Michelle Obama: "American dream endures"

DENVER — Michelle Obama introduced Barack Obama to a national audience Monday night as a loving husband and father and a dedicated public servant who shares the same values as other working-class Americans.

The wife of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee was the closing act on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention, a moment designed to show the couple's softer side and to take control of a personal narrative that Obama's Republican rival is trying to frame.

"I come here tonight as a sister, blessed with a brother who is my mentor, my protector and my lifelong friend," she told a prime-time television audience and conventioneers gathered in Denver. "I come here as a wife who loves my husband and believes he will be an extraordinary president."

In addressing the convention, Michelle Obama reprised her crucial role during the Democratic presidential primaries as deal closer. It was Michelle Obama who, early in the campaign, visited black beauty salons and black college campuses to tell skeptical African-American voters that her husband was "black enough" and seasoned enough to be president.

Monday night's appearance — which included a biographical video featuring her mother and older brother — was a high-stakes effort to counter Internet rumors and conservative talk-radio suggestions that Barack Obama isn't American or patriotic enough to be president and that she has some sort of hidden left-wing political agenda.

Her message to the country: We're just as American as you.

"Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you're going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don't know them, and even if you don't agree with them," she said. "And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and pass them on to the next generation."

She noted that this week commemorates the 88th anniversary of women winning the right to vote and the 45th anniversary of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

"I stand here today at the crosscurrents of that history, knowing that my piece of the American dream is a blessing hard won by those who came before me," she said.

Polls indicate that Americans like Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain, the wife of presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain, but they also show that they don't know much about them.

Michelle Obama has been an active player in her husband's campaign, and his foes have tried to tag her as unpatriotic or angry.

Critics pounced on her last February when she told an audience that "for the first time in my adult lifetime I am really proud of my country."

A Fox News Channel video scroll referred to her as Obama's "baby mama" and a Fox commentator called a seemingly playful fist bump between Michelle and Barack Obama a "terrorist fist jab."

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a civil rights-era icon, said Michelle Obama's speech would help some Americans get comfortable with the idea of an African-American first lady.

"America has never [considered] the possibility of a young, smart black woman as first lady," said Lewis, who initially supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign before endorsing Obama.

Michelle Obama, a graduate of Princeton, stressed her blue-collar South Side Chicago upbringing and her concerns for her daughters' future.

A 44-year-old hospital executive and mother of two, Obama described herself as a daughter of Chicago's South Side, raised by a loving family in a one-bedroom apartment in a brick bungalow.

Her mother, Miriam Robinson, was a stay-at-home mom. Her father, Fraser, worked for the city's water department, despite combating multiple sclerosis. Both parents instilled in their two children a drive to succeed.

"He and my mom poured everything they had into me and Craig," she said. "And thanks to their faith and hard work, we both were able to go on to college. So I know firsthand from their lives — and mine — that the American dream endures."

She described meeting her husband and discovering that despite his "funny name" they shared the values of working hard and treating people with respect. She also reached out to Clinton's supporters, lauding the New York senator even before she praised her husband's new running mate, Joseph Biden. The votes cast for Clinton in the primaries, Obama said, "put those 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling, so that our daughters — and sons — can dream a little bigger and aim a little higher."

When she was done, her husband appeared on a giant video screen from Kansas City, Mo., where he watched the speech at the home of supporters. He joked about how hard it was to get her to go out with him, adding that voters want a "persistent president" and that was proof how persistent he could be.

The couple's two daughters also watched on stage, with the outgoing Sasha, 7, grabbing a microphone to say, "Hi Daddy."

Information from The Chicago Tribune is included in this report.