Democrats’ message on Tuesday, the first day of the Democratic National Convention, was two-pronged and crystal clear. The evening’s speeches both sought to extol the president’s accomplishments and cast him as empathetic, while at the same time looking to deconstruct Romney and cast him as an impossibly worse choice for president.
Slideshow: The Democratic National Convention
The evening’s top-billed speakers embodied the dual purposes of Tuesday’s programming. Michelle Obama said her husband was the “same man” he was before the White House, in a speech designed to put a softer edge on the president’s case for re-election. And keynote speaker Julian Castro said Romney would diminish opportunities for voters if elected, in a speech that also weaved in the personal story of the San Antonio mayor, whom party leaders regard as a rising star.
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
First lady Michelle Obama speaks on stage during day one of the Democratic National Convention at Time Warner Cable Arena on September 4, 2012 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
"I have seen firsthand that being president doesn’t change who you are – no, it reveals who you are," Michelle Obama said in her prime-time speech. "So in the end, for Barack, these issues aren’t political – they’re personal. Because Barack knows what it means when a family struggles ... Barack knows the American Dream because he's lived it."
And the first lady brought the crowd to their feet in closing: "I know from experience that if I truly want to leave a better world for my daughters, and all our sons and daughters ... then we must work like never before, and we must once again come together and stand together for the man we can trust to keep moving this great country forward…my husband, our president, President Barack Obama."
Mrs. Obama's speech capped hours’ worth of speeches in Charlotte, but stood in contrast against most of the day’s earlier speakers, many of whom offered sharp criticism of Romney. So strong were the attacks on the Republican nominee, that it seemed as though many of the efforts to build up Obama were secondary to disparaging Romney.
A spokeswoman for the GOP presidential nominee, Andrea Saul, said late Tueseday evening in response: "On the first night of President Obama’s convention, not a single speaker uttered the words ‘Americans are better off than they were four years ago.’ Instead, there was a night full of tributes to government as the solution to every problem, even going as far as to say that ‘government is the only thing that we all belong to."
Though much of his speech focused on overcoming the difficulties associated with being a poor Latino in Texas as a child, the middle of Castro’s speech took aim at Romney in a way that was similar to those addresses.
