John_Schwada's Blog

It is supposed to be a masterful stroke of political theatre – holding Barack Obama’s Thursday night acceptance speech, aka The Big Speech, at Invesco Stadium here in Denver. 

The Obama team calculated that an Invesco Stadium speech – before a live crowd of some 70,000 - would showcase Obama’s crowd-appeal and make the speech more of a democratic (small “d”) affair, accessible to the average Obama well-wisher. The Pepsi Center, it was calculated, where the bulk of the convention’s business will be conducted, would be too small to permit such a large political and theatrical performance.

But this plan is partly a gamble. Already we’ve heard rival John McCain grousing that the Invesco Stadium event once again reinforces the fact (their view) that Obama is more about sizzle than substance.

But the bigger gamble may involve Mother Nature. She could have a big say-so in the success of an outdoor event in this city. And Invesco Stadium is an outdoor venue.

 We got a taste last night of weather’s possible role when the Denver metropolitan area was hit by a tornado. Outside the Pepsi Center, in our flimsy trailer workspace, we were buffeted by intemperate winds and saw vast, threatening cloud-scapes looming over this city. At times, it looked cataclysmic; something out of the Old Testament. It reminded us that there really is unpredictable, inclement weather in some parts of the U.S.

In other words, if it rains cats and dogs Thursday night, the Big Speech could become the Big Meltdown.

Only one other candidate in recent memory risked an outdoor venue for their acceptance speech. That was John F. Kennedy, who gave his 1960 acceptance speech, after some agonizing, at the Colesium, in Los Angeles, the host city for that year’s Democratic Party convention.

Roz Wyman, then a whippersnapper, now a veteran Democratic Party heavyweight, recently told the National Journal about the Colesium speech decision. It was, she reminded the reporter, her big idea. Bobby Kennedy, JFK’s brother and tireless political guard-dog, was not sold on it. He saw pitfalls, the biggest being the possibility that his brother couldn’t fill the stadium with supporters (weather not a problem in Los Angeles). He foresaw headlines the next day, like, “JFK Speaks to Empty Seats!!!” In other words, a political disaster; Bobby warned Wyman that if the party ran with her idea and it failed she could expect to be a political has-been in her twenties.

With her career on the line, Wyman rounded up every Democrat she could lay her hands on, busloads of them. It worked. Some say the stadium was still only half full on the big night but the fact is that it was full enough to keep the attendance issue from eclipsing JFK’s Big Speech.

Will Mother Nature be as kind to Obama, Thursday night? Can wild weather keep the Obama-ites at home? Can Obama throw the elocutionary long-bomb in the rain? We may find out.