STARPLUS

DENVER - OK, Barack Obama is a celebrity. Just like Sheryl Crow, Stevie Wonder and the other stars who shared the stadium spotlight with him Thursday night.

Republicans are trying to make fame a liability for the Democratic presidential nominee and they're having some success at it. But John McCain is a celebrity too.

It's a curious twist in this presidential campaign, given that nobody gets this close to the White House without being, or becoming, famous in the process. Actually, McCain got there first, the Vietnam POW who survived and won his way to the Senate in 1986.

But in the Republican script, he's renowned for what he's done while Obama's fame is empty, not earned. McCain spokesmen were on the case, taunting the Democrats for the setting and the spectacle as he delivered his acceptance address to a roaring crowd of some 84,000 people in Denver's pro football stadium.

John F. Kennedy delivered his "New Frontiers" acceptance speech to 80,000 people in the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960, the other time a Democratic National Convention held its finale before a massive crowd in an outdoor stadium.

Obama said he wanted his that way to show that it is a ground-up effort, with room for average Americans, not only delegates in their hall. In his speech, Obama spoke of his soldier grandfather who studied on the GI Bill, his single mother, of unemployed Chicago workers he tried to help, of the grandmother who sacrificed so that he could have a better life. "I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine," he said. "These are my heroes."

The celebrity stuff apparently has had some impact. Tom Daschle, the former Senate leader and an Obama adviser, acknowledged that Obama's poll numbers dipped a bit after McCain broadcast a campaign ad likening him to celebrities like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

"He's the biggest celebrity in the world," the ad intoned. "But is he ready to lead?"
Obama called it baloney, and then took out an ad of his own saying that actually, McCain was "Washington's biggest celebrity."

So what. Entertainers don't have to deal with wars, recessions and energy woes. Obama or McCain will.

There's a simple way to cut through the tissue of the celebrity issue. That's to listen to the nominees, both of them, and judge them on what they say, not how many people they say it to or how artfully they deliver the speeches. When the next president faces hard questions, fame won't help him find the right answers.
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