What the Mile High backdrop says about “The Speech”
How much will the grand stage and Greek columns and general aura of a mammoth stadium diminish Obama’s stated goal of tonight’s long-awaited speech to “communicate (with) middle-class families…”?
The idea of putting the Dem nominee with a “elitist” image problem on an immense and lavishly decorated platform in the middle of a football stadium may seem just silly to most people. But the McCain campaign and all conservatives are pouncing on this seeming gaffe, labeling it as proof that Obama is everything from amazingly “put of touch” to an emerging egocentric dictator who will destroy democracy. That’s bad.
The Obama team has apparently received the message loud and clear, and after having the huge stage assembled a few days ago, construction workers are going about toning down the awe-inspiring backdrop at Mile High and ripping out the most lavish of the, well, lavish decorations.
The Greek columns now symbolize a building in Washington, TV camera angles will be tweaked to portray Obama as being “in” the crowd instead of dozens of feet away and above the delegates on the field.
On Thursday afternoon, 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. (Wary of the field’s corporate-sounding name, Obama campaign spokespeople and surrogates were referring to it with the name of the stadium it replaced, Mile High.)
They were still testing camera angles to the very end, 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 had 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.”
This stage snafu is less of a major controversy than perhaps a disturbing metaphor for Obama’s big speech tonight. Will Obama be able to tear away the lofty rhetoric that he wields so well and that shot him up the political depth chart in record time? Can he really deliver a speech tonight that makes voters forget about the backdrop or Obama’s past speeches and make them believe that he really does understand their problems and has plenty of substance to “deliver”?
Or maybe the entire thing will come across as fake as the “temple” behind Obama when he walks across the stage in Denver.
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I think Obama will try and pull a “Reagan”esk kind of speech, knowing that the subtext of this entire campaign going forward will hinge on his race and if White America feels comfortable enough to give him the reins of power. Conservatives will use his background and Muslim sounding name as a backdoor attempt at “racial profiling” while McCain will use “celebrity” to bring him and the Democratic Party down to a losing party - all knowing that people don’t vote on the issues as much as they do their gut feelings and emotions.