For Convention, Obama’s Image Is All-American

[groovedaddy]

WASHINGTON — One of the first images prime-time viewers will see of the Democratic National Convention next week is that of Michelle Obama, who will begin the four-day introduction of her husband, and her family, on her terms. Like everything else at the orchestrated gala, that is by design.

Democrats face a number of imperatives at their convention, none trickier than making more voters comfortable with the prospect of putting a candidate with a most unusual background — the son of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother, who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia — and his family in the White House. No one, his advisers believe, makes the case better for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois than his wife, who will expand her profile by delivering one of the marquee speeches carried by television networks.

Through four nights there will be testimonials from family members like Mr. Obama’s wife and sister who will tell his “very American story,” in the words of one adviser, and from party luminaries like Senator Edward M. Kennedy (by videotape) and former President Bill Clinton (live) who will give Mr. Obama, the presumptive presidential nominee, the imprimatur of the party establishment.

At the convention beginning next Monday in Denver, there will be appearances by lesser known “Americans from all walks of life, from across the country” speaking about their support for Mr. Obama. Combined with a film featuring the candidate in all-American scenes by Davis Guggenheim — the director of “An Inconvenient Truth” whose father produced a similar biographical film for Robert F. Kennedy — aides to Mr. Obama are using the convention to tackle what members of both parties see as his greatest vulnerability with undecided voters: his “otherness.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/18/us/politics/18convention.html?th&emc=th