to women who had supported Mrs. Clinton is unclear. Both Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin oppose abortion rights, an important issue for some women. And a major theme of the Democratic convention that just concluded in Denver was both Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton urging supporters to unite behind Mr. Obama.

The choice of Ms. Palin was reminiscent of George H.W. Bush's selection of Dan Quayle, a young United States senator, as his running mate in 1988. The media and most in the Republican Party were caught unaware by the announcement of a figure relatively unknown outside Indiana.

Similarly, several of Mr. McCain's outside advisers reacted with bewilderment that Ms. Palin was the choice, and one said that it would undercut one of Mr. McCain's central criticisms of Senator Obama - that he is too inexperienced to be commander in chief.

"While it's a dramatic and interesting choice, it would make the argument he's making difficult to make," said the adviser, who is close to the campaign.

The confirmation of Mr. McCain's selection of Ms. Palin came barely an hour before he was to introduce her to the nation here and at the end of a chaotic and at times comic morning of media reports that veered from possibility to possibility. The two men who been widely reported as recently as Thursday evening to be on Mr. McCain's short list - Mr. Romney and Governor Pawlenty - were eliminated by mid-morning Friday.

Attention then turned to reports that a chartered Gulfstream jet had arrived near Dayton from Anchorage late Thursday, suggesting that Ms. Palin was on it.

In Alaska, Carrie Hollier, a 27-year-old resident and supporter of Mr. Obama, said she would feel some wistfulness about not voting for the governor she admires.

"It definitely makes it difficult, because you can't help but love Sarah Palin," she said.

In November, Ms. Palin spoke at a redeployment ceremony for the company of her husband, Daniel Norman, an Army sniper who was awarded a Purple Heart for shrapnel he took from a roadside bomb in Iraq. The governor spoke so warmly to the assembled families, said Ms. Hollier, "there wasn't one person who wasn't crying."

Under other circumstances, Ms. Hollier might consider voting for Ms. Palin. "She never comes across as full on Republican," she said. "But Obama is the one who is going to bring everyone home."

By Michael Cooper and Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times, August 29, 2008

DENVER - As Senator Barack Obama took the stage on the 50-yard line to a blinding flicker of flashbulbs, toddlers waved small flags on their parents' shoulders, tears ran down elderly faces and a roar befitting a Denver Broncos touchdown filled Invesco Field. "Change" signs formed a sea of blue, and chants of "U.S.A." competed with "Yes, we can."

"With profound gratitude and great humility, I accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States," Mr. Obama said to begin his speech, the culmination of a marathon political carnival that bore little resemblance to any convention finale that had come before.

Under clear skies after a humid day, the crowd of nearly 80,000 was a hodgepodge of suited Democratic donors, senators, delegates, party bigwigs, celebrities, political tourists, teenage volunteers and older voters - many of them African-American - bent on seeing a moment they had thought they would never witness. Some waited for five hours in baking heat in a line up to a mile long to come to the stadium.

"I have no reason to be here other than to be a part of history," said Janelle Murph, who had booked a last-minute flight from Baltimore to see the first African-American accept the nomination of a major party on the 45th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. "When I realized it was on that anniversary, it just felt like fate. I had to be there."

As afternoon turned to evening, the mood evolved from giddy to serious to - by the time Mr. Obama was talking about Iraq - nearly silent. Mr. Obama's face loomed on big video screens overhead while he spoke. About half of the crowd remained standing throughout, a group that included far more young people in the stands than delegates on the floor. An elderly African-American man removed his oversize red, white and blue hat in deference as Mr. Obama spoke.

"Yes, we can," the man chanted at appointed moments, in concert with others in Section 126.

The night sky brought an air of majesty to replace the summery festival feel of the late afternoon. While Mr. Obama spoke, people stopped texting and twittering to hear his words.

"America, this is not a time for small plans," Mr. Obama said, and three teenage women chanted "Tell it, Barack" in unison.

"Individual responsibility and mutual responsibility, that's the essence of the American promise," he said.

"Tell it, Barack," the women repeated.

"We cannot walk alone," Mr. Obama said, quoting Dr. King.

"Tell it, Barack," said a growing group that now included much of the section that the "tell it Barack" girls were sitting in.

The occasion was part coronation, part organizing meeting, part Woodstock. Inside the stadium, the home of the Broncos, chants of "Eight is enough," referring to President Bush's tenure, broke out, and big delegate hats outnumbered face paint (usually preferred at a football game). To some extent, the event resembled a Broncos game, though without beer sales, no discernible opposition and Mr. Obama in the spotlight role of John Elway (the Hall of Fame Broncos quarterback).

"This is one of the greatest experiences of my life," said Jane Culkin, a 16-year-old volunteer who attends George Washington High School in Denver. Behind her, Carrie Siubutt, of Brooklyn, was eating a bowl of multicolored Dippin' Dots while getting her first look at the stadium, which was filled by 7 p.m.

"This makes me feel very lucky to be an American," said Ms. Siubutt, a native of Trinidad.

"I feel like I'm the only one here," she said a few minutes later while flags filled the field, waving in rhythm to a "Si, se puede" chant.

The scene was one of the most unusual sights in the annals of American political conventions. Overnight, the familiar trappings of the convention hall were moved outdoors, with banners from every state filling the field. As the afternoon wore on, the warm-up acts went from C- to B- to A-list, and spectators passed the time taking pictures, getting autographs and throwing the occasional Obama beach ball. By the time Al Gore came on at 6:45 p.m., the stadium was aflutter with flashbulbs, waving flags and Obama signs.

In a twist on the normal convention finale, the prominent figures - donors, elected officials and media celebrities like Dan Rather - looked somewhat like the interlopers. Younger people dressed in jeans and shorts - many not of voting age - seemed decidedly more at home, as if they were attending an open air concert and were fully versed in the festival ritual. The wave broke out in Section 338 just after Mr. Gore's speech ended and spread quickly around the stadium.

The Obama campaign seemed to be trying to de-electrify the proceedings, keeping much of the focus on the grass roots instead of the rock star. A "Faces of America" montage flashed on a video screen in the back of a stage. There were a long procession of speakers from the military and relatively low-key musical acts and unintentionally subduing speeches from Democratic politicians.

The blue seats of the stadium gradually filled throughout the afternoon, with Democrats waiting for hours to hear Mr. Obama's acceptance speech. The atmosphere was one of historic celebration, with a resolution read into the convention's minutes stating, "Martin Luther King would have been proud."

After all the lines and waits and security screenings, the first thing people found were phone banks: clusters of tables filled with phones and eager volunteers who handed out lists of names and numbers. Callers were instructed not to ask their targets for money or votes - just to turn on their televisions to watch Mr. Obama's speech. The reward, or potential reward: a raffle with coveted floor seats as its prize.

The crowd was multiracial, and black voters, echoing one another, said they simply could not miss this moment.

Lillian Woods, 50, of Phoenix arrived at 1 p.m., seven hours before Mr. Obama would speak. "I had to be here for the whole thing," she said, passing the time in the hot sun. "It's history in the making."

Alycee Nelson Ruley, a retired marine from Morton, Pa., recalled watching Walter Cronkite cover Dr. King's March on Washington as an 8-year-old.

"I vividly remember watching, and I vividly remember not being able to go," Ms. Ruley said. She is a Republican, but after Mr. Obama won the South Carolina primary, she vowed to go to Denver if he won the nomination.

Mr. Obama did a "God Bless America" closing and, a few minutes later, heads in the crowd shot upward to see the first pops of orange fireworks - the Obama version of the balloon drop. The Obamas, along with Mr. Obama's running mate, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., and his wife, Jill, hugged and mingled on stage to the orchestral booms of string and percussion. Smoke from the fireworks created a building haze overhead, dotted with specks of confetti.

People filled the aisles, heads turned in every direction. They pointed cameras at the sky as they filed out.

By Mark Leibovich, The New York Times, August 28, 2008

DAYTON, Ohio (Reuters) - Republican John McCain picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate on Friday, a senior campaign official said, in a surprise choice that could help him appeal to women voters.

The choice of Palin, 44, will be unveiled later on Friday in a rally in Dayton as McCain grabs the political focus away from Democratic rival Barack Obama one day after Obama accepted his party's presidential nomination.

McCain and Palin will face Obama and his No. 2, Joe Biden, in the November 4 presidential election.

The pick followed days of speculation about McCain's choice, with most of the better-known contenders like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney slowly eliminated over the last 24 hours.

Palin is a conservative first-term governor of Alaska with strong anti-abortion views and a record of fiscal conservatism. She is an avid sportswoman who would bring youth and vitality to the ticket. McCain turns 72 on Friday.

Palin is not well-known nationally, and that could cut into McCain's argument that Obama is too inexperienced to handle the White House. But she could help him appeal to disaffected supporters of Democrat Hillary Clinton, who lost a bruising primary to Obama.

In his acceptance speech on Thursday, Obama directly attacked McCain and linked him to what he called the failed Republican economic policies of President George W. Bush.

Palin, former mayor of the town of Wasilla, built a reputation as a reformer in a state that recently has been hit with corruption scandals. Elected in 2006, she is Alaska's first woman governor.

Palin and her husband, Todd, have five children, ranging in age from 18 years to 4 months.

By Jeff Mason, Reuters, August 29, 2008

Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama successfully used his convention speech to lay out the stakes for the November election and draw a contrast with Republican John McCain, though he may receive little or no bounce in the polls, the Democratic nominee's chief strategist said.

"He believes that we are in a tipping point really in this country both in terms of our policies here, economic policies, and in foreign policy,'' strategist David Axelrod said in an interview on Bloomberg Television's "Political Capital with Al Hunt'' to be broadcast today. "I think he made that case.''

Because the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, begins just four days after the conclusion of the Democratic gathering last night, Obama isn't expected to get a bounce in the polls, Axelrod said.

"I wasn't looking for a huge bounce,'' Axelrod said. "I don't think there's a lot of play in this electorate.''

Axelrod said that Obama's criticism of McCain, 72, was stronger than in past speeches, and defended the harsher language. In his 45-minute speech last night in Denver, Obama criticized McCain's judgment on the war in Iraq, the economy and his support of President George W. Bush.

"The American people are willing to tolerate fair contrasts,'' Axelrod said. "If they feel you are being fair, they don't mind you being tough.''

Loyal Bush Supporter

Axelrod said Obama, an Illinois senator, successfully portrayed McCain as a loyal supporter of Bush rather than the maverick he campaigned as when he first sought the White House eight years ago.

"He's been living off the fumes of 2000,'' Axelrod said. "St. Paul underwent a conversion on the road to Damascus and John McCain underwent a conversion on the road to St. Paul.''

The Republican argument has been that Obama, 47, does not have the experience to serve as president. Axelrod noted that the Republicans ran a similar campaign against Bill Clinton in 1992.

Axelrod said the former president would be campaigning for Obama, though he wouldn't say whether they would campaign together. Obama is targeting 18 states, including several that traditionally have been inhospitable to Democratic presidential candidates and "we welcome having high-level surrogates so we can fan out across the country,'' Axelrod said.

Also accomplished, Axelrod said, was unifying the Democratic Party, which had been split during the long campaign between Obama and New York Senator Hillary Clinton. He praised the speeches by the two Clintons.

"I was thrilled with what both Clintons did at our convention,'' Axelrod said. "The big question going in was, 'Are we going to be united?' I don't think anybody is asking that question now.''

Obama wrote the first draft of his convention speech, and it was twice as long as the address he wound up delivering, Axelrod said. Axelrod and other advisers helped whittle it down, and the material that didn't make into Thursday's speech will find its way into other campaign addresses, he said.

"We certainly have some material to use going forward,'' Axelrod said.

By Jonathan D. Salant, Bloomberg, August 29, 2008

It was a fine speech. Beautifully crafted phrases that inspired, though they perhaps did not inform, floated high above the Doric columns on the stage at Invesco Field. At the same time, Barack Obama, his feet on the ground, delivered the meat and potatoes, reciting a checklist of the concerns of ordinary Americans who are hurting.

Much of it was Democratic boilerplate but he outlined plans, a few in detail. He talked, albeit vaguely, about how he would pay for some of them. And he attacked John McCain, witheringly. He was deft in intimating that the Arizona senator is an angry old codger, without quite saying that - McCain "doesn't get it" and it and lacks the right "temperament" for the White House.

The Illinois senator even showed some passion. A huge cheer went up around the stadium when his recitation of a litany of misdeeds under President George W. Bush ended with an emphatic: "Enough!" It seems a touch contrived (the exclamation mark was in the prepared text) and it was so uncharacteristic as to be slightly jarring. But he'd been urged to get angry and he made a decent go of appearing to be just that.

Trouble is, every nominee's acceptance address is the "biggest speech of his life". Every four years, the breathless build-up is duly followed by the punditocracy declaring that he hit a home run - though this time David Gergen's "it was less a speech than a symphony" might have raised a blush or two even at Obama HQ in Chicago.

We already knew, moreover, that Obama could give a fine speech. To a large extent, the McCain campaign, building on Hillary Clinton's "just words" and "one speech", has neutralized this powerful talent by turning it against him. By over-reaching in Berlin, the fine speechifying became a potential millstone for him.

Truth be told, the faux Greek temple looked more Vegas than Parthenon. The backdrop was probably designed to evoke the Lincoln memorial with perhaps a dash of West Wing thrown in. But once the fireworks had exploded from the structure and red, white and blue streamers were draped over it, it was sheer kitsch.

It was the first time a Democrat had accepted his party's nomination at an open air site since John F. Kennedy at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles in 1960. No doubt the comparison was a conscious one when Invesco was chosen above the plain old 18,000-seat Pepsi Center.

Filling a stadium with more than 84,000 people is no mean feat but the whole event had the feel of a great idea if Obama had been holding a 12-point poll lead and looked to be cruising towards an easy victory in November. With the polls now tied and a dogfight with McCain beckoning it felt like a mistake.

The venue belied the most important - and new - part of his message, to "spell out exactly what that change would mean if I am President". Having the plans to help ordinary Americans is one thing but persuading them to believe you have the will and capacity to carry them out is another.

Obama's demeanor remains cool and aloof. Bill Clinton could feel people's pain. Obama who, as Michael Barone has pointed out, has spent his entire adult life living in university communities, appears to view people's pain with concerned detachment.

He went on the attack but obviously felt conflicted about doing so. His lofty pronouncement that "what I will not do is suggest that the Senator [McCain] takes his positions for political purposes" was either nonsensical or disingenuous. It felt like the former. Why else do Democrats think McCain has changed his positions?

Throughout the week, Democrats were far too polite towards John McCain. Yes, he's a war hero but, as Wesley Clark correctly if impoliticly pointed out, that doesn't in itself qualify him to be President, and there's no need to honor McCain's service every time his name is mentioned. On Wednesday, Joe Biden, with senatorial collegiality, kept calling him John (though he did him once with George) when McCain or McSame would have done fine.

Obama has allowed McCain to get under his skin and inside his head. He mentioned McCain 21 times in the speech. In 1988, George H. W. Bush didn't use the name Michael Dukakis once. In 2000, the words Al Gore crossed George W. Bush's lips precisely once. Yet Obama even stooped to mentioning McCain's most effective attack ad, bleating that "I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead..."

The main benefit for Obama of speaking at Invesco was that it drew a line under the first three days of the convention which were dominated by the Clintons. Even at the point of the nomination by acclamation, the television image was of the former First Lady graciously deigning to grant the honor to the Young Pretender as chants of "Hillary, Hillary!" rang out around the arena.

Certainly, Senator Clinton did what she had to do in calling on her supporters to support her erstwhile rival. But it was a coldly logical endorsement. "Those are the reasons I ran for President," she said. "Those are the reasons I support Barack Obama. And those are the reasons you should too."

Bill did his bit with a more emotion and conviction but we knew that he could deliver an utterly insincere or untrue statement with feeling and believability. He needed to say it so he did and he did it well. But no one thought he actually believed it.

There wasn't a coherent message from the convention. Mark Warner's keynote was a bust - Paul Begala's reminder that this wasn't the Richmond Chamber of Commerce just about summed it up. McCain and Bush were hardly talked about during the first two days. It did genuinely feel like a surprise when Obama made his surprise appearance at the close of day three because before then so little of the proceedings had been about him.

The Clintons played the parts that fate had dictated they had to because they knew that another run in 2012 depended on them being good soldiers until November 4th. Obama gave a fine speech. But the convention did little to advance his candidacy and August was a month squandered by the newly-minted Democratic nominee.

By Toby Harnden, Real Clear Politics, August 29, 2008

JUNEAU, Alaska - In just two short years, Sarah Palin moved from suburban hockey mom and small-town mayor to vice presidential contender. The 44-year-old Republican, Alaska's first female governor, arrived at the Capitol in 2006 on an ethics reform platform after defeating two former governors in the primary and general elections. On Friday she was ready to leap to the national stage as GOP presidential candidate John McCain's surprise choice for running mate, according to two senior campaign officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement was pending.

She already has a national reputation for bucking her party's establishment and Alaska's powerful oil industry back home.

With ethics the centerpiece of her campaign, Palin defeated incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski, who served 22 years in the U.S. Senate before winning the governor's seat in 2002.

Her task didn't seem any easier in the general election, but she handily beat Tony Knowles, a popular Democrat who already served two terms as governor.

During her first year in office, Palin distanced herself from the powerful old guard of the state Republican Party, even calling on Sen. Ted Stevens to explain to Alaskans why federal authorities were investigating him.

Since then, their relationship has warmed, and they have appeared together at several events. Stevens even said lawmakers should follow Palin's lead in her efforts to get a natural gas pipeline built.

Stevens is scheduled to go on trial Sept. 22 in Washington, D.C., on charges he failed to disclose more than $250,000 in home renovations and gifts from executives at oil services contractor VECO Corp. He won the GOP primary on Tuesday with more than 60 percent of the vote. He's pleaded not guilty.

Palin also asked Alaska's congressional delegation to be more selective in seeking earmarks after what came to be known as the "Bridge to Nowhere" turned into a national embarrassment and a symbol of piggish pork-barrel spending.

She also successfully took on the oil industry, leading to a tax increase on oil company profits that now has the state's treasury swelling.

Typically seen walking the Capitol halls in black or red power suits while reading text messages on Blackberry screens in each hand, Palin made a recent appearance in Vogue, the fashion magazine.

And she oversees a state that's hardly shy about admiring her swept-back hair and celebrated smile. Bumper stickers and blogs have proclaimed Alaska and Palin: "Coldest State, Hottest Governor."

Palin describes herself as a "hockey mom" and an occasional commercial fisherwoman. She lives in Wasilla, a town of 6,500 about 30 miles north of Anchorage, with her husband, Todd, a blue-collar North Slope oil worker who competes in the Iron Dog, a 1,900-mile snowmobile race. He is part Yup'ik Eskimo.

Her previous political experience consisted of terms as Wasilla's mayor and councilwoman and a stint as head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

Palin's troubles with the GOP began when Murkowski named her chairwoman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. There, Palin exposed current Alaska Republican Party Chairman Randy Ruedrich, who was also an AOGCC commissioner, for ethical violations.

In 2005, Palin co-filed an ethics complaint against Murkowski's longtime aide and then attorney general, Gregg Renkes, for having a financial interest in a company that stood to gain from an international trade deal he was helping craft.

The Palins have five children: Track, 19; Bristol 17; Willow 14; Piper, 7, and Trig, who was born in April with Down syndrome.

Track enlisted in the Army in 2007 on the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and has been assigned to Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks.

Palin was born Feb. 11, 1964, in Idaho, but her parents moved to Alaska shortly after her birth to teach. She received a bachelor of science degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho in 1987.

By STEVE QUINN, Associated Press, August 29, 2008

DENVER - John McCain tapped little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate on Friday in a startling selection on the eve of the Republican National Convention.

Two senior campaign officials disclosed McCain's decision a few hours before the Republican presidential nominee-to-be and his newly-minted running mate appeared at a rally in swing-state Ohio.

Palin, like McCain, is a conservative with a maverick streak who has shown a willingness to clash with others in her own party. A self-styled hockey mom and political reformer, she has been governor of her state less than two years.

Palin's selection shocked numerous Republican officials.

At 44, Palin is a generation younger that Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, who is Barack Obama's running mate on the Democratic ticket.

She is three years Obama's junior, as well - and McCain has made much in recent weeks of Obama's relative lack of experience in foreign policy and defense matters.

In making his pick, McCain passed over several more prominent prospects who had figured in speculation for months - Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge among them.

Palin flew overnight to an airport in Ohio near Dayton, and even as she awaited her formal introduction, some aides said they had believed she was at home in Alaska.

She is a former mayor of Wasilla who became governor of her state in December, 2006 after ousting a governor of her own party in a primary and then dispatching a former governor in the general election.

More recently, she has come under the scrutiny of an investigation by the Republican-controlled legislature into the possibility that she ordered the dismissal of Alaska's public safety commissioner because he would not fire her former brother-in-law as a state trooper.

The timing of McCain's selection appeared designed to limit any political gain Obama yields from his own convention, which ended Thursday night with his nominating acceptance speech before an estimated 84,000 in Invesco Field in Colorado.

Public opinion polls show a close race between Obama and McCain, and with scarcely two months remaining until the election, neither contender can allow the other to jump out to a big post-convention lead.

McCain has had months to consider his choice, and has made it clear to reporters that one of his overriding goals was to avoid a situation like the one in 1988, when Dan Quayle was thrown into a national campaign with little preparation.

Palin has a long history of run-ins with the Alaska GOP hierarchy, giving her genuine maverick status and reformer credentials that could complement McCain's image.

Two years ago, she ousted the state's Republican incumbent governor, Frank Murkowski in the primary, despite having little money and little establishment backing.

She has also distanced herself from two senior Republican office-holders, sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don young. Both men are under federal corruption investigations.

She had earned stripes - and enmity - after Murkowski made her head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. From that post, she exposed ethical violations by the state GOP chairman, also a fellow commissioner.

She and her husband Todd Palin, have five children. The latest, a baby, was born with Down syndrome.

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press, August 29, 2008

DENVER - Barack Hussein Obama, a freshman senator who defeated the first family of Democratic Party politics with a call for a fundamentally new course in politics, was nominated by his party on Wednesday to be the 44th president of the United States.

The unanimous vote made Mr. Obama the first African-American to become a major party nominee for president. It brought to an end an often-bitter two-year political struggle for the nomination with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who, standing on a packed convention floor electric with anticipation, moved to halt the roll call in progress so that the convention could nominate Mr. Obama by acclamation. That it did with a succession of loud roars, followed by a swirl of dancing, embracing, high-fiving and chants of "Yes, we can."

In an effort to fully ease the lingering animosity from the primary season, former President Bill Clinton, in a speech that had been anxiously awaited by Mr. Obama's aides given the uncomfortable relations between the two men, offered an enthusiastic and unstinting endorsement of Mr. Obama's credentials to be president. Mr. Clinton's message, like the messenger, was greeted rapturously in the hall.

"Last night Hillary told us in no uncertain terms that she is going to do everything she can to elect Barack Obama," Mr. Clinton said. "That makes two of us."

Mr. Clinton proceeded to do precisely what Mr. Obama's campaign was looking for him to do: attest to Mr. Obama's readiness to be president, after a campaign largely based on Mrs. Clinton's contention that he was not.

"I say to you: Barack Obama is ready to lead America and restore American leadership in the world," Mr. Clinton said. "Barack Obama is ready to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Barack Obama is ready to be president of the United States."

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, Mr. Obama's choice for vice president, accepted the nomination with a speech in which he spoke frequently, and earnestly, of his blue-collar background, in effect offering himself as a validator for Mr. Obama among some voters who have been reluctant to embrace the Democratic presidential nominee.

He then turned to Senator John McCain, the likely Republican nominee, signaling how he would go after him in the campaign ahead. He referred to Mr. McCain as a friend - "I know you hear that phrase a lot in politics; I mean it," he said - and then proceeded to offer a long and systematic case about why Mr. McCain should not be president.

"The choice in this election is clear," Mr. Biden said. "These times require more than a good soldier. They require a wise leader," he said, a leader who can deliver "the change that everybody knows we need."

His 21-minute address completed, Mr. Biden was joined on stage by his wife, Jill, who told the crowd they were about to be joined by an unscheduled guest. The crowd exploded as Mr. Obama walked around the corner.

"If I'm not mistaken, Hillary Clinton rocked the house last night," he said, gazing up at where Mr. and Mrs. Clinton were watching the proceedings and leading the crowd in applause. "And President Clinton reminded us of what it's like when you have a president who actually puts people first. Thank you."

The historic nature of the moment quickly gave way to the political imperatives confronting Mr. Obama, who arrived here on Wednesday afternoon and is to accept the nomination Thursday night before a crowd of 75,000 people in a football stadium. After days in which the convention often seemed less about Mr. Obama than about the two families that have dominated Democratic politics for nearly a half-century, the Kennedys and the Clintons, he needed to convince voters that he has solutions to their economic anxieties and to rally his party against the reinvigorated candidacy of Mr. McCain.

The roll-call vote took place in the late afternoon Wednesday - the first time in at least 50 years that Democrats have not scheduled their roll call on prime-time television - as Democrats sought to avoid drawing attention to the lingering resentments between Clinton and Obama delegates. Yet the significance of the vote escaped no one, and sent a charge through the Pepsi Center as a procession of state delegations cast their votes and the hall, slightly empty at the beginning of the vote, became shoulder-to-shoulder with Democrats eager to witness this moment.

As planned, it fell to Mrs. Clinton to put Mr. Obama over the top. He was declared the party's nominee at 4:47 p.m. Mountain time after Mrs. Clinton, in a light blue suit standing out in a crowd that included almost every elected New York official, moved that the roll call be suspended and that Mr. Obama be declared the party's nominee by acclamation. The vote was timed to conclude during the network evening news broadcasts.

