The 17 Minutes That Launched a Political Star

(By Melina Mara -- The Washington Post)   |   Buy Photo

As Lampe listened from the back of the room for a third time, he once again thought Obama sounded a beat or two off. The politician would deliver the biggest speech of his life in about 30 hours, and he had run out of time to practice. Lampe walked out of the room with Axelrod.

"I don't know," Axelrod said. "He's still only 75 percent of the way there."

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Obama stood alone two minutes before his speech, separated from the crowd by a thick blue curtain. A whirlwind of morning interviews had weakened his voice, and a last-minute wardrobe decision had forced him to borrow an adviser's blue tie. He steadied himself one final time while Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois introduced him. Then Obama stepped onstage.

The politician who four years earlier had been unable to obtain a floor pass to a Democratic convention walked out to see 5,000 people crammed onto the floor and waving blue signs imprinted with his name. Obama responded to their cheers by lifting his right hand in a triumphant wave. He shook Durbin's hand, then hugged him. Durbin walked to the side of the stage and stood next to Michelle. He looked back over his shoulder, as if hesitant to leave Obama out there alone.

"You've got to try to picture this, the atmosphere, the pressure that comes with standing by yourself in front of all those people," Durbin said. "One minute you're backstage, and then someone pushes you out there, and suddenly you're smack dab in the center of the spotlight, in front of all these people and TV cameras. The crowd is going completely berserk with anticipation. I think it's probably the hardest assignment you can have."

The teleprompter missed the first few words of Obama's speech, and he stalled slightly. He had written an address that lacked an early applause line -- a tactic some convention organizers originally questioned -- and the slow start worried his friends. Terry Link, the state senator, was watching with several Obama supporters in a Fleet Center skybox and thought his colleague looked stiff, almost robotic. "I'd seen him speak so many times," Link said, "and he just wasn't in his usual rhythm."

Two minutes into the speech, Obama mentioned Kansas, and that state's delegation roared in the upper deck. Surprised by the response, Obama pointed up at the group and smiled -- his first unrehearsed gesture. The crowd chuckled. Obama's shoulders relaxed. "He became," Link said, "the Obama we all knew."

Over the next 15 minutes, Obama crafted a first impression that still stands at the foundation of his presidential campaign.

His speech contained no revolutionary ideas, analysts said. Most of the concepts could have been plucked from any standard stump speech: that every child deserves a shot at a good life; that each American is connected -- and responsible -- for every other; that government needs to be honest with its people, especially before going to war. One conservative pundit, analyzing Obama's speech later that night, would sum it up as "pure puff."

But Obama's message resonated in Boston because of the connection he fostered with the audience, analysts said. At the core of his speech, he established an us-vs.-them scenario in which everyone listening had a rooting interest. Which force would shape the country's future, Obama asked: The divisiveness of modern, partisan politics and stereotyping? Or the optimism of the American people?

Obama possessed the vision, he said, of "not a black America and a white America and a Latino America and an Asian America -- there is a United States of America." By the time he sped to his climax -- "Out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come" -- the crowd stood, transfixed.