Barack Obama made a surprise appearance via live video feed, talking to wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia from Kansas City and introducing one of the everyday American families his campaign hopes to draw upon.
DENVER -- The messages coming out of the first night of the Democratic National Convention were all about real people's issues, the concerns of hard-working men and women and, with a surprise appearance by Barack Obama by video link from Kansas City, the sweetness of down-home family values.
Inside the Pepsi Center, it is a message that is at times obscured in an event of masterful stagecraft, skilled planning and the sweeping reminders that history is being made.
In fact, it was hard to escape the soaring rhetoric from speaker after speaker on a stage right out of the MTV Music Video Awards, with a podium topped by a canopy that looked ready to fly away.
Not that it was unwarranted.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, suffering from brain cancer, provided a bittersweet moment, preceded by a short film by Ken Burns on his amazing life. Shuttled to Denver on Sunday night, Kennedy stood at the lectern and delivered a spirited endorsement of Obama's candidacy, leaving little doubt to whom the Camelot torch was being passed.
"The work begins anew, the hope rises again and the dream lives on," Kennedy told the Denver auditorium. Delegates waved "Kennedy" placards, as he evoked parts of his legendary speech before the 1980 convention, when he lost the nomination to Jimmy Carter.
There had been some doubt as to whether Kennedy would have the strength to deliver the address, and stagehands set a stool at the lectern. But his voice still filled with vigor, Kennedy never used the seat.
"I pledge to you that next January I will be there on the floor of the United States Senate," Kennedy said.
In her address, Michelle Obama didn't avoid her own references to the momentum of the moment, noting the anniversaries this week of women's suffrage and of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.
"I stand here today at the crossroads of that history," she said.
Her speech was the subject of endless scrutiny and speculation, particularly among the massive press corps that has turned out with little actual news to write about.
It was obvious that the campaign was trying its best to emphasize her working-class roots and her own challenges as a working mother -- a contrast to the relentless sniping from conservative commentators that she is angry or, even worse, not happy with America.
"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," she said. "You treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don't know them, and even if you don't agree with them."
At the end of the evening, as her daughters came on stage and waved to the crowd, the candidate suddenly appeared on the massive video screens. He waved at his children and introduced the Kansas City family he was with -- average everyday Americans.
Of course, they didn't look so average on the Jumbotrons. But that is the paradox that all political conventions must struggle with these days: how to push a basic message yet still make it interesting. Or at least interesting so the broadcast networks will devote their scant prime time coverage to it.
So the evening's "This Is Your Life" testimonials from Obama's friends and Americans from all walks of life were interspersed with jamming jazz, soul and rhythm and blues. Even Kennedy was greeted to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," and exited to the tune of "Still the One."
The only oddity of the evening came outside of primetime. It was a film in which Jimmy Carter is seen talking and helping the ordinary people of New Orleans. Then, the lights went up and the former president himself appeared, along with his wife. But they merely waved and walked across the stage. No remarks.
And one speaker perhaps got too wrapped up in the crosscurrents of history. That was Jesse Jackson Jr., who said that King would be proud at "this first political convention to take place within the site of a mountaintop."
Actually, Denver hosted the 1908 convention.
Contact Ted Johnson at
ted.johnson@variety.com