cbs 20080829 OBAMA

It was a speech that you could boil down to one word.

This is DR.

Some democrats were worried that Barack Obama couldn't be tough.  That he gave a good speech, had a great life story, but that in the end he was too idealistic to mount the kind of attack that it takes to win.

TAPE:

I don't think that's going to be a problem.  But he also signalled another tactic -- he indicated that he plans to steal the other side's weapons -- 
that instead using wedge issues to separate people, he'd use them to find common ground.

He didn't fall-back on the "pro-choice" euphemism -- he uttered the word abortion.  But he said that instead of just FIGHTING about it and getting nowhere, suppose we try to do what sincere people on both sides REALLY want, which is to reduce unwanted pregnancies.  And on GUN CONTROL:  Instead of using it as a fundraising tool, why don't we figure out a way to take the guns away from the BAD GUYS, without disarming the good guys.

And finally on the ego issue -- why a man so young, with a comparatively thin resume, thinks he's ready for this; thinks he has the right to invite 80,000 people to his acceptance speech:

TAPE:  "I get it....

Lots of politicians have talked about change.  But it's an overused word.  Change needs a focus if people are going to believe it's real.  And Barack Obama woke up one day and realized that, at this particular point in American history, whether he deserved it or not, a remarkably large number of people had decided that he was going to be it.

Now this.