Twenty years ago, Barack Obama skyrocketed to national prominence with a speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention (DNC). It was full of soaring rhetoric. Everyone remembers the bit about how Americans are “one people” who can’t be divided into “red states” and “blue states.” No one seems to remember the policy substance — possibly because there just wasn’t much there.

He mentioned that health care should be more affordable and unemployment should be lower. There was also a gesture to the importance of protecting civil liberties — which would become deeply ironic given the record of his own presidency, during which he embraced warrantless mass surveillance and even ordered a drone strike on an American citizen.

But it was overwhelmingly clear that policy wasn’t the point of the speech. And the one he gave last night in Chicago was no different. In both cases, the real focus was inspirational storytelling, designed to fill the audience with confidence that the speaker (and, by extension, the candidate being talked up: John Kerry in 2004, Kamala Harris in 2024) is a good person who can be trusted to make the right decisions, whatever those might turn out to be.