Ladies and gentlemen, we might have just seen America’s next political superstar. I had read all about Barack Obama and his Illinois Senatorial campaign. I had heard about how he transcended the politics of race and division. I had seen the commentary about how he was running for the United States Senate on a platform of equality and opportunity and hope and optimism and justice and rights and compassion, with intelligence and thoughtfulness hallmarks of his approach, whether in a large room or while pressing the flesh. I had discovered his remarkable biography, read of his gifts, had heard tales of his potential. But politics is about spin and salesmanship and self-promotion and making silk purses out of sow’s ears, or chicken salad out of chicken poop. And yet I would have a hard time believing anyone who saw Obama’s keynote address before the convention tonight in the Fleet Center who did not come to the same conclusion I just did: This guy is going to be a player in American politics for a long, long time. It looks as if he will be running uncontested or virtually so in Illinois, as every rival or potential rival in the GOP proves inadequate, compromised, or uninterested. He will use this keynote as a springboard to a greater national profile, to be sure.

I am very proud to be a Democrat tonight. This was the evening when the cavalcade of speakers appeared before the convention, herded out every twenty minutes or so, a promenade of the party’s greats and near greats, the Democrats who fought for this nomination but lost (Gephart, Dean and Braun), those who have a high profile and exalted positions (Daschle and Kennedy) and those with lower profiles but strong status (Vilsack and Ron Reagan, for example). This is the night that had the potential for disaster written all over it. Would Ted Kennedy come out crapping lightning and spewing thunder from his not insubstantial head, or would he play the role of steadfast but reasonable liberal standardbearer? Would Dean go insane before the world or would he validate his perception as one who helped push the party to ask questions it otherwise might not have asked? Was Ron Reagan, Jr. just a show pony or did he have a place in the Democratic firmament as more than just his father’s son and thus a not-so-subtle tweak at the GOP? At almost every turn, where potential disaster loomed, instead the speakers were reasonable. Of course they were partisan, and of course they provided grist for a Republican machine that would create what they could not find, just as Democrats will do the same during the GOP’s convention in New York next month. We are different parties because we believe in different things. But at the same time, there is a party unity and sense of purpose among the Democrats that is allowing for enough of an edge to seep out and keep the true believers on the party’s left flank engaged, happy, rising for standing ovations. There has not been a lot of demagogic shouting, ad hominem attacks, or disjointed rambles. Sometimes you don’t have to hit a home run in order to succeed. Sometimes it’s good just not to strike out.

And for me, it comes back to those magical twenty minutes or so of Barack Obama where if you looked back over the ghosts of Democratic conventions past you could almost see Bobby Kennedy or a young Franklin Roosevelt, not so much in what he said but in the promise that he represented for so many in saying it. The American public has a difficult job ahead of it, and much will transpire before we have to make final decisions. There may be epochal events that make that decision more difficult, or others that make it easier. I fully expect the Republican National Convention to give the Grand Old Party a chance to shine, to show their party and their ideals in the light they believe makes them look best. But for now, for all of the rigid control the Kerry people and the DNC has managed to maintain, through it all shine many of the reasons why I am a Democrat, and why many millions of Americans feel the same way.