Acceptance Speech

NEW YORK -- Democrats from Bill Clinton on down are trying to make over his besmirched image, taking advantage of the convention spotlight to emphasize his humble beginnings in Hope, Ark.In his only campaign appearance yesterday, Mr. Clinton noted he "grew up not in the best of circumstances.""My mother was widowed before I was born, my family was poor when I was little. I was able to work my way through college and law school, and I know what it's like not to have enough money to get along on," he told an audience at a Manhattan social service center.

Hanging around backstage at the Academy Awards for 10 years, you pick up a few things. And, if you're a writer, you put them in a book, which is what Steve Pond has done in The Big Show: High Times and Dirty Dealings Backstage at the Academy Awards. Pond, originally granted permission to be a fly on Oscar's wall 10 years ago for a story for Premiere magazine, has been backstage at every Academy Awards since 1995. With this year's ceremonies only a week away, he agreed to answer some questions about what goes on behind the scenes of the movie industry's biggest night.

WASHINGTON - The air certainly went out fast from that trial balloon sent up by Sen. John Kerry's campaign suggesting he might not formally accept the Democratic nomination at the party's convention in Boston in late July. Pressure from his hometown, home state and convention planners quickly caused Mr. Kerry to find new virtues in making his nomination speech as tradition demands in the convention hall. "Boston," as he put it, "is the place where America's freedom began, and it's where I want the journey to the Democratic nomination to be completed."

NEW YORK - With President Bush's nomination acceptance speech behind him, will he move on from the drumbeat convention reminder that Sept. 11, 2001, made him a wartime president to details of what he would do with another four years in the presidency? In the lead-up to the convention here, Mr. Bush and his surrogates spent much of their time questioning Sen. John Kerry's qualifications for the job even as his strategists promised that he would use the convention to spell out his intentions for a second term.

WASHINGTON -- There were no shouts of "Newt, Newt, Newt" this time around. No clamoring by House Republicans to get near the man. No talk of "revolution" or history in the making.In fact, the contrast was so stark -- between the giddy, larger-than-life Newt Gingrich of two years ago and the beleaguered House speaker who stood before his colleagues yesterday contrite and apologetic -- that even the Georgia Republican himself couldn't help but comment."Let me say to the entire House that two years ago, when I became the first Republican speaker in 40 years, to the degree I was too brash, too self-confident or too pushy, I apologize," Gingrich said in his acceptance speech yesterday after winning back his speaker's gavel by the skin of his teeth.

CLEVELAND -- In his acceptance speech last month, Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore told his party's national convention he knew many people thought he was too serious, but that running for president was serious business. Continuing to make a virtue out of his seriousness, just as he did in that acceptance speech, the vice president here the other day unveiled a 191-page economic plan for a Gore presidency that was pointedly heavy on specifics. In the heart of the old Rust Belt, Mr. Gore accompanied the release of his plan, called "Prosperity for America's Families," with a speech in which he reminded his listeners again and again that he was throwing a full blueprint at them to examine and make up their own minds.

NEW YORK -- The acceptance speech is an important ritual for any presidential candidate. For Bill Clinton, the speech he gives in Madison Square Garden tonight may be more than important and perhaps even defining.The weight given to acceptance speeches is based on the premise that, as polling data consistently show, most voters don't pay much attention to any presidential campaign until the conventions choose the nominees. For the first time, the candidate commands a national audience that is paying some attention to what he has to say.Thus, for example, Democrats were buoyed four years ago when Michael S. Dukakis delivered a speech at Atlanta that was both compassionate and forceful.

Thirty years ago this week, former California governor Ronald Reagan delivered his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Detroit. The moment signaled an important pivot in modern American politics. Some references made by Mr. Reagan — who that November easily unseated incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter — are outdated today. But parts of his script are so timeless, one can easily imagine them coming from the 2008 Denver acceptance speech delivered by Barack Obama, whose election has been described as bringing the Reagan political era to a close.

PHILADELPHIA - Freshly anointed Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush departed from here on his quest for the White House yesterday mindful that he is bearing the hopes of a party that believes it may be about to taste victory for the first time since 1988. "We leave the city of brotherly love energized and united, focused on victory," the Texas governor told an airport rally of about 500 supporters who bid him farewell on the morning after he accepted his party's nomination at the Republican National Convention.

Barack Obama has given some great speeches since his national debut as the keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. Don't expect his speech Thursday night in Charlotte to be one of them. This is not a moment to announce his arrival on the national political scene. Nor will this speech be anything like the Philadelphia speech of May 2008, where he explained how racial identity shaped his life and the fate of the nation. Because asking to be returned to the Oval Office for a second term is a task quite different from asking for the first four years, Thursday's speech may not even look much like Mr. Obama's acceptance speech four years ago at Denver's Invesco Field.