On July 27, 2004, future United States president Barack Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, officially titled The Audacity of Hope. At the time, Obama was a member of the Illinois Senate and the Democratic Party nominee for the 2004 United States Senate election in Illinois. His unexpectedly large victory in the March primary had already made him a rising star within the party, and led to the reissue of his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father. The speech was well received, which further elevated Obama's political profile and led to his reissued memoir becoming a bestseller.
Obama was selected to deliver the keynote by Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and his campaign in early July 2004, after Kerry was impressed during joint appearances by the two candidates in Illinois. Obama largely wrote the speech himself, with later edits from the Kerry campaign. It was delivered on the second night of the convention. In just under twenty minutes, the address included a biographical sketch of Obama, his vision of America, and the reasons for his support for Kerry. Unlike almost all prior and subsequent convention keynote addresses, it was not televised by the commercial broadcast networks and was only seen by a combined television audience of about nine million on PBS, cable news stations, and C-SPAN. Nevertheless, the speech is credited with launching Obama's national political career and leading to his 2008 election as president. Since its delivery, several academics have studied the speech, both for the various narratives it describes as well as its implications for racial reconciliation.
Background In 1996, Barack Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate. After a losing campaign for United States House of Representatives in 2000, he began a campaign for United States Senate in 2003. On March 16, 2004, Obama won a surprising majority of the vote in the Democratic primary for Senate. As the Democratic nominee, Obama made two joint appearances with presumptive presidential nominee John Kerry in Chicago during the spring. The joint campaign events left Kerry and his campaign impressed by Obama.Obama, 354.
In April, after Kerry had secured the Democratic nomination, Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill began considering possible candidates to deliver the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. The keynote address is traditionally an opportunity for one of the party's leading orators to demonstrate support for the nominee and raise their own political profile. Searching for a speaker who would generate media attention, the campaign considered Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, Arizona governor Janet Napolitano, Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, Virginia governor Mark Warner, and New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. Others involved in the process included convention manager Jack Corrigan and Kerry media advisor Robert Shrum. Corrigan's friend, Lisa Hay, strongly recommended Obama on the basis of their time together working on the Harvard Law Review.
Cahill had previously seen Obama in Time magazine and solicited opinions from people who knew and had worked with him. Some within the campaign expressed concern over his speaking style, lack of experience with a teleprompter, opposition to the Iraq War (which Kerry had initially supported), and relatively junior position as a state senator. During the process, the Obama campaign provided an eight-minute audition video, and several Obama advisors lobbied on his behalf. The Kerry campaign eventually chose Obama over Granholm, in part because polls showed Kerry with weaker-than-expected support among African Americans and because he was running for an important Senate seat.
According to Obama, he was told several weeks after campaigning with Kerry that he would have some kind of speaking role at the convention. He was reportedly called sometime right before the Independence Day holiday by Cahill, who told him that he was chosen to be the keynote speaker. Kerry first publicly hinted Obama would deliver the address on June 29, and the official announcement was made on July 14.
Drafting Obama began drafting his speech at a hotel in Springfield, Illinois, several days after receiving the call from Cahill.Obama, 356-7. According to his memoir, also titled The Audacity of Hope, Obama stated that he began by considering his own campaign themes and specific issues he wished to address. While remembering the various people he had met and stories he had heard during his campaign, he was reminded of a sermon by his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, on the subject of the George Frederic Watts painting Hope.Sermon printed in Preaching Today, 1990. The title of Wright's sermon was "The Audacity to Hope," but Obama recalled it as "The Audacity of Hope", which became the title for his convention speech and later of his second book.
The first draft was written in longhand, and Obama reportedly labored over it for some two weeks, often beyond midnight. Dan Shomon, his campaign political director, referred to the speech as "a greatest hits collection of rhetoric drawn from his stump speeches." Obama also watched and read previous keynote addresses during the process. Although he was originally granted eight minutes for the speech, the initial draft ran for 25 minutes, leading to two more weeks of edits with advisors to reduce it to 17 minutes. The final draft was sent to a Democratic speechwriting team at the FleetCenter around July 20. Although some biographical material was removed to focus on the Kerry campaign, reports on the process indicated that three-quarters or more of the Obama draft was left intact after the Kerry campaign's edits. After delivering it, Obama acknowledged that his and Kerry's staffs had reviewed the speech for length, noting, however, that he was proud to have written it himself along with most of his other speeches.
