The Speech

When Barack Obama launched into his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he was still an obscure state senator from Illinois. By the time he finished 17 minutes later, he had captured the nation's attention and opened the way for a run at the presidency. A behind-the-scenes look at the politicking, plotting, and preparation that went into Obama's breakthrough moment

By David Bernstein

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Minutes before he is to go onstage to introduce Obama, Durbin chats with his colleague. With them are their wives, Michelle Obama and Loretta Durbin.

On Tuesday, the day of his speech, Obama was up before 6 a.m. He gobbled down a vegetable omelet en route to the FleetCenter for back-to-back-to-back live interviews with the network morning shows. Next, he rushed off to speak at the Illinois delegation breakfast and then to a rally sponsored by the League of Conservation Voters. Afterwards, he returned to the arena for another hour of TV interviews. There was barely time for lunch, a turkey sandwich that he ate in the SUV while being interviewed by a group of reporters.

Gibbs recalls that by midafternoon, Obama's voice was getting hoarse from overuse. In the middle of one taping, Gibbs had to search the FleetCenter for hot tea and lemons to help soothe Obama's throat. "I can remember having this panic attack," he says: "Oh, my God, what if he's written this tremendous speech and everything's great, except I've scheduled too many TV interviews and he loses his voice?"

Even when Obama used one of the portable toilets outside the FleetCenter, the media horde followed. "Can y'all just give me one moment to use the Port-O-Let?" he told the group, according to one newspaper account. After a final dry run of the speech, Obama returned to the hotel to get some rest. A couple of hours before he was scheduled to go on, Obama had a wardrobe problem. He had a handsome black suit, but his wife, Michelle, didn't like his ties.

Gibbs was dressing in his hotel room, getting ready to put on a blue tie, when Axelrod knocked on his door. "Axelrod said, ‘That one's good,' and he took it," says Gibbs. Michelle Obama approved of the new tie, but Gibbs says Obama grumbled until he got to the convention hall and one of the makeup stylists told him, "That's a really nice tie."

On the drive to the FleetCenter, Obama called his grandmother, Madelyn, in Hawaii and his two young daughters, Malia and Sasha, then six and three. Backstage, the Obamas watched the other convention speakers on the monitors in the greenroom. He was relaxed but pensive, "like an athlete getting ready for a big game," as Axelrod puts it. Obama insisted that Michelle stay with him backstage until it was time for him to go onstage. "He gained some stability by having her there by his side," Lampe says.

In The Audacity of Hope, Obama recalls the final moments right before his speech. Waiting behind the black curtain as Dick Durbin introduced him, Obama writes, his thoughts turned first to his family-his parents, his grandparents, and then to his friends and supporters back home in Illinois. "Lord, let me tell their stories right, I said to myself. Then I walked onto the stage."

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Shortly after 9 p.m., Barack Obama made his way to the podium-flashing his movie-star smile and waving to the thousands of cheering party faithful. A sea of blue-and-white signs emblazoned with "obama" sprang up across the hall. As the soulful sounds of the 1964 civil rights anthem "Keep On Pushing" by Curtis Mayfield & the Impressions filled the room, it was hard to miss Obama's swagger, especially on the 90-by-17-foot video screen centered over the stage.

Senator Durbin greeted his future colleague at the dais. They slapped palms, shook hands, and exchanged professional hugs. Then Obama stood alone on the podium, mute for nearly 30 seconds, basking in his prime-time moment.

He opened the speech with a CliffsNotes version of his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father, recounting his multicultural upbringing, a story that moves from Kenya to Kansas to Hawaii. By then, he had related it probably thousands of times before, and it came across as earnest but slightly lackluster. His hand gestures were stiff and methodical, like a news anchor's; his delivery, a bit tentative. Valerie Jarrett recalls the nervousness in the room as she sat in a skybox, watching the speech with about two dozen of Obama's other closest friends and supporters: "I was digging my nails into my hands when he started."

Then something clicked inside Obama's head. He found his pitch and cadence. He projected effortlessly. His gestures became more theatrical, yet still natural. As Rideout watched from the side of the stage, she noticed the striking change. "I saw this moment where, like, something happened to him physically," she says. "His shoulders settled down, and this wave of support from the crowd looked like it literally washed over him. You could just see him gain this confidence and go with the moment. That's when the speech took on a life of its own." Dan Shomon also noticed the difference: "I think he just said, ‘I'm not hitting on all cylinders-I'm just going to go for it.' Then he just took it up a notch, and I was like, ‘Wow.' He just went on fire." The cheers and ovations erupted. Before he was finished, he would have been interrupted by applause 33 times.

After talking about his background, Obama focused on the concerns of everyday Americans: the Maytag plant workers in downstate Galesburg, whose jobs were going overseas; the woman from East St. Louis who couldn't afford college; the idealistic young marine from East Moline who went off to fight in Iraq. "If there's a child on the South Side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child," he declared to huge applause. "If there is a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription drugs, and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandparent. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties."

The crowd was rapt; some even wept. "It was like he had 10,000 sets of eyes," says Jarrett, "like he was looking into everyone's eyes and talking one-on-one with everyone in the room."

The momentum built when Obama proclaimed: "Tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America." Then the speech climaxed with the edited red-state, blue-state assertion. Even Obama was caught up in the moment. "I remember standing behind him and watching his feet move," recalls Stephanie Cutter, Kerry's former campaign press secretary. "It was like he was dancing at the podium. His feet were moving to the rhythm of the speech."

When it was over, Obama strode away from the dais and embraced his beaming, if visibly relieved, wife. The Obamas left the stage together, serenaded by the strains of "Keep On Pushing."