Beyond the Dome

There was one line in Barack Obama’s acceptance speech last night that seemed to sum up his entire candidacy in one neat phrase: “Change doesn’t come from Washington — change comes to Washington.”

He was talking about a grassroots mobilization style of politics, not about himself — a way of channeling his community organizing background into a call for people to get involved in politics. But in a way, it also spoke to one of his biggest vulnerabilities: the fact that he has only three and a half years of experience as a U.S. senator, nearly half of it spent on the presidential campaign trail.

With any other senator, that might be an immediate disqualifier. But if “change comes to Washington” rather than from Washington, as Obama says, that helps him defuse the issue because most people wouldn’t judge him by his Senate record. In fact, they wouldn’t judge him as a senator at all. They’d see him almost as a visitor to Washington, someone who’s just as appalled by the state of affairs as they are.

The whole event at Invesco Field was designed to mark a break from the usual way of doing things, and in that it was a success. Sitting in the stands, watching thousands of people waving American flags and “change” signs, cheering and stomping their feet, it was impossible not to feel the power of people getting excited about politics. Even if they were almost all on one side of the political fence, it was a reminder that mass mobilization, when it’s done skillfully, is not a force to be dismissed lightly.

It’s about the last lesson you’d expect from what is, after all, an all-Senate ticket now. (Remember that Joe Biden has been in the Senate since the early 1970s.) And now, John McCain, in picking Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, has a strong anti-Washington element to balance the quarter century he has spent on Capitol Hill.

But if McCain wants to take issue with the way Obama frames the argument, he may have to come up with an equally compelling narrative of his own. Starting on Monday in St. Paul, he’ll have one of his best chances to do it.