"With eyes firmly fixed on the future in the spirit of unity, with the goal of victory, with faith in our party and country, let's declare together in one voice, right here and right now, that Barack Obama is our candidate and he will be our president," Mrs. Clinton said.

"I move that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois be selected by this convention by acclamation as the nominee of the Democratic Party for president of the United States," she said.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, standing at the lectern, asked for a second and was greeted by a roar of voices. A louder roar came from the crowd when she asked for support of the motion.

When the voting was cut off, Mr. Obama had received 1,549 votes, compared with 231 for Mrs. Clinton.

The hall pulsed when Mr. Clinton strode onto the stage for a performance that became a reminder of why Democrats had considered him a politician with once-in-a-generation skills - and suggested that for Democrats in this hall at least, Mr. Clinton may have survived a primary in which he was repeatedly criticized for the sharp tone he often used against Mr. Obama. Again and again, Mr. Clinton tried to quiet the crowd. Again and again, they ignored him.

"You all sit down, we have to get on with the show," he said.

Mr. Clinton arguably did a better job than Mrs. Clinton the night before in making the case for Mr. Obama, and pumped up a crowd at a convention that has often seemed listless. He even managed, amid all his praise, to slip in a reference to the reservations he voiced about Mr. Obama back when he was campaigning against him, suggesting that Mr. Biden was just what Mr. Obama needed.

"With Joe Biden's experience and wisdom, supporting Barack Obama's proven understanding, instincts and insight, America will have the national security leadership we need," he said.

And without mentioning Mr. McCain by name, he offered a sharp denunciation of him and the Republicans.

"The Republicans will nominate a good man who served our country heroically and suffered terribly in Vietnam," he said. "He loves our country every bit as much as we all do. As a senator, he has shown his independence on several issues. But on the two great questions of this election, how to rebuild the American Dream and how to restore America's leadership in the world, he still embraces the extreme philosophy which has defined his party for more than 25 years."

"They actually want us to reward them for the last eight years by giving them four more," he said. "Let's send them a message that will echo from the Rockies all across America: Thanks, but no thanks."

For all the good Mr. Clinton might have done for Mr. Obama on Wednesday night it marked the second night in a row that the Clintons had been the face of what was supposed to be Mr. Obama's convention. But when Mr. Obama walked out from backstage at the end of the night - "Hello, Democrats!" - he left little doubt about who was now the face of the Democratic party.

For Mr. Obama, the nomination - seized from Mrs. Clinton, who just one year ago was viewed as the obvious favorite to win the nomination especially against an opponent with a scant political resume - was a remarkable achievement in what has been a remarkable ascendance. It was less than four years ago that Mr. Obama, coming off of serving seven years as an Illinois state senator, became a member of the United States Senate. He is 47 years old, the son of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya.

Mr. Obama's nomination came 120 years after Frederick Douglass became the first African-American to have his name entered in nomination at a major party convention. Douglass received one vote at the Republican convention in Chicago in 1888.

Making the moment even more striking was the historical nature of Mrs. Clinton's candidacy. She was the third woman whose name has been entered as a candidate for president at a major party convention. As she moved to end the roll-call vote, some women in the hall could be seen wiping tears from their eyes.

Eager to avoid the missteps that plagued the first months of the Clinton administration, aides to Barack Obama have begun working in concert with top Democrats in Congress to craft a preliminary legislative agenda that would guide the senator from Illinois should he capture the White House in November.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has assigned her committee chairmen to begin with low-hanging fruit to build confidence and provide a new, young president quick legislative victories, then pivot to more challenging issues, from ending U.S. military involvement in Iraq to broadening health-care coverage. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. rangel (D-N.Y.) said his policy staffs and Obama's have been working together for more than a month.

"This is my last chance," Rangel, 78, said of his opportunity to make a lasting legislative imprint. "This is the big one."

Pelosi's priorities begin, in order, with ending the war in Iraq, expanding access to health care, rebuilding infrastructure and weaning the nation off oil. But with economic problems looming ever larger, she and other Democrats say providing relief could be their first target: "I'll just use a four-letter word," Pelosi said. "Jobs."

Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill hope to dramatically expand their ranks in the fall election and are even allowing themselves to contemplate securing a potentially filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Their enthusiasm is tempered by some Democrats' caution against overreaching for fear that an agenda geared too much to the party's most liberal elements could make the 2010 elections a repeat of 1994, when Democrats were exiled from power on Capitol Hill for 12 years.

With Republican retirements and a political playing field still tilting away from the GOP, most independent political analysts predict the Democrats will expand their majority in the House by at least 10 seats and maybe twice that number. But a 60-seat, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate -- which would require a nine-seat Democratic gain -- is a long shot.

"The odds are pretty high we won't get to 60, but it's not out of the question," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Recent polling has shown that the seat of Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) is in more jeopardy than it was just weeks ago. The indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) has imperiled the longest-held Republican Senate seat in history. New numbers indicate that Republican-held seats in states that have been little more than an afterthought for Democrats in most election years -- including those of Sen. Saxby Chambliss in Georgia, Sen. Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina, Sen. Roger Wicker in Mississippi and even Sen. James M. Inhofe in Oklahoma -- are becoming more competitive.

"The chatter about whether Democrats can pick up enough seats in November to hit the magic number of 60 and a filibuster-proof majority is getting louder," the nonpartisan Cook Political Report said last week.

Even if the Democrats fall short, moderate Republicans such as Sens. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and Arlen Specter (Pa.), and possible survivors, such as Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Gordon Smith (Ore.), could still provide the votes next year to break Republican filibusters. "It's not as good as 60, but it's close enough to get a lot done," Schumer said.

If Obama prevails, Democrats hope to revive legislation that was vetoed by President Bush or filibustered in the Senate. Among the bills that would be pushed within days of the opening of the next Congress would be a significant expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, paid for with an increase in the federal tobacco tax, and an extension of tax credits for renewable energy sources, financed largely by the repeal of recent tax breaks for oil companies.

"You start small and build confidence," said Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.).

Congress would also likely take up Obama's economic stimulus package quickly, which includes one-time tax rebates to help offset rising energy costs, and money for state and local governments to fund infrastructure projects and cope with rising health-care spending. Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said he recently spoke to Obama and that the agenda would include Iraq, health care and global warming. But, Durbin added, "his mind is really fixed on the economy. That might eclipse everything."

After those first bills, Democrats are split. Some Democratic leaders are already fretting about the lessons of 1993, when Bill Clinton took office with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and immediately moved to try to enact deficit reduction through tax increases, universal health care, an overhaul of the nation's welfare laws and new gun controls. Democrats lost control of Congress the next year in a wave of voter discontent and anger.

"Normally, when all your dreams are realized in an election, that's when it becomes a nightmare," Moran said. "2008 could be a dream election. 2010 could be a disaster."

Those Democrats worry that the withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq alone could leave Democrats politically vulnerable in 2010, especially if violence flares. Committee chairmen have been advised to steer clear of troop withdrawal legislation until the spring, to give Obama time to mobilize a diplomatic offensive and get the Iraqi government and its neighbors more involved in maintaining regional stability.

In tandem with that challenge, the prospect of defeat on an issue as big as universal health insurance is already kindling memories of 1994. Some Democrats argue that Obama should start with universal health insurance for children and a federally backed catastrophic health insurance fund that would lower the costs of traditional insurance policies and take the pressure off businesses tempted to drop employee coverage.

Schumer said they should stick to the "vowels": energy, immigration, education and Iraq. But other Democrats say they need to think big and move fast.

"My experience is the president's best chance for a big idea is his first year. After that, you're already into another election cycle," Durbin said.

Rangel said: "All I know is, I want to see America educated, healthy and with enough money in their pockets to go out and get a good job and raise a family. And we're going to have a ball doing that."

One challenge that seems destined for the back burner is balancing a federal budget that has been swimming in red ink for eight years. Obama and leaders in the House and Senate insist they will stick to the party's reinstituted rules to pay for new spending or tax cuts with offsetting tax hikes or spending cuts. But that would only stabilize the deficit, approaching $500 billion, not reduce it.

"People have to understand how far the road back is to sea level," Pelosi said.

How all this unfolds will depend at first on the scope of a Democratic victory in November, leaders say. A strong win for Obama and congressional Democrats would force Republicans into the new president's camp and allow him to be more aggressive. A narrow win would force him to make good on his promises to meet Republicans halfway and find truly bipartisan compromise.

"As whip, I am just praying for a number as close to 60 as possible," Durbin said. "I don't know if we can reach it, but it's possible."

By Jonathan Weisman, The Washington Post, August 28, 2008

DENVER, Aug. 27 -- Lena Taylor, a Wisconsin state senator from Milwaukee, is "overwhelmed" by the history that will be made Thursday night, when Sen. Barack Obama will become the first African American to accept a major-party presidential nomination. Add in that his acceptance will come on the 45th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech, that it has been 40 years since Robert F. Kennedy predicted the country might elect a black president in four decades, and that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy made a dramatic appearance here this week, and the symbolism boggles her mind.

But Taylor also knows that some Democrats gathered in Denver may not want her and others to get too carried away in celebrating Obama's racial breakthrough, lest it distract from the overriding goal of driving home the party's message on the economy and other issues. Top Democrats, union officials and others have spoken openly this week about the challenge Obama faces among white voters who are inclined toward the party but may be uncomfortable voting for a black presidential candidate. And Obama himself has tried throughout the campaign not to focus explicitly on his role as the first African American with a serious shot at the White House.

It reminds Taylor of the reactions she sometimes receives from other Wisconsin legislators when she mentions she is the chamber's only black female member. And it will not stop her from speaking out about what she is feeling now.

"I talk about it because our sense of pride gives hope for other individuals, too. That kind of hope and pride inspires other people into action," she said. "For those who do not want to have that dialogue, I recognize that. But for those of us who are proud of this moment, we are not going to squash that."

Other black delegates here described a similar frame of mind: immense pride and wonderment at the thought of Obama accepting the nomination, coupled with a keen awareness that for many of their fellow Democrats, beating Sen. John McCain is the priority. The black delegates said that they share that goal with no less intensity -- but that on this day, they could not help but pause to reflect on the history being made.

Michael B. Coleman, the mayor of Columbus, Ohio, thinks of his great-great-grandmother Margaret Dean, who was born into slavery in Virginia and later sold to a plantation owner in Kentucky. She lived to 104, outlasting all of her many children, before dying in the 1940s. As far as Coleman knows, Dean, whose picture hangs prominently in his office at City Hall, never voted. That there is now a black presidential nominee, only six decades after the death of a forebear of his who spent three decades in slavery, brings Coleman up short.

"If she were alive, she would be immensely proud of my being the first African American mayor of Columbus," he said. "But she would not have even conceived of the possibility that a black man or woman, a person of color, could become president of these United States of America."

Coleman, one of the first mayors to endorse Obama, said he feels no compunction about fully celebrating the symbolism of the moment. "You don't run from your roots. You embrace your past, and you represent everybody," he said. "This is a good thing for America."

Emma Allen, 58, thinks back to her childhood in rural Texas, between the towns of Giddings and Dime Box, watching TV images of violence against civil rights marchers. "I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Now, for me to be here . . .," she said, her voice trailing off. Her parents were activists who tried to get other blacks to vote, despite poll taxes. She carried on the work as a precinct chair in Fort Worth. She realizes that even some younger African Americans may not want to dwell on Obama as a "first," but said they just don't understand.

"With younger people, they haven't lived it," she said. "But with older people, there's no way if you were born in my time and world, to think that you would see this happen."

Iris Salters, 63, the first black female president of the Michigan teachers union, recalls her small high school in the state's southwest, where white families were upset that she had edged out a white boy as valedictorian. "There were certain things we knew we couldn't do. You could have the second-best grades, but you knew when you were pushing up to the line and crossing over it," she said. She urged all Democrats to mark Obama's moment.

"There are some people here that are afraid this may in some way take away from their status, but this is not a black thing or a white thing," she said. "There are some majority people who are afraid of that. But if we're not all rowing in the same rhythm, we're going to go in a circle."

Some said they felt no anxiety about celebrating. Donald Williams, 57, a lawyer from El Paso who attended segregated schools in Houston, said that "one of the greatest strengths" of the Democratic Party is that it accepts everyone. Not that anything would stop him from observing, anyway. "Being an African American and not being sensitive to the historic nature of this is just a fallacy," he said. "I've always been involved in politics, but I always had to 'settle for.' This is the first time in my adult life I've been really excited. This is going to show that America's precepts are not just rhetoric."

For Mohamed Jibrell, 57, a Somali immigrant in Minneapolis, the significant came with a twist -- not only were Democrats nominating a black man, but also one with recent East African roots. As he saw it, the uplifting nature of the nomination lay in Obama's success in appealing across racial lines. "It's not so much that he's black. That's why it is historic, but that's not why people are excited. What's exciting is that he is transcending."

For Tori Hill, a delegate from Eden Prairie, Minn., the significance lay as much in the elevation of Michelle Obama as a potential first lady as in her husband's nomination. The sister of three high-achieving professional women, Hill sees in Michelle Obama's success traces of her family's advancement -- which is why she brought her three children with her to Denver, even if it meant her teenage son had to miss his first football practice and his pre-semester enrichment classes. "This is a blessed moment," she said. "This is America's time. This is the people's time."

By Alec MacGillis, The Washington Post, August 28, 2008

DENVER, Aug. 27 -- At first, it seemed, it might be all about Bill Clinton and yesteryear. The former president strode onto the stage Wednesday night to his old campaign theme song, "Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)," and bathed in the glow of a standing ovation that went on so long and loud that he had to finally confess, "I love this." But it turned out to be not about him at all, with Clinton delivering a speech that framed the case for Sen. Barack Obama and against the Republicans in a way that no one at this convention had done before.

Only a day earlier, when there was some unease among Clinton's associates about whether he was being straitjacketed in what he could say in his speech, Obama tried to defuse the situation by saying Clinton could say whatever he wanted. Good call, as it turned out. Perhaps not even Obama himself could have conjured up an oration so powerful on his behalf. Not only did Clinton utter the words "Barack Obama" 15 times, they came in his first sentence and his last, and there were long riffs about the candidate in between.

At the start of the speech, Clinton joked that it seemed unfair that he had to follow the previous night's address by his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who many believed had delivered the most flowing and soulful speech of her failed campaign. Fat chance. Clinton is always competitive, even in some ways with his wife, and the praise she received seemed almost to prod him to find ways to top her.

The orchestration of his speech came in four parts.

First was the unscripted ode to himself, which amounted to nothing more than him joyously trying to get the audience to sit down. He started and stopped three times before the crowd quieted enough to let him speak, and those several minutes, while eating up the time allotted to him -- which he was destined to ignore in any case -- served to remind everyone that for all of the controversy that seems to swirl around him, in and out of office, in and out of the campaigns, he still holds an uncommon place in the modern Democratic pantheon as the party's only two-term president of the postwar era.

Then came an ode to Obama, which, if not overly warm, was indisputably lengthy and strong, filling the one void of his wife's largely Obama-less speech the night before. Saying he is convinced that Obama is "the man for this job," he praised the nominee's "remarkable ability to inspire people," his "intelligence and curiosity," his "clear grasp" of foreign policy, the strength he gained from the "long, hard primary" against Hillary and the judgment he showed in choosing Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. as his running mate.

If this was all about Obama, there were also intimations of the Clinton years here. In 1992, Clinton gained momentum going into his convention by choosing Sen. Al Gore to run with him; and Obama, he said, in selecting Biden, "hit it out of the park."

Next came the case against Sen. John McCain and the GOP. Here Clinton went into his professorial mode, biting his lip, jabbing his finger to make a point and throwing wide his hands as a means of inviting the audience in on his wisdom as he cited a litany of Republican failings in domestic and foreign policy. The longest ovation of his speech came after a slap at the Bush administration's foreign policy propensities to go it alone and rely on force first. "People the world over," Clinton said, "have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of power."

At the end of this riff, Clinton paused, gathered in the audience and said, "They actually want us to reward them for the last eight years by giving them four more," a bewildered expression crossing his tanned face. "Let's send them a message that will echo from the Rockies all across America: Thanks, but no thanks. In this case, the third time is not the charm."

And finally Clinton brought it all together by linking his presidency to the prospect of a "President Obama" -- and in putting those two words together, it was as though he were finally, after months of reserve and hotheadedness, giving the new kid his blessing. Long gone was the Hillary Clinton campaign ad asking whom people might trust when the phone rang in the White House at 3 in the morning. Sixteen years ago, Bill Clinton said, the Republicans tried to diminish him by "saying I was too young and too inexperienced to be commander in chief. Sound familiar? It didn't work in 1992, because we were on the right side of history. And it won't work in 2008, because Barack Obama is on the right side of history."

It is the most repetitive theme of Clinton's political life: that he always finds a path to redemption when he is down, and in many ways he proved that again with this speech. And he might also have accomplished something larger and less self-centered -- by doing all he could to bring Obama up at the same time.

By David Maraniss, The Washington Post, August 28, 2008

Candidate Gets Boost From the Clintons as He Becomes The First African American to Lead a Major-Party Ticket

DENVER, Aug. 27 -- Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois completed an improbable and historic journey here Wednesday when he was nominated by acclamation as the Democratic candidate for president, becoming the first African American to lead a major political party into a general-election campaign.

Obama, who just eight years ago attended his first Democratic National Convention and who four years later shot to national prominence with an electrifying keynote address at the gathering in Boston, was given a final symbolic boost Wednesday by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who moved from the convention floor to suspend the roll call of the states and formalize her former rival's nomination by acclamation.

The gesture of conciliation brought to a conclusion the closest and hardest-fought nomination battle Democrats have waged in the modern era of presidential politics, pitting two historic candidacies in a contest that divided the party and left lingering bitter feelings among Clinton loyalists.

But after days of nervous speculation about how the long and often contentious competition would end here in Denver, the nomination-by-acclamation set off a joyous scene on the convention floor, as delegates danced to the strains of "Love Train" and then broke out in chants of "Yes, we can! Yes, we can!"

Hours later, the convention confirmed Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.) as the party's vice presidential nominee, and as he finished his acceptance speech, Obama made a surprise visit to the Pepsi Center to praise his running mate; his wife, Michelle; his erstwhile rival Clinton; and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, who had delivered a powerful speech on behalf of Obama earlier in the night.

"I think the convention's gone pretty well so far, don't you think?" Obama said. He cited his wife's speech on Monday, and then, referring to Hillary Clinton's speech on Tuesday, said, "If I'm not mistaken, Hillary Clinton rocked the house last night."

In his acceptance speech, Biden, the fiery chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, cast himself as a champion of working-class families -- a key target group Obama has struggled to win over -- and laid out a sustained critique of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), who will accept the GOP nomination next week.

"I am here for everyone I grew up with in Scranton and Wilmington," he said. "I am here for the cops and firefighters, the teachers and assembly-line workers -- the folks whose lives are the very measure of whether the American dream endures."

Time and again, Biden charged, Obama's judgment on foreign policy issues has been superior to McCain's. On domestic issues, he said, McCain would continue the policies of President Bush rather than embrace changes he said the country desperately needs.

"Again and again, on the most important national security issues of our time, John McCain was wrong and Barack Obama was proven right," Biden argued. "Folks, remember when the world used to trust us? When they looked to us for leadership? With Barack Obama as our president, they'll look to us again, they'll trust us again, and we'll be able to lead again."

In its response to the night's proceedings, McCain's campaign sought to turn Biden's words against Obama.

"Joe Biden is right: We need more than a good soldier. We need a leader with the experience and judgment to serve as commander in chief from Day One," said spokesman Ben Porritt. "That leader is John McCain."

Biden was preceded on the podium by Bill Clinton, whose conduct during the nominating contest prompted considerable criticism from Democrats backing Obama and who has complained in private that he was unfairly attacked.

But the former president, like his wife on Tuesday, delivered a rousing speech that made a strong argument that the election of Obama is critical to the country's future.

Clinton drew a thunderous and sustained welcome from delegates, who cheered and waved American flags and chanted "Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill" as he sought to quiet them. "I am here first to support Barack Obama," he said, setting off another round of applause.

Clinton acknowledged that "in the end, my candidate didn't win" the nomination. But then, citing his wife's speech on Tuesday, he said: "Hillary told us in no uncertain terms that she'll do everything she can to elect Barack Obama. That makes two of us." That set off a fresh round of applause that grew louder when he added: "Actually, that makes 18 million of us, because, like Hillary, I want all of you who supported her to vote for Barack Obama in November."

Challenging Republican criticism of the new nominee, he said: "Barack Obama is ready to lead America and restore American leadership in the world. Barack Obama is ready to honor the oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Barack Obama is ready to be president of the United States."

Recalling that Republicans had accused him of not being ready when he ran in 1992, Clinton noted that the criticism had not worked then and "won't work in 2008, because Barack Obama is on the right side of history."

Obama, who began Wednesday in Montana, touched down in Denver just as nominating speeches were getting underway and immediately headed to his hotel downtown to continue working on the acceptance speech he will deliver on Thursday night. He was with his wife; their daughters, Sasha and Malia; and other members of his extended family when he was declared the party's nominee.

The final stages of the nomination battle played out through a series of events on Tuesday and Wednesday, beginning with Hillary Clinton's speech on Tuesday, in which she called Obama "my candidate" and told her supporters that if they believe in the causes she champions, they should now help elect Obama.

On Wednesday, Clinton met with her delegates and, over shouts of "No, no," told them they were free to vote any way they wished. "I'm not telling you what to do," she said to some applause. But she added: "I signed my ballot this morning for Senator Obama."

The roll call of the states, which was the subject of lengthy negotiations between the Obama and Clinton campaigns, began shortly before 4 p.m. Denver time. Clinton wanted her name put in nomination in recognition of her historic candidacy, and many of her delegates were demanding the opportunity to record their support for her.

But early in the roll call it became clear that many of them had already shifted to Obama and that the quadrennial spectacle had been choreographed to produce a party united behind him.

The first conspicuous example of the shift to Obama came when Arkansas, the home state of Bill Clinton and a state she carried overwhelmingly during the primaries, cast most of its 47 votes for him.

Other Clinton states followed suit. New Hampshire, which brought her campaign back to life in January with a surprise victory, cast all its votes for Obama. Then came New Jersey, another state where Clinton trumped Obama in the primaries, which voted unanimously for him.

Two-thirds of the way through the roll call, an elaborately planned series of handoffs began to unfold. New Mexico yielded the floor to Illinois, which had passed on the first go-round. Illinois, Obama's home state, then yielded the floor to New York, Clinton's state.

Suddenly, the cameras zeroed in on Clinton within a throng of people on the convention floor moving toward the stanchion marking the New York delegation. A cheer went up as her image appeared on the big screens in the arena.

Standing next to Gov. David A Paterson, Sen. Charles E. Schumer and Rep. Charles B. Rangel, Clinton did the honors for the man who had denied her dream of becoming the first woman ever nominated to lead a major party. "With the goal of unity," she said, "let's declare together in one voice, right here, right now, that Barack Obama is our candidate and he will be our president."

Clinton then moved that the convention suspend the rules and the continuation of the roll-call vote and asked that Obama be nominated by acclamation. Her motion triggered another thunderous round of applause and cheers from delegates. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) quickly gaveled the nomination to a close, triggering a demonstration that brought the party ever closer to unity.

Obama was nominated by Michael Wilson, a registered Republican and Iraq war veteran, with seconding speeches by Sen. Ken Salazar (Colo.) and Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) and Artur Davis (Ala.).

Wilson praised Obama for his opposition to the Iraq war and his willingness to meet with enemies of the United States. "You know, there's an old saying: 'If you always do what you did, you'll always get what you got,' " he said. "America needs new leadership in the White House, and that leader is Barack Obama."

Clinton was nominated by civil rights leader Dolores Huerta of California, who called the senator a champion for working people. "She has stood with hardworking people and knows how important it is to keep fighting and keep going," she said. "For many in America, working people are invisible. For Hillary Clinton, no American is invisible."

Long before the marquee speakers came to the hall, a procession of Democratic elected officials blasted McCain and Bush in an effort to undermine the GOP's advantage on foreign policy issues.

Former Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.), an early supporter of Obama, directly addressed the question of whether Obama is ready to serve as commander in chief by holding up the current administration as an example.

"Together Vice President Cheney, [former defense secretary] Donald Rumsfeld and John McCain brought more than a century of experience to our foreign policy challenges," he said. "And what did that get us? One international debacle after another."

Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee, noted that McCain had voted with the administration 90 percent of the time and that a McCain administration would look like a Bush administration. He argued that Obama would keep the country safer than McCain would.

"George Bush, with John McCain at his side, promised to spread freedom but delivered the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said. "They misread the threat and misled the country."

Sen. Evan Bayh (Ind.), who was one of the finalists in the vice presidential search, described McCain as "not the change we need" and, despite having voted for the Iraq war resolution, attacked Bush and McCain for their prosecution of that conflict.

"George Bush and John McCain were wrong about going to war in Iraq, are wrong about how to get us out of Iraq, wrong to ignore the danger in Afghanistan," said Bayh, who became an administration critic. "The time for change has come, and Barack Obama is the change we need."

By Dan Balz and Anne E. Kornblut, The Washington Post, August 28, 2008

DENVER - Barack Obama has a dream, a dream embodied in a speech, a speech he gave at the Democratic National Convention Thursday night to introduce himself to America.

Yes, introduce. Hard as it is to believe, most Americans are just getting to know him. And this is what they got to know Thursday night: He is a man who can master a moment.

He did a little inspiration, he did a little substance, he did a little attack, he did a little defense, he did a little everything except let his audience down.

Even when it sounded like he was going to lapse into old and tired political rhetoric - he talked about the struggles of ordinary, hardworking Americans - he gave it a new twist and managed to blunt the attacks of his opponent to boot.

