Fighting Cancer, Kennedy Adds an Opening Spark
DENVER — Senator Edward M. Kennedy, struggling with terminal brain cancer, arrived on Monday night at the Democratic National Convention in a triumphant appearance that provided an emotional start for the event as the party turned to a new era and gathered to nominate Senator Barack Obama for president.
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Michelle Obama at a sound check on the stage at the Pepsi Center in Denver on Monday morning. Her daughters played in the background with her brother, Craig Robinson. More Photos »
A worker cleans the stage before the start of the Democratic National Convention at the Pepsi Center in Denver. More Photos >
Mr. Kennedy arrived at the convention center here shortly before dusk, accompanied by a flock of family members. He walked a few halting steps to a waiting golf cart, which drove him into the hall where Democrats are meeting this week.
Mr. Kennedy walked out with his wife, Vicki, who kissed him and left him at the lectern. The crowd, many of them wiping tears from their eyes, would not stop cheering until he settled them down
“My fellow Democrats, my fellow Americans, it is so wonderful to be here,” Mr. Kennedy said. “And nothing is going to keep me away from this special gathering tonight.”
“I have come here tonight,” he continued, “to stand with you to change America to restore its future, to rise to our best ideals and to elect Barack Obama president of the United States.”
Every sentence was greeted by loud applause. And while Mr. Kennedy spoke slowly, he was firm and energetic, gesturing with a hand and sounding very much like the man who enraptured the party’s convention 28 years ago.
In a moment that captured the generational arc of the night — and the Kennedy family’s connection to Mr. Obama, whom Mr. Kennedy endorsed in a turning point of his campaign — a video tribute to the Massachusetts senator was introduced by Caroline Kennedy, his niece and the daughter of President John F. Kennedy. Her tribute was as much to her uncle as to the man who brought her into national politics.
“I have never had someone inspire me the way people tell me my father inspired them, but I do now: Barack Obama,” Ms. Kennedy said inside the Pepsi Center. “And I know someone else who’s been inspired all over again by Senator Obama. In our family, he’s known as Uncle Teddy. More than any senator of his generation, or perhaps any generation, Teddy has made life better for people in this country and around the world.”
“For 46 years, he has been so much more than just a senator for the people of Massachusetts; he’s been a senator for all who believe in a dream that’s never died,” she said, invoking Mr. Kennedy’s speech to the Democratic convention in 1980.
The Democrats’ 2008 convention was gaveled to order with a stream of opening speakers who began laying the foundation for the tasks that Mr. Obama and his advisers hope to accomplish during the four-day event. Throughout the day, aides to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Mr. Obama, of Illinois, worked to ease tensions over the Clintons’ roles at the convention in what was amounting to a decidedly strained passing of the generational torch.
In a speech to the New York delegation earlier in the day, Mrs. Clinton strongly urged her supporters to vote for Mr. Obama at the convention. And Mr. Obama, campaigning in Davenport, Iowa, said he had spoken to former President Bill Clinton earlier in the week and made clear that he welcomed Mr. Clinton’s role at the convention.
Even before the sun set here, speakers were assailing the presumed Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, in a way that made clear the convention would not be a replay of the Democrats’ genteel gathering in 2004. Speaker after speaker, reading speeches that had been carefully vetted by a team of Obama advisers, denounced Mr. McCain for his ties to President Bush, his positions on the economy and his stand on abortion.
“John McCain has spent more than 25 years in Washington voting against women’s freedom,” said Nancy Keenan, the head of NARAL-Pro-Choice America, “and has pledged to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who will overturn Roe v. Wade.”
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who is chairwoman of the convention, said: “Republicans say John McCain has experience. We say John McCain has the experience of being wrong.”
But while some speakers took the rough road, others — starting with old friends and associates of the Obamas and scheduled to culminate with Michelle Obama’s anticipated address — offered a warm picture of Mr. Obama and his family. If one big task for Mr. Obama this week was to try to paint a critical picture of Mr. McCain and his policies, another was to try to present a fuller portrait of Mr. Obama and push back against Republicans’ efforts to paint him as culturally and politically distant from mainstream America.
Mr. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, talked about growing up in a family with little money, raised by a mother who was “an eternal optimist who understood that parents are our first and best teachers.”
In remarks prepared for delivery later on Monday night, Mrs. Obama is to speak of her own family’s blue-collar past and spoke of her husband’s life as “a great American story.”
She is to add in her prepared remarks: “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. And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values and pass them on to the next generation.”
And Mrs. Obama’s portrait of her life growing up on the South Side of Chicago, living in a modest house, is expected to offer a contrast with speakers who offered a mocking reminder of how Mr. McCain was unable to say last week how many homes he owned.
“About the only guy who seems to have done really well these last eight years,” said Andy Tobias, the Democratic treasurer, “is a guy with a private jet and so many homes that he loses count.”
Yet for all the planning by Mr. Obama’s aides, the appearance by Mr. Kennedy was the most anticipated event of the day. The convention hall included many delegates who remembered when he stilled Madison Square Garden in New York as he yielded the party’s 1980 nomination to President Jimmy Carter, declaring the “dream will never die.”
As the convention roared to life, Mr. McCain was hardly passive. He taped an appearance on the NBC program “Tonight,” where he poked fun at Mr. Obama’s choice for running mate, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, alluding to his verbosity and the risks that trait posed during a debate.
“The problem for any of them might be getting a word in edgewise,” Mr. McCain said, before adding, “I take that back.”
Mrs. Clinton, preparing for her own speech on Tuesday, appeared before distraught members of her home-state delegation. She criticized a commercial from the McCain campaign that sought to foster divisions between her supporters and those of Mr. Obama.
“Let me state what I think about their tactics and these ads,” she said. “I’m Hillary Rodham Clinton and I do not approve of that message.”
Aides to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama were negotiating a plan that would allow delegates from some states to vote for either candidate during the roll call for the nomination, but then end the voting relatively early with the declaration of unanimous consent for Mr. Obama. One idea, according to a Democrat involved in the process, is to have New York delegates cast their votes and then have Mrs. Clinton make a motion for the hall to unanimously endorse Mr. Obama.
Reporting was contributed by Jeff Zeleny in Davenport, Iowa; Michael Cooper in Los Angeles; and John M. Broder, Janet Elder, Patrick Healy and Jeremy W. Peters in Denver.
My mom, the girls, and I left home in Chicago and got to Denver yesterday. What a beautiful city!The convention started this morning, and everyone here is getting ready for the big week.
All the work you've done is at the heart of what's happening here, and our team filmed a short video to give you a look behind the scenes at the convention center.
Take a minute to check out the video and share it with your friends:
This week, folks from across the country will get to know Barack and our family a little better. Tonight I'm giving a speech at the convention, and I'm planning to share a few stories about the Barack I know -- the husband, the father, and the man who shares my dreams for our girls, for this country, and for our future.
Before my speech, we're also going to show a video introducing our family to families across the country. Make sure to turn on your TV at 10:30 p.m. EDT (8:30 p.m. MDT) to see it, or you can watch it at www.BarackObama.com.
This is such an important moment, and I hope you'll join me by tuning into the convention tonight and all week long.
Thanks,
Michelle
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