What does Obama need to do in his Thursday night acceptance speech?
I think Obama’s great challenge is to combine inspiration and “change we can believe in” with substance we can believe in. The substance is there — he just has to tell people. This is one of the greatest platforms he’s gonna get. Al Gore in 2000 got one of the biggest bounces out of a convention speech anyone has ever had, something around 13 to 18 points. And it had a lot of substance to it. But it was clothed in human terms, talking about families he met and, for Gore, some inspirational quality. I think Obama will give a superb speech, but it has to have substance in it as well as spirit. –Tom Schaller *** CNN television analyst John King took a break from live coverage from the floor of the Pepsi Arena in Denver to talk about the media effects of national party conventions. People dismiss conventions as pageantry, but the party and candidate that gets the biggest polling bump tends to win. Is it an oversimplification to call them pageants? It is an oversimplification. It’s obviou
