Barack Obama Accepts Presidential Nomination

Democratic nominee says it is “time to change America”
By Michelle Austein
Denver – On the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech August 28, Barack Obama formally accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for the presidency of the United States.
As people shouted “Yes we can” and waved signs reading “Change,” Obama said, “With profound gratitude and great humility, I accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States.”
In his acceptance speech, Obama said “it is time for us to change America,” and this 2008 election is the election to keep “the American promise alive."
“We meet at one of those defining moments, a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil and the American promise has been threatened,” he said.
OBAMA’S VISION FOR HIS PRESIDENCY
Obama said he would change life in the United States by cutting taxes for 95 percent of working families, providing affordable health care for every American, ensuring equal pay for women and offering affordable college education to every young American who serves his or her community.
In an election year in which high gasoline prices have been a major campaign issue, the Democratic nominee said that as president he would “set a clear goal … in 10 years we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.” Obama said he would do so by safely harnessing nuclear power and investing in renewable sources of energy.
“Just as we keep our promise to the next generation here at home,” Obama said, “so must we keep America’s promise abroad.” The Democratic nominee said he would end the war in Iraq and fight al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Obama said he would “build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century,” which include nuclear proliferation, poverty, genocide and climate change.
Much of Obama’s speech focused on what he viewed as “failed policies” of President Bush and problems with presumed Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s proposed policies.
“We love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight,” Obama said. Throughout his campaign, Obama has said McCain would promote policies similar to those of the Bush administration. Obama said the Republican candidate does not understand the problems middle-class Americans face, and criticized McCain’s positions on tax relief for oil companies, health care and education.
The Democratic candidate also criticized McCain’s positions on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: “We need a president who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past.”
Obama, the first African-American presidential nominee of a major party, spoke of King’s famous March on Washington on August 28, 1963.
Speaking about those who participated in the march and listened to King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Obama said “they could’ve heard words of anger and discord. They could’ve been told to succumb to the fear and frustration of so many dreams deferred.”
“But what the people heard instead … is that in America our destiny is inextricably linked,” Obama said. “That together, our dreams can be one.”
Those marchers, Obama said, pledged to march ahead. In this election, “we must pledge once more to march into the future.”
PEOPLE WAIT IN LONG LINES TO SEE HISTORY MADE
Obama’s speech capped off an evening of political speeches, videos and musical performances at Invesco Field, a football stadium that seats about 76,000. Most convention events were open only to delegates and party leaders, but this speech was open to the general public – free tickets were distributed months ahead of the speech. The last candidate to give an acceptance speech outside the convention hall was John F. Kennedy in 1960.
Those who were able to get the tickets waited long hours in the Denver heat to see the Democratic nominee, but few complained. Many said they believed they would be witnessing history. Tom and Patty Ballowe came from New Mexico for the speech.
“It’s exciting to be a part of history,” Tom Ballowe said. The Ballowes, who have worked as volunteers on the Obama campaign for months, saw the event as an important recognition of their hard work.
Dale Fish of Pueblo, Colorado, drove 100 miles to see Obama. The Vietnam veteran says he supports the Democratic candidate because “we don’t need kids dying for another war.” Fish said Obama reminds him of the late President Kennedy and his “passion and ability to capture the imagination.”
In 1960 “the whole nation was jaded,” Fish said, but Kennedy and King helped that generation believe in their leaders. Fish believes that “Obama gives us new dreams, new direction, new passion.”

[Full text of Obama's speech]

More coverage:
> Democrats Formally Nominate Barack Obama for U.S. Presidency

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> Former President Helps Democratic Party Unite Behind Obama

> Opening Night of Democratic Convention Celebrates Obama’s Story

> U.S. Election Helping America’s Image Worldwide

Competitiveness Forum Raises Uruguay's Profile in the Americas

Ambassador Baxter and Uruguay delegation have successful meetings in Atlanta
By Leigh Miller

The second annual Americas Competitiveness Forum held August 17-19 in Atlanta, Georgia, was an opportunity for Uruguay to raise its profile as an innovation center in the Americas, according to U.S. Ambassador Frank Baxter.

