Some saw spectacular, others just spectacle

Analysts differ on message sent by venue

Barack Obama's image was shown on a large screen last night at Invesco Field as he accepted the Democratic nomination for president. (yoon s. byun/globe staff)

DENVER - Everything about Barack Obama's nomination celebration last night was on an outsize scale: crowd size, the glitz, the traffic, and perhaps most of all, the political risk.

Obama addressed more than 84,000 spectators, delivering a show packed with rock stars, JumboTron video presentations, and, in the finale, fireworks shooting from the stage, a celebrity-studded event that Republicans would view as validation of their argument that Obama is a vanity candidate who lacks the gravity and substance to be president.

"It is a high wire act, there's no question about that," said Robert Schmuhl, a political scientist from the University of Notre Dame.

The crowd at Invesco Field was lively. Under a warm sun, with the Rockies in the background, people from across the country danced and waved American flags as the opening acts began.

Republicans, however, seemed almost as pleased. They viewed the display as proof of their assertion, lodged in tough television commercials over the last month, that Obama is a vapid candidate with crowd appeal but little else. The Republican National Committee mocked the faux-Greek column backdrop on the set behind Obama's podium as a "Temple of Obama," and toga-clad College Republicans taunted the Democrats on their way to the stadium.

"Shield your face from the great Obama!" they chanted. "Obama will beat Michael Phelps by walking on water."

The set seemed intended to imbue the event with presidential imagery; a blue carpet with white stars covered the stage, which jutted into the crowd so that Obama would be surrounded by people during his speech. While the columns may look large on television, inside the stadium they looked small amid a sea of people. Afterward, Obama waved goodbye on a swell of symphonic triumphal music, rather than rock.

Dan Schnur, communications director for John McCain's 2000 campaign and now director of the Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, said the tactic was probably an attempt to help Obama seem closer to the people because, on television, the spectators are a stand-in for the viewing audience. But he wasn't sure that it would work.

"There's no question that Obama's people are doing everything they can to turn it into a more intimate venue, but there is only so much intimacy you can create" in such a large stadium, he said.

The superstar cast appeared geared to appeal to a broad spectrum of the electorate and to show Obama as a candidate with universal appeal. Jennifer Hudson, the Academy Award-winning "Dreamgirls" star, performed a heart-stopping rendition of the national anthem; the crowd swayed and sang along withwill.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas as he performed his musical tribute "Yes We Can," sung over samples of Obama's speeches. Sheryl Crow sang "A Change Would Do You Good."

And gymnast Shawn Johnson, the 16-year-old Olympic gold medalist, led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance.

"If anybody right now is the all-American girl next door, it's Shawn Johnson," said Dennis Goldford, a political scientist from Drake University in Iowa, noting that when Johnson returned from Beijing to her hometown of West Des Moines this month, she was received by a crowd of about 7,000, including many young families. "That's part of what the Obama folks want to attach to Obama. He may be a different color, but he's as all-American as everyone else."

The outdoor setting echoed not only John F. Kennedy's Democratic nomination acceptance speech in 1960 at Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles but also Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech" on the National Mall in Washington 45 years ago yesterday.

The Obama campaign also saw the event as an enormous organizing opportunity in a critical swing state. Twice the crowd was asked to send a text message to the campaign with their reason for supporting Obama - which let the campaign collect cellphone numbers not otherwise publicly available. Between the acts, the messages people sent ran in a crawl along the bottom of the screen.

"On the night of Nov. 4, our friends will look back and realize this night, this convention, is one of the reasons we turned Colorado blue," David Plouffe, the campaign manager, told the crowd.