"I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine, these are my heroes," Obama said as the enormous crowd at Invesco Field roared. "Theirs are the stories that shaped me. And it is on their behalf that I intend to win this election and keep our promise alive as president of the United States."

Obama's speech soared many times, but it always came back to earth. And it usually came back to earth on John McCain's head.

Obama mentioned McCain by name no fewer than 21 times, praising his service and patriotism, but attacking him not just on specifics, but on one, general point.

"McCain doesn't get it," Obama said. McCain is "grasping at the ideas of the past."

Need a translation? Here's one: McCain, who turns 72 on Friday, is old and out of it. His ideas are tired and he is tired, and this is no time in the history of America or the world for a tired president.

You can accuse Barack Obama of a lot of things - and no doubt McCain will do so next week at the Republican National Convention - but you can't accuse Obama of being a cream puff. He is ready to get it on, high road, low road, or middle road, against the Republicans.

Their greatest sin? Well, much of what they have told us about fighting terror, Obama said, has been a fiction.

"For while Sen. McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing that it would distract us from the real threats we face," Obama said. "When John McCain said we could just 'muddle through' in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights."

And then Obama really lowered the boom. "John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell," Obama said, "but he won't even go to the cave where he lives."

Obama sought to undo Thursday night what George Bush had done in 2004: convince voters that only a Republican administration could protect America from terrorism.

Wrong, said Obama. "Don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country; don't tell me that Democrats won't keep us safe," he thundered. "The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans - Democrats and Republicans - have built, and we are here to restore that legacy."

Nor is Obama cowed by the current success of the surge in Iraq, upon which McCain has staked so much. "John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war," Obama said. "That's not the judgment we need. That won't keep America safe. We need a president who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past."

The past, the past, the past. Old, old, old. Tired, tired, tired. That was Obama's continuing line of attack as he stood on a vast stage in a vast football stadium looking young, vigorous and enthusiastic.

Enthusiasm is a concern for the Republicans this year. The most extraordinary sight in Denver Thursday afternoon was the line of people waiting to get into Invesco Field. It stretched not just for blocks, but for miles. People filled every inch of the sidewalks on main streets and side streets. They inched under viaducts and scampered across highway entrance ramps. They stood in line for hours to get into the stadium to wait in the hot sun for even more hours. All to see a man give a speech that they could have stayed home and watched on TV.

That's enthusiasm. And, for John McCain, that's going to be a challenge. McCain has another one: giving speeches is not his strongest point. And even though there will be debates and commercials and town hall meetings in the weeks ahead, presidential campaigns are still largely about giving speeches. They used to be done on stumps and now they are done on television, but they still have to be done.

And Barack Obama knows how to do them. All his speeches, however, can be summed up in one word. Those Americans who have not heard it before, will be hearing it a lot. It is his theme, his campaign, his promise.

"I believe that as hard as it will be, the change we need is coming," he said. "Because I've seen it. Because I've lived it."

By Roger Simon, Politico, August 29, 2008

LAS VEGAS - This year, Nevada finally ceased to be an afterthought in the Democratic presidential nominating process.

The result is a political landscape transformed throughout the Mountain West, where an amped-up ground game has Democrats poised to alter the party's traditional election calculus in 2008.

The match that sparked this Western political brushfire: By holding the Democratic caucus on Jan. 19, a date earlier than ever before in Nevada and early enough to actually matter, voter turnout exploded. Fewer than 10,000 Democrats bothered to show up in 2004. More than 10 times as many - 117,599, to be exact - attended in 2008.

Democratic voter registration has likewise surged, giving the party a 60,000-voter edge over Republicans, according to July figures compiled by the state. That's a reversal from 2004, when Republicans held about a 10,000-voter lead. And as a result of caucus organizing efforts, Democrats now boast the most extensive and sophisticated volunteer network the state has ever seen.

"There have been other cycles where, even though we all were like, 'OK, we're going to fight the good fight,' it was very hard to believe it was actually possible" to win, said Pilar Weiss, political director of the powerful Culinary Workers Union. "Now it really is."

It is this new confidence in the nuts-and-bolts business of field organizing that has given Democrats a spring in their step as they prepare to wage battle in a traditionally hostile region. For Nevada isn't the only Western battleground state where Democrats appear to be outpacing the GOP in the field.

"This presidential cycle is different," says Brian Colon, chairman of the New Mexico Democratic Party. "The ground game is completely different."

In New Mexico, between January and June this year, more Democrats registered to vote than did Republicans and independents combined. The Barack Obama campaign has opened 17 offices across the state - nearly three times as many as John McCain and the Republican National Committee.

What's striking, said Colon, is that the Obama offices were put in place 100 days before Election Day. In the past, he said, there were far fewer offices and field efforts didn't begin to take shape until about 45 days before Election Day.

Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar tells a similar story.

"Colorado has always been a tough state, and it will be a tough state. But as I have traveled around some 25 counties in the last few weeks, I can tell you that I have never in my history here in this state seen the kind of presence for a presidential campaign that we have from Baraclk Obama's campaign," Salazar said in an Aug. 21 conference call with reporters. "I have never seen a presidential campaign propose to have more than 20 offices opened up all around Colorado."

The scale of the Obama field operations isn't necessarily the problem for Republicans. Rather, it's that all three states don't leave much margin for error to begin with, so even a marginally successful effort to turn out voters could prove decisive. In 2004, President Bush carried New Mexico by fewer than 6,000 votes - 50 percent to 49 percent - and Nevada by 50 percent to 48 percent. He won Colorado over John F. Kerry by a more comfortable 52 percent to 47 percent, but that was a marked improvement for Democrats over 2000, when Al Gore won just 42 percent.

In Nevada, Republicans aren't willing to concede that they are worried. In fact, they don't even acknowledge Democrats have an edge when it comes to boots on the ground.

"We're going to have just as good or better of an organization," said McCain's regional communications director, Rick Gorka, dismissing the notion that the McCain ground game is lagging behind Democrats in Nevada. "We're going to be fully prepared" with the volunteers to ensure victory.

While the voter registration gap is a concern, the McCain team argues that its voters are more reliable than the first-time and young voters the other side is pursuing.

"Now that we have our nominee, Republicans will be coming out," said John Peschong, McCain's regional campaign manager for the Western states. "I don't believe there's an enthusiasm gap."

Indeed, in early August, the McCain campaign was focused intently on identifying potential supporters and undecided voters through phone calls and door-to-door canvassing. Voter identification and volunteer recruitment was taking place during nightly phone banks run out of McCain offices.

On Aug. 4, about a dozen volunteers worked the phones at McCain's Western regional headquarters in Henderson, Nev., while a full-size cardboard cutout of the candidate in his fighter-pilot days looked on.

Yet even there, in the campaign boiler room, there were mixed signs. Like many in the room, volunteer Paul Winn admits his first choice was Mitt Romney, who won the Nevada GOP caucuses. A retired lawyer, Winn has never volunteered before but came out to make calls for McCain even though he hates the work.

"I don't want Obama as president," Winn explained. "It scares the hell out of me."

As for McCain, a candidate he's not that excited about, Winn described his thinking as, "Do you want to lose one leg or both legs?"

Also making calls that evening was Richard Scotti, a Las Vegas lawyer and precinct administrator for the Clark County Republican Party, a role that puts him at the center of organizing the grass-roots network in the state's most populous county.

So far, the party has recruited about 125 precint captains - an improvement over past election cycles, he said. And a recent grass-roots training meeting packed the room. "We are making a lot of progress," Scotti said.

But the early caucus allowed the Democrats to make even more.

There were more than 500 Democratic caucus locations across Nevada in January - each one requiring at least one party volunteer - compared with a mere 15 sites in 2004. As a result, Democrats have trained hundreds of precinct captains, including some in sparsely populated places where the prospect once might have been unthinkable - places such as Eureka and Humboldt counties, where there haven't even been Democratic county chairmen in years, let alone precinct captains.

The caucus also invigorated Nevada's politically influential labor community, particularly the 60,000-member Culinary Workers, which at the end of August will unleash an 11-week push to register all its eligible members and turn them out for Obama. Forty-five percent of the union's members are Hispanic, a key constituency for Obama.

Meanwhile, the Obama camp has focused heavily on voter registration, aiming to register tens of thousands of new voters before Election Day. Comedian George Lopez kicked off a Las Vegas registration drive with an Aug. 2 event that doubled as chance to energize the Hispanic community. Hillary Rodham Clinton jump-started another weekend drive with a campaign rally in Henderson on Aug. 8. By mid-August, the campaign had 11 field offices open.

No detail, it seems, is too small. Through early August, Obama field staffers also helped organize four weekends' worth of house parties - all advertised on the campaign website - that drew an estimated 4,000 guests in total.

The other upshot of the caucus was that it provided the Obama campaign with a database filled with the names of thousands of caucus volunteers - a ready-made grass-roots network that the campaign has already plugged into for the general election.

One of those volunteers is Shirley Hampton, a regional sales manager for a tobacco company, who also organized for Obama during the caucus season.

These days, Hampton - who was never politically active until this year -- canvasses for Obama two days a week. On a recent Saturday, she canvassed southwest Las Vegas, a fast-growing area with a large number of independent voters, wearing an Obama T-shirt and carrying a list of local unaffiliated voters.

"I like everything about him," Hampton said of Obama. "He speaks my language," especially on education and family values. And his speech on race made her "so proud," said Hampton, who is African-American.

Hampton is emblematic of the transformative role of the January Democratic caucus, said Eric Herzik, a political scientist at the University of Nevada in Reno.

"The mainstream Democrat here is like the mainstream Democrat nationally," he said. "But the big thing [the caucus] did was energize the party and get them organized. And, oh God, it worked."

By Charles Mahtesian and Victoria McGrane, Politico, August 29, 2008

Has he or hasn't he?

Last night and earlier today it looked like Sen. John McCain had settled on a running mate, with word leaking to Politico that the veep-to-be would get the call from McCain today.

Then McCain decided to make things complicated.

In a morning interview McCain told Pittsburgh radio station KDKA that he hasn't made up his mind, though he will be bringing Mitt Romney and Tom Ridge to his rally in Pennsylvania this weekend.

KDKA: "McCain said in an early morning radio interview that he was bringing along to that event both former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, two of the leading names on his short list. But he cautioned against assuming that meant either one would be the pick."

Mike Allen says McCain's playing coy, even though his friends "say he has told his inner circle of his pick, but won't call the decision official until he has discussed it with his wife, Cindy, who has been in the country of Georgia."

ENTICING: Roll Call reports that the Secret Service has been tooling around Romney's sister's home in Michigan.

Caveat: "[O]ne campaign operative familiar with the working of a presidential-level campaign cautioned that a sweep of such a location could have been conducted in advance of Romney appearing as a surrogate - not the vice presidential nominee - at an upcoming McCain campaign stop in Michigan."

ALSO ENTICING: CBS affiliate WCCO is reporting that Tim Pawlenty has wiped his Friday schedule clean. A sign that he'll be otherwise engaged? Like everything else he does this week: it could be.

PLUS: Karl Rove refused to settle the question of whether he tried to muscle Lieberman out of the veepstakes, telling Fox News: "Look, I'm not going to get into who I call and don't call."

This follows Jonathan Martin's report that rumors of Joe Lieberman's demise have been greatly exaggerated - and that the Connecticut senator's presence on McCain's short list prompted an intervention from the Republican operative Democrats love to hate.

"Republican strategist Karl Rove called Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) late last week and urged him to contact Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to withdraw his name from vice presidential consideration, according to three sources familiar with the conversation.

"Lieberman dismissed the request, these sources agreed."

If Lieberman's still a contender, though, that certainly doesn't mean it's time to dismiss the other VP prospects.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty continued his silence about the vice presidential process Wednesday, saying he "wouldn't answer questions about whether he had been asked to provide financial and personal information from screening," AP reports.

Har-de-har-har: "Asked by KTIS host Dave Clutter whether he had any announcements, Pawlenty said he was going to be vice president of his fantasy football league."

And Thursday morning Pawlenty told MSNBC he'd be "surprised" by a pro-choice running mate, saying McCain would want "a senior team in his administration that reflects his values."

Elsewhere: It may be too late to affect McCain's decision, but a new poll out of Florida helps make the case for a McCain-Romney ticket.

The Miami Herald reports on a new Mason-Dixon poll of the Sunshine State showing Romney would draw Floridians toward McCain:

"About 32 percent of respondents said they'd favor McCain if he picked Romney. That's double the number of those who said they'd be less inclined to back the ticket"

The poll also has good news for Karl Rove: "Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman looks toxic to the ticket. Nearly twice as many people said they'd be less likely to vote for McCain if the former Democrat were on the ticket. Many Democrats see the former vice presidential candidate of 2000 as a turncoat. Conservative Republicans can't stand his abortion-rights record."

On the other hand, Romney's not choosing his words as carefully as he might, saying in Las Vegas that Democratic attacks on McCain's wealth represented "the politics of envy."

AP: "He said he saw the criticism as 'the politics of jealousy or envy or a sense that somehow we're going to be less likely to vote for someone because they've achieved economic success."

It's a pithy phrase, but doesn't it also sound a little smug, given Romney's personal affluence?

Overall, though, Romney's visit to Nevada was a success, according to local news reports, which described the Las Vegas area's reaction as a "huge welcome."

And today he's headed to La Jolla for fundraising purposes. http://www.cbs8.com/stories/story.138857.html

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal kept his eye on state government, taking steps to revitalize his state's Ethics Board and preparing Louisiana for Tropical Storm/Hurricane Gustav.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports: "Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a pre-storm state of emergency this afternoon, announcing the mobilization of 3,000 National Guard with as many 5,000 call-ups possible depending on the course of Hurricane Gustav.

"Jindal also has asked for a federal state of emergency, a request that has not yet been answered."

Even if Jindal's not still in the VP chase, it's crucial for him to respond well to this storm - both for his own future career and for sake of the Republican National Convention, during which Gustav will be an unwelcome distraction.

Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, could see her state descend into Florida-in-2000-style controversy as Rep. Don Young and Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, rivals in the Republican primary for Alaska’s contressional seat, remain separated by less than 200 votes.

Palin endorsed Parnell in the primary and could be in an awkward position as the vote counting proceeds. If Parnell ultimately loses, it'll take some of the shine off the political brand that vaulted Palin into the veepstakes.

And finally: former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina tried out an "I feel your pain" sales pitch yesterday, reports the Philadelphia Bulletin.

"Carly Fiorina, economic adviser to presidential candidate John McCain, yesterday told Pennsylvania reporters the senator can win the state despite its economically 'hurting' residents...

"I know, as John McCain knows, the people of Pennsylvania are hurting right now, Ms. Fiorina said. 'They are concerned about their jobs; they are concerned about the ability to stay in their homes; they are concerned about the rising prices of food and fuel; and they are concerned about our continued ability to compete in this 21st-century economy. And that's why I think John McCain will do very well in Pennsylvania.' "

Fiorina wouldn't be the obvious choice to deliver this kind of message from the ticket, but it's a message McCain wants delivered and Fiorina's giving it her best shot.

A sign she's still in the mix? As they say in the New York Lotto: Hey, you never know.

By Alexander Burns, Politico, August 28, 2008

AS I watch Barack Obama's speech to the Democratic convention tonight, I will be remembering another speech: the one that made Martin Luther King cry. And I will be thinking: Mr. Obama's speech - and in a way his whole candidacy - might not have been possible had that other speech not been given.

That speech was President Lyndon Johnson's address to Congress in 1965 announcing that he was about to introduce a voting rights act, and in some respects Mr. Obama's candidacy is the climax - at least thus far - of a movement based not only on the sacrifices and heroism of the Rev. Dr. King and generations of black fighters for civil rights but also on the political genius of Lyndon Baines Johnson, who as it happens was born 100 years ago yesterday.

When, on the night of March 15, 1965, the long motorcade drove away from the White House, heading for Capitol Hill, where President Johnson would give his speech to a joint session of Congress, pickets were standing outside the gates, as they had been for weeks, and as the presidential limousine passed, they were singing the same song that was being sung that week in Selma, Ala.: "We Shall Overcome." They were singing it in defiance of Johnson, because they didn't trust him.

They had reasons not to trust him.

In March 1965, black Americans in the 11 Southern states were still largely unable to vote. When they tried to register, they faced not only questions impossible to answer - like the infamous "how many bubbles in a bar of soap?" - but also the humiliation of trying to answer them in front of registrars who didn't bother to conceal their scorn. Out of six million blacks old enough to vote in those 11 states in 1965, only a small percentage - 27 percent in Georgia, 19 percent in Alabama, 6 percent in Mississippi - were registered.

What's more, those who were registered faced not only beatings and worse but economic retaliation as well if they tried to actually cast a ballot. Black men who registered might be told by their employer that they no longer had a job; black farmers who went to the bank to renew their annual "crop loan" were turned down, and lost their farms. Some, as I have written, "had to load their wives and children into their rundown cars and drive away, sometimes with no place to go." So the number of black men and women in the South who actually cast a vote was far smaller than the number registered; in no way were black Americans realizing their political potential.

More important, many civil rights leaders felt that President Johnson wasn't helping them nearly as much as he could have - and that in fact he never had. He had passed a civil rights bill in 1964, but it hadn't been a voting rights bill.

And they remembered his record, a long record. It was not merely that during his first 20 years, 1937 through 1956, in the House and Senate, he had voted against every civil rights bill - even bills aimed at ending lynching.

Leaders of the civil rights movement who had watched their bills die, year after year, in Congress - not a single civil rights bill had been enacted since 1870 - knew that Johnson had been not merely a voter but a strategist against civil rights, a tactician so successful that Richard Russell of Georgia, the leader of the Senate's mighty "Southern caucus," had raised him to power in the Senate, had, in fact, made him his anointed successor as the South's legislative leader, the young hope of the elderly Southern senators in their desperate battle to maintain racial segregation.

In 1956, by which time Lyndon Johnson was majority leader, he devised and carried out the strategy that had not only crushed a civil rights bill in the Senate by a majority greater than ever before, but had done so in a way that humiliated, in a particularly vicious manner, the liberal senator who refused to bow to his wishes, Paul Douglas of Illinois.

In 1957 he had engineered the passage of a civil rights bill. The mere fact of its passage in the face of Southern senatorial power - it was the first civil rights bill to be enacted in 87 years - made it a significant benchmark in the history of American government, and the guile and determination with which Johnson drove it to passage made it a landmark of legislative mastery as well. But he was forced to weaken it to get it through, and liberals, not understanding the obstacles he had surmounted, blamed him for not making it stronger.

Some civil rights leaders who had been talking to Lyndon Johnson since he became president were now, by the spring of 1965, convinced of his good faith, but most were not, and the mass of the movement, symbolized by those protesters outside the White House gates, still distrusted him.

*

Men and women who knew Lyndon Johnson, however, felt there was another element to the story. They included the Mexican-American children of impoverished migrant workers he had taught as a 21-year-old schoolteacher in the little town of Cotulla, Tex.; to the ends of their lives they would talk about how hard he had worked to teach and inspire them. "He used to tell us this country was so free that anyone could become president who was willing to work hard enough," one student said.

Others remember what one calls the story about the "little baby in the cradle." As one student recalled, "He would tell us that one day we might say the baby would be a teacher. Maybe the next day we'd say the baby would be a doctor. And one day we might say the baby - any baby - might grow up to be president of the United States."

His former students weren't alone. Men and women at Georgetown dinner tables were also convinced of the sincerity of Johnson's intentions. "I remember at this dinner party, Johnson talking about teaching the Mexican-American kids in Cotulla, and his frustration that they had no books," recalls Bethine Church, the wife of Senator Frank Church of Idaho. "I remember it as one of the most passionate evenings I've ever spent."

These men and women felt Johnson truly wanted to help poor people and particularly people of color, and that he was held back only by his ambition: his desire to be president, and because he was a senator from a Southern state. But when, in 1957, ambition and compassion were finally pointing in the same direction - when he realized that he would never become president unless he removed the "magnolia scent" of the South - he set out to pass a civil rights bill, he did it with a passion that showed how deeply he believed in what he was doing.

The bill he got was the weak one, and civil rights leaders blamed him because the advances it made were meager. Only a week before the March 1965 speech, Dr. King had said that at the rate voter registration was going, it would take 135 years before even half the blacks in Mississippi were registered. And as the limousines were pulling through the gates that night in March, the protesters were singing "We Shall Overcome," as if to tell Lyndon Johnson, we'll do it without you.

But they didn't have to.

When Johnson stepped to the lectern on Capitol Hill that night, he adopted the great anthem of the civil rights movement as his own.

"Even if we pass this bill," he said, "the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life."

And, Lyndon Johnson said, "Their cause must be our cause, too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice."

He paused, and then he said, "And we shall overcome."

Martin Luther King was watching the speech at the home of a family in Selma with some of his aides, none of whom had ever, during all the hard years, seen Dr. King cry. But Lyndon Johnson said, "We shall overcome" - and they saw him cry then.

And there was another indication of the power of that speech. When the motorcade returned to the White House, the protesters were gone.

*

Another significant moment had occurred in the Capitol after the speech, as Johnson was coming down the aisle accepting congratulations.

It wasn't just congratulations he wanted. One of the congressmen on the aisle was Emanuel Celler, the 76-year-old chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which handled civil rights legislation. Long a rights champion but now an elderly man, Celler said he would start hearings on the bill the following week, but "I can't push that committee or it might get out of hand."

Suddenly, Johnson wasn't smiling. His eyes narrowed and his face turned cold. He was still shaking Celler's hand, but with his other hand he was jabbing at the old man. "Start them this week, Manny," he said. "And hold night sessions, too."

Celler did. The heroism of the march at Selma, the heroism all across the South, the almost unbelievable bravery of black men and women - and children, so many children - who marched, and were beaten, and marched again, for the right to vote, created the rising tide of national feeling behind the passage of civil rights legislation, the legislation not only of 1965 but of 1964 and 1957. That feeling did so much to make the legislation possible. It has taken me scores of pages in my books to try to describe that heroism, and all of them inadequate. But it also took Lyndon Johnson, whom the black leader James Farmer, sitting in the Oval Office, heard "cajoling, threatening, everything else, whatever was necessary" to get the 1965 bill passed and who, with his legislative genius and savage will, broke, piece by piece, in 1957 and 1964 and 1965, the long unbreakable power of the Southern bloc.

"Abraham Lincoln struck off the chains of black Americans," I have written, "but it was Lyndon Johnson who led them into voting booths, closed democracy's sacred curtain behind them, placed their hands upon the lever that gave them a hold on their own destiny, made them, at last and forever, a true part of American political life"

LOOK what has been wrought! Forty-three years ago, a mere blink in history's eye, many black Americans were unable to vote. Tonight, a black American ascends a stage as nominee for president. "Just give Negroes the vote and many of these problems will get better," Lyndon Johnson said. "Just give them the vote," and they can do the rest for themselves.

All during this long primary campaign, after reading, first thing every morning, newspaper articles about Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency, I would turn, as part of the research for my next book, to newspaper articles from 1965 about Lyndon Johnson's campaign to win for black people the right to vote.

And I would think about Johnson's great speech, when he adopted the rallying cry of black protest as his own, when he joined his voice to the voices of all the men and women who had sung the mighty hymn of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King cried when he heard that speech. Since I am not black, I cannot know - cannot even imagine - Dr. King's feelings. I know mine, however. To me, Barack Obama is the inheritor of Lyndon Johnson's civil rights legacy. As I sit listening to Mr. Obama tonight, I will be hearing other words as well. I will be hearing Lyndon Johnson saying, "We shall overcome."

By ROBERT A. CARO, The New York Times, August 27, 2008

DENVER - The focus of the presidential campaign shifts to Republicans on Friday as GOP candidate John McCain is set to introduce his running mate at a rally in Ohio.

McCain decided on his choice for vice president early Thursday, but the campaign has given no hint on his selection.

The announcement of a GOP vice presidential choice was hoped by McCain's campaign to dampen any momentum that Democratic rival Barack Obama might get from the just concluded Democratic National Convention. Republicans kick off their convention next week in St. Paul, Minn.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a rival of McCain's in the primary race, were considered among the leading contenders to join the McCain ticket.

McCain will appear with his No. 2 at a rally in Dayton, Ohio, on Friday, aides said. McCain was mum on the subject Thursday as he and his wife, Cindy, boarded a plane in Phoenix bound for Dayton.

Pawlenty fed the speculation Thursday when he abruptly canceled scheduled interviews with The Associated Press and other media and left Denver where he had been part of a GOP response team to counter what was being said at the just concluded Democratic nominating convention.

Later in Minneapolis, Pawlenty shed no additional light to his sudden change in travel plans and said he intends to attend the Minnesota State Fair on Friday. "There's nothing really new to report on Senator McCain's decision. I think we'll all hear from him shortly and hopefully we'll be able to move forward together," said Pawlenty.

Romney met with donors in California on Thursday and was in Los Angeles and Orange County by evening. "I don't have anything for you right now," Romney said earlier in the day when asked about the vice presidential search.

At least two more rallies are planned by McCain and his running mate in Pennsylvania and Missouri in the run up to next week's convention.

Others believed to be in contention were former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge and Sen. Joe Lieberman, a former Democrat-turned independent who has been a strong supporter of McCain's candidacy. Lieberman, who was Al Gore's running mate in 2000, was vacationing on New York's Long Island. One Lieberman aide said there has been no indication the Connecticut senator is McCain's choice.

It was also possible that McCain might choose a dark horse from any number of names that have circulated.

If he knew of McCain's decision, Pawlenty gave nothing away when he arrived back at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and, later, as he attended a volleyball game at the high school where one of his daughters is a 10th-grader. Media and onlookers had gathered in front of Pawlenty's private home in Eagan, a southern St. Paul suburb, as well as at the governor's mansion in St. Paul. Pawlenty said he had no plans to fly to Ohio.

