A mile-high stack of must-achieve goals

DENVER

Democrats are coming to this sprawling mile-high city determined to make history.

Three months after Barack Obama claimed the party's nomination in Minnesota, and 45 years after the Rev. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, the Illinois senator will preside over the first American political convention dedicated to the idea that a black man can become president.

No one may put it quite that way from the podiums of the convention center or at Invesco Field, the open-air football stadium where Obama will accept the nomination Thursday night. But the racial milestone theme will be plain in the televised images of Obama's life story, the central narrative of the four-day gathering marking the start of his fall campaign's march on Washington.

Beyond the soaring calls for change and the echoes of John F. Kennedy's "New Frontier," Obama will have to use his moment in the national spotlight to reignite the stalled momentum of his campaign and grant "cathartic" closure to rival Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Amid tightening polls, he and running mate Joe Biden also will have to blunt questions about his experience that are sure to be raised at the Republican Convention in St. Paul starting Labor Day.

"This is going to be a major change no matter how it comes out," said historian Hy Berman, who has studied Minnesota and national elections since the 1960s. "The fact of an African-American winning a major party's nomination is unprecedented. It's a difficult position to be in, but so far he's been treading very carefully and, I think, successfully."

To be sure, Obama does not want race to be at the center of the campaign. "I don't think, I know, he wants to be elected because he's a good president who happens to be black, not because he's black and would like to be president," said former Vice President Walter Mondale, one of 16 superdelegates from Minnesota.

Mondale, who was committed to Clinton before she suspended her campaign in June, said the main task confronting the convention's 4,090 delegates is to put on a show of unity around Obama's quest to end the Republicans' eight-year grip on the White House.

"After a primary like this, there's always more time needed to unify the party," he said.

The convention will be the first in 40 years where a top rival is expected to play such an outsize role in the carefully scripted choreography that viewers see on TV.

By mutual agreement, the convention will put Clinton's name in nomination and hold a roll-call vote of the state delegations, in what Mondale calls an "emotional closing" for Clinton delegates who want to celebrate their candidate's own historic gender milestone.

A night of exuberance for the Clinton brand may not be what the unity doctors called for, but, in a final act of party solidarity, Clinton has vowed to cast her ballot for Obama.

"A little controversy never hurts," said Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman, whose mother, former Minnesota First Lady Jane Freeman, introduced Obama at his packed Target Center rally on Feb. 2. "But Obama's going to win the nomination, and he's going to make a hell of a speech."

A new 'New Frontier'

Obama's ability to deliver uplifting oratory has never been questioned. His meteoric rise to national prominence began with an inspiring keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention. Nor is there any doubt he can draw a crowd, a key factor in his decision to open his acceptance speech to the public in the Denver Broncos' 76,000-seat stadium.

The move -- call it audacious -- invites comparisons to JFK's acceptance speech at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles in 1960. Kennedy used his speech to call for "a new generation of leadership," saying that the country stood "on the edge of a New Frontier."

"When I hear Obama talking about change and a new direction ... it brings back to me some parallels," said Hubert (Skip) Humphrey III, who was at the 1960 Democratic Convention with the rival campaign of his father, Hubert H. Humphrey. "It was part of this whole momentum of moving forward, of moving beyond."

But the delegates to the Democratic Convention also know that the historic Obama candidacy is taking them into uncharted political waters. In the foreground: questions raised by Clinton -- and now McCain -- about the depth of their candidate's experience and readiness to lead.

In the background: often unspoken questions about America's readiness for a president who, in Obama's famous phrase, doesn't look like the ones they see on their currency.

"I think he has a very tough campaign ahead of him because a lot of ideas about race are very subliminal," said longtime Minnesota Democratic activist analyst Geri Joseph. "What will they do when they get in the voting booth, I don't think anybody really knows yet."

Long road ahead

If there's a sense of foreboding accompanying the excitement, it has to be at least partly the result of polls showing McCain holding his own against Obama as they head into the end-of-summer conventions, a time when Democrats are typically ahead, and in a year that is supposed to favor them.

If Republicans can't help but nod to the Democratic convention's sense of history-in-the-making, they aren't prepared to cede the mantle of change. "It's historic, there's no question," said Republican National Committee Chairman Robert (Mike) Duncan, reflecting on the Democrats' big show in Denver. "Theirs is going to be about history and ours is going to be about the future."

Democrats know that they will need a strong push from their convention to get through the last two months of the campaign. And therein lies another parallel to the 1960 race, which the young Kennedy barely won.

"Obama's biggest problem is to recapture the excitement about the time he was in Minneapolis [in February], when he was coming on strong," said Rodney Leonard, a longtime DFL stalwart who served as an aide to Gov. Orville Freeman, the man who nominated Kennedy at the 1960 convention.

To do that, the Obama campaign knows it has to transcend race and home in on themes that resonate across all elements of society, to engage voters on the substance that Republicans say he lacks.

"I think he's better off to just hammer on issues people really do care about it, like jobs and the economy," said former congressman and ex-Minneapolis Mayor Don Fraser, who ran JFK's campaign in Minnesota.

Sheryl Salomon, managing director of Black Voices, a leading African-American website that will cover both conventions, agrees.

"In the end, voters, and black voters, are more focused on making sure that someone who has their best interests in mind will win, rather than voting for the first black president," she said.

That's certainly the vision Obama's convention will try to project -- that of a new, post-racial America -- a compelling 21st century invocation of a Kennedyesque New Frontier.

"I see an ability in Mr. Obama to project that same sense of vision," Skip Humphrey said. "Now whether that amounts to or equals victory, we'll see."

Kevin Diaz • 202-408-2753