POLITICO — Barack Obama’s Democratic National Convention keynote delivered 10 years ago Sunday evening started his journey to the White House.
Those 18 minutes in Boston reshaped American politics. Obama spent a long passage of his speech extolling Democratic nominee John Kerry, but he wasn’t the one whose presidential prospects most people left the Fleet Center buzzing about. Caught by surprise by a convention keynote that was actually worth watching, the crowd went wild. Even Hillary Clinton and Jesse Jackson were spotted clapping for him.
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A decade later, the speech remains a road map to the Obama agenda — and the many places where he’s fallen short in his term and a half so far.
The parts that hold up well: transitioning from a manufacturing base, the pursuit of enemies (like Osama bin Laden), a cooperative economy, voting rights, solving the “health care crisis,” “a road to opportunity” for the middle class.
But parts come across as the oratorical equivalent of an embarrassing hairdo in a high school yearbook.
Read more at Politico.
