Obama Looks To History As He Edits His Speech

By some accounts, Barack Obama has spent more than a dozen hours already practicing his Invesco field acceptance speech.

Clues about its substance are hard to come by, but the campaign has begun to let some details out.

Let's get this out of the way: the speech will not be a reprisal of his 2004 convention keynoter, or so the campaign says.

2008's speech will be "workmanlike."  Less broader themes and more of Obama's life story and the people he's met on his journey.  Then he "will put in front of Americans the choice they have in this election."

A senior campaign official said that Obama had recently read John F. Kennedy's convention speech in 1960 and Ronald Reagan's convention speech in 1980.

Kennedy asked whether Americans have the "nerve and will" to reclaim what's great about the country amid international crisis and "eight years of fitful sleep."

And after eight years of drugged and fitful sleep, this nation needs strong, creative Democratic leadership in the White House.

But we are not merely running against Mr. Nixon. Our task is not merely one of itemizing Republican failures. Nor is that wholly necessary. For the families forced from the farm will know how to vote without our telling them. The unemployed miners and textile workers will know how to vote. The old people without medical care--the families without a decent home--the parents of children without adequate food or schools--they all know that it's time for a change.

But I think the American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack. The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high--to permit the customary passions of political debate. We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future. As Winston Churchill said on taking office some twenty years ago: if we open a quarrel between the present and the past, we shall be in danger of losing the future.

Reagan said that the "major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of Democratic Party leadership--in the White House and in Congress--for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us."