The Political Whore

The Democrats kicked off their four-day Obama infomercial with family night, a series of speeches aimed at humanizing Obama. The most effective was Michelle Obama’s conversational and heartfelt account of her life, especially the family aspects with her brother, a star basketball player and current coach at Oregon State, Craig Robinson.

She told the DNC audience:

As you might imagine, for Barack, running for President is nothing compared to that first game of basketball with my brother Craig.

I can’t tell you how much it means to have Craig and my mom here tonight. Like Craig, I can feel my dad looking down on us, just as I’ve felt his presence in every grace-filled moment of my life.At six-foot-six, I’ve often felt like Craig was looking down on me too…literally. But the truth is, both when we were kids and today, he wasn’t looking down on me – he was watching over me.

And he’s been there for me every step of the way since that clear February day 19 months ago, when – with little more than our faith in each other and a hunger for change – we joined my husband, Barack Obama, on the improbable journey that’s brought us to this moment.

Simple and effective, laying the groundwork to humanize Obama a bit after the mock-heroicizing of him that the McCain camp has so successfully done over the past month.

Of course, the money shot of the night was the Lion in Winter, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., who took to the convention for probably the last time. He spoke for only about seven minutes, and those (like me) who were looking for parting wisdom from Teddy were disappointed. He stuck to the Obama story arc and handed the baton to Obama, and the crowd loved it. But what an opportunity for Kennedy to make sense out of the “dream” of the New Frontier and Camelot 40 years on, as well as the legacy of liberalism. But he got the job done, and those in the hall were clearly overcome with the emotion of the moment and the Ken Burns film that introduced him:

Here’s the vid of Kennedy speaking, introduced by Caroline Kennedy:

Bonus cuts: Joe Bardi has lots more convention goodness/weirdness over at The Short List; Mark Halperin grades the speakers; Jesse Jackson Jr. impresses.

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