Baxter and Uruguay Industry, Energy & Mining Minister Daniel Martinez led a Uruguayan delegation to the event, which brought together public and private sector actors from the Western Hemisphere to discuss strategies for innovation and economic growth. More than 1,000 attendees from business, government, academia and non-governmental organizations in at least 25 countries attended the forum, which was organized by the U.S. State Department.

“This was an opportunity to learn about best practices for competitiveness from peers in other countries,” Baxter said in an interview following the conference. “Sure, there’s competition, but the market is so broad that there is room for learning from each other about how to succeed in the world economy.”

Ambassador Baxter stressed that the development of human capital “should be the No. 1 priority for any country or entity that wants to be competitive,” adding that the Atlanta conference highlighted the importance of educational partnerships between universities and private industry.

He said that developing such academia-industry relationships is one area in which Uruguay has room to grow. One of his meetings in Atlanta, along with Minister Martinez and U.S. Embassy Political Officer Jack Doutrich, involved a discussion with the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Georgia and the Georgia Energy Innovation Center about potential cooperation with Uruguay for renewable energy projects.

Although Atlanta-based Southern Co., the world’s eighth-largest utility company, has divested its international holdings, Ambassador Baxter said his meeting with company representatives proved useful for learning about the potential for Uruguay to further its cellulosic biofuel power generation capabilities.

“There are so many opportunities out there, but you have to look for them. Uruguay has to initiate the conversations,” Baxter said, adding that it was encouraging that such a substantial delegation from Uruguay attended the Atlanta forum.

Several Uruguayan business and government officials spoke on discussion panels at the forum, and met with counterparts from U.S. states and other countries to share best practices on technology transfer, economic development and small business innovation.

Rodolfo Oppenheimer, senior partner of Prosperitas Capital Partners, a financial management company that established the first venture capital fund in Uruguay, participated on a panel about the development of venture capital in Latin America.

Uruguay has begun the process of creating venture capital markets to support Uruguayan entrepreneurs and small businesses, Mr. Oppenheimer said, by following the U.S. model that first develops seed capital, then angel investors, followed by venture capital funds and, finally, mature capital markets. “Now we just need to allow our VC companies to mature,” he said in an interview after the Atlanta conference.

“I think we are headed in the right direction. We need to talk about it day in and day out. The U.S. ambassador [Baxter] is doing a fabulous job of bringing the right individuals from the U.S. to talk to Uruguay about creating capital markets,” Mr. Oppenheimer added.

He said that the Atlanta conference was useful for talking with policy makers from around the hemisphere about strategies that his company can use to develop the right environment for the growth of venture capital in Uruguay. Montevideo-based Prosperitas invests in small- and medium-sized companies with technologies for the information technology, service and agribusiness industries.

Isidoro Hodara, vice president of Zonamerica, a business park in Uruguay, attended the Atlanta forum to learn about developing closer relationships between universities and entrepreneurs. “In addition to networking, the usefulness of this forum lies also in learning what other countries are doing to increase their competitiveness. This gives us a much better position from which to judge what to do in the future,” he said. Dr. Hodara is also an international affairs professor at Universidad ORT Uruguay in Montevideo.

Miguel Brechner, president of the Uruguay Technological Laboratory, a government-funded, privately operated organization, spoke at the forum about the country’s innovation in public-private partnerships. Among other projects, his lab is handling the roll-out of the international “One Laptop Per Child” program, which provides a laptop computer to each public school child in Uruguay.

Santiago Sotuyo, director of Uruguay's National Ports Administration, and Fernando Brun, head of the country’s National Research and Innovation Agency, also attended the forum with Ambassador Baxter and Minister Martinez.

Baxter noted that Uruguay is hoping to host a second annual Americas Innovation Forum in April 2009. The first innovation forum, held in Punta del Este at the end of March, drew attendees from Latin America to discuss strategies for innovation. It was modeled after the inaugural the Americas Competitiveness Forum in Atlanta in 2007.

The third annual Americas Competitiveness Forum is to be held in Chile in 2009.

Visit www.competitivenessforum.org for more information about the event.