Romney, who had played the GOP attack-dog role earlier in the week at the Democratic convention, left his beach-front San Diego home Thursday morning with an overnight bag. His son, Matt, said Romney was headed to an unspecified location in the state.

Ridge was at his suburban Washington, D.C., home. Asked by an AP photographer as he took out the trash if he had any travel plans for the day, Ridge smiled and said he didn't.

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press, August 29, 2008

DENVER - Fresh off his historic nominating convention, Democrat Barack Obama is embarking on what likely will be the most important 67 days of his campaign for the White House. Republican John McCain is looking to upstage his rival with the announcement of his running mate.

Obama leaves the convention city of Denver as the first black man to be nominated for president by a major political party. The 47-year-old Illinois senator won over the party faithful - even some die-hard backers of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton - but the broader electorate awaits.

His first stop: the battleground states of the Midwest. On Friday, Obama flies to Pittsburgh, where he and running mate Joe Biden will kick off a bus tour of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

The goal is to maintain the buzz of a convention that culminated Thursday night with Obama addressing an energetic, flag-waving crowd of 84,000 packed into Denver's pro football stadium.

"Change happens because the American people demand it - because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time," Obama told the adoring crowd at Invesco Field. "America, this is one of those moments."

McCain, who marks his 72nd birthday on Friday, was determined to create his own gift - steal some of the spotlight from Obama by revealing his choice for vice president. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty canceled several media interviews Thursday, stoking speculation that he was the one.

McCain and his No. 2 are expected to appear together for the first time at one or more rallies planned for Ohio, Pennsylvania and Missouri in the run-up to the Republican National Convention, which starts Monday in St. Paul, Minn.

In the jam-packed football stadium, Obama promised an end to eight years of "broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush" and argued that McCain "doesn't get it."

He pledged to cut taxes for nearly all working-class families, end the war in Iraq and break America's dependence on Mideast oil within a decade. Portraying a McCain administration as a continuation of the current Bush White House, Obama said, "On Nov. 4, we must stand up and say: 'Eight is enough.'"

Polls show a tight race between Obama and McCain, with some two months before the election and three high-stakes debates.

Obama accepted his party's nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. He alluded to the historic parallel - and its promise - toward the end of his 44-minute speech.

"What the people heard ... people of every creed and color, from every walk of life - is that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked. That together, our dreams can be one," Obama said.

Scattered around the stadium, some wept when Obama entered.

"I'm crying because I was around when Martin Luther King died and when John F. Kennedy died, and it's a long time since then and a long time to get back the dream," said Francino Norman of Miami. "This is history. I will tell my grandchildren about this."

Obama criticized McCain's support for the war in Iraq, while invoking Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy as proof that Democrats could be strong on defense.

"If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander in chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have," Obama said. "John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of hell - but he won't even go to the cave where he lives."

In response, McCain's campaign said, "Tonight, Americans witnessed a misleading speech that was so fundamentally at odds with the meager record of Barack Obama."

The Obama campaign emphasized the next phase of the campaign by encouraging supporters in the stadium to use their cell phones to send text messages to friends and to call thousands of unregistered voters from lists developed by the campaign.

Obama's campaign has identified 55 million voting age Americans across the country who are not registered to vote.

Obama entered the Democratic convention still needing to win over many of Clinton's supporters. Some Clinton delegates arrived in Denver wary of Obama, still sore over their epic nominating battle.

Obama's speech followed two days of full-throated endorsements by his one-time rival and her husband, the former president. Hillary Rodham Clinton issued a short statement Thursday night praising Obama's speech.

Sari Bourne stood in the crowd Thursday night and cried while holding an American flag against her cheek.

"I worked on the Hillary Clinton campaign for a year and I've come to the realization that he's the one to change this country," said the 23-year-old New Yorker.

On the other side of the globe, Obama's relatives in Kenya watched his speech at the home of Obama's uncle, Said Obama, in Kisumu, more than 300 miles from the capital, Nairobi.

Said Obama told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that he believes his nephew's success signals a change in race relations in America.

"Race is a problem in America," he said. "But let's hope that Americans are going to address the problems that are bedeviling the country."

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press, August 29, 2008

DENVER, Colorado (CNN) -- It was classic Clinton.

It was Sen. Hillary Clinton's big night but before her speech even began, former President Bill Clinton reached out in his box and firmly embraced a young African-American man.

Clinton gripped the young man tightly; to millions watching on television, it was clear he could feel Mervyn Jones Jr.'s pain.

As he sat down for his wife's headlining address, Bill Clinton's silent embrace of the 25-year-old son of recently deceased Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones resonated loudly.

Rep. Tubbs Jones, of course, was a solid and loyal Clinton supporter, standing by the Clintons even when many other black leaders were shifting their support to Barack Obama.

Then, in her speech, Sen. Clinton herself took a moment to mention Tubbs Jones and her son.

"Steadfast in her beliefs, a fighter of uncommon grace, she was an inspiration to me and to us all," Clinton said. "Our heart goes out to Stephanie's son, Mervyn Jr."

The public moment of recognition was the result of years of friendship.

" I remember the first time President Clinton ran for office [in 1992]," Jones Jr. told CNN. "He came to Cleveland. I must have been 8 years old.

"My mother got the chance to meet him. ... They have been best of friends ever since," he said.

And, perhaps, it was also a reminder that if you stand by the Clintons, the Clintons will stand by you.

Tubbs Jones endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in April 2007 but with Sen. Barack Obama's success during the primaries, many African-American superdelegates came under pressure to back Obama instead.

Tubbs Jones, however, held steadfast even as others in her position switched their allegiance.

"I'm going to be with her until she says, 'Stephanie, I'm no longer in this fight. You're free to do something else,'" Tubbs Jones told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in March. "In politics, all you have is your word," she added.

She passed that same sense of commitment on to her son.

"If you give somebody your word, you're going to go ahead and do it," Jones Jr. said the day after Hillary Clinton's address to the Democratic National Convention. "Otherwise, it's not worth anything."

"The same goes in politics," he added. "If you don't have your word, you don't really have anything to stand on in politics. So, that's one thing I did learn [from my mother] at a very early age."

When Sen. Clinton asked Jones Jr. to sit with her husband during what was perhaps her most important speech to date, he agreed.

"She always said that if you don't stick by somebody in the bad times, you never know how good the good times are going to be," Jones Jr. said, explaining his mother's view of loyalty.

Tubbs Jones, 58, died suddenly a week ago of a brain aneurysm. She was in her fifth term in the House of Representatives and was the first African-American woman to represent Ohio in the House.

What would Tubbs Jones have thought of Sen. Clinton's call Tuesday for Democrats to unify behind Obama?

"She would've been standing up, hooting and hollering saying, 'Wow. That's exactly what we needed. Way to be a team player,'" Jones Jr. said.

In what some political analysts were calling the first speech of her second campaign for president, Hillary Clinton did her part on stage.

And, in the box, her husband held on tightly to the son of an old friend ­and sent a message of his own that may resonate as an important moment in the long-term resurrection of the Clinton brand in American politics.




By Martina Stewart, CNN, August 28, 2008

DENVER, Aug. 26 -- Hillary Rodham Clinton's most loyal delegates came to the Pepsi Center on Tuesday night looking for direction. They listened, rapt, to a 20-minute speech that many proclaimed the best she had ever delivered, hoping her words could somehow unwind a year of tension in the Democratic Party. But when Clinton stepped off the stage and the standing ovation faded into silence, many of her supporters were left with a sobering realization: Even a tremendous speech couldn't erase their frustrations.

Despite Clinton's plea for Democrats to unite, her delegates remained divided as to how they should proceed.

There was Jerry Straughan, a professor from California, who listened from his seat in the rafters and shook his head at what he considered the speech's predictability. "It's a tactic," he said. "Who knows what she really thinks? With all the missteps that have taken place, this is the only thing she could do. So, yes, I'm still bitter."

There was JoAnn Enos, from Minnesota, who digested Clinton's resounding endorsement of Barack Obama and decided that she, too, will move on and get behind him. "I'll vote for [Obama] in the roll call," she said, "because that's what Hillary wants."

There was Shirley Love, from West Virginia, who smiled at Clinton's composure, waved a button bearing her name and felt a renewed pang of regret that she had lost the nomination. "She deserves it," Love said. "That's the thing that sticks with you. Even if she can move on easily, that's not as easy for everybody else."

Most delegates agreed that Clinton's impassioned speech marked a step toward reconciliation. The crowd in the Pepsi Center stood to applaud almost every time she mentioned Obama by name.

John Burkett, a Pennsylvania delegate and staunch Clinton supporter, attached an Obama button to his shirt. A New Mexico delegate said the "H" on his shirt will be replaced with an "O" come Thursday.

"She hit it right out of the ballpark," said Terie Norelli, New Hampshire's House speaker. "I've never been prouder of a Democrat than I was tonight." Norelli said the speech made her want to work hard for Obama. "She said it better than I ever could have: Everything I worked for and that she worked for would be at risk if we do anything less."

But Clinton's performance fell far short of the panacea the Democratic Party had desperately hoped for, delegates said. Some worried that, after Clinton's public withdrawal, more voters might defect for Republican John McCain or simply stay home.

"I'm not going to vote for Obama. I'm not going to vote for McCain, either," said Blanche Darley, 65, a Texas delegate for Clinton. Darley wore a button saying "Obamination Scares the Hell Out of Me."

"We love her, but it's our vote if we don't trust him or don't like him," said Darley, who was a superdelegate for Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

Weeping, Dawn Yingling, a 44-year-old single mother from Indianapolis, said that the speech was "fabulous" but that she still isn't going to work for the Obama campaign. "She was fabulous, nothing less than I expected. It's hard to sit here and think about she would have accomplished. We're not stupid -- we're not going to vote for John McCain," she said. But she'll limit her campaigning to a House candidate. "It will take a Congress as well as a president. That's what I can do and be true to who I am."

For Clinton's supporters, it was difficult to accept her speech as the public finale of her campaign, because this moment once held such tremendous potential. Shelby Leary, a delegate from West Virginia, stood to watch a video tribute to Clinton's success as a trailblazer and then chanted "Hillary" for 30 seconds with the rest of the crowd. Anne Price, from Washington state, wore a dozen Clinton buttons and wiped tears from her eyes.

It seemed a particularly resonant moment Tuesday night, which marked both Women's Equality Day and the 88th anniversary of women's suffrage.

"There's no way this night couldn't be emotional," Leary said. "A lot of us loved campaigning for her, and it's hard to watch it end. But after something like this, you have to have an emotional end for people to come to terms with things."

Clinton said Tuesday night that it is Obama's convention. But many of her supporters came here exclusively to honor her. One group traveled from New York and built an impromptu museum commemorating Clinton's historic campaign. Another lighted thousands of candles in a park to symbolize her widespread support.

On Tuesday morning, hundreds of loyalists formed a 200-yard parade and marched through downtown. They shouted into loudspeakers and beat drums, creating a cacophony that echoed across the blocks. As they began marching, some of the supporters chanted, "We want a roll call." Many of them wore their opinions on T-shirts: Country Over Party. Damn, We Wish You Were President. Still Making History. Democrats Left Behind.

At the front of the parade route, one banner summarized their message: Hillary. Who Else?

"A lot of people came here just because they wanted to celebrate Hillary," said Elizabeth Fiechter, a New York City lawyer who helped organize the parade. "We get criticism because there's this idea that the election should move on and just leave her behind. We're not going down that quietly."

The week of festivities for Clinton delegates and supporters started Monday with a meet-and-greet, where some supporters learned that they differ from one another more than they originally thought. The most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that only 42 percent of Clinton voters classify themselves as "solidly behind" Obama, and that 20 percent plan to vote for McCain. But in Denver, Clinton supporters sometimes classified themselves as belonging to one of two categories: the sad and the angry.

"It just makes me upset because Hillary would have been the perfect woman to do this job," said Katherine Vincent, from Colorado. "I'm a Democrat first, but it's just difficult to get over."

"I hate Obama so much that I'm going to devote as much time to McCain as I did to Hillary," said Adita Blanco, a Democrat from Edward, Okla., who has never voted for a Republican. "Obama has nothing. He has no experience. The Democratic Party doesn't care about us. You couldn't treat [Clinton] any worse."

Perhaps the best example of the persistent divide in the Democratic Party came after Clinton's speech Tuesday night. The lights went down in the Pepsi Center, and some influential Democrats left downtown for good. They planned to head for the airport and fly home, long before Obama accepts the nomination in a speech at Invesco Field on Thursday night.

Clinton will hold a private meeting with her top financial advisers Wednesday, and many donors plan to leave immediately afterward. Terence R. McAuliffe, Clinton's campaign chairman and the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, also plans to leave before Obama's speech. Many of the women from 18 Million Voices, Fiechter's pro-Clinton group, booked tickets for Wednesday and Thursday because "we really are taking a position of being indifferent to Obama," Fiechter said.

Clinton's delegates inside the Pepsi Center had no choice but to stick around, at least until the end of Wednesday's roll call.

"I wish I could leave," said Straughan, the professor from California. "To be honest, that would make this whole thing a lot easier."

By Eli Saslow, The Washington Post, August 27, 2008

DENVER - When Senator Barack Obama announced in early July that he would give his nomination address in an outdoor stadium in front of 75,000 people, he wowed members of both parties who saw it as an inspired stroke of campaign image making.

But as he landed here on Wednesday and prepared to become the first presidential candidate in nearly 50 years to accept his party's nomination on such a big stage, the plan seemed as much risky as bold.

With daunting challenges of logistics, style and substance, the plan was hatched before the Republicans began a concerted drive to paint Mr. Obama as a media sensation lacking the resume to be president. Now Obama aides are feeling all the more pressure to bring a lofty candidacy to ground level, showing that Mr. Obama grasps the concerns of everyday Americans.

On Wednesday, workers were still making changes to Invesco Field, home to the Denver Broncos, so it would feel more intimate, less like the boisterous rallies that served Mr. Obama so well early in the primaries, but also created the celebrity image that dogs him.

They were still testing camera angles, so Mr. Obama would appear among the giant crowd, not above it. They took steps to reduce the echo effect, familiar to football fans, of speaking in such a cavernous space. Planners scrapped their idea to turn the audience of 75,000 into a giant phone bank, in response to fears that the cellphone system would crash (people will instead be asked to text-message friends and neighbors to support the campaign, program aides said would be effective nonetheless.)

And workers put the finishing touches on the backdrop: faux columns intended to suggest a federal building in Washington and create an air of stateliness. (The McCain campaign named it the Temple of Obama, a label repeated by some commentators.)

Mr. Obama shared his rationale for the move when he took the stage at the Pepsi Center on Wednesday night. "We're going to be moving to Mile High Stadium tomorrow, and I want to let you know why," he said. "We want to open up this convention to make sure that everybody that wants to come can join in the party and join in the effort to take America back."

Yet for Mr. Obama, the dramatic setting of the speech, which will take place between 10 and 11 p.m. Eastern time, stands in contrast to the "workmanlike" message he intends to offer.

"I'm not aiming for a lot of high rhetoric," he said Wednesday. "I am much more concerned with communicating how I intend to help middle-class families live their lives."

Mr. Obama holed up in a Chicago hotel over the weekend, and worked on the address well into the night this week with a small group of aides. He has studied several acceptance speeches, including Bill Clinton's in 1992, Ronald Reagan's in 1980 and John F. Kennedy's in 1960.

Some aides worried about the setting overwhelming the message. But those closest to the planning said they had no regrets and were sticking to the sort of big-event politics that no other candidate has been able to match this year.

"We are leaning into this, how can you not?" said Jenny Backus, a campaign strategist working on the convention plan. "This is the enthusiasm gap," referring to what polls show as excitement for Mr. Obama that Senator John McCain's campaign has not matched.

Dee Dee Myers, a former press secretary to President Clinton, said that delegates in the hall were excited about the stadium event but that it was the party's senior strategists who were more wary of the setting.

"There's a concern in the campaign about how do you pull this off in a way that makes it about the economic themes they want to hit," Ms. Myers said. "He needs to get from the stadium to the diner, and it's a hard thing to pull off."

Mr. Obama's aides had hoped to upend the traditional convention style. But the prolonged primary fight with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton left the convention in the hands of the party's career planners. Their flashy stage design, which has been likened to an arcade, had none of the look or feel of the more spare style of the Obama brand.

When a close circle of his top advisers presented Mr. Obama with $6 million plans to move his acceptance speech to the football stadium in early July, the candidate asked one question, said Anita Dunn, a senior strategist: "Will it rain?" The campaign produced a raft of meteorological data showing it had rained on Aug. 28 only once in 20 years. (Aides were alarmed, however, to arrive in Denver on Sunday to news of a nearby tornado.)

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.

The Obama campaign dismissed Republican attempts to turn the night against them.

"I know that Senator McCain and his people are shooting barbs on the opulence of our convention from the mountaintop in Sedona from the McCain estate," said David Axelrod, the campaign's chief strategist. "I don't think it warrants a response."

DENVER - In 1908, when Democrats first gathered in Denver, African-American activists asked the party to make a place for them -- inside the convention, in the platform and in the campaign to come. At the very least, they asked, Democrats should take a stand against lynching.

William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic nominee for president, vetoed even that modest outreach -- fearing that to do so would weaken the party's hold on what was then referred to as "the solid south."

One hundred years passed. A civil rights movement rose. A new generation of political leaders - most, though not all of them, Democrats -- stepped gingerly toward the future.

And on Wednesday afternoon, at around 4:50 p.m., the Democratic party nominated an African-American man for president.

There has been a lot of talk, too much talk, about this being a "transformational moment" in American politics.

But it must be said that, if the quadrennial convention is the measure of a political party, then the Democrats have, a century on from their first gathering in Denver, completed a process of transformation.

Despite the bizarrely determined efforts of convention organizers and the campaign of Barack Obama to shift the focus away from nominating speeches and a clumsy roll-call vote -- by restructuring the schedule to complete the process while many Americans were still at work -- the most historic moment of the convention was its most traditional.

Far from the prying eyes of prime-time television, Democrats undertook the rituals of nominating two candidates for president -- Hillary Clinton, the woman who began the campaign as the all-but-certain Democratic nominee, and Obama, the man who upset those best-laid plans.

Such was the desire of the managers of the convention to downplay the actual work of the delegates who have traveled from across the country to be a part of this moment that those chosen to place the names of Clinton and Obama in nomination delivered almost perfunctory remarks.

Michael Wilson, a registered Republican from Florida and an Air Force medic who served in Iraq, nominated Barack Obama with an on-message declaration that, "I've seen war up close. I support Barack Obama because America needs a president who has the strength, wisdom and courage to talk to our enemies... who will respect our veterans when they get back home instead of letting them languish without the medical care they deserve."

Colorado Senator Ken Salazar dressed on-message, wearing a cowboy hat as he seconded the Obama's nomination. Another second came from Alabama Congressman Artur Davis, D-Ala., who assured the delegates that, "Our time is now!"

The Clinton nominating speeches were better, especially that of veteran United Farm Workers union leader Dolores Huerta, who described herself as a "passionate" Clinton backer and told the convention: "Hillary's values are the values of my family and my community. For Hillary Clinton, no American is invisible."

Whether the speeches were muscular or lame, however, the mood was electric in a convention hall that filled rapidly as delegates rushed to be part of the first real convention roll-call vote since Democrats nominated Bill Clinton in 1992.

States, commonwealths and territories grabbed their moments in the limelight -- Alabama stayed united behind Clinton, and everyone cheered; Illinois was strong for Obama, and everyone cheered; Guam asked for more self-determination, and everyone cheered.

It quickly became evident that Clinton delegates were breaking for Obama in a big way. Clinton had announced earlier in the day that she was casting her super-delegate vote for her former rival, and there was a "If he's good enough for Hillary..." vibe as the states announced. Michigan, where Obama wasn't even on the primary ballot, voted 125-27 for the Illinois senator.

Kathleen Weber, a delegate from Dubuque, Iowa, who started talking up Obama as a presidential candidate four years ago, was jumping up and down, saying, "I hope it's over."

And, in a few short minutes, it was.

New Jersey, a Clinton bastion, voted unanimously for Obama. Then, a wave of excitement swept through the Pepsi Center. Hillary Clinton was in the hall and making her way toward the New York delegation.

The delegation chair, veteran state legislator Sheldon Silver, called on "the great senator from New York." And Clinton spoke the words that formally opened the next chapter in the history of the Democratic party and perhaps the nation.

"With eyes firmly fixed on the future, in the spirit of unity, with the goal of victory, with faith in our party and our country, let's declare together in one voice right here right now, that Barack Obama is our candidate and he will be our president," said Clinton, as the crowd roared.

"I move Senator Barack Obama of Illinois be selected by the convention by acclamation as the nominee of the Democratic Party."

After the hall shook with applause and cheers, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the question. "Yes," came the cry of the crowd. Pelosi briefly, very briefly, entertained the question of whether anyone wanted to say "no" and, while a few Clinton dead-enders might have liked to do so, Pelosi declared the nomination fight to be finished.

The crowd chanted, "Yes we can!" The old O'Jays song "Love Train" blared through the loudspeakers. Hugs. Kisses. High fives. Arms around shoulders. Euphoria. And, and... something that looked and felt an awful lot like unity.

Tim Sullivan, a tough labor stalwart from Wisconsin who went to seven states to campaign for Clinton and said he cried when Clinton released her delegates, may have put it best when he said, "I was for Hillary. Oh, I was for Hillary. But Barack Obama beat her. And when he won, when he beat the woman I backed with all my heart and soul, he proved to me that he was ready to be president."

Sullivan cast his super-delegate vote for Obama.

Much will be made of the importance of speeches delivered Wednesday night by Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. Clinton and Biden are great speakers. And, surely, their remarks added to the historic character of the evening.

But nothing that Bill Clinton, or even Hillary Clinton, said; nothing that Michelle Obama said, or that Barack Obama says will make this convention historic -- let alone transformational.

The history, and with it the transformation, was made mid-way through a roll-call vote at the convention of a party that has, after long and difficult struggle, proven the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to have been correct when he said, "We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

The arc is still being bent. There is, still, so much work to be done.

But when the party that once deferred the dreams of millions of Americans determined on a Wednesday afternoon in the summer of 2008 to finally and formally nominate Barack Obama for president, it confirmed that the trajectory is, indeed, in the direction of justice.

By John Nichols, The Nation, August 27, 2008

Is the United States a land of limitless horizons, where hard work and big dreams enable people of humble background to scale dizzying heights of privilege and power?

Or is this a society of slammed doors and blocked opportunities, of a trapped middle class and shattered hope, where ordinary people can only provide a better life for their children with the help of an activist government and dramatic new policies?

The Denver Democrats insist that both descriptions are true, and they fail to acknowledge the obvious contradiction in the two primary messages of their convention.

On the one hand, they want Americans to believe that we live in a dark, destitute moment in our history, with no chance for prosperity or progress unless a Democrat captures the White House.

On the other hand, they celebrate dozens of inspiring rags-to-riches stories (like those of the party's sweethearts, Barack and Michelle Obama) proving that traditional American values still bring spectacular and gratifying results.

First, they suggest that ordinary Americans can't possibly achieve their dreams without government help.

But then, sometimes in the very same speeches, they brag about their own classic American stories in which family and faith conquer every obstacle.

Consider the way the convention celebrated Michelle Obama's story on its opening night. Her brother, Craig Robinson, emphasized the way their parents' values brought about their success, saying "I can see how the person she is today, was formed in the experiences we shared growing up: working hard, studying hard, having parents who wanted more for us than what they had. And always being reminded that in this country of all countries - those things are possible."

Michelle herself similarly emphasized her father's contribution to her success: "He and my mom poured everything they had into me and Craig. It was the greatest gift a child can receive: never doubting for a single minute that you're loved, and cherished, and have a place in this world. And thanks to their faith and hard work, we were both able to go to college." She never mentioned that for both herself and her big brother, that college happened to be Princeton. "So I know firsthand," she declared to the convention, "from their lives - and mine - that the American Dream endures."

She made similar observations about her husband, the presidential candidate: "His family was so much like mine. He was raised by grandparents who were working class folks just like my parents, and by a single mother who struggled to pay the bills just like we did. Like my family, they scrimped and saved so that he could have opportunities they never had themselves."

Just a few minutes later, after celebrating their dual climb from penury to prominence, from want to wealth (the Obamas reported more than $4 million in income last year), she went back to talking about hardship and injustice and misery in America, recalling her husband's distinction between "the world as it is" and "the world as it should be." She cited his lament that "all too often we accept the distance between the two, and settle for the world as it is - even when it doesn't reflect our values and aspirations. But he reminded us that we know what our world should look like. We know what fairness and justice and opportunity look like."

Don't "fairness and justice and opportunity" actually look a lot like the story of these Obamas themselves?

If the Democrats celebrate the fact that "in this country - of all countries - those things are possible," if they proclaim that parental "faith and hard work" can still deliver the American Dream, then isn't it contradictory to decry "the world as it is"?

Many other speakers at the convention similarly tried to have it both ways --- praising the nation for its social and economic mobility, while suggesting that this openness and opportunity ended with their own families' successes.

Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas recalled that her great-grandmother worked as a house maid for President William Howard Taft - and then her father, John Gilligan, preceded Taft's own grandson as a Congressman from Ohio.

Deval Patrick, Governor of Massachusetts, recalled his tenement childhood in which he and his sister and their single mom lived with only two beds for the three of them, so they took turns sleeping on the floor - before Patrick went off to Harvard, Harvard Law. The Justice Department and the governorship Virginia Governor Mark Warner noted that he became the first-ever member of his family to graduate from college - before his own career at Harvard Law, and as a cell phone entrepreneur earning literally hundreds of millions of dollars.

