Don't be seduced by fancy oratory

When Barack Obama accepts his party's nomination this week in Denver, the senator from Illinois will give the most anticipated convention speech since Ronald Reagan addressed the Republicans in 1980 in Detroit. Obama's speech rates as a huge occasion for all the obvious reasons, but the key revelation about this event is that America's response to it will matter far more than the oratory itself.

Great political speeches have historically been identifiable because they tapped into certain veins of the American imagination and experience. Pundits and historians could point to superb political oratory by sensing the speaker's grasp of the prevailing mood, the needs of the population, or the American way of being. If the performance was memorable, the intensity electrifying and the phrasing inspired, the speech would rate as a classic. This has been the pattern, and we have gotten used to viewing presidential campaign speeches in such a manner.

This year, it's time for a different paradigm to emerge. Some background is needed to explain why.

Obama's speech is so anticipated in political circles because we haven't seen as skilled a master of the TelePrompTer, of the major made-for-TV speech, since Reagan came along nearly 30 years ago. Politics rewards slick theatrical imagecraft far more than cold, intellectual knowledge.

No one understood this better than Reagan, who defeated Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale, both with a penchant for being policy-smart but charisma-poor. Carter and Mondale would tell the country tough truths with a grim face, and get crushed in the Electoral College; Reagan offered a Morning in America facade that cloaked draconian social-service cuts but, of course, the populace ate it all up.

In Obama, the Democrats now have the more polished political performer when it comes to wholesale politics and the main-event speech on national television. But given the truthfulness of Bill Clinton, another prime-time performer, one can look back and realize that — as was the case with Reagan — Clinton was a successful politician not in the noble or enlightened sense, but only in the much darker sense: He seduced his listeners and won elections.

The paradigm shift being proposed, then — a shift that makes the people, not Obama himself, the biggest story of this convention speech — is that we Americans should no longer take major political orations at face value. We should no longer evaluate speeches based on their theatrical quality, smoothness of delivery, or fullness of passion.

The reason for this adjustment should be obvious enough. Major politicians have not been faithful to the positions they've staked out. Granted, politicians aren't given any incentive by the current system to remain consistent with prior deeds, but that doesn't — and shouldn't — change the bottom-line reality.

Obama has supported the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), has become much more open to offshore oil drilling, and has shown a general propensity to move significantly to the right on virtually every significant issue facing the country. The candidate who so proudly embraced the mantle of "change" has clearly shown since the end of the Democratic primary an awfully establishment-friendly bent in just about everything he has done.

McCain, once a fierce opponent of George W. Bush, has become indistinguishable from the president on the most urgent issues of the day, lurching to the right along with Obama — only to a worse extent.

This raises an important point. If we, a nation in love with good theater and entertainment value, view convention speeches through the predictable lens of oratorical artistry, we risk being sold a bill of goods yet again. Because Americans have fallen in love with the aura of the presidency — the one great figure who will bring us out of trouble — we have become too willing to equate great political theater with genuine policy wisdom and governmental competence. In this election and beyond, such a mindset has to change.

Instead of accepting a convention speech at face value and then being shocked when subsequent actions don't match the oratory, we the people should use this convention speech, and McCain's the following week, as a time to soberly evaluate the candidates and keep tabs on them until Election Day.

By devaluing the more theatrical aspects of political oratory, we'll reduce the aura of an alarmingly imperial presidency and become vigilant restraints on runaway power, the wise citizens our Founding Fathers would admire.