United States at “Turning Point” as Voters Go to Polls November 4

Major shifts in U.S. society suggest 2008 election particularly significant

By Eric Green

The 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign will reflect dramatic changes in American society, political analysts tell America.gov.
Iowa State University political science professor Steffen Schmidt said the 2008 vote will be a “watershed, seriously important election.”
The election would be important, he said, even without a global terrorism threat, or that the presumed presidential nominees are Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, who could be the first African-American U.S. president.
Important elections occur “when there is a general shift in the paradigm [basic structure] of society,” Schmidt said Examples in U.S. history include the 1861-1865 Civil War and the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Schmidt said 2008 is a “threshold year when the full impact of globalization is making itself felt in full force, and the U.S. economy has now shifted so that most Americans are no longer working in stable lifelong jobs.” Instead, Schmidt said, “we are becoming a very fast-moving, innovative and novel economy -- the first 21st century economy.”
The election, he said, marks the “end of the cheap energy period and the need to shift to new energies and technologies which can be accelerated or slowed by good or bad national government policies.”
These challenges face “whoever becomes U.S. president in 2008,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt said older Americans will be “critically important in 2008 simply because their numbers are huge and they are facing the economic [income, job and pension] and health consequences of the 21st century economy and they are very concerned” about those issues.
The candidate who “can see what the next 50 years will require to keep us competitive, wealthy, and strong and who can articulate that to voters will win the election,” said Schmidt.
UNITED STATES FACES ENORMOUS CHALLENGES
Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, said 2008 ranks “among the most important elections in U.S. history because America is at a turning point today.”
“There are enormous challenges abroad with two wars raging” in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the United States faces an “enormous challenge in terms of how we get off the fossil fuel economy and ensure our children a future,” said Lichtman, who will be in Russia September 15-30 for the State Department’s U.S. Speaker and Specialist program. Lichtman will “impersonate” Obama in the staging of up to five U.S.-style presidential debates to heighten Russian awareness of the American election process.
The presidential election will show the conflicting pressures older voters face in casting their votes, Lichtman said. Many older voters, he said, identify with McCain because the Arizona senator is 71, but have views on the issues more compatible with those of Obama, who will be 47 when the election occurs. Lichtman said the Illinois senator showed during the Democratic primaries that he can motivate younger voters “but the open question is whether they will show up at the polls and vote where they haven’t in the past.”
Young people “are the hardest voters to turn on and the easiest voters to turn off,” said Lichtman.
OBAMA CAMPAIGN OF HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE
Cary Covington, a political science professor at the University of Iowa, said the election is important on at least two levels.
“First, and most obviously, the symbolism of an African American running for the highest office in the country is, regardless of whether he wins or loses, of historic significance,” said Covington.
On a substantive level, Covington said, the country’s choice between McCain and Obama will be “critical to foreign affairs. Differences between the two candidates on domestic issues are, of course, important. But presidents cannot determine our path in domestic affairs the way they can in foreign affairs.”
Covington said presidents can use their leadership role in foreign affairs to pressure the U.S. Congress to “endorse their preferred policies in ways that they cannot do in domestic policy.”
McCain is more attuned to President Bush’s “unilateral approach to foreign policy” and his “reliance on ‘hard’ foreign policy tools like the military,” Covington said.
Obama, in contrast, “appears to prefer to act multilaterally, much like” the first President Bush as he prepared for the 1991 Gulf War, Covington said.
He added that Obama also seems “inclined to lead with the ‘soft’ foreign policy tools of diplomacy and to rely on military force only if the diplomatic efforts fail.”
This difference, Covington said, is “important because the rest of the world is likely to respond quite differently to a continuation of the Bush approach than to the change embodied by Obama,” who will give U.S. allies a “sense of inclusion and a stake in outcomes.”
Covington said the differences in the approaches of McCain and Obama are likely to influence foreign policy more significantly than domestic policies.
For information on the foreign policy positions of McCain and Obama, see “Candidate McCain Aims to Revitalize U.S. Global Standing” and “Obama Emphasizes Multilateral U.S. Foreign Policymaking.”