3 America’s New Faces

In July 2004, the Democratic National Convention met in Boston to nominate John Kerry as presidential candidate, with a keynote address by rising political star Barack Obama. Obama’s speech thrilled the convention, and confirmed his image as a potential national leader. He stressed the nation’s essential unity, despite its apparent stresses – the unity of Red and Blue states, of different ethnic and racial groups – and above all, presented an optimistic message of hope, and better days to come. The speech had a special resonance at a time when ongoing military crises overseas provoked a mounting sense of despair at home. Yet as Obama recognized, such negative news was only one part of a much larger national story, when most Americans were enjoying great prosperity and participating in headlong technological growth, during an era of incredibly rapid social change and development. To borrow a phrase from Ronald Reagan, the opening years of the twenty-first century felt rather more like Morning in America: it was seed-time.