Unfortunately, none of these convention speakers took the opportunity to remind their national TV audience that middle class and working class Americans could still replicate such impressive achievements - even after eight years of Bush.

Rather than encouraging the public to pursue timely dreams and apply timeless values with full confidence of success, the Denver Dems seemed to say that we made it, but you can't --- unless you elect us and we provide government help.

Amazingly enough, in recounting their own stories of advancement and achievement, none of the speakers cited bureaucratic intervention or federal assistance as an element of success. Instead, they repeatedly invoked strong personal values - strong families, self-discipline, tireless effort, sacrifice - as the sole key to economic and educational progress.

If those values worked for the top Democrats themselves, why can't they work for Americans everywhere?

By implication, these smug and preening politicians suggested that we're brilliant and strong and special enough to make it to the top without government help, but most of the mere mortals who are watching us on TV will get nowhere at all unless we somehow use taxpayer money to assist them.

As to the claim that recent Republican misrule somehow put an end to the opportunities that middle-aged politicians enjoyed during the golden "Camelot" era of their youth, it's worth remembering that the GOP has controlled the White House for 36 of the last 48 years. Michelle Obama, for instance, has lived the greater part of her 44 years on planet earth under Republican Presidents and, even more disproportionately, under Republican Governors of Illinois (30 out of 44).

The contradictions emanating from the Democratic convention - praising individual stories of opportunity and upward mobility, while decrying the general disappearance of opportunity and mobility-- actually mirror the most puzzling anomaly of recent public opinion polling. By overwhelming majorities, Americans describe the state of the country as dire and desperate, while similarly lopsided majorities rate their own status as successful, satisfying and optimistic.

Most citizens feel fortunate and confident and pleased with their lives, even while media alarmists and complaints from politicians have convinced them that the nation at large teeters on the verge of collapse and destruction. In other words, most of us know from our own experience that we're doing well and moving ahead, but we're illogically convinced that we're exceptional in that regard.

In the same sense, the TV extravaganza from Denver asserts again and again that the Democratic Party is comprised of strivers and dreamers who've overcome all obstacles, working their way up from nothing to enjoy the most lavish blessings our society can bestow. At the same time that we thrill to these all-American stories, we're reminded that we can never consider them representative or the nation at large.

In fact, the paragons on parade in the Pepsi Center - very much including both Obama and Biden - are, presumably, so unique in their history of unassisted self-improvement that we're meant to conclude that they're the only ones in the country ultimately fit to lead.

By Michael Medved, Town Hall, August 28, 2008

Inflating Obama's record will not resolve doubts.

THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION exposed the central defect of Senator Barack Obama's candidacy: the absence of compelling evidence he is up to the job of president. The exposé comes courtesy of a bad habit of his running mate, Senator Joe Biden. When in doubt, Mr. Biden exaggerates. And in the past week, he did a lot.

Voters expect candidates to embellish, but only so much. Go beyond acceptable stretching and a candidate may squander his most precious political possession: credibility. Mr. Obama may be on this perilous path.

Last Saturday, America heard Mr. Obama's new running mate exclaim, "I watch with amazement as he came to the Senate. I watch with amazement!" Mr. Biden's hyperkinetic praise is what we expect a running mate to offer his benefactor at the top of the ticket.

But Saturday and again Wednesday night, Mr. Biden also praised Mr. Obama for three specific legislative accomplishments. One of them was an ethics bill, called by Mr. Biden in his acceptance speech "the most sweeping in a generation." However, many critics--including Hillary Clinton--criticized it as weak. For example, under Mr. Obama's bill, lobbyists may buy politicians meals if they are eating standing up but not if they're sitting down. Mr. Obama's bill didn't ban privately funded travel for congressmen or authorize an independent investigation office. But Mr. Obama did help draft, negotiate, and push the legislation that passed. The other two supposed accomplishments are more problematic.

Saturday, Mr. Biden asserted Mr. Obama "made his mark literally from day one, reaching across the aisle to pass legislation to secure the world's deadliest weapons," a claim similar to one Mr. Obama made earlier in the campaign. Wednesday night, Mr. Biden was more expansive, claiming Mr. Obama was a leader "to pass a law that helps keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists." This implied a big, important controversial measure, passed with difficulty after the intervention of an extraordinary leader.

In reality, the Lugar-Obama Bill was passed on a voice vote on December 11, 2006. It was so routine, there was no recorded vote. The media didn't consider it important or controversial. Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post reported its Senate passage, though the Post ran a 798-word op-ed by Senators Lugar and Obama the week before it was approved. It was not the subject of a story on the CBS, ABC or NBC evening news--not when it passed, not when it was signed, not ever. No story about it appeared in Roll Call or The Hill, the daily newspapers that cover the minutiae of Congress. It drew only one squib in Congressional Quarterly--and that story didn't mention Obama, just Lugar. The Bush administration supported it. The legislation required the administration to report to Congress within 180 days "on proliferation and interdiction assistance" to secure the mostly conventional weapons stocks littering the nations born from the collapsed Soviet empire. It created a new State Department office to support the Bush administration's "Proliferation Security Initiative" aimed at interdicting weapons of mass destruction and conventional weaponry. And the bill authorized $110 million in funding. But this legislation didn't require a profile in courage to co-sponsor or hard work and powerful persuasion to pass, as Mr. Biden implied.

Saturday, Biden proclaimed: "But I was proudest, I was proudest, when I watched him spontaneously focus the attention of the nation on the shameful neglect of America's wounded warriors at Walter Reed Army Hospital." The problem for Mr. Biden (and the object of his praise, Mr. Obama) is the problems at Walter Reed were revealed in articles in the Washington Post, starting February 18, 2007. Unless Mr. Obama writes for the Washington Post under the nom de media of Anne Hull or Dana Priest, he didn't "spontaneously focus the attention of the nation." The two reporters did. The legislation to correct the shortcomings emerged from a Senate committee Mr. Obama doesn't serve on and he played no significant role in drafting or pushing it through the legislative. Mr. Obama is not the real hero of the Walter Reed turn-around, despite Mr. Biden's extravagant claims. Like Mr. Biden, Michelle Obama's speechwriter could not resist hyping her husband's work. Monday night, Mrs. Obama talked about "what he's done in the United States Senate, fighting to ensure that the men and women who serve this country are welcomed home not just with medals and parades, but with good jobs and benefits and health care--including mental health care." This is an apparent reference to the Dignity For Wounded Warriors Act, a bill Mr. Obama introduced that never made it out of the Senate Armed Services Committee, despite its Democratic majority. Americans missed the spectacle of Mr. Obama "fighting to ensure" because he was missing for that particular battle. And if he was fighting, he must have been ineffectual because fellow Democrats didn't think this bill was worth passing.

When candidates lack real accomplishments, they and those around them exaggerate what they have done, puff their performance, hype the difficulty of their activities and depict their work as far more substantial than it really is. But if you describe yourself as something you're not, or as having done things you haven't, a critical press corps may be aroused and the contrast with what people believe to be true may be jarring.

Mr. Obama should be way ahead in the race for the presidency but this week has seen five polls showing the essentially race dead even. Deep doubts remain about whether Mr. Obama is up to the job. His running mate and his handlers know this. So they are puffing his résumé, padding his accomplishments and claiming the work of others to reassure voters he is up to the duties of the Oval Office. It may work. But the American people are particular about who they elect as president. And voters do not tolerate candidates whose opinion of ordinary citizens is so low they think they can get away with misleading them.

By Karl Rove, Weekly Standard, August 28, 2008

Where have you gone, Barack Obama? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Like many Americans, the first time I heard Barack Obama speak was at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. I had only heard about him shortly before that.

"Wow," I thought after hearing his message in Boston. This is a guy who really gets it. This is a candidate smart enough to cure the political malaise that afflicts the nation. Here is a leader who can run against the extremes of both parties and seize the vast middle ground of American politics.

The next day, I wrote that Obama's stirring message joined the late Ronald Reagan's "shining city on a hill" acceptance speech in 1984 and the late Barbara Jordan's keynote address about change in 1992 as exceptional examples of modern American political oratory.

He talked about the true genius of America being its citizens' "faith in simple dreams" and "insistence on small miracles." He warned against "those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes."

"Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America."

Four years later, those words have a melancholy ring. In 2004, Obama presented himself as a unifier, a politician who wasn't concerned with red or blue labels or conservative or liberal tags.

There was nothing about Obama's past that suggested the young lawmaker from Illinois should be the agent of American post-partisanship. Not the bare knuckle politics of Chicago's South Side from which he emerged. And not his hyper-partisan, liberal voting record in the Illinois Legislature.

Contrary to F. Scott Fitzgerald, however, there are indeed second acts in American political lives. And when Obama went to Washington in 2005, he had his chance to do more than just talk about consensus, bipartisanship and a new brand of politics.

But just as in Springfield, Obama proved to be nothing more than a shrewd and opportunistic partisan. He could have joined the bipartisan "Gang of 14" that negotiated a halt to divisive judicial nominations, but didn't. He could have been a leader for bipartisan compromises on immigration, terrorist surveillance and energy, but wasn't.

According to a Washington Post database, Obama votes with his party 96 percent of the time, which makes him tied for the eleventh most partisan member of the Senate. At 96.6 percent, his running mate Joe Biden is the eighth most partisan senator.

By comparison, John McCain votes with his party 88.3 percent of the time which - here's a comment on the true nature of bipartisanship in Washington - makes him 65th in the partisan rankings.

So Obama needed a new narrative. And in his next political act, he dispensed with centrism and the great middle ground of American politics and espoused the politics of "change" - change in pastors, change in churches and calculated changes in his positions on NAFTA, gun control and much else.

Can Obama change the Democratic national convention in 2008? Yes he can.

In 2004, Democrats rallying behind John Kerry insisted that military service - and not just National Guard service - is essential for the Oval Office. You won't hear any of that this year because the Democratic ticket has neither.

In 2004, Democrats took great delight in lambasting Vice President Dick Cheney's draft deferments during the Vietnam War. You won't hear any of that that this year. Biden, infamous for being one of the Senate's biggest windbags, was disqualified from military service because of asthma.

But all those convention antics pale in comparison to the change in the man who, four years ago, briefly fired the imaginations of Americans tired of the extremes of partisan politics. That Obama has left and gone away - if he ever really existed.

By Jonathan Gurwitz, San Antonio Express-News, August 27, 2008

A thorough diagnosis of what's been ailing the Obama campaign. And suggestions for a cure.

I

The Barack Obama campaign has been floundering. If he had a lead in the polls in late June--and the summer polls are notoriously fickly--he clearly lost it by the convention's beginning. And so far, the convention--dominated, ironically, by the Clintons--has not particularly helped. Bill Clinton and Joe Biden performed quite well last night, but if Obama fails to deliver a spellbinding oration tonight, the Democrats could be in for a long and disappointing fall.

Why is Obama in trouble? Many of his problems are not of his own doing; they stem from his being the first African American to have a shot at the presidency. The New York Times' Matt Bai insists that "the race isn't about race" and that what matters more is Obama's "remarkably little governing experience." Obama's inexperience is undoubtedly a handicap against John McCain, but what Bai misses is the connection: Obama's race reinforces whatever doubts voters might have about his ability to govern. As several psycholigical experiments have shown, white voters asked to compare white and black candidates of equal accomplishment will tend to view the black candidate as being less competent.

Stanley Greenberg and Democracy Corps make a similar mistake in what is otherwise a brilliant study of how voters in Macomb County, a white working class area north of Detroit, plan to vote this fall. Greenberg found Obama trailing McCain by 46 to 39 percent in this bellwether county, which Bill Clinton won in 1996 and John Kerry lost in 2004. Greenberg found that a third of Macomb voters were worried that Obama "will put the interests of black Americans ahead of other Americans," but concluded that Macomb's voters "do not seem to be voting predominately on race." Instead, he contended that Macomb voters are more worried about Obama raising taxes.

Concerns about Obama's race and his being a tax-and-spend liberal, however, are intricately related. Psychological studies showing that white voters will judge a black candidate to be less competent also show that they will judge a black candidate with the same views as a white one to be less moderate and more leftwing. Worries about race reinforce worries about taxing and spending.

So Obama starts the general election with a large handicap that he has to overcome. And as voters have begun to focus on the choice between him and McCain, and as the McCain campaign has gone on the attack against Obama's experience and ideology, these handicaps have become much more serious.

II.

Obama still has advantages that he can fall back on. Voters prefer Democrats to Republicans by a wide margin. And Obama has attracted intense support from African Americans; upscale, professional Democrats; and Democratic-leaning independents. According to Greenberg's polling, Obama is running nine points ahead of McCain in neighboring Oakland County, the home of well-to-do professionals and managers. All in all, Obama has a good chance to win in November--but this summer the Obama campaign has made the crucial error of conducting itself as it were on the verge of a landslide victory, comparable to Lyndon Johnson's win over Barry Goldwater in 1964. And it is still displaying the same overconfidence.

After securing the nomination in June, Obama's first priority had to be healing the rift between himself and Hillary Clinton. Candidates who can't put nomination battles behind them well before the convention usually lose. Think of Goldwater in 1964, Gerald Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and Walter Mondale in 1984. There are only two candidates I can remember who succeeded in overcoming intraparty rifts during the convention--John Kennedy in 1960 and Ronald Reagan in 1980--and they did it by nominating their primary opponents to be vice president.

Obama, who evidently did not see a nail-biting election looming, chose not to do that, and is reaping the consequences. I didn't think so last spring, but I realize now that Obama would have been better off had he chosen Hillary Clinton. Of course, he might have faced a nightmare in January 2009 with Bill and Hillary in the White House, but at least he would have been more assured of making it there. As it is, he may not be able to count on Clinton's fundraisers in the fall, he may not be able to count on all of her voters, and states that might have been in play with the two Clintons in tow--Florida, Arkansas, and Missouri--probably won't be.

Obama's pursuit of a 50-state strategy (now mercifully reduced to eighteen) is another sign of overconfidence. This summer, for instance, he spent money advertising and opening up field offices in Georgia. He has even appointed a coordinator for gay Georgians. That's fine, but Obama doesn't have a prayer of carrying Georgia in the presidential election. That's the kind of calculation you make if you think you're Johnson in 1964 and not Kennedy in 1960. Or if you think that field operations have the same effect in a general election that they do in a party caucus. From my experience, Obama's field operations were actually superior to those of Hillary Clinton in West Virginia, a state where he won 26 percent of the vote. They were superior in California, too, which Obama also lost. Field operations can be important, but as Karl Rove showed in 2004, they have to be carefully targeted.

Finally, Obama's rejection of McCain's proposal to hold weekly town meeting debates probably stemmed from overconfidence. The leading candidate always wants to avoid debates. But I agree with my colleague Michael Crowley, who thinks these town hall meetings could have helped Obama's campaign. As detailed polling and focus groups have shown, Obama still remains a mystery to most voters; and as an African American, the mystery risks being solved with the usual stereotypes. Obama could have used these weekly meetings to introduce himself to white voters and to reassure them that he wouldn't put black interests above theirs. And as an extra bonus, McCain may not have been able to maintain his cool during ten or twelve weekly debates.

Add these results of overconfidence to Obama's Berlin speech (which made an otherwise serious foreign trip look like a political stunt to impress the rubes back home) and his flip-flop response to Russia's invasion of Georgia (he went from apportioning blame equally to calling for NATO to admit Georgia, which would likely commit the U.S. to military intervention on its behalf), and you have some of the reasons why Obama has faltered this summer. But there is a larger issue--and one that Obama has the opportunity to address in his convention speech tonight.

III.

Some of what Obama has to do in his convention speech--and in the weeks to follow--is simply redress the errors of the summer. In his speech, he has to bestow praise on the Clinton years. That's a way of continuing the process of reconciliation, as former Clinton aide Howard Wolfson has suggested he do, and it's good politics to contrast Clinton prosperity with Bush recession. Obama could also use Hillary and Bill Clinton on the campaign trail--particularly in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and (if he stands any chance there) Missouri, where Bill was very popular. Obama himself and Joe Biden need to risk wearing out their welcome in the battleground states. Not a single voter in Ohio should think that Obama is a Muslim or that he agrees with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And he should avoid spending time and money in states like Georgia. Even North Carolina may appear futile by October 1. It's 1960, remember, not 1964.

But what Obama has to do above all is find a way to focus on the economy--which is voters' main concern--and to do so in a way that reflects his best abilities and deepest beliefs, and that is cognizant of the obstacles he faces as an African American candidate. To begin with, that means Obama cannot run as a Huey Long-style red meat populist. That's not who he is, anyway. And in making promises, he has to be careful to avoid endorsing programs that could be interpreted as irresponsible acts of tax-and-spend liberalism. He can propose a detailed plan for national health insurance once he is elected. For the moment, he should avoid anything that appears to require new taxes, or that appears to send a lot of money to inner-cities.

Of course, Obama has to propose programs and attack McCain's outrageous tax-or-spending proposals, but he needs to do it using a simple economic theme that highlights what he wants to do and draws a contrast with McCain. If you look back at Bill Clinton's campaigns in 1992 and 1996, they were based on very simple themes. In 1992, "putting people first" highlighted Clinton's middle class tax cut and drew a contrast with the "patrician" Bush. In 1996, "building a bridge to the 21st century" highlighted Clinton's economic successes and drew a contrast between the youthful Clinton and the aging Bob Dole.

Obama ran his primary campaign around the slogan "change we can believe in." That helped burnish his outsider image against Clinton, but it doesn't work as well against McCain (who, fairly or not, is still identified with outsiderdom and change), and it doesn't provide the context for any economic program. This has been clear for months, but the Obama campaign has yet to provide an alternative.

I am not clever enough to come up with such a theme, but I can say that it should be an extension of Obama's underlying appeal to the unity of American races, religions, states, regions, and even parties. That's what brought him to Americans' attention in 2004 when he declared at the Democratic Convention that "there's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America." What he has to say from now on should be framed as an attempt to prevent the wide disparities in wealth, income, and power that are undermining the promise of American democracy. By articulating a positive picture of a unified America, this theme also has the virtue of directly addressing voters' fears about his favoring African Americans over whites.

Obama will also have to address foreign policy, but he needs to find a way to contrast his own concern about creating a new America with John McCain's relative indifference to what goes on in Sheboygan or Akron. Bill Clinton did that brilliantly against George H.W. Bush in 1992; and in his speech last night, he may have showed Obama how to do it against McCain. "Most important, Barack Obama knows that America cannot be strong abroad unless we are strong at home," Clinton said. "People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power."

I want to say one final thing; it's about Obama's oratorical style. In response to the criticisms of his Berlin speech, some Democrats suggested that Obama should tone down his high style and seek a more direct conversational approach, even at the risk of being dull. That would be a tragic error. Obama's mistake was giving an uplifting speech to a huge crowd in Berlin; not giving an uplifting speech. High-flown oratory has always played a very large role in American politics--going back to Daniel Webster and Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson--and Obama's ability to perform in that manner is one of his greatest strengths. Obama's presentation isn't the problem; it is his message. And his first and best opportunity to fix it will come tonight.

By John B. Judis, The New Republic, August 28, 2008

Joe Biden finally changes the subject away from the Clintons.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden became running mates five days ago, but it wasn't until Wednesday night that they became a ticket. There was the official nominating procedure, of course, but there was also a spiritual hurdle: moving past the Clintons.

Hillary Clinton did her part Tuesday night, making a full-throated pitch to her supporters, and then on Wednesday Bill Clinton did his. He praised Obama relentlessly and took care of the one omission from his wife's performance the night before: Calling on his experience during eight years in the White House, Clinton vouched that Obama was ready to be commander in chief. The only way he could have endorsed Obama more enthusiastically is if he'd kissed him.

After Clinton, there wasn't much oxygen in the room for Joe Biden. But he didn't need to deliver the most beautiful speech. That's not his job. His job is to use his quirky approachability to introduce Obama to voters who have been skeptical about him. A guy named Barack needs a guy named Joe as his running mate. (In political-speak, they call this being the validator.)

Biden's best pitch came not on the issue of foreign affairs, Biden's strong suit. It came shortly after he began, when he offered a little collage of kitchen-table conversations about families facing hard times. "Should Mom move in with us now that Dad is gone? Fifty dollars, $60, $70 to fill up the gas tank? How in God's name, with winter coming, how are we going to heat the home?" Working-class and Catholic voters may identify with a guy who drops the expressions of their faith or tells gritty stories about how Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden taught him how to defend himself. (In case you didn't notice, she's Irish.) If they identify with Biden, they might listen to him - and that's the first step in overcoming their doubts about the man at the top of the ticket.

It's not an easy task. Blue-collar voters in Delaware may like Biden when he's selling himself, but will his sales pitch work elsewhere for Obama? Can he really be an ambassador to the food court when he looks like an ambassador to the Court of Saint James?

It's not the only contradiction. Biden talked at length about change in Washington, but with the tailored suit and leonine hair, he looks as much a Senate institution as the bean soup. Biden said Obama was ready to be commander in chief, but there are plenty of times when he's said the opposite. "I think he can be ready, but right now I don't believe he is," he said during the primary. "It's awful hard, with only a little bit of experience to have a clear sense of what you would do on the most critical issues facing us today."

Biden's assertions about Obama's foreign-policy judgment may or may not stick. But he's got a much better chance of fulfilling the traditional attack role. He was all over John McCain Wednesday night - and will be for the rest of the race. He has perfected the senatorial two-step of lathering his victim in friendship first ("John McCain is my friend") before dismantling him repeatedly. That lends weight to the attacks, and Biden knows his brief when talking about foreign affairs.

The evening ended with another of the compulsory convention exercises: the candidate's "surprise visit." Obama arrived onstage to hug his running mate and hand out the praise. First he paid tribute to his wife (whose tears upon hearing Biden's life story should be in a campaign commercial), then he honored Hillary Clinton. Finally, he praised Bill Clinton. The mantle had been passed from one generation of Democrats to the next, and, safely in his position as the new leader, Obama was in a position to apply the benedictions.

By John Dickerson, Slate magazine, August 28, 2008

DENVER -- When Barack Obama feeds rhetorical fishes and loaves to the multitudes in the football stadium Thursday night, he should deliver a message of sufficient particularity that it seems particularly suited to Americans. One more inspirational oration, one general enough to please Berliners or even his fellow "citizens of the world," will confirm Pascal's point that "continuous eloquence wearies." That is so because it is not really eloquent. If it is continuous, it is necessarily formulaic and abstract, vague enough for any time and place, hence truly apposite for none.

If Socrates had engaged in an interminable presidential campaign in a media-drenched age, perhaps he, too, would have come to seem banal. But the fact that Obama lost nine of the final 14 primaries might have something to do with the fact that when he descends from the ether to practicalities, he reprises liberalism's most shopworn nostrums.

Russia, a third-world nation with first-world missiles, is rampant; Iran is developing a missile inventory capable of delivering nuclear weapons the development of which will not be halted by Obama's promised "aggressive personal diplomacy." Yet Obama has vowed to "cut investments in unproven missile defense systems." Steamboats, railroads, airplanes and vaccines were "unproven" until farsighted people made investments. Furthermore, as Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute notes, Democrats will eventually embrace missile defense in Europe because they "will have nowhere else to go short of pre-emptive strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities."

Obama, who might be the last person to learn that schools' cognitive outputs are not simply functions of financial inputs, promises more money for teachers, who, as usual, are about 10 percent of the Democrats' convention delegates and alternates. He waxes indignant about approximately 150,000 jobs sent overseas each year -- less than 1 percent of the number of jobs normally lost and gained in the creative destruction of America's dynamic economy. U.S. exports are fending off a recession while he complains about free trade. He deplores NAFTA, although since it was implemented in 1994 the U.S., Mexican and Canadian economies have grown 50 percent, 46 percent and 54 percent, respectively.

Recycling George McGovern's 1972 "Demogrant" notion, Obama promises a $1,000 check for every family, financed by a "windfall profits" tax on oil companies. Obama is unintimidated by the rule against legislating about subjects one cannot define.

Obama thinks government is not getting a "reasonable share" of oil companies' profits, which in 2007 were, as a percentage of revenues (8.3 percent), below those of U.S. manufacturing generally (8.9 percent). Exxon Mobil pays almost as much in corporate taxes to various governments as the bottom 50 percent of American earners pay in income taxes. Exxon Mobil does make $1,400 a second in profits -- hear the sharp intakes of breath from liberals with pursed lips -- but pays $4,000 a second in taxes and $15,000 a second in operating costs.

Obama's rhetorical extravagances are inversely proportional to his details, as when he promises "nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy" in order to "end the age of oil." The diminished enthusiasm of some voters hitherto receptive to his appeals might have something to do with the seepage of reality from his rhetoric. Voters understand that neither the "transformation" nor the "end" will or should occur. His dreamy certitude that "alternative" fuels will quickly become real alternatives is an energy policy akin to an old vaudeville joke: "If we had some eggs, we could have ham and eggs, if we had some ham."

When he speaks Thursday night in a venue consecrated to the faux combat of football, the NATO alliance, which was 12 years old when he was born, may be collapsing because of its unwillingness to help enough in Afghanistan and its inability to respond seriously to Russia's combat in Georgia. It is unfair to neither NATO nor Obama to note that the alliance is practicing what he preaches: It is preaching to Vladimir Putin, who is unimpressed. NATO, said Lord Ismay, speaking of Europe in 1949, was created to "keep the Americans in, the Germans down and the Russians out." That Germany's appeasement reflex is part of NATO's weakness is perhaps progress, of sorts.

Journalism often must be preoccupied with matters barely remembered a week later. But decades hence, historians will write about today's response to Russia by the West, perhaps in obituaries for the idea of "the West." If Obama does not speak to this crisis Thursday night, that will speak volumes.

