DNC plan: Portray Obama as all-American

Standing at the 50-yard line
Campaign aides and outside advisers, however, have grappled with how far convention speakers, including the candidate himself, should go in explicitly addressing race and the historic nature of his candidacy, particularly as Mr. Obama accepts the nomination on the 45th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

They are seeking some intimacy amid the grandiosity of Mr. Obama’s acceptance speech in the Invesco Field stadium before an audience of more than 70,000, the sort of cheering throng Mr. McCain’s aides have sought to use against Mr. Obama by portraying him as presiding over a cult of personality.

When he delivers his speech on the last night of the convention, Mr. Obama will not be addressing the crowd from a lone lectern at the edge of the field; he will be standing at the 50-yard line, surrounded by a diverse set of people he has met throughout the campaign, whose presence is intended to signal to viewers at home that people like them are O.K. with Mr. Obama. Ten people selected by the campaign from all corners of the country will meet backstage with Mr. Obama and be shown to the television audience, also intended to convey their comfort level with the senator.

By then, the convention program will probably have already established his maternal grandfather’s roots in Kansas and service in World War II. The film by Mr. Guggenheim is expected to be steeped in Americana; parts of it were filmed while Mr. Obama was campaigning in the Rockwellesque town of Butte, Mont.

McCain plans counter-appearances
Coming immediately after Mr. Obama announces his vice-presidential nominee, the convention will give Mr. Obama one of his biggest stages and television audiences of the year. (Mr. McCain has indicated his intention to run television advertisements during the coverage, and Mr. McCain is expected to appear on “Tonight” with Jay Leno on NBC Monday night. )

“There are two overriding strategic imperatives for the convention: One is to make people comfortable with Barack Obama,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster who served as a top strategist for Senator John Kerry’s presidential race in 2004. “The other is to define the race clearly and define Barack Obama as change and McCain as a continuation of Bush’s policies at home and abroad.”

Ms. Dunn, the strategist for Mr. Obama, said that would be accomplished by emphasizing the course of the country “over the last eight years, the gridlock, and what that has meant for American families,” and the specifics of where Mr. Obama “wants to lead to the country.”

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But, aides say, another important task is uniting the party after a bruising primary between Mr. Obama, the potential first African-American nominee, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the potential first female nominee. Women speaking at the convention include Mrs. Clinton, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

None of this is to leave out Mr. Obama’s solid base of enthusiastic supporters. Advisers to Mr. Obama said the gathering was built around specific tasks aimed at capitalizing on their excitement.

For instance, when people arrive at the stadium in the hours leading up to Mr. Obama’s acceptance speech, they will be urged to call or send text messages to their friends and neighbors back home, sharing pro-Obama messages or asking them to watch the speech. The idea is to turn the football stadium into a giant phone bank.

“We always look for opportunities to put our people to work and not just have them sit idle and listen to speeches,” said Steve Hildebrand, the deputy campaign manager.

This article, For Convention, Obama's Image is All-American, first appeared in The New York Times.

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