Catch a rising star.

Barack Obama, the black state legislator from Illinois who was the keynote star of the Democratic convention, jumps from the green van that is carrying him around the clogged streets of Boston.

After his eloquent speech Tuesday evening, time with Obama is in high demand in a city packed with Democrats who are watching for politicians to star in future conventions. So the rail-thin, elegantly dressed candidate for the US Senate from Illinois is running 45 minutes late for lunch.

The first impression of Obama is of grace. And that is an impression that persists after spending time with him.

He delivers his apology for keeping a roomful of reporters waiting with grace – an arm draped easily around his host’s shoulder.

He moves through the hotel lobby with grace, stopping briefly to talk earnestly with the many supporters who spot him and want to chat or get an autograph.

He is dealing with the sudden adulation with apparent humility. “We spent 17 months as David, and have spent the last month as Goliath,” he quips.

And while noting that the reception to his convention address was “gratifying,” he observes that “ultimately an election is not going to be decided on a 15-minute speech.”

The first black editor of the Harvard Law Review, Obama offers an assessment of how he bridges black and white interests. “I am rooted in the African-American community, I am concerned about the African-American community while still connecting with and being concerned with the larger community. If I work on increasing the wages of low-wage workers, that is not a black issue. On the other hand, black folks are disproportionately underemployed and suffering from low wages.”

His connection with the larger community has him well ahead in the race for the Illinois seat in the US Senate. His Republican opponent dropped out of the race after embarrassing facts from a divorce filing were made public.

The approach he espouses for reforming society echoes his thoughtful demeanor. “I think there is a way of presenting that issue that isn’t accusatory, that doesn’t try to place blame somewhere but rather says to white America you don’t want discrimination either, you want fairness, let’s work together to try to achieve that.”

Obama spoke in his convention speech of his faith and does so again in his meeting with reporters at a Monitor-sponsored lunch. “I’m religious -- especially after this week,” he quips, adding “we can only worship our God if the government is secular.”

The media attention he has received this week comes with a downside. Of the media’s tendency to anoint a single black leader he says, “this idea that somehow there is only room for one at a time is insulting.”

Finally, Obama speaks with candor of the challenges he would face if elected to the US Senate since he would be one of very few members of that body not to be a millionaire. He notes he has taken out a second mortgage saying, “it wasn’t to fund the campaign, it was to fund food and gas.”

He adds, “It is a source of concern for my wife and for me because we have two small children. If the voters of Illinois select me I’m going to have to figure out how to structure our lives in a way that doesn’t disadvantage my kids. All this stuff is relative, you know. It is absolutely true given the costs of living in Washington, [that] $150,000 is not an enormous salary. What is also true is that 90 percent of the people in Washington make do on less.”

Unless some unexpected event intervenes, Barack Obama will be moving to Washington after the November election. It is a city that needs his intelligence and grace.

JOHN NORDELL - STAFF

After a prolonged period in the public eye, some politicians become pre-programmed. Ask them a question and you can almost hear the mental hard drive whirling to serve up a canned answer on the joy of public service or the sanctity of marriage.

Happily for those of us who had breakfast with them on Tuesday, John Kerry’s daughters – 30-year-old, raven-haired Alexandra and 27-year-old blond Vanessa – have not yet retreated into the land of prepackaged, plastic responses.

Instead, at least for the hour they spent with us, they are what every parent hopes a grown child will be: gracious, articulate, intelligent, independent, spontaneous, honest, and funny.

However the race turns out, John Kerry is a very lucky man to have two such wonderful people in his life.

The American public will get to see this first hand Thursday evening when Alexandra and Vanessa give prime time speeches introducing their father to the Democratic convention.

The press loves to examine family members hoping for clues about who a potential president might be. There is considerable danger in this process since each child is an individual.

Still even grown children emit some sense of the way they were brought up.

Alexandra says her father, "always challenged us to be independent and to carve our own paths and never was the kind of political father to demand we be on the [campaign] trail."

Their distinctive approaches are obvious from the start. Vanessa bounds out of a Secret Service van, walks at a very brisk clip into the hotel, and plunges into a dining room and starts shaking hands. Alexandra hangs back a bit, moving somewhat more tentatively into the fray.

The sisters have chosen strikingly different professional paths. Alexandra Kerry graduated with honors from Brown University in 1997. While in college, she tried her hand at journalism as the co-editor in chief of the Brown Independent newspaper. This spring she graduated from the American Film Institute with an MFA in directing and presented her film at the Cannes Film Festival. She is currently working on a documentary about the campaign and came to breakfast with her own cameraman in tow.

Vanessa Kerry graduated from Yale in 1999 with a Bachelors of Science in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. She is currently in her third year of medical school at Harvard University and this fall will work on a master’s degree in London.

During her first year at Harvard, Vanessa founded the national non-profit Students for Environmental Awareness in Medicine (SEAM), which now includes representatives from more than one-third of American medical schools. The organization works to raise awareness about environmental change and its effects on human health.

Both daughters have interrupted their careers to work on their father’s campaign. And they admit the process of becoming a public figure and losing their privacy is daunting.

