Submitted by wonkitime on August 28, 2008 - 9:21am.
by Won Kim
In case you haven't been watching the Democratic National
Convention (DNC), let me quickly sum it up for you. As you would expect, there
has been a lot of grand speeches, plenty of panoramic shots of energized
attendees and an abundance of Barack Obama paraphernalia. What you might have
missed is how much the Democratic Party is focusing on the personal traits of
the party nominees (Obama and Joseph Biden), namely, their ability to be great
dads.
Public relations experts and marketers would coin this a
terrific job of stagecrafting. After months of campaigning about their stance
on the Iraq
war, health care and the economy, the DNC is a coming out party to avid voters
and to the general public. And like any good party, the last thing you want to do
is talk about work and the grim state of our country. So what do you do? You
tell animated stories about your family. Hand it to Obama and his crew, they
know a good party when they see one.
When Obama's wife, Michelle, took center stage earlier this week,
she began talking about her family. Quickly, she turned the focus onto her
husband, and tugged at the heart of America by telling us that Obama is
not only a good man and husband, but a father.
"He's the same man who drove me and our new baby
daughter home from the hospital ten years ago this summer, inching along at a
snail's pace, peering anxiously at us in the rearview mirror, feeling the whole
weight of her future in his hands, determined to give her everything he'd
struggled so hard for himself, determined to give her what he never had: the
affirming embrace of a father's love."
The following night, one of the most memorable moments of
the night was the speech before vice president candidate Joseph Biden took the
stage. Biden's son, Beau, had the task of introducing his father onto the
stage. Beau's presence already had great storylines. He is a Delaware Attorney
General, who is also an Army National Guard planning to be shipped out to Iraq
in the coming months. Yet the story that hit home was Beau illustrating the
father's strength of Joseph Biden.
He told the anxious crowd of the fateful day in 1972 when
his mother and sister died in a car crash coming home after purchasing a
Christmas tree. This occurred right around the time Biden was about to be sworn
in as senator.
"We, not the Senate, were all my father cared about. He decided not to
take the oath of office. He said Delaware
can get another senator, but my boys can't get another father.
However, great men like Ted Kennedy, Mike Mansfield, Hubert Humphrey, men who
have been tested in their own right, convinced him to serve. He was sworn in ...
at my bedside," Beau said in his speech.
"As a single parent, he decided to be there to put us to bed, to be
there when we woke from a bad dream, to make us breakfast, so he traveled to
and from Washington, four hours a day," Beau added.
He concluded his speech by urging voters to "Be there for my dad like he was
for me."
Whether you're voting for Obama or John McCain or remain currently undecided,
one thing is for sure. The people stagecrafting this election obviously believe
that how good a father you are is a reflection of how good a leader you may
become.
