"Around town with the editor" by LLOYD H WESTON
Pioneer Press Newspapers, Park Ridge, Illinois Published August 5, 2004 "Park Ridge Herald-Advocate" - Page 15 (For copy of actual newspaper clip, please see attachment, below.)
Obama, Illinois shine at Dem Convention (Editor's Note: With this column, published one week after the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Lloyd H Weston became the first pundit, in print, to (a) compare Barack Obama with John F. Kennedy and (b) to predict an Obama presidency. Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009. THE PHOTO shows then-U.S. Senator Obama with Weston, his wife, Linda, and U.S. Senator Dick Durbin in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., on March 17, 2005.)
BOSTON
-- For Illinoisans, at least, the 2004 Democratic National Convention here
will be long remembered as the event that introduced our favorite
son, State
Senator Barack Obama , to the rest of the country and to the world.
For us,
Obama was the star of the show. Not since former governor Adlai E. Stevenson was nominated for the presidency
the second
time, in 1956, has a citizen of Illinois brought so much positive
pressto
the Land of Lincoln.
I
stood off to the side in a crowded gallery last week at the welcoming reception
for the Illinois delegation. The tiny Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood was packed with some of the biggest names in Prairie State politics.
Although Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Democratic lawmakers would not arrive in town until later that night or the next day, due to that overtime work on the
state budget,
Attorney General Lisa Madigan was working the crowd near the bandstand; her artist husband nearby working his pen and sketchpad. Lt. Governor Pat Quinn
was there, and Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas was doing her best to keep her mind on Democratic politics just three days before she was to fly to the Olympics in Athens as a guest of the Greek government. Even Chicago's Mayor Richard M. Daley had been there half an hour before Obama entered the room, wading (there is no other word for it ... wading) through the crowd of admirers.
Sure, Obama has a lock on being the next U.S. senator from Illinois, but it was much more than that. In just over 48 hours he will have achieved near-rock star status, and another son of Illinois would join the likes of Paul Douglas, Everett Dirksen, Stevenson and Paul Simon as a perpetual presence on the national stage.
As I watched the tall, thin figure signing autographs, posing for digital flashes, shaking hands and returning the hugs and busses of beautiful women, an involuntary flashback ignited in my brain. As a freshman in college, on Labor Day 44 years ago, I witnessed John F. Kennedy wading through an even larger crowd -- signing, posing, shaking and hugging - at the Michigan State Fair in Detroit. Three weeks later he would be at CBS studios in Chicago for his first televised debate with Richard Nixon .
The next night, at Boston's Fleet Center, 4,500 national delegates and 15,000 representatives of the American and international press understood why their Illinois colleagues had been telling them to pay attention to Obama's Tuesday night keynote address.
In years to come, those who will claim they were there to hear Obama speak that night, I predict, will exceed by 10-fold the Boston Fire Department's occupancy limitations on the Fleet Center. It was that kind of night.
On Wednesday, the man who surely will one day be our first African-American president appeared at the daily caucus of Illinois delegates at the Hilton Boston Back Bay Hotel. Apparently, genuinely surprised that -- in light of his smash-hit national debut -- he had not been expected, he was almost apologetic.
After all, he is an Illinois state senator, he explained, where else would he be at 8 in the morning!
Deja view
When delegates were not at the convention center; in meetings, caucuses or seminars at the hotels; hitting the historic sights, or dining on this city's famous seafood, most had invitations to more parties and receptions then they had the time to attend.
One of the hottest tickets of the week was the shindig in honor of Mayor Daley, hosted by the Chicago Board of Trade. Cocktails and buffet dinner just before sunset, afforded party-goers an unmatched view of Boston Harbor from a 33rd floor venue in the financial district.
Give this city its due. Our own Lake Michigan vistas -- as spectacular as they may be -- have to take a back seat to this shoreline that was hosting a historic tea party a hundred years before the Chicago fire.
Copyright 2004, Park Ridge Herald-Advocate, Pioneer Press. All rights reserved. |
