Capitol Idea: Dem Stunt Diminishes Obama's Big Night

By Scott Nance

Everything about Democrat Barack Obama's plan to accept his party's 2008 presidential nomination at the Denver football stadium is big.

It represents bigger thinking, and the venue is certainly big.

The substance of the speech may not be much different than delivering it at the main convention site at the Pepsi Center, but the atmospherics all become bigger.

In my mind's eye, I can see how coverage of Obama's speech will play on television. At Invesco Field, I can imagine all kinds of big, wide camera shots from above, and from all around the stadium.

That kind of coverage could make Obama seem much bigger than he is, lending him more the appearance and atmosphere of, say, the Pope instead of a presidential candidate.

Again, the speech itself won't necessarily be any different, but it will likely seem bigger just because of the venue.

That alone will raise the bar for rival John McCain when a week later, McCain delivers his own acceptance speech for Republicans. That McCain will be giving his speech in the relatively cramped confines of a traditional convention center will probably instantly create, consciously or unconsciously, more negative impressions of the speech.

While Obama can rest on atmospherics, McCain won't have that benefit. The weight will be on him to actually deliver a bigger speech in terms of subsance just to keep up.

Putting that sort of intense pressure on McCain and his speechmaking was a big political move on the part of Obama, as well.

So it's odd that the Democrats have launched a fundraising stunt that actually seems to diminish the size of the big Obama event.

To raise money for their Senate candidates, Democrats have actually turned their presidential nomination into a contest.

Donna Brazile, a top Democratic strategist who was Al Gore's 2000 campaign manager, sent an email to supporters this week breathlessly building up the size of Obama's speech.

"In our twenty-four hour news age, lots of big political events come. And then they go," she writes. "But this August, when Barack Obama strides on to a stage in Denver to accept the presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention, it will be a moment crystallized in American lore. Historians will be talking about it for generations to come."

Then she delivers the punchline on behalf of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC): "If you donate to the DSCC today - even as little as $5 - you will be entered into a contest that could win you and a guest a trip to Denver for the 2008 Democratic National Convention in August."

That just sounds a little cheesy, too much like a radio station call-in contest for tickets to a rock concert.

In one way, the DSCC gambit is probably a smart fundraising move. But in another way, I can't help but feel that for all of Obama's trying to make the event big, Brazile has just reduced this so-called historical event to just another stadium show.

The publisher of On The Hill and its sister site, Life, The Universe ..., Scott Nance has covered government and Washington for more than a decade. Capitol Idea is his regular column from Washington.

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