By George Will, The Washington Post, August 28, 2008

DENVER - It is natural to describe Barack Obama's flight from obscure state senator to presidential nominee, from a head-turning 2004 speech in Boston to the pinnacle of American politics in Denver in 2008, as a success story beyond imagination.

Except that's not true.

Lots of people in Obama's life not only imagined it, they flatly predicted it. And they said so years before Obama sprang on the national scene as part of a personality-driven phenomenon virtually unprecedented in this country's presidential history.

"If there is someone who wore fate on his sleeve, it is Barack Obama," said former Illinois Sen. Denny Jacobs, who served with Obama and played poker with him. "You could see it happen. You could feel it. It was a matter of time."

There is a whiff of the mystical in Jacobs's premonition of Obama's destiny as leader.

But that misty, glittery terrain is precisely the ground on which Democrats have chosen to wage the 2008 presidential election.

It is a choice freighted with risks. It depends on winning, over the next ten weeks, many Americans whom polls show are reluctant to embrace a movement that places its faith in intangible qualities - charisma, vision, capacity for growth - rather than in such prosaic traits as national experience or long-term identification with a policy agenda.

Obama's remarkable ascent has been fueled by two main engines.

The first is Obama's own preternatural self-assurance. It is a seemingly imperturbable belief in his own rhetorical and intellectual gifts.

The second is the willingness of Democrats to invest in a particular notion of the presidency - that it is an inspirational office more than an administrative one, one that rewards the skills of the preacher more than those of the policy expert or legislative tactician.

These engines each have produced their own powerful backdrafts: Obama's poise, to the eyes of skeptics, can too often curdle into arrogance.

And Republicans have served notice plainly that they will cast Obama and his partisans as a frivolous movement, lacking in substance and naive about the obligations of a commander in chief.

For now, though, hours away from Obama's acceptance speech before an expected 80,000 people at Invesco Field, his story is a remarkable testament to the power of self-confidence.

These days, of course, his self-confidence is bolstered by many validators.

At a San Francisco fundraiser earlier this month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Obama "a leader that God has blesses us with at this time."

This is a theme echoed by supporters from the outset, despite Obama saying on the trail that the campaign isn't about him. Michelle Obama leads the way. The word she invokes in speeches about her husband is "special," as in last summer in Iowa, when she rhapsodized that there was "something very special about this man."

He understood earlier than most Democrats that the Iraq war was a mistake, she said, "because he's special."

To spend time in Obama's campaign orbit, as this reporter has done since before the Iowa caucuses, is to see constant reminders, in both public and private moments, of his poise. Sometimes it comes off as the signature of a well-grounded man, who seems not to have the kind of hyperkinetic neediness of many politicians. Other times it simply looks brash.

At the same San Francisco fundraiser where Pelosi suggested his candidacy was divinely inspired, Obama said coolly, "I will win, don't worry about that."

In July, Obama smiled and offered a one-word answer when asked during a CBS interview whether he ever had doubts about his foreign policy experience: "Never."

When he walks through a hotel lobby in the morning to catch a workout, Obama retreats with ease into an inward-looking zone. He wears headphones and buries his head in a newspaper, bothering to look up only when shouts or cheering from onlookers becomes too loud to ignore.

By the end of Obama's overseas trip last summer, which featured an adoring crowd of 200,000 in Berlin, an Obama sticker affixed to the wall of the campaign plane's media cabin had been defaced: "Worship me," it read, under a drawing of his face. (Someone has since tried to scrub the sticker clean.)

By now, the basic stepping stones of Obama's biography are well-known: the bright child of a single mother, the Harvard Law School standout, the community organizer and rising, restless politician from Chicago.

What is less appreciated is how each of these chapters contributed to and reinforced Obama's desire to succeed and his apparent sense of self-destiny.

At the outset, it was his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, who built him up.

Fearful that her son would feel alienated as an African-American growing up in a white household in Hawaii, his mother reinforced Obama's esteem at every turn. He moved between cultures and races as a child, learning lessons that would inform his political rise decades later.

"Barry was given a lesson that he would consume over and over: His unique racial ancestry made him someone who certainly was not to be ostracized or shunned. Far from it - he was a special person worthy of others' deep admiration,' " Obama biographer David Mendell wrote in the 2007 book, "From Power to Promise."

Obama traces his ambition to the successes - and shortcomings - of his Kenyan father, who was studying at the University of Hawaii when he met Obama's mother. His father left when Obama was two years old, but was nonetheless built up by his mother.

She told Obama that he had acquired his intellect from his father, a Harvard-educated economist who, as the senator learned later in life, had fallen short in his own professional and personal pursuits. Barack Obama Sr. married and divorced several times, cycled through a series of government jobs in Kenya and suffered from alcoholism. He died in a car crash in 1982, at 46 years old.

"In my case, you had this person who was almost a myth in our family, about how smart he was, and how well he had done school, and how well-spoken he was," Obama said in a recent CNN interview. "So that was something to live up to, high expectations. On the other hand, here's somebody who wasn't there, and that I would come to learn was an alcoholic, someone who had not treated his family well. And, so, that was something you felt you had to make up for."

His maternal grandfather, who helped raise Obama, also fueled his self-assurance from an early age, telling Obama of a lesson from his father: "Confidence - the secret to a man's success," Obama wrote in "Dreams of My Father."

"That is how Obama's father led his life," Mendell wrote in his book, "and even in times of self-doubt, Obama has hearkened back to that wisdom."

After graduating from Columbia University, Obama moved to Chicago to become a community organizer on the South Side, a job that could humble even the most confident individuals. But Obama saw success, said Gerald Kellman, who hired him.

Obama's three years as a community organizer is "very much at the root of who Barack has become," Kellman said. "He was tested so severely and he did well."

Obama went onto Harvard Law School, where he became the first African-American president of the law review, emerging from a crowded field as the candidate who could bridge liberal and conservative factions. The achievement earned so much national attention that some students made light of the media invasion in a memo titled, "The Barack Obama Story, a Made for TV Movie, Starring Blair Underwood as Barack Obama," according to a March 1990 article in the Los Angeles Times.

"He is a superstar," Kellman said of Obama's Harvard experience. "He realized people began to respond to him in a powerful way."

As he moved up in Illinois politics, Obama was reminded frequently of his potential. Tall, handsome and smart, Obama heard from colleagues and friends that he didn’t belong in the Illinois legislature, that could be the governor - maybe even president of the United States.

"He had this ability, immediately, you sit there and say, 'This guy, there is something special about him,' " said Illinois Sen. Terry Link, another member of the poker group. "No matter who met him or how you met him, you walked away with that impression. This guy is going places. I think he will be president of the United States. Did I think he would become more than what he was at the time? Yeah, he had this unique ability to make people feel comfortable around themselves, and feel part of the process."

Twelve years ago, Cass Sunstein, a former colleague at the University of Chicago law school, introduced his daughter to Obama this way: "If all goes well, maybe he will be president of the United States."

He analyzed issues in a way that "wasn't impaired by ideological blinders or simple frameworks," Sunstein explained. "I also thought he likes people, and people liked him. I thought early on, this was someone who could unify the country across political lines. There was something about his lack of dogmatism, and his problem-solving ability and the ability to connect with him."

By the late 1990s, members of the Saguaro Seminar were calling him "governor." Obama was a first-term state senator contemplating - and openly discussing - his ambitions for higher office.

He joined the working group led by Robert Putnam, author of "Bowling Alone," with three dozen other political leaders, clergy, philanthropists and Ivy League professors. They met several times a year, for three years, to discuss ways to rebuild "social capital" and civic life.

"So we were in the midst of one of our intensive discussions about civic engagement," said Martha Minow, a Harvard University law professor who taught Obama. "And after one of these ranging discussions, across the political sectors, he did this tour de force summary. We just said, 'When are you running for president?' It became a joke. We started to nickname him 'governor.' "

After delivering a celebrated speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Obama began to believe he could stand on that stage as the nominee, a four-year journey that culminates tonight in Denver.

Ever since that day, which turned him into an overnight celebrity, Obama has constantly walked the line between confident and cocky.

He can show humility, asking God in a note he pressed into the Western Wall in Jerusalem to "help me guard against pride," or invoking his wife in stump speeches as someone who reminds him often that he is not a perfect man.

He can appear self-deprecating and genuinely uneasy about the trappings of his entourage and his following, joking to reporters that he has daydreamed about escaping the presidential campaign bubble. When he goes out to dinner in Chicago with his family, he looks loathe to engage the dozens of people who gather to see him outside restaurants and other public places.

But the flashes of Obama-as-upstart seem to be the enduring ones, fueling a narrative now central to GOP attacks.

Deflecting criticism in February during the primary that he was all rhetoric, no substance: "It's true I give a good speech. What can I do? Nothing wrong with that."

(After his 2004 convention speech, according to Mendell, he said, "I'm LeBron, baby. I can play on this level. I got some game.")

An Obama visit Sunday to a Lutheran church in Wisconsin drew attention because the sermon focused on humility and the pastor warned that one should not become "cocky."

Known early in the campaign for her deprecating humor, describing her husband as "stinky and snore-y" in the morning, Michelle Obama just as often portrays her husband as almost otherworldly in his gifts.

The country needed Barack Obama, she said, who she would rather have at home in Chicago, but "who I am willing to sacrifice because we have this window of opportunity."

Locked in a fierce primary election battle in April, Michelle Obama paced a stage at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and promised her husband would "be one of the most dynamic leaders we have seen in a long time" - and Democrats know it.

"The thing I want to remind you is that everybody in this party knows that," she said. "You know why I say that? Because, see, before he was running, right after that wonderful speech at the convention, everybody wanted a piece of hope. It wasn't naive then. Barack spent the entire fall traveling around, campaigning and raising money for every single Democratic race.

"Every single person," she said, "wanted him on stage with them, for a little piece of hope. There wasn't anything naive about it. The problem came when Barack said, 'I am standing back here, but maybe I can run this.' "

By Carrie Budoff Brown, Politico, August 28, 2008

To listen to many of the antsy poll-following Democrats gathered here in Colorado, you might think you stumbled into a Dear Abby conference instead of a political convention. Just about everyone outside of the Obama true believers has a piece of advice for what the change candidate should change about his campaign to regain his mojo and avoid blowing what should be a sure thing.

Don't be so nuanced, the self-styled strategists say. Be more specific. Tell your story. Take the gloves off. Embrace your inner populist. Put Iraq back in play. And, oh yes, do it all in one pressure-packed speech if possible.

This fretting is understandable to some extent, and not just because we are the party that made the hand-wring its official handshake. By traditional standards Barack Obama is underperforming. And his "different-ness" has injected an uncomfortable degree of uncertainty into this contest.

But this is hardly cause for panic. Indeed, the Democrats who are telling Mr. Obama "I love you, you're perfect, now change" are underestimating the position of fundamental strength he is starting with, and the tremendous advantages his campaign will bring to bear this fall.

This is not just a matter of cyclical political dynamics that strongly favor Democrats (record-setting wrong track numbers, the damage George W. Bush has done to the Republican brand, a major intensity gap among the bases, etc.). Mr. Obama's campaign itself has a substantial structural lead -- the ruthlessly efficient money-raising and field-organizing machine that swamped the Clinton juggernaut is ready to do the same to Mr. McCain -- that current polls just don't account for and won't for some time.

More importantly, the doubting Democrats are misunderstanding the challenge Mr. Obama faces in closing the deal with those crucial voters who want a leader who can move the country in a new direction but are not yet sold on Mr. Obama as the man for that job.

In this, there is a faulty presumption that these winnable, undecided voters are rejecting Mr. Obama's message, and that he needs to say something different to sway them. The fact is, based on all the available polling and a lot of anecdotal evidence, these persuadables simply don't know Mr. Obama yet. In particular, they don't know the Mr. Obama that built such a potent and passionate coalition in the primaries beyond the antiwar left.

They know the Barack Obama who is for getting out of Iraq and who gives a snazzy speech, along with the Barack Obama who prayed with the crazy preacher and who did not wear a flag pin. But they don't know the Barack Obama who was booed by the nation's biggest teachers union for openly advocating taboo reform policies such as merit pay for teachers and charter schools. They don't know the Barack Obama who rejected the cheap gimmick of a national gas tax holiday and trusted the intelligence of voters to see it as such. They don't know the Barack Obama who risked alienating his antiwar base by supporting a compromise plan to reform the Bush warrantless wiretapping program.

They don't know the Barack Obama who in early 2007 worked on a bipartisan basis to pass one of the toughest ethics reform bills in a generation, as well as co-sponsoring legislation with Republican Dick Lugar in 2006 to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. And they certainly don't know the Barack Obama who went into a black church on Father's Day to bluntly chastise his strongest supporters and challenge them to take more responsibility for the children they bring into this world.

Which is to say they don't know what an independent-minded, orthodoxy-challenging, gutsy leader he can and will be, or that he has the strength as well as the judgment that's needed to bring the country together, deliver the new politics he's promising, and be the president for all of America that George W. Bush never could or would be.

That's why one of the few areas Mr. Obama has consistently trailed Mr. McCain is on the critical question of who is a stronger leader. Swing voters know Mr. McCain has a long-established record of taking tough stands, bucking his party and forging bipartisan coalitions (which is why he has been able to get away with the brazen flip-flops he made during the Republican primaries). We're lucky at this point if most of those same voters know Mr. Obama is not a Muslim.

Moreover, that's why I am convinced that Mr. Obama does not need to fundamentally change his message or strategy to win over the undecideds (though a few of the refinements being suggested would be helpful). He mostly just needs to be himself -- or to be more precise, to be more of himself. No reinvention, no repositioning -- just recount the tough stands and political risks he has already taken, relentlessly reinforce those points for the next three months, and ideally look for a few opportunities to walk the change-making walk as we near November.

Some Democrats mistakenly assume this must lead to a cynical, calculated move to the center or a coordinated series of Sister Souljah moments. I am not suggesting that Mr. Obama has to show he's a different kind of Democrat to pass the trust bar, as Bill Clinton did. Rather, I am arguing that because he does not have the kind of leadership record voters are used to in presidential candidates -- or the accumulated "country first" proof points Mr. McCain boasts -- he has to meet a higher burden during the campaign in proving that he is the different kind of politician he claims to be.

Sometimes that means going against the party grain, as Al Gore did by supporting the first Gulf War (he was one of only 10 Senate Democrats to do so). But it can just as easily mean standing on principle the other way, as Tim Kaine did when he stuck to his anti-death penalty convictions while running for governor in strongly pro-death-penalty Virginia.

This is exactly what wins over independents -- being independent. Just ask my mayor Mike Bloomberg, who continues to enjoy eye-popping approval numbers after seven years in one of the country's bluest bastions.

Now one could argue that the Obama campaign could have and should have started emphasizing these points earlier. But that quibble aside, now that the general election campaign is moving into high gear, Mr. Obama's acceptance speech tomorrow night is an ideal time to begin cracking the strength gap, by making the case that he can break the partisan stalemate in Washington and produce progress on the economy, energy, climate change, health care and other serious problems that are begging for national leadership.

And the ideal issue for Mr. Obama to focus on in the speech and beyond, as Mayor Bloomberg can attest, is education. No challenge is more consequential for our country than closing the achievement gap in our urban schools and raising the competitiveness of our workforce. And no special interest has done more to stand in the way of change in our public schools than the teachers unions that dominate Democratic politics.

The unions' chokehold on the party (and by extension the futures of millions of black and Hispanic children) is starting to loosen. One sign of that was the impressive number of progressive leaders who showed up to support Mr. Obama's change agenda and embrace an aggressively pro-innovation set of principles at a forum sponsored by Democrats for Education Reform (full disclosure: the group is a client of mine) here in Denver on Sunday. That group included three of the country's most influential African-American mayors, all rising stars in the party -- Adrian Fenty in Washington, Cory Booker in Newark, and Michael Nutter in Philadelphia.

Imagine what the party's first African-American presidential nominee could do to liberate millions of low-income children of color, not to mention elevate his standing as a change agent, simply by declaring that the era of unequal education is over in America. Mr. Obama doesn't have to, nor should he, attack or even mention the unions. Just do what he has already done (but louder): challenge his own party to change its policies to put children first, and embrace innovative solutions like longer school days and years, high-quality charter schools, and performance pay for teachers.

That's not just change you can believe in. That's change you can bank votes on.

By DAN GERSTEIN, The Wall Street Journal, August 27, 2008

DENVER - Former President Clinton forcefully endorsed Barack Obama's bid for the White House on Wednesday, telling delegates to the Democratic convention that Obama is "ready to lead America and restore American leadership in the world."

Clinton pushed back on attacks - initiated by himself and his wife during the bitter primary campaign, and later taken up by Republican John McCain, that Obama is ill prepared for the White House, especially on matters of national defense.

"With Joe Biden's experience and wisdom, supporting Barack Obama's proven understanding, insight, and good instincts, America will have the national security leadership we need," Clinton said.

Clinton campaigned feverishly for his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her long-fought primary battle against Obama, and took her loss hard. He had not spoken out as strongly in support of Obama since he clinched the nomination in June.

But Wednesday, he was unambiguous.

Jabbing a finger at thousands of cheering delegates, he declared: "I want all of you who supported her to vote for Barack Obama in November."

Clinton was by turns funny, nostalgic and wonkish, delving into issues like health care and pension benefits.

Clinton, ever mindful of himself, likened Obama's presidential quest to his own bid for the presidency in 1992, when "Republicans said I was too young and too inexperienced to be commander in chief."

"Sound familiar?" Clinton said. "It didn't work in 1992, because we were on the right side of history. And it won't work in 2008, because Barack Obama is on the right side of history."

He allowed that the primary campaign had generated "so much heat it increased global warming."

"In the end," he said, "my candidate didn't win. But I'm proud of the campaign she ran: She never quit on the people she stood up for, on the changes she pushed for, on the future she wants for all our children."

By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press, August 28, 2008

DENVER - We supposedly live in a classless society, but the velvet ropes have been spreading like weeds in recent years. How odd, then, that the power-saturated floor of the Democratic National Convention is, in fact, one of the most democratic places on Earth - providing, that is, you have the proper credentials.

Those wearing floor passes around their necks can descend the stairs onto the Pepsi Center's main floor. Once there, pretty much anything goes. Choose who you want to talk to and walk right up: former Pittsburgh Steeler Franco Harris (friendly), 1980s TV star Morgan Fairchild (detached), or maybe "Harold and Kumar" movie star Kal Penn (sincere and talkative).

About the only person that the credential-holding hoi polloi weren't permitted to approach Wednesday afternoon was Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Accompanied by Secret Service agents, she popped up in the New York delegation to officially hand the nomination to Barack Obama.

Penn, the floor manager for the Virginia delegation, loves the convention spectacle. He is bullish about the chance to broadcast the Democratic Party's principles to a larger audience - and snag some undecided voters in the process.

"With the Internet, with cable, with the 15,000 journalists that we have here, so many more people can experience it," Penn said. "Being here on the ground, to be part of that kind of change is something I'm glad is televised."

Harris, a legendary running back whose legs and moves carried the Steelers to four Super Bowl championships between 1975 and 1980, was standing with the Pennsylvania delegation - towering above it, actually. An ardent Obama supporter, he found many parallels between his profession and politics.

"Sports, politics, there is a big connection there," Harris said. "It's about developing the skills and developing the intellect. And it teaches you how to be competitive."

Fifteen feet away from where he stood, Sally Powless, a delegate from Toledo, Ohio, drank in the scene. From her vantage point in the front row of her delegation, she watched Wolf Blitzer interview Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry on CNN's elevated platform and reveled in the spectacle around her.

"I'll tell ya, it's energy," she said. "It's being among all these Democrats. You know everybody thinks the way you think. You can get into a conversation about things that are important for you and know you're not going to get into a confrontation."

Cynthia Glozier, a Clinton delegate, voted for her candidate when the delegation was polled Wednesday morning but promised to vote for Obama during the public roll-call later. She didn't get the chance; Clinton did it for her.

Because of Clinton, the New York delegation, predictably, proved a very popular one for journalists. A Chinese-speaking radio crew was trolling the seats for material, and Glozier said she had been interviewed multiple times, including by the Arabic-language network al-Jazeera.

"I don't know of anybody in the New York delegation who hasn't been interviewed at least once," said Glozier, 51, a high-school English teacher from Rhinebeck, N.Y. "We have already been sold, so our focus is to tell the world what we believe."

Logistics, too, made the whole thing feel more democratic. Deep in the Pennsylvania delegation, a tan, burly man went seat by seat, asking folks if they belonged and cheerfully ejecting them if they didn't.

"Everybody here a delegate?" he asked. "If you're a guest, you can't sit in these seats."

People listened because of who was talking. You'd think, though, that Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell would have chosen to delegate that particular duty.

By TED ANTHONY, Associated Press, August 28, 2008

DENVER - In an emotional meeting leading up to the Democratic roll call of the states, Hillary Rodham Clinton released her convention delegates Wednesday to vote for certain presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Many in the crowded ballroom yelled back, "No!"

"I am not telling you what to do," Clinton responded. "You've come here from so many different places having made this journey and feeling in your heart what is right for you to do."

Her speech, just a couple of hours before the nomination vote was scheduled, was frequently interrupted by shouts from the crowd, including a brief chant of "Roll call! Roll call!" signifying the desire of many of her delegates to have a chance to vote for her.

"You are to be given the respect and recognition you have earned as delegates," Clinton said. She insisted that however the delegates voted, "as Democrats and as Americans we will leave Denver united."

A roll call vote was scheduled for later in the afternoon after brief nominating speeches for both Clinton and Obama. The former rivals negotiated a plan that would cut off the split roll call after a few states - perhaps by Clinton herself - in favor of acclamation for Obama. She planned to sit with the New York delegation during the vote.

Delegates said they were frustrated that they did not have specific instructions on how the process would work or which states would participate, even as they received their ballots Wednesday morning. With Clinton's encouragement during the meeting and in a speech to the convention Tuesday night, a swell of Clinton delegates said they would support Obama.

"She's a supreme lady," said California delegate Marie McClintock as she left the meeting with Clinton. "I voted for Hillary this morning because I gave my word and I keep my word."

Massachusetts delegate Nancy Saboori was visibly upset at the end of Clinton's speech.

"She doesn't have the right to release us," Saboori argued. "We're not little kids to be told what to do in a half-hour."

Kathleen Krehbiel, Clinton's Iowa vote-counter, said she made up her mind to switch and believed most Clinton loyalists also were coming around.

"I did not want to see a floor fight," she said. "I don't see any further reason to continue to carry out a pretense that she's a candidate. She's not."

Not all Clinton supporters were on board. Sonja Jaquez Lewis, a Clinton delegate from Colorado, said she and others may walk out if Clinton is denied a roll call.

"If we don't have an official roll call vote, state-by-state, it is going to reopen a wound," Lewis said.

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine said Democrats from his state, which Clinton won, voted in private to unanimously support Obama.

"I think it is reflective of the unity that I sense that is building across the party," Corzine said. "That doesn't mean there won't be outliers that are still heartbroken their favorite candidate didn't make it."

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Clinton supporter, said in an AP interview that he will vote for Obama "wistfully but enthusiastically." But Rendell estimated somewhere around 10 or 12 Clinton delegates from his state weren't "going to be able to bring themselves to vote for anybody other than Senator Clinton."

He insisted that's not a slight of Obama, rather a reflection of their hard work for Clinton and their deep admiration for her and her bid to become the first woman president.

"Even though Hillary tells us not to spend any time thinking about what might have been," he said, pausing as tears welled in his eyes, "I'm sure all of us were thinking about what might have been last night."

Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, an Obama supporter, said Clinton's challenge in getting her delegates to come on board with Obama "may be the biggest test of her leadership."

"If she's not a strong enough leader to get her followers to do what's right for America, then that would surprise me," McCaskill told the AP. "I think they are going to follow her lead, and her lead was very crystal clear last night."

Wyoming state Sen. Mike Massie, D-Laramie, said his delegation gave 12 votes to Obama and six to Clinton after state party officials rejected a request from Clinton delegates to delay the vote until after a meeting later in the day with Clinton. Massie said the delegation is still puzzled by orders to vote before Clinton could meet with her delegates and release them.

"That question is on the minds of a lot of people," Massie said.

By NEDRA PICKLER and DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press, August 27, 2008

DENVER - Barack Obama stepped triumphantly into history Wednesday night, the first black American to win a major party presidential nomination, as thousands of Democrats transformed their convention hall into a joyful, shouting celebration.

Former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton asked delegates to the party convention to make their verdict unanimous "in the spirit of unity, with the goal of victory." And they did, with a roar.

Competing chants of "Obama" and "Yes we can" surged up from the convention floor as the outcome of a carefully scripted roll call of the states was announced.

Not long afterward, former President Bill Clinton delivered his own strong pitch for the 47-year-old first-term senator from Illinois.

"Everything I've learned in my eight years as president and the work I've done since, in America and across the globe, has convinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job," he said.

Michelle Obama, watching from her seat in the balcony, stood and applauded as the former president praised her man.

Obama was across town as the party handed him its top prize - a ticket into the general election campaign against Republican Sen. John McCain. He was expected to briefly visit the Pepsi Center later in the evening to thank the delegates.

His formal acceptance speech Thursday night was expected to draw a crowd of 75,000 at the nearby football stadium where an elaborate backdrop was under construction.

Back inside the smaller convention hall, Melissa Etheridge provided a musical interlude, a medley that included "Give Peace a Chance."

The evening program also included the delegates' acceptance of Obama's choice of Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden as vice presidential running mate. Biden had the marquee time spot for his acceptance speech late Wednesday.

Hillary Clinton's call for Obama to be approved by acclamation - midway through the traditional roll call of the states - was the culmination of a painstaking agreement worked out between the two camps to present a unified front after their long and often-bitter fight for the nomination.

