Obama's stump speech plays to fears, hopes

In fact, it's a carefully organized four-part argument.

Obama delivers it without notes or changes from week to week. A campaign centerpiece for 19 months, the full-blown stump speech probably has done more than anything to rocket him to fame and to a lead over Republican John McCain in some national polls.

Obama has modified the speech over time, testing new lines and adapting to political events. The biggest change came when he finally secured the Democratic nomination and was able to sharpen his criticisms of McCain and drop his more cautious critiques of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

President Bush has been a central target from the start. And the stump speech's overall feel and organization have remained remarkably similar for at least a year. He nearly always includes several key lines, including "Now is our time, "If you will stand with me," and "We can change the world."

Obama has wowed audiences with speeches he reads from teleprompters, including his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention and his recent speech accepting the Democratic nomination before some 80,000 people in Denver and another 40 million TV viewers.

In many ways, the stump speech is more impressive. He delivers it from memory at large rallies, walking about the stage with his sleeves rolled up. With fairly modest shifts in volume and pace, he moves the audience to joyous chants one moment, hushed attention the next, and thunderous ovations--and some tears--with his call-to-arms conclusion, which he sometimes has to shout.

His recent half-hour talk at a high school football stadium in Dublin, Ohio, is a good example.

The speech starts with a brief biographical section. In this case, Obama devotes it to his new running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, rather than himself. He calls Biden "a man who's worked in Washington for decades, but who's never let Washington change him."

Obama then lays out the problem he sees for the nation. In 19 months of campaigning, he says, he has learned that Americans are generous and hardworking, but "they recognize that over the last eight years this country has gone tragically off course."