Convention and final preparations The 2004 Democratic National Convention was held at the FleetCenter in Boston, Massachusetts, from July 26 to 29, 2004. Obama was scheduled to address the delegates on the second night. The Obama campaign was unhappy with the time slot and hoped to change it, as that night would not be covered by the major television networks.
After delaying his trip for a budget vote at the Illinois state capitol, Obama arrived in Boston at 1:30 am EDT on Sunday, July 25, on a chartered Hawker jet.Obama states in The Audacity of Hope that he had three hours of sleep in Boston before going to his Meet the Press interview (Obama, 357). He was also reported to have been unable to sleep, seen pacing in the lobby of the Back Bay Hilton (Bernstein, "The Speech"). On the same morning, Obama made his first appearance on Meet the Press. During an interview with the host, Tim Russert, Obama touched on his aims for the speech:
He also appeared on Face the Nation and Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.
On July 27, the morning before his speech, Obama appeared on Good Morning America. When asked how he would deal with the fact that he was against the 2003 invasion of Iraq while Kerry and his running mate John Edwards supported the resolution approving the use of military force, Obama responded that they were focused on the future instead of looking back at the past. Obama also said that his wife, Michelle, had given him advice for the speech: "Don't screw it up."
During another interview that morning with NPR, Obama referred to discussion of his prospects as a presidential candidate as silly, and addressed the risk of being typecast, as another young, African American politician (Harold Ford Jr.) had given the 2000 keynote. In the afternoon, he gave a speech on environmental policy to a small crowd at Boston Harbor. According to Martin Nesbitt, on the afternoon before the speech, Nesbitt likened Obama to a rock star because of the crowd growing behind them, and Obama replied, "Yeah, if you think it’s bad today, wait until tomorrow. My speech is pretty good."Chicago (Bernstein, "The Speech") reports Nesbitt recalling slightly different wording: "Yeah, but it might be a little worse tomorrow... It's a pretty good speech."
During advance preparations, some Obama advisors were concerned because it was the first time the candidate had used a teleprompter. He conducted three one-hour practice sessions in the FleetCenter locker rooms and reportedly had difficulty with the teleprompter, while also adapting to various techniques for speaking to a live convention crowd and television audience. During preprataions, he met Kerry staffer and speechwriter Jon Favreau, who would later become Obama's own speechwriter. Favreau informed Obama that a sentence in his speech, "We're not red states and blue states; we're all Americans, standing up together for the red, white, and blue," would be removed to avoid overlap with Kerry's acceptance speech, which included the sentence, "Maybe some just see us divided into those red states and blue states, but I see us as one America: red, white, and blue." It is unclear whether or not this line existed in Kerry's speech before the campaign reviewed Obama's, but regardless, its removal reportedly angered Obama.
Speech After an introduction by Illinois senator Dick Durbin, Obama stepped on stage shortly before 9:45 pm EDT to the 1964 song "Keep On Pushing" by The Impressions. Obama spoke for 17 minutes, interrupted 33 times by audience applause. The final speech was 2,297 words long.
After thanking Durbin and acknowledging the privilege to speak, Obama immediately launched into a brief autobiographical sketch covering his Kenyan grandfather's work as a domestic servant for the British and his own father, who had obtained a scholarship to study in the United States. He then spoke of his mother's family, describing his grandfather, Stanley, fighting under George S. Patton in World War II, while his grandmother Madelyn worked on a bomber assembly line and raised his mother. Obama explained the African name given to him by his parents meant "blessed," concluding: Obama next mentioned several Americans he had met who were struggling with jobs, healthcare, and education, stating, "They don't expect government to solve all their problems, but they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all."
In the next segment of his address, Obama mentioned John Kerry for the first time, listing his major values and beliefs, interrupted by a story of a young Marine he had met and an affirmation that when military action is undertaken, the families and soldiers involved must be cared for and that there is an obligation to "never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world." Obama affirmed Kerry's commitment to keep America secure.
Obama next addressed community and unity in the United States, inverting the Book of Genesis to argue, "I am my brother's keeper," and that a person struggling somewhere affects us even if we are not directly involved. Referring to the "spin masters" and "negative ad peddlers," who he claimed sought to divide the country, Obama declared:
Asking whether the country wished to engage in a politics of cynicism or hope, he argued that Kerry and Edwards called on a long American tradition of hope:
To conclude, Obama said that he believed "we have a righteous wind at our backs" and expressed confidence in the country's ability to meet the current challenges. He concluded by expressing his belief that Kerry and Edwards would be elected, and with their inauguration, "this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness, a brighter day will come."
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