By DAVID ESPO, Associated Press, August 27, 2008

DENVER - When this campaign ends, after future presidents have come and gone, and when today's young people are grown old, history will remember Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008, as the day a black man became the presidential nominee of a major party.

This is history with the ink still wet; transcendent, yet in your face now.

It's a history that belongs to the red states and the blue states and the United States, to borrow the phrase that made people first sit up and listen to Barack Obama only four years ago.

Americans who don't like him, who will never vote for him, own it, too.

The roll call of states Wednesday night at the Democratic convention means Denver joins Springfield, Ill., and Washington, D.C. in an arc that spans centuries which saw slavery, emancipation, lynchings, Jim Crow, lunch counter bigotry, voting rights, integration, oratory, intermarriage, black pride, assassination, riots, marches - so many marches - and now a nomination.

The arc traces Abraham Lincoln's legacy of freeing the slaves to Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech at the Lincoln Memorial 45 years ago Thursday, to the convention center in Denver.

And on next to Invesco Field, where Obama will speak on the anniversary of King's "I have a dream" speech.

"This is a monumental moment in our nation's history," Martin Luther King III, the civil rights icon's oldest son, told AP on Wednesday. "And it becomes obviously an even greater moment in November if he's elected."

Democrats have danced around race for much of their convention, to a point where the marker that will enter the history books is almost obscured. It's all about making whites comfortable voting for him. Democrats worry about a backlash.

Obama's racial milestone was on everyone's minds but few lips as speaker after speaker stood to emphasize that he is a regular guy.

Yet all knew, win or lose in the fall, something for the ages was unfolding. "This man is on a mission," said Florida delegate Cynthia Moore Chestnut of Gainesville.

That's a lot riding on someone who has fought no wars, led no mass protests, served two-thirds of a term in the Senate, and missed the height of the civil rights movement because he was too young.

Until now, Obama's promise has outpaced his achievements and, at times, he has sounded like a man carried along on a wave that came out of the blue.

"When I actually do something," he joked not so long ago, "we'll let you know."

Two movements - for blacks and women - converged in this campaign as Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton went head to head. Both movements got farther than ever before, but only one could carry the day.

The roll call ended her historic campaign to become the first female nominee of a major party and hard feelings linger.

Civil rights and women's rights are not in a horse race. But over two centuries it has felt like one, as if there were only so much equality to go around at any given moment.

Women and blacks have worked together at times, apart at other times and against each other on occasion, as their advancements leapfrogged.

Blacks got the right to vote, then women did. But then blacks wrestled for decades to secure the right to vote without impediments that amounted to disenfranchisement.

Paradoxically (does history ever unfold in a neat progression?), Obama is less a product of the civil rights movement than most of his black country men and women. He is not a descendent of slaves. He is the son of a black man from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas.

Obama inevitably stands on many shoulders as beneficiary of the evolution of black political power in the United States.

There are the shoulders of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, whose many accomplishments include this milestone: At the Republican convention in 1888, he received one vote in the presidential roll call, the first black man to get a vote for a major party nomination.

There are the shoulders of Jesse Jackson, a century later the first black contender to sway the race for president.

And the shoulders of ordinary voters across racial lines, like Kate Clark, 53, a white cafe owner in Nazareth, Pa., who said: "I think we need to see the United States and see the world through eyes that are younger, through eyes that have dreams, through eyes that see something new for the nation."

And Edwin David, who served with the famed World War II unit of black fighters known as the Tuskegee Airman and, at age 83, and retired in the Pocono Mountains, pleaded: "Just let me live 'til voting time in November. In my lifetime, we just might get to see the first African-American president."

By JESSE J. HOLLAND and CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press, August 27, 2008

His backers see her support as tepid. A reported flap over Bill Clinton's convention speech only exacerbates matters.

DENVER -- The big question of the presidential election, says L. Douglas Wilder, the nation's first elected black governor, is not whether America is ready for a black president. Rather, he asks, "Are the Clintons ready?"

What Democratic candidate Barack Obama needs, says Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr., is for Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton to provide a "Pee Wee Reese moment," referring to the white ballplayer who embraced Jackie Robinson when white baseball fans rained abuse on the pioneering Dodger.

As the Democratic National Convention began Monday, some black delegates who are pledged to Obama are unhappy -- even seething -- at what they say is weak support from the former president and first lady in the wake of a bitter primary campaign.

Their anger is the latest turn in the ongoing rivalry between the Clinton and Obama camps, a breach Democrats must repair if they are to win over lagging Clinton supporters. It is boiling over at an inopportune time -- with the race against Republican John McCain tightening to a dead heat and the Obama campaign hoping that this week's Democratic gathering will convey a sense of unity and momentum.

Instead, in interviews with delegates and aides to the rival camps, it was clear Monday that tensions have only swelled since the heat of a primary competition fraught with racial, gender and generational differences. Obama backers are frustrated that the Clintons do not seem willing to let go of their 16-year dominance of the Democratic Party, while Clinton aides complained privately that the young presumed nominee is not paying them proper respect -- a tension heightened by the revelation that Obama never seriously considered his rival as a running mate.

The mutual frustration comes amid reports that Bill Clinton and the Obama camp are at odds over the substance of the former president's speech to the convention Wednesday. That report led to a joint unity statement on Monday.

"There is absolutely no cause for this, no reason for this continuing divide," said Wilder, the former Virginia governor who is now mayor of Richmond. "Do you want to win or not?"

In an interview conducted before he took part in a panel on race sponsored by Politico, Wilder laughed off the argument forwarded by Clintonites that the couple endorsed Obama and have promised to deliver gracious speeches. The New York senator, Wilder countered, could easily signal to her supporters the gravity of the situation.

"All she has to do is say, 'Finished. Over. I'm here, I'm supporting [Obama], and you don't help me by doing what you're doing,' " Wilder said, adding later that he came to the morning panel to "ask the question as to whether America is ready for an African American president. The question is, are the Clintons ready? That's what it comes down to."

Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, a leading African American lawmaker and the third-most powerful Democrat in the House, was critical of the Clintons' tactics during the primaries. In an interview Monday, he said he did not hold them responsible for the current concerns but is worried about how Sen. Clinton's supporters might cloud the convention.

"We learned coming out of the caucuses that sound bites can in fact be detrimental," Clyburn said. "So, irrespective of what may or may not happen on the [convention] floor . . . the problem is you might have two or three people who will say something, and that may become the headline."

Race had been the backdrop of tensions between the Clinton and Obama camps for months in a primary campaign that amounted to a fight between choosing the country's first female or first black presidential nominee. Obama backers were angry when President Clinton, renowned for his good relations with black America, appeared to narrow-cast the Obama candidacy as appealing mostly to black voters, comparing it to past campaigns by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the lawmaker's father. Bill Clinton later accused the campaign of playing the race card against him, citing a sheet of talking points directing Obama staffers to take issue with Clinton's remarks on Jackson.

One African American Obama delegate, Marvin Sutton, said he regretted that the Clinton-Obama rivalry had gone on for so long.

"The campaigns should have come together earlier on," said Sutton, 46, of Arlington, Texas. "The longer you're divided, the longer it takes for us to get the ball rolling."

The tension this week stems in part from the prominence being given to the Clintons -- the former first lady is to speak tonight, a day before the former president -- and the concern that the couple will draw precious media exposure when Obama needs to introduce himself to the nation.

"We've only got four good prime-time hours at this convention, and we're using one of them for this?" said a black congressman who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of criticizing the Clintons. "All I can say is, Obama's a bigger man than I am."

One senior advisor to Obama's campaign said the Clintons should be more fully involved in persuading their base to help the new nominee.

"It's not about making public statements. It's about calling her friends up and telling them, 'I want you to do one thing more for me, and that is to help this ticket,' " the advisor said. "She's got to deliver that message personally."

Clinton backers are sore too.

A former Clinton advisor said Monday that Bill Clinton is not happy that he has been asked to deliver a speech on national security. The former president would prefer to talk broadly about both domestic and foreign policy, with an emphasis on the economy, the source said. The dispute was first reported by Politico.

"When former presidents come to a convention, they talk about what they want to talk about," the former advisor said.

Still, there were signs of thaw.

On Wednesday, an aide said, Sen. Clinton will meet privately with her delegates and release them to Obama, meaning she wants them to cast their votes for him in the traditional roll call scheduled for later that night.

The campaigns are negotiating a plan in which the roll call vote would be interrupted so that Obama could be declared the winner by unanimous consent -- a move that is seen as offering respect to Clinton while limiting embarrassing division for Obama.

Leading Democrats said Monday that the camps must soothe racial wounds if Obama is to woo crucial voters -- and if the Clintons are to safeguard their legacy.

"I know this is going to happen because Hillary Clinton is a professional," said Rep. Jackson. Just as a statue in New York honors the partnership of ballplayers Reese and Robinson, so someday in Denver "they might have a statue with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama embracing."

"Now is the time," Jackson said, adding, "We'll be watching."




By Peter Wallsten and Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times, August 26, 2008

Sen. Barack Obama's, D-Ill., chief strategist, David Axelrod, spoke out this morning against accusations that Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., was never vetted for the vice presidency.

"I can tell you, the first person that [Obama] sat down and talked to at all about this vice presidential issue was Sen. Clinton. They had a discussion back in early June about it, and he spent more time with Sen. Clinton alone, talking about issues, than he has with Joe Biden or anyone else in the last couple of months. So, that's simply not true," Axelrod explained in an exclusive interview on "This Week With George Stephanopoulos."

The McCain campaign pounced on the issue Sunday morning, releasing an ad attempting to rile up former Hillary supporters. "She won millions of votes. But isn't on his ticket. Why? For speaking the truth?" the ad asks amid clips of Clinton targeting Obama during the primary season.

Axelrod went on to explain why Obama opted for Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., instead of the former first lady: "[Obama] has a high regard for Sen. Clinton ... She's going to be an important voice in moving this country forward in the next administration. But he felt that Sen. Biden would be the best fit for him at this time."

In a separate interview, former Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani questioned Obama's decision not to pick Clinton. "The strong choice would have been Hillary Clinton. The obvious choice would have been Hillary Clinton," Giuliani said. "She had 50 percent of the Democratic vote. Obama has 50 percent of the Democratic vote. You almost have to go to extraordinary lengths to avoid her as the vice presidential pick of the party."

"Sen. Obama has made a choice more out of weakness than strength," Giuliani continued. "Don't go with your strongest candidate, and then go with a candidate that actually emphasizes all your weaknesses and has been quite vocal about them."

And while the former mayor of New York welcomed Biden "to this whole effort again," he made clear that he has no intention of joining him on the campaign trail as McCain's running mate. "I have not been, as far as I can tell, vetted, if they do tell you about that," he said. "I am certain that the candidate -- it's down to three or four candidates. It is not me."

By Mary Bruce, ABC News, August 24, 2008

By Marianne Means, Hearst Newspapers, August 26, 2008

Hillary Clinton was extraordinary tonight! The acknowledgement of the anniversary of women's suffrage heightened the experience of this historic candidacy. But no campaign is ever about one individual.

Senator Clinton made it clear this was never about her, but our goals for America. It was also about the possibility for many of us to live to see the first woman president. As part of the sisterhood of traveling pantsuits, I am proud to have campaigned and to have participated in so many victories. That America recognized the possibility of a woman as commander in chief, that a woman won elections in state after state...... Senator Clinton has paved the way for women to have, as Speaker Pelosi put it several times this week, a seat at the table.

It took us from 1848 in Seneca Falls to 1920 for women to win the right to vote. It will take longer for us to elect a female President. But Hillary Clinton has stood on the shoulders of women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others will stand on her shoulders.

The nation saw an extraordinary stateswoman tonight. It was a deeply emotional experience for me to have been part of this campaign, and to be here tonight to witness an important chapter in American history.

By Ruth Balser, The Boston Globe, August 27, 2008

DENVER, Colorado (AFP) - Hillary Clinton ordered her grieving supporters to unite behind Democratic nominee Barack Obama, in an emotional final act to her White House quest which fell just short of history.

"Whether you voted for me, or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose," said Clinton, who got a euphoric welcome for her primetime speech Tuesday at the Democratic National Convention.

"We are on the same team, and none of us can sit on the sidelines," she said, vowing to work to elect the man who thwarted her presidential dreams, and who will make his own history by becoming the first black presidential nominee.

The former first lady milked a deafening ovation as the crowd, blanketed with signs bearing a stylized version of her "Hillary" signature, feted her almost as though she had won the exhausting primary fight.

She told the thousands in the arena, and millions of her army of women and blue-collar voters watching on television, that despite their fierce primary duel, "Barack Obama is my candidate. And he must be our president."

Wistfully, Clinton looked back on the thousands of miles, and thousands of speeches and meetings that made up her presidential campaign, which finally ended when Obama clinched the nomination in June.

"You taught me so much, you made me laugh and ... you even made me cry. You allowed me to become part of your lives, and you became part of mine."

Senator Obama watched Clinton's speech from Montana, and hailed her oration as an "outstanding" appeal for Democratic unity.

"That was excellent, that was a strong speech. She made the case for why we're going to be unified in November and why we're going to win this election."

Clinton also lashed Republican White House hopeful John McCain as a "twin" of unpopular President George W. Bush, saying he stood for "more war, less diplomacy," and "more economic stagnation, less health care."

The former first lady, introduced by daughter Chelsea, said she had not spent the past "35 years in the trenches" to suffer more "failed leadership" from Republicans.

"No way, no how, no McCain," she said.

The New York senator, however, did not say that Obama was ready to serve as commander-in-chief and sought a political rather than personal connection with the new party champion.

The McCain campaign seized on the omission.

"Senator Clinton ran her presidential campaign making clear that Barack Obama is not prepared to lead as commander in chief," McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said.

"Nowhere tonight, did she alter that assessment, nowhere did she say that Barack Obama is ready to lead," he said.

"Millions of Hillary Clinton supporters and millions of Americans remain concerned about whether Barack Obama is ready to be president."

Clinton's speech was closely scrutinized for her willingness to heal the wounds of a primary campaign which split the Democratic Party in two, and offered hopes to Republicans in a tough year for the demoralized party.

But she gave her blessing to Obama in the first lines of her speech, providing valuable television pictures of an arena of cheering Democrats united, after a compelling nominating battle.

Clinton's 18 million primary voters are vital to Obama, as his White House race with McCain has tightened to a dead heat.

In an effort to forge party unity, Clinton was expected to release her delegates, freeing them to vote for Obama in Wednesday's roll call vote.

The speech was the first of a one-two punch from the Clintons -- former president Bill Clinton will address the convention on Wednesday -- after fighting a barely disguised feud with the Obama campaign.

After her speech, Clinton sent an email to supporters urging them to help Obama win the election.

"Standing on that stage tonight in front of 20,000 Democrats unified behind Senator Obama, I saw a bright future for America," she wrote.

"I saw millions of people across the country working as one to elect the next Democratic President."

Moses Ross, a delegate from Portland, Oregon, said he would support Obama because "Hillary Clinton has asked me to."

"I'm sad that we're not standing here talking about her running for president, but we have to abide by her wishes."

AFP, August 27, 2008

The response is rapturous as she gives a speech full of fire and humor.

She came on, all in orange, to rapturous response, as "a proud mother, as a proud Democrat, as a proud senator from New York, a proud American, and a proud supporter of Barack Obama," and hit those points from different angles again and again. It was never a question of her seeming to be sincere or insincere in her support of Obama -- there was too much energy in the performance to even think about it. Freed from the campaign, she seemed relaxed and happy, full of humor ("my sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits") but full of fire too. This was her own big finish -- both an endorsement and a kind of acceptance speech, as a force in the party and the most important woman in America.




By Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times, August 27, 2008

DENVER - Senator Edward M. Kennedy had just left a hospital bed here when he delivered his speech to the Democratic National Convention on Monday night, after suffering a debilitating bout of kidney stones Sunday upon arriving in town, aides said.

Mr. Kennedy's aides described a harrowing 48-hour period in which it appeared that Mr. Kennedy would not be able to give the convention speech. In June, he had told family members when he left the Duke University Medical Center, where he was operated on for brain cancer, that he was intent on giving the speech.

And with less than two hours to go before he was to take the stage, Mr. Kennedy - sitting unnoticed in a room at the University of Colorado Hospital - told his wife, Victoria, and doctors that he wanted to go to the Pepsi Center and deliver the speech.

He was driven there, accompanied by a doctor and paramedics, perched on a golf cart that took him inside. Mr. Kennedy, with his wife and his niece Caroline at his side, walked gingerly onto the stage, where he delivered a highly acclaimed address. He then returned to the hospital, where he spent the night.

This sequence of events described by Kennedy associates added another dramatic layer to the appearance by Mr. Kennedy that riveted Democrats and produced a sustained and tearful reception among the delegates.

His aides said after Mr. Kennedy finally decided he was well enough to come to Denver over the weekend, they became alarmed when he arrived on Sunday after a long charter airplane flight, and reported being in excruciating pain.

Their first concern was that the pain was somehow related to his cancer, or the chemotherapy and radiology he had undergone, and that it had been complicated by the long flight or the high altitude of the city. A visit to a local hospital Sunday night revealed it was kidney stones and was unrelated to his cancer.

One close associate, who demanded anonymity to discuss any element of Mr. Kennedy's medical condition, disclosed that the senator had suffered an unspecified but serious setback in July after he flew to Washington in the midst of treatment to cast a vote on a Medicare bill.

Mr. Kennedy's aides said he did make one concession to the kidney stones: the speech he gave was about 10 minutes, roughly half the length of an earlier draft.

Kidney stones are notoriously painful, and typically treated with morphine or other painkillers. (Aides would not say whether Mr. Kennedy had been given painkillers, or whether any stones had passed.)

Mr. Kennedy's longtime associate Bob Shrum said that as soon as the senator became ill, he sent an even shorter three-sentence statement that Mr. Kennedy could read at the Pepsi Center. He said Mr. Kennedy, in informing him that he wanted to speak, had rejected that option.

"He said, 'I'm not getting up to go over there and give a three-sentence speech,' " Mr. Shrum said.

Mr. Kennedy's advisers said he had begun working on the speech about three weeks ago and went through rehearsals every day when his health permitted. They said he made clear that he did not want to be represented at the convention only by a videotape tribute.

By all indications, Mr. Kennedy was in better health on Tuesday when he attended a small breakfast in his honor before flying home to Massachusetts.

"He looked tremendously healthy considering what he has been going through," said Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and a longtime Kennedy friend.

By Adam Nagourney, The New York Times, August 26, 2008

DENVER - Let's play a game: Who would draw more contempt if he showed up here this week, Joseph I. Lieberman or John Edwards?

"Lieberman, definitely," said Lola Hopper, a delegate from Texas. "If he showed his face, he'd have to leave town in the back of a trunk."

Edwards? "He'd have to go into hiding, but Lieberman would be worse."

Yep, that seemed the consensus among delegates surveyed about the last two Democratic running mates, both of whom have become party pariahs, but for different reasons.

Mr. Lieberman, the lapsed Democratic senator from Connecticut and Al Gore's running mate in 2000, is supporting John McCain's presidential campaign and will speak at next week's Republican convention. He may even be in the running to be Mr. McCain's Number Two.

Mr. Edwards, the former presidential candidate and John Kerry's wing man in 2004, just recently admitted to an affair two years ago with a former campaign staffer, Rielle Hunter. His wife, Elizabeth, suffers from incurable breast cancer. While Mr. Edwards is hardly missed here ("He's a sick puppy," said New Hampshire delegate Lou D'Allesandro), Mr. Lieberman is certifiable delegate poison.

Indeed, on the scale of veep violations, it appears that Mr. Lieberman committed a much greater infraction jumping into bed with Republicans than Mr. Edwards did with Ms. Hunter. As Phil Johnston, a Massachusetts delegate put it: "Edwards was only unfaithful to his wife. Lieberman was unfaithful to an entire party."

Delegates professed bewilderment at the running mates run amok. "What does it say that our last two vice-presidential candidates are absolutely persona non-grata in their own party?" said Mr. D'Allesandro, a fervent supporter of Mr. Edwards' 2004 presidential bid.

It says, for one, that Joe Biden better keep his nose clean. Mr. Biden, the Delaware senator who Barack Obama picked as his running-mate a few days ago, was looking quite ecstatic Monday night. His home-state delegation was given a primo spot right up front, a testament to the First State's newfound eminence here. It's not clear whether the nosebleed status of the delegations from Connecticut and North Carolina -- Mr. Lieberman and Mr. Edwards' respective home-states -- has anything to do with the crimes of Traitor Joe and Don Juan John.

But some of their former proud constituents were talking about them like local golden-boys-turned-serial-killers. A reporter (O.K., this one) trekked up to where the Connecticut delegation and asked: "Where's Joe Lieberman?" Nancy Dinardo, state party chair, shot back, "If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that."

By Mark Leibovich, The New York Times, August 26, 2008

DENVER - A significant number of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's top fund-raisers remain on the sidelines and unwilling to work for Senator Barack Obama, a nettlesome problem that appears to be contributing to the campaign's failure to keep pace with ambitious fund-raising goals it set for the general election.

The lingering rancor between the sides appears to have intensified at the Democratic convention, with grousing from some Clinton fund-raisers about the way they are being treated by the Obama campaign in terms of hotel rooms, credentials and the like. Tensions were already high, particularly in the wake of revelations that Mr. Obama did not vet Mrs. Clinton or ask her advice on his vice-presidential pick.

Many major Clinton fund-raisers skipped the convention; others are leaving Wednesday, before Mr. Obama's speech.

More broadly, a consensus appears to have emerged among many major Clinton donors that the Obama campaign did not do enough to enlist their support, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen Clinton fund-raisers.

"I've had more contact from the McCain campaign since the nomination than from the Obama campaign," said Calvin Fayard, a New Orleans lawyer, major Clinton fund-raiser and longtime Democratic donor who is not in Denver this week.

Mr. Fayard said he was considering supporting Senator John McCain, the Republican, citing what he perceived as Mr. Obama's inexperience.

After Mrs. Clinton suspended her campaign in June, the Clinton and Obama campaigns publicly vowed to work toward integrating Mrs. Clinton's fund-raising apparatus with Mr. Obama's.

But it appears that much of that effort has fallen short, said former Clinton supporters who have decided to begin raising money for Mr. Obama.

"I believe to date I'm a minority," said Hassan Nemazee, a former national finance chairman for the Clinton campaign who said he had raised more than $500,000 for Mr. Obama in the last few months. "I still firmly believe there is a tremendous amount of untapped resources that can be tapped if the Obama campaign pro-actively engages people in the Clinton world."

Indeed, a New York Times analysis of Federal Election Committee records found that Clinton donors contributed roughly $2 million to the Obama campaign in July, similar to what they gave in June. The amount is not insubstantial, but it appears to fall short of targets originally envisioned by Obama fund-raisers.

When Mr. Obama decided in June to bypass the $84 million in public financing for the general election, campaign officials calculated that to make it worth the additional time he would need to devote off the campaign trail to fund-raising, they needed to raise two to three times the $84 million.

They set out a goal of raising $300 million for the campaign and $180 million for the Democratic Party, several fund-raisers said, or about $100 million a month.

The targets hewed closely with what Obama advisers also cited in interviews as their anticipated budget for the general election, but a spokesman for the campaign insisted on Tuesday that its fund-raising was on target and denied that $100 million a month was ever a real goal, or that the campaign was having problems recruiting Clinton donors.

In July, Mr. Obama and the Democratic National Committee took in about $77 million. That swamped the $53 million Mr. McCain and the Republican National Committee collected. But it was for a second straight month significantly off the pace Obama officials had set.

In June, when Mrs. Clinton suspended her campaign, Clinton and Obama officials estimated they might be able to collect $50 million to $75 million or more from Clinton donors. They appear to be nowhere near that.

And the prospects for the Obama campaign to wring more out of top Clinton fund-raisers who are inactive or unenthusiastic appears to be diminishing. There was much initial wrangling between the two sides over how to best draw in former Clinton fund-raisers, with some arguing that the Obama camp should alter its fund-raising structure to offer top Clinton bundlers titles parallel to those of their Obama counterparts. But Obama officials, who take pride in having less hierarchy in their campaign organization, resisted. In the end, they saw little need to change what was working, several top Clinton fund-raisers said.

Another sore point remains Clinton fund-raisers' contentions that Mr. Obama has not done enough to help Mrs. Clinton retire her debt. The analysis by The Times found that Obama donors gave $300,000 to Mrs. Clinton in July and $135,000 in June.

Perceived snubs leading up to the convention have not helped. Only a handful of Clinton donors got rooms at the coveted Ritz-Carlton, where the biggest Obama fund-raisers are staying.

The Times's analysis of campaign finance records found fewer than 50 out of the more than 300 "Hillraisers" - who have bundled more than $100,000 for Mrs. Clinton - contributed to the Obama campaign in July, up from about 10 the month before.

Just over 70 Hillraisers have contributed to Mr. Obama, meaning the vast majority of Hillraisers appear to have not.

By Michael Luo and Griff Palmer, The New York Times, August 26, 2008

She may have lost the nomination - but she holds her party's fate in her hands. The Democratic convention that opens here today will be the coronation of Barack Obama, choreographed to the last word and smallest gesture. But millions of hands could still wield a fatal dagger. They belong to the supporters of Hillary Clinton.

At the weekend, the last important political piece before this unmatched pageant fell into place, with Obama's choice of Joe Biden, the vastly experienced chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as his vice presidential running mate. At almost the same moment, an army of construction workers set about completing the last physical piece - the transformation of Invesco Field, normally home to the Denver Broncos football team, from mile-high sports arena into a colossal open-air theatre where the nominee presumptive will deliver his acceptance speech before 80,000 people on Thursday evening.

The selection of Biden has been broadly welcomed in party ranks, though perhaps not with overwhelming enthusiasm. If for a variety of reasons (most notably, of course, her husband), Hillary herself could not be enlisted for the 'dream ticket' that would unify the party, the consensus is that Biden was the best alternative available.

