Mayor David Cicilline

The Providence Journal

So, let me see if I have this straight.

President Bush’s popularity is down the tube, people are sick of Republicans, and it’s almost impossible to find anyone who thinks the country is on the right track.

People have had it with the war in Iraq. The economy is lousy. Food prices and gasoline prices are out of control. Home foreclosures blight the landscape.

The GOP is about to nominate a man who will turn 72 this week, supports the war, embraces George Bush’s tax policies, and is prone to gaffes.

And yet Democrat Barack Obama barely edged Republican John McCain in recent polls; indeed, they showed a statistical dead heat. True, they were taken before McCain’s celebrated failure to remember how many homes he owns.

The Democratic National Convention that will coronate Obama, the 47-year-old Illinois senator, opens tomorrow in Denver. By the time this gifted orator, the first black nominee of either party, finishes his acceptance speech Thursday night, he may have scrambled the election anew and opened a huge lead over the GOP senator from Arizona.

I wouldn’t count on it — and, of course, any bounce Obama enjoys could quickly evaporate when the Republicans convene next week in St. Paul. But Democrats have to hope that Obama takes full advantage of this showcase opportunity. Except for the fall debates, this looms as his best chance to seize the public’s attention, outline a vision, erase doubts and develop some momentum.

He has to persuade you that he is ready to be president, understands your problems, and will do something about them.

In part, the world looks to see how skillfully Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the convention itself defuse the resentment felt by many of her supporters — a good number of whom think she was the victim of sexism — and rally them to the Obama cause.

Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts, who was a Clinton supporter but is enthused about Obama, says Clinton has the ability — and must use her Tuesday night speech — to “put firmly to rest” any notion that she secretly is trying to undermine the nominee.

In my book, this is tricky terrain. The more eloquent Clinton is, the more disheartened her supporters may be that she was denied the nomination.

Still, it is Obama himself who must shine at this convention.

I spoke last Tuesday with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse at a ziti-and-meatball community dinner he was hosting at the Salvatore Mancini Resource & Activity Center in North Providence, the kind of place where you might try your hand at bocce, line dancing or bingo. Something I’d never seen before (a sign of the times): fliers touting $1 tickets for a raffle of $50 Hess gasoline cards.

When I asked Whitehouse what Obama needs to do in Denver, he asserted, “Unite the party once and for all and come out of it with a strong message explaining why this election is about these folks and not about him, and with a strong economic message that explains what the differences are going to be for people if he’s the president compared to McCain.”

It is striking to me that Obama is not well ahead of McCain. Could the problem be racism?

“There may be some portion of that,” Whitehouse said, “but I find it hard to believe that could explain the gap between the people who think that the country’s seriously off in the wrong direction but are still uncertain as to whether to vote for Senator Obama. I think he has to make the case with them. I think a lot of it is getting to know him a little better. A lot of it is that it’s not really focus time yet for many folks.”

I have to tell you, I have been skeptical of the idea that sexism did Clinton in. The New York senator, a former first lady, launched her bid with every advantage of name recognition, endorsements, money, and a long record. And she blew it, and a recent Atlantic Monthly article detailed her campaign’s incompetence and infighting and her inability to right the ship.

State Sen. Maryellen Goodwin, an Obama fan, rejects the notion that Clinton got a raw deal. She had a “fair shot,” Goodwin told me earlier on Tuesday. As for any Clinton backers who are still smoldering, “They’re entitled to their opinion.” She hopes they “move on” and embrace Obama, as did she in the first place. “I wouldn’t say I turned my back on her. I thought I was choosing the better of the two candidates.”

I don’t, of course, rule out the idea that some people held Clinton’s gender against her. At the Whitehouse meeting I ran into former state human resources administrator Beverly Dwyer, a Clinton activist who told me, “I would have liked a woman to make some history.”

Dwyer reported that in canvassing phone calls she made for Clinton among voters in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, she encountered sexist attitudes toward her candidate and racist attitudes toward Obama.

The words weren’t subtle. Dwyer said she heard comments like, “I can’t imagine a woman running the military,” or, “I’m not voting for any black man for president, least of all a person that’s not qualified.”

Dwyer said she thought racism was more widespread than sexism, so she believed Clinton was doing well. But, of course, there were other factors at work. One that Dwyer found: Some people thought Bill was a liability.

Another Hillary Clinton fan, Gina Picard, a Providence principal running for North Providence School Committee, told me, “I honestly believe that she lost because people sort of looked at her husband and said he would take over and he would be running the country. [And] I don’t know, honestly, if our country is ready for a woman at that leadership level.”

While Dwyer is fine now with Obama, Picard is hesitant. “My concern is just the level of experience: Is he too fresh a face? He has a lot of charisma, which is great, but can he actually get in there and do it?”

Obama, she said, seems too liberal. On the other hand, “John McCain is definitely not the guy for education.”

