That '60's Show: With Barack Obama in the Starring Role

BOSTON, Tuesday, July 27—Democrats are fond of talking about the future these days, but walking on the floor of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) this week, there were times when it resembled nothing so much as a big nostalgia show.

I’m not sure what did it for me—whether it was Peter Yarrow’s Mighty Wind-ish rehearsal of “If I Had a Hammer,” the big screens flashing “GO JOHNNY GO” over Chuck Berry’s bell-ringing guitar, or the blown-up photo of the young John Kerry looking cool in a leather jacket beside John Lennon. But halfway through Tuesday night it hit me: We’re not close to done with the ’60s.

And so what? It’s not as if the DNC manufactured the national fixation on the happy, miserable decade between Eisenhower and Nixon; for many of our college-age generation, it’s unavoidable.

My favorite current rock bands sleep with copies of Sgt. Pepper under their pillows, and I cherish few pastimes as fondly as that of imagining my parents (or myself) taking an active part in each and every social, political and cultural watershed of that era. I’m as proud that my father was tear-gassed marching against the war in Washington in October 1967 (his second date with my mother, a year or so later, was at another peace rally) as that he cut a low-rent lyrical folk-pop album at the end of the decade. Sure, cynics might brand the DNC itself a dad trying too hard to be cool, but I for one appreciated the myriad nods to a decade when change somehow managed both to happen on a huge scale and to aim far higher than it could ever reach.

The trouble is, this wasn’t the real ’60s—like the bizarre parliamentary spectacle of the platform’s adoption by a half-empty floor, it was a show. There wouldn’t be any 1968-style riot and repression, to be sure, but along with that current of radical danger seemed to have gone any spirit of radical promise.

We got former Vermont Gov. Howard B. Dean, yes, and no amount of convention committee vetting could entirely dampen the sincere righteousness that made him such a compelling candidate way back when. But there’s no denying that this was a different Dean than we knew in January, a firebrand muted. Even Sen. Edward M. Kennedy ’54-’56, D-Mass., seemed more restrained than usual, earning applause that must have been more for his sterling record as the Senate’s proud liberal leader than anything he said Tuesday night.

Then there was Ron Reagan—his appearance, or more accurately his name, a huge coup for the convention. Still, Reagan delivered his altogether correct views on stem-cell research in the mellow tones of a genial, almost-vacant Mr. Wizard. It’s not that the speech wasn’t effective or right; it’s that there was something creepily stagey about it throughout.

The problem that became obvious on Tuesday night is that—though the party itself is far less divided than it was in the 1960s—this was a convention that couldn’t quite decide what it wanted to be. Speakers who must have been dying for a chance to lace into the current administration’s moral bankruptcy and pragmatic failures were reportedly told to lay off the Bush-bashing for fear of alienating those precious swingers. And so this week inhabited an odd political twilight zone: an opposition party seeking to rescue the nation midway through what seems the worst eight years of misgovernance in memory, the Dems forced themselves to put on a happy face.

On Monday, this issue was swept under the rug by the speakers’ bronzed star power. Al Gore ’69 is allowed to be bitter about the 2000 election, as long as he pretends he’s joking.

Jimmy Carter’s Nobel lets him say whatever he wants. (And saying Bush misled the American people—wow, that’s pretty hot stuff. Kudos to the convention’s planners for managing to make even so simple a factual criticism as this taboo for anyone but a former president.)

Bill Clinton, ever the down-to-earth rhetorical genius, was nimble enough to brutalize Bush’s record, point out the successes of his own and promote John Kerry better than the candidate could ever do himself—almost without seeming to do any of the three.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., would no doubt have been just as masterful had she been given the full speech she deserved. Forced to play the well-trained wife in a five-minute introduction (and, to her eternal credit, going on for 11 instead), she hardly had room to show off her oratorical skill before bowing out for Bill.

On Wednesday and Thursday, meanwhile, the importance of Edwards and Kerry themselves made the convention’s identity crisis easy to ignore. Tuesday, then, presented an existential question of sorts: without old heroes or current leaders to focus the spotlight on, how would the Democratic Party present itself?

The answer, apparently, was to pack in as many different sides of the party as could be fit, all tamed to fit the DNC stage. A calmly intense Teresa Heinz Kerry, the former candidates (Gephardt and Mosely-Braun in addition to Dean), Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., Reagan, a young star of “The O.C.” (?!), the younger (13 years old) founder of Kids for Kerry, an enthusiastic group of dancers—all came on and went off, charging the crowd admirably at times but leaving little lasting impression.

The only speaker, then, who really captivated those who saw him was Barack Obama, ahead of whose currently unopposed Illinois senatorial campaign the savviest pols are leapfrogging to declare him the odds-on favorite for the nation’s first non-white president. That kind of dreaming might be a little premature for the former first black president of the Harvard Law Review, but seeing Obama’s vital performance on Tuesday made it seem almost required.

Obama seemed the only speaker who was able to pull off what the Dems were aiming for with any success. Deftly modulating his style from high to low, common-sense talk to vaulted preaching, big-picture issues to personal journey, Obama knew how to avoid being another caged animal in a superficial circus: He was the circus, jumping from topic to topic and mood to mood so swiftly that the audience had no choice but to come along for the ride. This was unabashed politics, genuine and forceful, and the contrast with the night’s other speakers was impossible to ignore.

Obama is, clearly, the party’s future. But in the end, his style was the real ’60s legacy at the FleetCenter on Tuesday. That era’s greatest speakers succeeded by bridging gaps in exactly the same way Obama showed himself capable of—by relating to audiences on a human level but inspiring unshakable confidence in their ability to lead.

For now, the Democrats will focus on putting forward a candidate who forged his long career in public service in that decade’s crises of conscience. But far louder than the instrumental of the Beatles’ “Revolution” playing from the rafters earlier, Obama promised an uprising of principles to come that will make good on all the ’60s’ promises.

—Staff writer Simon W. Vozick-Levinson can be reached at vozick@fas.harvard.edu.