The following post is from Professor Anand Rao’s Visual Rhetoric course blog, he absolutely nails the significance of the political event this evening beautifully:
Obama’s Acceptance Speech - August 28, 2008
There is a very long backstory to tonight’s acceptance speech by Barack Obama. As over-exposed as he may appear to be, there are still many Americans who do not know much about Obama, and the acceptance speech is his opportunity to reintroduce himself to the American public, and outline what he feels they need to know about him.
This is Obama’s night, and there has been some friction between the two campaigns as the possibility of John McCain’s campaign leaking McCain’s VP pick on the same night. The McCain campaign has pledged to not announce the VP pick tonight- but they also had to decide whether to not air or say anything tonight, or to run a negative ad tonight. Instead, Sen. McCain aired the following:
No precedent for this- nothing like it has been used in past campaigns.
As the McCain ad mentions, this is an historic night, as it is the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Here is a copy of that speech:
If you did not see it live, here is a copy of the speech given by the Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama: (not available yet- I will post it once it is)
For this blog entry, outline what you think was the most important argument laid out by Sen. Obama, why you think it is so important, how you think Sen. McCain could respond, and what audience Sen. Obama was speaking to with that argument (not just the general audience- what group of voters would he expect to find that argument appealing). Finally, how effective was the speech, and why?
on Aug 29th, 2008 at 10:51 am
As a college student, with only a part time job to be able to pay rent and other expenses like gas, the high price of gas has consumed a significant part of my income. I have tried to cut back on the amount I drive, but it is impossible to avoid driving, especially in this area. If cars were more fuel-efficient and technologies were used to produce fuel in the United States, the price of fuel could decrease and we would have more money to put back into other sectors of the economy.
Senator McCain could argue that we can not avoid the dependence we have on the oil in the Middle East. He could also say that he and other members of his party have invested in the new techologies that Senator Obama has promised to use.
I felt that Senator Obama’s speech was effective. I have not been following any part of this election and did not know anything about either candidate and their positions on the issues until last night. I feel that Senator Obama’s speech was delivered very well and appealed to the general American population. His presentation was strong and kept my attention. The fact that he focused on a few major issues and spelled out how he planned on paying for all of them was important for him to do to be able to appeal to people who may not yet have chosen their canidate. I look forward to watching Senator McCain’s speech next week to hear his position on these issues.