What does Picard want to hear from Obama this week? “More substance.”

So do I. Still, conventions usually are as much about tone. Secretary of State Ralph Mollis, a former North Providence mayor, said the convention has to convey to people like residents of his town a sense of hope. “We’re looking for hope … hope for our grandchildren and children … for job opportunities … hope for affordable housing … We’re looking for our country to turn around.”

In a Wednesday interview, Roberts said one reason Obama has not opened a big lead is that “McCain benefits from the perception that he is a different kind of Republican.” (You do remember the maverick image he cultivated in 2000.) “He is a much more traditional Republican than he likes to present himself … He benefits from the perception that he won’t be a third-term Bush.”

This, clearly, is something Obama needs to get on top of.

The challenge is made greater by the fact that, to many people, McCain, with a heroic military/POW background, has more compelling credentials than Obama to be president, certainly to be commander in chief.

By the same token, while Obama has to face racism among voters, McCain faces the prospect of ageism.

Like most Rhode Island Democratic officials — and primary voters — Providence Mayor David Cicilline was originally for Clinton. But in a recent conversation with me he was euphoric about Obama.

Cicilline raged about what he called the Bush administration’s abandonment of the cities. He said he and a few other mayors had a chance to meet with Obama in June. “It was wonderful, it was great, to hear our next president actually value cities and the people who live in cities.”

Cicilline said many voters have not bothered to size Obama up. In Denver, he said, Obama can tell his story and demonstrate his qualities. “A president has to have good judgment, be smart, deal with complicated issues.”

He said Obama needs to inspire people to believe that, from the economy to the armed forces to education, he can lead the nation to “a better place.”

I’d welcome it. In fact, I’d like to believe McCain could do it, too. Sometimes the debate — over Iraq, say — seems hopelessly bogged down. You have McCain, a supporter of the surge, saying that Obama, in resisting it, preferred to win an election than a war. But then Obama says McCain was wrong to endorse the war to begin with…

And what of these suggestions, albeit more subtle, that Obama, who was born in Hawaii and largely grew up there, is not a real American? I was in Hawaii in March and I was under the impression it’s part of the United States.

Of course, you see Obama saying he doesn’t want to run a standard campaign, he’s sick of Washington politics as usual, blah blah, and he runs commercials skewering McCain, ads that have raised eyebrows among unaligned watchdog monitors.

I try to be an optimist. And yet I run into things on the political circuit that get me very depressed. For example, at the Whitehouse community dinner, several questioners fumed about undocumented immigrants, or, as one the speakers, Kathy Gudaitis, of Johnston, called them, “illegal aliens,” which makes it sound to my ears as if they have swooped down from Mars. The topic of immigration gained renewed currency last month with the arrest of 31 suspected illegal immigrants (16 women and 15 men) doing maintenance work at Rhode Island courthouses. Gudaitis demands stricter law enforcement.

I thought Whitehouse handled the topic pretty well. He said he had supported a multipronged, balanced bill to overhaul the immigration picture but that the measure faltered when not enough Republicans backed it.

He noted that he is a former U.S. Attorney and former state attorney general. He said he launched the investigation that eventually led to the conviction of former Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci. He said he took out the notorious, dangerous Latin Kings gang. He said he won a huge oil-spill settlement.

“I take your point that the laws need to be enforced,” the senator said. “But I don’t think 30 cleaning ladies is that dramatic compared to some of the problems that are taking place out there.”

Gudaitis, a retired gas company supervisor, told me she votes for the candidate, not the party, and she’s not for Obama or McCain. Then she said, “I know I’m not voting for Obama.” She said he scares her. “I don’t believe you should give so much away … People have to earn it themselves.”

In view of the community-dinner griping about immigrants, I asked Whitehouse later if he thinks Obama should or should not talk about the issue in his convention speech.

Whitehouse paused and said he should focus on such broader issues as Iraq, energy, the economy and health care. “Immigration is an important issue, but it’s not of that scale,” he said.

Later in the week, Rhode Islanders saw anew the explosiveness of the issue when Bishop Thomas Tobin and 15 pastors, saying mass arrests of suspected illegal immigrants had spread fear across Rhode Island and torn families and communities apart, called on federal officials for a moratorium on raids here. This was a daring stand, no doubt thankless, and I doubt you’ll see Obama say anything like it.

Overall, there is one thing I’ll be looking for Thursday night — not in Denver, per se, but among people around the country.

Senator Goodwin told me that she was on hand when Obama, then an Illinois state legislator, delivered the keynote at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.

I asked if she thought at the time that she was listening to a future president. Not right then, she said. But right afterward there was a tremendous buzz. Folks were saying things like, “Was he amazing!” and “Can you believe that!”

If by the end of his Denver speech, you and your friends are swooning about how amazing he was, how incredibly impressive, I’ll begin to believe he really is going to pull this off.

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal’s political columnist.

mbakst@projo.com