As we look forward to another convention keynote speaker tonight (with former Virginia Governor Mark Warner having the not-entirely-enviable assignment of trying to top the guy who stole the show four years ago), Dayo Olopade at the New Republic takes a look at how Barack Obama got the speaking gig that made him a star. This little tidbit jumped out at me:
The chain of events that launched Obama into the keynote began in April 2004, when Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill was in the early stages of planning a convention that the Kerry team hoped would rejuvenate his sagging campaign. They were eagerly looking for “something that would be high impact and would be written about a lot and reported on,” as Cahill puts it. And as she was helping compile a shortlist of possible keynoters, she recalled a photo spread about Obama she saw in Time magazine earlier that year…