Obama's keys to a successful convention
DEMOCRATS HEAD for Denver this weekend hopeful but nervous.
With the economy stumbling and voters deeply discontented after eight years of Republican rule, the normal pattern of American politics should spell a Democratic November.
And yet, Barack Obama has not opened a convincing lead over Republican John McCain. Quite the contrary, in the run-up to the conventions, McCain is the one making progress.
Although Obama had enjoyed a small lead, several recent polls have showed it narrowing, with McCain now right on his heels.
One, a Zogby survey, even shows McCain ahead 46 percent to 41 percent among likely voters, sending a frisson of unease through the Democratic ranks.
"The Zogby poll has everyone a little concerned," reports Obama supporter Phil Johnston, former chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party.
As far as real news goes, conventions are more famine than feast. Yet they do give both candidate and party a chance to project a concerted message.
Sometimes it works: In 1992, with independent Ross Perot (temporarily) exiting the presidential race on the very day that Bill Clinton accepted the nomination, Clinton used the limelight to real advantage, jumping to a lead he never relinquished.
And sometimes it doesn't. With the GOP's ideological warriors seizing the spotlight, the same year's Republican conclave proved far less helpful for incumbent George H. W. Bush.
So what are the challenges Obama and the Democrats face this year?
First, to make the convention's take-away message one that's about Obama and his values and vision, and not Bill Clinton and the presidential past or Hillary Clinton and her possible future.
There, Obama may well find himself struggling against the self-celebratory instincts of the former president, who speaks on Wednesday, and the strategic interests of Mrs. Clinton, who headlines Tuesday night.
As Al Gore discovered in 2000, Bill Clinton has a knack for turning the spotlight back on himself.
This is a new era, however. And particularly after his off-putting performance in the primary campaign, Clinton needs to park his outsized ego at the door and deliver a powerful argument for this year's candidate.
As Obama has already discovered, the former president's wife is also reluctant to cede the stage. With the Clintons already occupying the convention spotlight for two nights, Hillary Clinton has also secured agreement to have her name put in nomination and to have a roll call vote, supposedly to honor her campaign and supporters.
Some of those supporters find that more quizzical than cathartic.
"What's the point of a roll call? It is a distraction that takes away from the crowning moment for our nominee," says one exasperated Clinton backer. "Does it always have to be about them?"
With a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showing that only half of her primary voters have settled on Obama, Clinton needs to do everything she can to bring them aboard. Thus she would do better to forgo the roll call and move that Obama be nominated by acclamation.
"This convention needs to be about Barack Obama, period," says Johnston. "Anything that detracts from that message is a problem for us in the fall."
Obama faces several crucial tasks when he finally takes the podium.
"He needs to illustrate his complete narrative and tell his personal story as America's story, so that when he speaks about values - responsibility, hard work, and opportunity - they are his values and America's values," says Democratic strategist John Sasso. "Then people will see that the struggles they are facing are the struggles he's faced."
Second, Obama has to present his domestic policy pieces in a way that gives white working-class voters a clear, compelling reason to back him.
Finally, he needs to persuade viewers that he would be an acceptable commander in chief. That's an area where McCain currently enjoys a considerable advantage - and with an aggressive Russia and Iraq and Afghanistan keeping foreign affairs on the front-burner, it's a crucial threshold.
Obama obviously can't control the Clintons. (Who can?) But if he can meet those challenges, he will have made his own speech a success.
Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com. 