He may have been chosen for his seasoning in national security matters - the 'Vladimir Putin candidate,' it is joked, after the Russian onslaught against Georgia played into the strongest suit of Obama's Republican rival John McCain, making Americans wonder whether they were really prepared to make a 47-year-old rookie Senator their commander in chief.

But over the next couple of months, America will see little of Biden the Washington insider, smooth (and often solipsistic and maddeningly garrulous) foreign affairs expert. The Joe Biden on display will be the hardworking, nice-guy son of a Catholic family, raised in industrial Scranton, Pennsylvania, who commutes from his home state of Delaware to Washington - and by train, of all things. This Biden, the Obama camp fervently hopes, will help win over the white blue collar workers that spurned their man and flocked to Hillary in the primaries in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, vital swing states the party must win to reclaim the White House in November.

The Biden unveiled by Obama at their joint introductory rally in Springfield, Illinois, on Saturday was indisputably the second Biden, aimably ripping into his old Senate pal McCain as a Bush clone, who would offer only the prospect of four more years of what Biden called the most disastrous Presidency in modern times. Traditionally, the vice Presidential nominee is the attack dog on the ticket, allowing his partner to tread the higher ground. If Springfield was any guide, Biden is more than up for it.

The hope is that this combative, freewheeling Biden will be the perfect complement for the cool, cerebral and ultra-disciplined Obama. On the other hand, the gaffe prone Biden could prove a dangerous and distracting side-show. It's easy to imagine the reporters' calls to Obama HQ in Chicago, and the aghast replies - "Oh God, did he really say that?" But the Illinois Senator has evidently concluded the risk is worth taking.

Ideally, the convention that unfolds this week will be a nonstop four day party political broadcast, on prime time TV before an unusually receptive audience, more interested in this election than any in modern times. The stage is perfectly set. Yes, what with the Georgia crisis, an unpersuasive performance in a debate organized by Christian evangelicals and a resurgent John McCain, the candidate has had a rough August this far. Even so, an ABC News survey yesterday showed Obama going into the convention with a 49-45 per cent edge nationally among self-described likely voters.

It's a small lead, but a lead nonetheless, and one which is likely to be significantly larger by next weekend. Obama's handlers are busy playing down expectations, but they will be disappointed if convention does not produce a 'bounce' of at least 7 or 8 points. Alas, there is one large complication: the Clinton factor.

After the most closely contested primary season in modern times, many scars have yet to heal. The ABC poll found that one in three of Hillary's supporters are not yet ready to swing behind Obama. By the end their candidate was winning more primaries than she lost. Obama's high point, it could be argued, came in late February. Since then it was been mostly downhill, as he lost in bellwether primaries like Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. By one measure she even collected more votes than Obama, 18-plus million of them. Had Democrats used the Republicans' winner-take-all system in the primaries and eschewed superdelegates, she - not Obama - would be the nominee. Small wonder many of them still feel cheated.

The lady herself has been distinctly gracious in defeat, even though some complain she has been less enthusiastic for Obama than she might have been: in Florida last week she even referred to him as "my opponent." But she has campaigned on his behalf, both in joint appearances and solo; on Saturday she warmly praised the choice of the "purposeful and dynamic" Biden - even though by all accounts, Obama did not hold a serious conversation about the vice-Presidency with the woman who almost defeated him. "It's easy to see that as disrespect, and some Hillary loyalists are going to resent it," says James Carville, Democratic strategist, Clinton loyalist and a prime architect of her husband's White House victory in 1992.

Undoubtedly, Hillary's speech tomorrow will be a rousing call to unity. But the reminders of what might have been will be everywhere. Her name will be formally placed in nomination, and even though she will tell her supporters to swing behind her rival, virtually half the elected delegates in the Pepsi Center, where the convention is being held, were sent there on her behalf.

Probably, most of them will follow those instructions. If anything figures larger in the collective Democratic soul than memories of the epic Obama/Clinton struggle, it is the burning desire to win back the White House, in a year which could not be more favourable. But what could prevent it is a bruising convention.

Twice in recent times precisely that has happened, in 1976 when Ronald Reagan came close to unseating Gerald Ford at the Republican convention in Kansas City, and in 1980 when Edward Kennedy carried a doomed but unrelenting challenge to Jimmy Carter to the bitter end. Not by co-incidence, Ford and Carter, incumbent Presidents, both lost. An even if Hillary proves a good loser, there is no guarantee that her husband, visibly far more irked at Obama's win, will behave similarly. Bill Clinton speaks on Wednesday evening. No words this week will be more minutely parsed, by every political analyst in the land.

And so to the remarkable ad aired yesterday by the McCain campaign. It positively eggs on disgruntled Hillary supporters, especially women, to cast in their lot with the Republican. "Passed Over," it is called, asking why she was not given the No. 2 spot. "She won millions of votes," a woman's voice softly intones, "but isn't on his ticket. Why? For speaking the truth." The ad then runs clips of the former First Lady, first complaining in one of the Democratic debates earlier this year how Obama rarely gives specifics of his plans, and then evoking the name of Tony Rezko, the indicted Chicago graft-peddler who was an Obama fundraiser and once even sold him real estate.

Surely, one would presume, Democrats will not be so easily fooled. But an NBC/ Wall Street last week found, stunningly, that of Hillary voters in the primaries, 27 per cent were undecided who to vote for in November, while 21 per cent claimed to have switched to McCain - that fierce pro-life advocate, self-confessed ignoramus on the economy, ardent supporter of every one of George W. Bush's wars and, if his own words are any guide, not averse to a few more. Could the most diehard Hillary believer go quite that far to spite Obama? Joe Biden's most important task will be to help make sure they do not, and prevent his running mate's week in the limelight from being merely a prelude to disaster.

Assuming the Clinton problem can be resolved, this has every prospect of being a convention for the ages.

Never before has an African American had a serious chance of reaching the Oval Office, and at a moment when the country's belief in itself has rarely been more fragile. Never has interest, not just in the US, but around the world, been as powerful. The Obama life story, compelling by American standards and by those of any other country scarcely believable, will be told as never before.

At the end there will be Obama's words to the 80,000 believers in Invesco Field. As a rule, convention speeches that linger in the memory do so for the wrong reasons. An exception was Obama's inspirational keynote address to John Kerry's convention in Boston four years ago, that turned him overnight into a national figure, though he had not even been elected to the Senate. On Thursday evening - a drenching Colorado thunderstorm of course permitting - he can do even better still.

By Rupert Cornwell, The Independent, 24 August 2008

Here in Denver, it's easy to blame the Clintons. Out on the convention floor, their diehards are there with their Hillary buttons, plotting to run in 2012, whining on about the 18 million cracks in that glass ceiling, secretly wishing John McCain will win in November. Truth is, the Obama people feel, they lost - get over it!

And Bill's all upset about being accused of being racist? Well, if the cap fits! And what about Hillary talking about hard-working white people? A favourite badge here for Obama loyalists is "Hard working white person for Hillary." The Clintons feel dissed? But they have half the convention! Hillary speaks tonight and Bill speaks tomorrow. She's getting a roll call vote. In her speech, Michelle Obama even talked about those 18 million cracks.

But this kind of thinking is exactly how to lose to McCain. It's the Obama people who need to get over it - and quickly. Continuing to bear a grudge will only help McCain. But since June it seems he's failed to take even basic steps to placate the Clintons and their supporters. He's given Hillary some public things he didn't have to do - such as the roll call vote - but missed out the small pleasantries and behind the scenes stuff that could have really made the difference.

At this stage, the rights and the wrongs don't really matter. Did Hillary demean Obama? Did Bill play the race card? It's of only academic relevance right now. Obama won and he needs Clinton supporters on board. Yet he's hardly spoken to Bill Clinton and he's made it clear by omission that he doesn't see a former two-term president as a potential wise counsel.

He let Clinton supporters believe that Hillary might be his veep choice when she wasn't even vetted - and this after he'd said she'd be on anyone's shortlist. He talked about helping retire her debt but doesn't seem to have put himself out trying to do so.

Take Representative Loretta Sanchez as an example. The California congresswoman hasn't endorsed Obama yet. Why not? He hasn't asked.

She was outside the Pepsi Centre here a few minutes ago, saying: "He could pick up the phone, he could call me.... Hillary is out there, she is busting her behind for Barack...his people can also write cheques." She continued: "He's just got to call and ask me for my endorsement. It's easy....It's about showing Hillary supporters love."

You could view this as silly emotional stuff, even political extortion. Maybe it is. But how hard is it to pick up the phone to these people? Even if you think they're ridiculous, don't let them know that. As one Hillary aide remarked this week, Bill Clinton's not a complicated person. How about a public statement saying he never played the race card? An Obama visit to the Clinton Library in Little Rock? It wouldn't have been hard.

Trouble is, the perception that Obama has spurned the Clintons plays into the notion that he is arrogant, aloof and disdainful, that he thinks he's got the election sewn up already and doesn't need any help. A little magnanimity would have been just good politics.

The Obama campaign's talking points are all about the rift stories being media-generated blather. But no one really buys that.

So Obama has a lot of work to do with the Clintons. Problem is, what might have been easy to do in June and July is now a lot harder.

By Toby Harnden, The Telegraph, August 26, 2008

Obama is inexperienced, fluffy and arrogant. I can't back that.

I've never voted for a Republican presidential candidate, but this year is different. I'm voting for John McCain.

Hillary Clinton did a brave and unusual thing in Denver - she directly confronted her own supporters over their motives

It was hot and sweaty in Denver on Tuesday, getting more humid as evening drew in. But just moments before Hillary Clinton was due to address the Democratic party's national convention, the skies opened in drenching rain, clearing the air. If you wanted a perfect metaphor – a pathetic fallacy, in fact - for Hillary Clinton's speech this evening, then there it was.

To call Clinton's speech eagerly awaited would be an understatement. The drumbeat of the media of Clintonian reluctance in the last week - including a curious New York Times article that found even Clinton's supporters complaining that she was campaigning for Barack Obama too tepidly - has been a steady background to the convention, as if Hillary was Achilles sulking in her tent, nursing her grievances and refusing to fight. But not any more. Last night's effort should delete any serious idea that she remains disenchanted or passively hostile towards Obama. She made that obvious right from the outset - as she had to - by saying:

I am honoured to be here tonight. I'm here tonight as a proud mother. As a proud Democrat. As a proud senator from New York. A proud American. And a proud supporter of Barack Obama.

And whether you voted for me, or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose. We are on the same team, and none of us can afford to sit on the sidelines.

But it wasn't her up-front support for Obama that was most effective in blunting the Clintonian refuseniks in the Pepsi Centre, not to mention the more worrying guerillas prowling around Denver in their Puma T-shirts. Instead it was her brilliant use of a rhetorical device that showed her to be far more effective in argument than her utilitarian speaking style suggests.

Hillary Clinton is no barnstorming speaker, as a rule. She showed it again for much of last night, when she repeatedly stepped on her own applause lines and so stifled the audience's enthusiasm when she could have ridden it, as Bill Clinton would have. Not long into the speech she seemed to have settled into a familiar theme of her stump speeches during the primaries - the recitation of various struggling Americans who urged her on, such as the small boy who sold his bicycle to donate to her campaign, and many others.

Some of these inspirations became familiar friends to anyone following the long primary season (at least one turned out not to be true, but that wasn't Clinton's fault). Some of them resurfaced one more time in Denver last night:

I will always remember the young man in a Marine Corps T-shirt who waited months for medical care and he said to me: 'Take care of my buddies; a lot of them are still over there, and then will you please take care of me?'

But this time, there was a twist - the twist of a knife. After thanking her supporters, Clinton listed the policies that she had fought for, noting: "Those are the reasons I ran for president. and those are the reasons I support Barack Obama for president." Then she stopped dead in her tracks, and said:

I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that young boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?

At a stroke Clinton had confronted her supporters, directly, although in such a way that it turned the question back on those who cling to her candidacy to the point of withholding their votes from Obama. Instead, they were suddenly cast adrift on their own egos.

Such a profound challenge by a politician to her own supporters is very rare indeed. It's a luxury that only a secure and confident leader can afford. It also absolves Clinton herself of responsibility of what any remaining rump of her supporters choose to do. It's not about her now - it's about them.

By Richard Adams, The Guardian, August 27 2008

DENVER - The thunderous roar in the arena, the fists in the air, the chorus of 'Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!" - this was the moment she had been waiting for here in the Mile High City.

But this wasn't her time. And it wasn't her convention. So, with a large smile and a simple, "I am a proud supporter of Barack Obama," Hillary Rodham Clinton handed it over to her one-time rival.

The moment brought tears in the Utah delegate section and hooting from Washington state supporters.

"She did it," yelled Nicholas Petrish, a Washington delegate when Clinton gave her endorsement to Obama. A burly electrician, Petrish, an Obama supporter, said he saw tears in Clinton's eyes but yelled, "Go baby go!"

"We love you Hillary!" screamed a man from Michigan.

All evening, Clinton - and her all-important speech - was the talk of the Pepsi Center. Delegates from Florida wondered what she would say to bring the party together. Women in Ohio and New York and West Virginia wore 'Hillary for President' buttons. California delegates held signs reading "18 million cracks" - referring to the 18 million votes Clinton received in the Democratic primaries and caucuses.

For the moment, it was all Hillary.

"This is our day," said Erin Lally, a former state representative from Ohio who covered her red jacket with Clinton stickers and buttons. "Hillary deserves one big thank you, and she's got one."

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), one of Clinton's most loyal congressional supporters, said the day was a "special one" for the former first lady.

"I am so proud of her," Jackson Lee said.

Clinton's former campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, said the senator had practiced her speech all day, in between events to rally her supporters.

Beforehand, McAuliffe said he gave her a kiss on the cheek and told her to "knock it out of the park."

"She knew what she had to do, and boy did she do it," McAuliffe declared. "Right outta the park!"

"Bring on the unity."

The mood among Hillary delegates reflected a ready willingness to embrace Obama.

Tony Vanderbloemer, a Wisconsin delegate, sporting a yellow Hillary shirt, put it this way: "It won't be difficult for me to support Obama. But it's going to be very difficult for me to not vote for Hillary."

Still, there was some bittersweet disappointment.

Brian Stratton, the mayor of Schenectady, N.Y., and a one-time Clinton supporter, even slipped up in describing the transition.

"The primary race is over and as a nation and party we have to get behind her - I mean get behind him," Stratton said.

Obama delegates in the Washington state delegation had put on blue Hillary stick-on buttons that were being distributed in the convention hall as a symbol of unity. Democratic volunteers across the hall handed out signs that read "Unity." Some had Clinton's name. Others had Obama's.

"They asked if we would all be united," said Kristine Petereit. "In our internal delegation we wanted to support and rally."

"I'm a good soldier," Petrish said, "and I do what I'm told."

But it wasn't that easy for some.

"It's been a rough campaign for us, and it's going to be rough 'till November," said Nadia Morgen, a 36-year-old technical writer and Clinton supporter from Washington State.

One of the most emotional moments came when Clinton invoked Harriet Tubman's advice to slaves in the underground railroad of 19th-century America. "If you want a taste of freedom keep going," Clinton said.

"That gave me goose bumps," Petrish said.

Morgen said Clinton delivered "a beautiful speech."

"I don't think anything more could be asked of her," Morgen said. "I'm searching for the words for this. It struck a chord with everyone."

But Mary Goulding, a Clinton delegate from Wisconsin, was more blunt.

"You've heard of the Period Club?" Goulding asked. "Put a period on it tomorrow and move on."

By Amie Parnes & David Rogers, Politico, August 27, 2008

DENVER - For one evening, their political world was perfect. Or so it seemed.

Standing before thousands of delegates, almost half of them her backers, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton declared it time "to unite as a single party with a single purpose" and urged her followers to help elect once-bitter rival Barack Obama. "We are on the same team," she said, after allowing the applause to build to a crescendo and linger, longer than usual - much like the Democratic primary race itself.

"Barack Obama is my candidate," she said. "And he must be our president."

But did she mean it? And would it matter?

True, her challenges Tuesday night were impossibly high, perhaps mutually exclusive.

She had to both promote her political future and unify her party. Clinton had to somehow convince people that she honestly thought Obama was ready for the presidency. But something stood in her way: Her words.

- Dec. 3, 2007: "So you decide which makes more sense: Entrust our country to someone who is ready on Day One ... or to put America in the hands of someone with little national or international experience, who started running for president the day he arrived in the U.S. Senate."

- March 2008. "I know Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Sen. Obama has a speech he gave in 2002."

- Feb. 23, 2008: "Now, I could stand up here and say, 'Let's just get everybody together. Let's get unified.' The skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect."

There in no such thing as a perfect world, though the Clinton and Obama image teams tried their best to create one. Hundreds of "Hillary" signs danced before the TV cameras, bearing her breezy blue signature. Her misty-eyed husband, former President Clinton, watched from above.

By the time she was done, Sen. Clinton had delivered a strong, convincing affirmation of Obama and, just as importantly, a thumping of McCain. She did her part. Her husband takes the stage Wednesday and then Obama must make his case to the American people that he will be ready on Day One.

That there's more to him than a single speech.

That he's the perfect man for troubled times. She brought the party together, for one night anyway, and now it's up to Obama to close the deal with voters.

Unlike Obama, she no longer needs to worry about her favorability ratings so there was no pulling punches.

"No way," Clinton said. "No how. No McCain."

She said McCain would be an extension of the Bush administration. No jobs. Poor health care coverage. High gas prices. Home foreclosures. "More war," she said, "Less diplomacy. More of a government where the privileged comes first, and everyone else come last."

In other words, Clinton seemed to say, even if Obama is everything she said during the campaign, he's still a better candidate than McCain. The speech was as much of an attack on McCain as it was an embrace of Obama. "We don't need four more years of the last eight years," she said.

The crowd, Obama and Clinton delegates alike, loved it.

She took the high road Tuesday night because it was also her best road politically; if Obama wins, she still emerges as a central voice in American liberalism, replacing the ailing Sen. Edward Kennedy. And if Obama loses, as Hillary said he would during the campaign, she is blameless and the party can turn back to her without guilt in four years.

Behind the scenes Tuesday, the Obama and Clinton camps struck a tentative deal that would allow some states to cast votes in a roll call before somebody - possibly Clinton herself - cuts short the tally and asks the convention to nominate Obama by unanimous consent. This was her price for ending her historic bid for the presidency in a manner that, however messy, still left Obama in a stronger position than Kennedy left Jimmy Carter in 1980, when the Massachusetts senator extracted platform concessions and shrank from the traditional unity show at the final gavel.

But she did extract her price.

The bill came due Tuesday. The crowd. The applause. The promise of a vote Wednesday, and a speech laced 17 times by some variation of the pronoun "I."

"You never gave up," Clinton told her delegates, a phrase that so perfectly fits her. "You never gave up. And together we made history."

By Ron Fournier, The Associated Press, August 27, 2008

DENVER - Hillary Rodham Clinton had a simple message Tuesday for her still loyal supporters: This election isn't about her.

The former first lady ceded the nomination that was almost hers in a prime-time speech to Democratic delegates, closing another chapter in a long, improbable political career that took her from supportive spouse to political powerhouse.

She was warmly embraced by delegates split between herself and Barack Obama in the primary. Any who were still angry over her loss were drowned out in applause when she opened her speech by declaring herself "a proud supporter of Barack Obama."

She exhorted her backers - "my sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits," she called them - to remember who was most important in this campaign.

"I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me?" she said. She urged them instead to remember Marines who have served their country, single mothers, families barely getting by on minimum wage and other struggling Americans.

"You haven't worked so hard over the last 18 months, or endured the last eight years, to suffer through more failed leadership," Clinton told the delegates. "No way. No how. No McCain."

The line drew applause from Obama, who was watching on television from Billings, Mont., with supporters and reporters.

Clinton spoke on the eve of the delegate roll call in which both she and Obama will be nominated for president. But under a deal between the two camps, only some delegates will get the opportunity to cast a historic vote for either a woman or a black man before the split decision will be cut off in favor of unanimous consent for Obama.

Advisers to Clinton and Obama sent a joint letter Tuesday night instructing state delegation chairs to distribute vote tally sheets to delegates Wednesday and return them by 4 p.m. local time, just as the vote is scheduled to get under way.

The letter said Clinton would have one nominating speech and two seconding speeches, followed by Obama's nominating speech and three seconding speeches - totaling no more than 15 minutes for each candidate. Then the roll call will begin, said the letter signed by Obama senior adviser Jeff Berman, Clinton senior adviser Craig Smith and convention secretary Alice Germond.

Still, many details were unclear - which states would get a chance to vote, whether Clinton herself would cut it off in acclamation for Obama and if floor demonstrations would be tolerated.

The dealmaking and lack of direction left Clinton supporters frustrated. Clinton fueled confusion by refusing to publicly instruct her delegates how to vote, though she said she'll back Obama when the time comes. She planned to meet with her delegates Wednesday.

All the Clintons, a longtime royal family of Democratic politics, were on hand to pass the torch to Obama. Clinton was introduced by her daughter Chelsea, while her husband watched from a box seat above the Arkansas delegation. Not everyone with a ticket could get in to hear Clinton after fire marshals declared the hall filled to capacity.

The convention hall was brimming with delegates wearing Clinton gear. There were Hillary T-shirts, buttons and stickers. Some delegates brought signs promoting Clinton for president. Many wore white shirts to mark the 88th anniversary of women's suffrage.

"My mother was born before women could vote," Clinton reminded them. "But in this election my daughter got to vote for her mother for president."

The Obama campaign gave Clinton her due. Before she took the stage Tuesday night, Obama's campaign distributed "Hillary" signs throughout the Pepsi Center. But only sentences into Clinton's speech, those signs were quickly swapped out for others proclaiming either "Obama" or "Hillary" on one side, and "Unity" on the other.

Some Clinton delegates weren't ready for so quick a pivot.

"We love you Hillary!" some shouted.

Jennie Lou Leeder, a Clinton delegate from Llado, Texas, said Clinton "was so good tonight, I was crying."

Did her speech help to unify the party?

"It's not Hillary's job to bring this party together," Leeder said. "It's Barack Obama's job to bring this party together."

Daniel Kagan, a Clinton delegate from Englewood, Colo., said he felt pride and sadness watching Clinton speak. He was proud of her accomplishments, but saddened by the realization that her campaign was truly over.

Nevertheless, Kagan said, the speech will help to unify the party.

"I know that it's changed attitudes," Kagan said. "I saw some of my colleagues standing up and applauding for Obama for the first time."

It was the culmination of an emotional day for Clinton loyalists, still wondering how the final act would play out in Wednesday's roll call vote and whether they would have a chance to give their candidate one last show of support.

Party leaders said they feared a nationally televised floor demonstration Wednesday that would underscore party divisions.

"It seems to be a little more of a problem than I anticipated," former Democratic Party chairman Don Fowler told the AP. "All you need is 200 people in that crowd to boo and stuff like that and it will be replayed 900 times. And that's not what you want out of this."

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press, August 27, 2008

DENVER - Hillary Rodham Clinton closed the book on her 2008 presidential bid with an emphatic plea for the party to unite behind Barack Obama.

Now the Democratic convention spotlight turns to her husband, as former President Bill Clinton takes to the prime-time television stage Wednesday evening. He is expected to launch attacks on the Republican's presumptive presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, and on the Bush administration.

Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, Obama's choice as a running mate, will get prime-time exposure as well.

Hillary Clinton, who won 18 million votes but still failed to earn her party's nomination, planned to meet with delegates who still want to cast ballots for her during the nominating roll call Wednesday evening - a symbolic move before Obama is nominated, presumably by acclamation. Clinton has not indicated whether she would have her name placed in nomination or seek a formal roll call vote.

Clinton's aides said it remained unclear how exactly the meeting with the delegates would play out, or how her supporters will react.

"It's not Hillary's job to bring this party together," said Jennie Lou Leeder, a Clinton delegate from Llado, Texas. "It's Barack Obama's job to bring this party together."

It's the kind of talk that Clinton tried to discourage. "I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me?" she said Tuesday night in her convention speech, addressing her supporters.

Clinton used her prime-time convention appearance to try to silence infighting over how to honor Clinton's campaign without distracting from Obama's upcoming contest against McCain.

"Barack Obama is my candidate, and he must be our president," she said.

Even so, bringing the Democratic Party together is going to take more than a single speech. The best unifier among Democrats going into the final sprint might just be McCain.

"Arizonans are also proud of their political tradition, from Barry Goldwater to Mo Udall to Bruce Babbitt. There's a pattern here," Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano told delegates Tuesday as part of the chorus eviscerating McCain. Goldwater, Udall and Babbitt all sought the presidency; none succeeded.

"Speaking for myself, and for at least this coming election, this is one Arizona tradition I'd like to see continue," Napolitano said.

Republicans, meanwhile, struggled for a bit of the spotlight. McCain has been airing commercials quoting critical comments from Obama's former rivals. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a potential running mate for McCain, came to Denver and said, "Barack Obama is a charming and fine person with a lovely family, but he's not ready to be president."

Bill Clinton, whose reputation took some hits during the primary season, stayed away from his wife and daughter Chelsea - who introduced her mother on stage Tuesday evening. Instead, he watched his wife's speech from convention floor box seats.

"She was great," Clinton told The Associated Press as he left the convention hall. "Weren't you proud of her?"

Obama, 47, formally receives the nomination Wednesday. He delivers his acceptance speech Thursday night at a football stadium. An estimated 75,000 tickets have been distributed for the event, meant to stir comparisons with John F. Kennedy's appearance at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960.

McCain and his yet-unnamed vice presidential pick are scheduled to receive their formal nomination at the Republican convention in Minneapolis next week.

By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press, August 27, 2008