Artur Davis: “Headliner” at RNC

This is Artur Davis’s job now, the work that he hopes will resurrect his political career. Wear a suit. Speak to strangers. Explain that what had been some of the most important causes of his life — a political party and a president — turned out to be mistakes.

“How many of us believed, four years ago, that Barack Obama was not just a politician?” Davis, a former four-term congressman, asked Mitt Romney supporters in Arlington County’s Ballston neighborhood on Wednesday. The Romney people said nothing, but Davis kept on: This was his story, not theirs.

“We may not have the power to stop it,” Davis said of President Obama’s campaign. “But the American people have the power to punish it.”

Four years ago, Davis was onstage at the Democratic convention: a fast-rising congressman from Alabama, so close to Obama that he provided the official “second” for Obama’s nomination.

On Thursday, the Republican Party said he would be a “headliner” at its convention in Tampa, where he will be one of Obama’s most prominent African American critics.