How Obama got to convention's center stage

CHICAGO — The Democratic National Convention is akin to a long-standing family reunion. And Barack Obama was not on the guest list eight years ago.

He was drained of money and confidence, fresh from a punishing defeat in an Illinois congressional primary race. Even the state delegation did not have room at the party's gathering in Los Angeles for Obama, then a 39-year-old lawyer, who had annoyed some state Democrats for not waiting his turn to seek a higher office.

Never mind all that. Obama bought a plane ticket and headed West anyway.

He persuaded a clerk at the car-rental agency to overlook the unpaid balance on his credit card and he made his way to the festivities. He was not a delegate — not even close to being a superdelegate — and without a floor credential he had all the sway of the junior state senator that he was.

"I have no memory of him there," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., recalled. "It was a disastrous trip for him."

As Obama prepares for his own celebration tonight in Denver, his evolution as a politician can be seen as a narrative centered on his party's conventions, how he managed to navigate the politics of both Chicago, his adopted hometown, and the nation to accomplish this dizzying rise.

When party activists gathered in Chicago to nominate President Clinton to a second term in 1996, Obama was making his first run for political office, but the 34-year-old did not have enough clout to get full access to the convention. Instead, he concluded that high-dollar breakfasts and dinners seemed to lock voters out of the system, grousing to a reporter: "The convention's for sale, right?"

Four years later, a lone news account of his visit to California is when he dropped by a reception at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It was at a gathering of Illinois Democrats, where Obama praised the state's senior senator. An Associated Press article reported: "Dick Durbin is not only the most popular Democrat in the state," gushed state Sen. Barack Obama of Chicago, "but the most popular politician in the state."

By 2004, other Democrats were doing the gushing.

After winning a crowded primary to fill an open U.S. Senate seat in Illinois, his race quickly became one to watch as Democrats fought — unsuccessfully — to take control of the Senate. But if elected, he would become the only African American in the Senate and only the third to win election since Reconstruction.

Shortly after Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, he campaigned in Chicago with Obama. Impressed by his ability, as well as the diversity he would bring to the national party, Kerry invited Obama to play a premier role at the convention.

For Obama, the keynote speech at the FleetCenter in Boston would provide the flint for his national ambitions. But he still was seen as little more than a rising Democrat who, perhaps one day, would find a place in the party hierarchy.

"Nobody knew who I was," Obama said this week, thinking back to the last convention. "Even up to the time that I walked on the stage, where they were handing out Obama signs, people were thinking, what is this?"

Although Obama's Senate campaign had been chronicled before the convention address, few people anticipated how pivotal his big moment on the podium would be.

"When he was giving the speech, you knew that something was going to change," said David Axelrod, who at the time was the senior strategist of Obama's Senate race and now is playing the same role in his presidential campaign. "He was treated with a little deference."

Not everyone took notice, though. While he arrived in Massachusetts on a chartered jet provided for an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," two days before his speech, he headed back to Illinois on a $285 airline ticket.

Because of his last name, airport security workers frequently pulled him aside for extra screening, said Jim Cauley, his campaign manager at the time. And sure enough, the new star of the Democratic Party was pulled out of the line and asked to stand shoeless while an agent passed a wand over him.

There was no such delay this year.

When Obama arrived in Denver on Wednesday, his campaign slogan and name were emblazoned on the side of his chartered 757 jet. The front cabin alone is larger than the car he struggled to rent eight years ago this month.

As he wrote in his second book, "The Audacity of Hope," he was frustrated by his lack of access in 2000, saying: "I ended up watching most of the speeches on various television screens scattered around the Staples Center, occasionally following friends or acquaintances into skyboxes where it was clear I didn't belong."

So he left one day before Al Gore accepted the party's nomination. This time? Gore is one of the leading warmup acts for Obama. He will be seated in Invesco Field when Obama is on the stage accepting the party's nomination.