“To be totally candid, I am scared. Definitely,” Vanessa says. “I mean I am. This is a big adventure. This is a very new process for us but … the reason I think we are both here is that idea of service. We joined this campaign because there are things we really care about ... for me health care is a huge issue, the environment is an issue for both of us, global health is very important to me. But the candid answer is yea, it’s a little bit scary.”

The most troublesome aspect of being front and center in a presidential campaign is the loss of privacy as news organizations follow your every move and write about past relationships.

As Vanessa notes, “This is baptism by fire or whatever the term is. There are going to be pros and cons to this whole process. But what frightens me about it is that you do want to retain your privacy. There are things that you want to be sacred. You want your friends, your private jokes. You want those moments. You want to know you can walk down the street and not have someone just come up and just give you a kiss on the cheek because they think they can, which has happened.”

Both daughters are trying to find a sense of balance in the process. As Alexandra says, “it is a push me-pull me situation. We care a great deal about our father. We care a great deal about this election. We care a great deal about the issues. And we also care a great deal about our privacy. And we are trying to figure out that relationship, and being recognized [in public] is not at the top of the list.”

The Kerry daughters bring a well-honed, self-deprecating sense of humor to their dealings with reporters. “It’s always kind of hard to talk about this process without sounding kind of cheesy,” Vanessa says.

And both spring to the defense of their stepmother, Teresa Heinz Kerry, when questioned about the forceful language she used in dealing with a reporter from a conservative Pittsburgh paper.

Alexandra, the former college newspaper editor, says she is disappointed in the press. “I am not always disappointed. But occasionally I am disappointed simply because of a certain standard I have... to me it is about truth telling.” She notes that the press sometimes focuses on “a negative thing when there is a policy at issue at hand that could have been discussed.”

If we were looking for soul-baring candor, we had invited the wrong person to Sunday brunch.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe is refreshingly upfront about his approach to the press. He is going to spin us and he is going to admit it.

“I’m the ultimate optimist, the chief cheerleader,” he tells the roomful of political reporters. When asked about Democrats' chances in 2004 Congressional elections he responds, “we are going to win everything.”

McAuliffe is relentlessly upbeat and full of energy. On Saturday, he says, he gave 18 speeches and then got up at 5 a.m. Sunday to start all over again.

Actually, cheerleading is only half his job. The other, as he once said on TV's Meet the Press, is “to raise an awful lot of money.” And that he has done, restoring the Democratic party to fiscal health. The gold donkey cufflinks he sports seem to underscore the point.

“We are run like a business,” he says. For the first time in memory, the party is out of debt. In fact, McAuliffe is happy to remind you know the party has $65 million on hand for a tidal wave of anti-Bush ads after the convention.

He’ll gladly share a line from his speech to the convention Monday night. The Bush team is planning to “spend millions on weapons of mass deception,” he chuckles and the Democrats need to fire back.

McAuliffe is leading a party unified around the idea of defeating George Bush. And if that produces a convention political pros find boring, no problem.

“I chaired yesterday the credentials committee. It was the least controversial, most non-eventful credentials committee in the history of our party,” McAuliffe says. “The press sometimes says, 'Well, gee, all this harmony, don’t you want some action?' No, I love it, I think it is great. I apologize to all of you we are not giving you more things to write about.”

His desire to keep reporters singing from the party songbook is unfailing. When he hears that Republican Party Chairman Ed Gillespie will be our luncheon guest on Monday, he invites reporters to skip the meeting with Gillespie and come instead to a party at the same hour McAuliffe is hosting on Boston’s Rose Wharf. Call my press person for an invitation, the chairman says - only half-joking.

Monitor Breakfast with Governor Bill Richardson:

Political conventions are not like the poems you read in college English courses where you have to puzzle out the message by decoding symbols.

No, if you are a reporter at a political convention, folks are only too happy to tell you the meaning of the convention – even before the first speech is given.

So on a rainy Saturday morning, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, the chairman of the 2004 Democratic Convention, came to eat lukewarm scrambled eggs with a roomful of reporters at a Boston hotel and share the convention’s message.

“The objective of the convention is to come out with a perception of Senator Kerry as a proven tested leader with a lifetime of service and strength in his service to the country,” Richardson said. “The main objective will be to convey to the American people that Senator Kerry through his experience and background is going to be ready for the presidency.”

Expect the message to be overwhelmingly positive with any servings of rhetorical red meat parceled out sparingly. “This is going to be a positive convention, the objective is to offer positive solutions. This is not a bash Bush convention,” Richardson said.

Having previously served as a member of Congress, as US Ambassador to the United Nations, and as Energy Secretary in the Clinton cabinet, Richardson is skilled at serving up his message spiced with self –deprecating humor.

He noted that his Wednesday night speech at the convention has not yet been approved and that all convention speeches must be vetted by the Kerry team.

What would happen, one reporter asked, if former Vice President Gore wants to say something in his convention speech that the Kerry team did not like? “That is up in the higher echelons,” Richardson quipped. “I am just convention chairman. By being convention chairman, everyone thinks I have got all the passes, I decide the speakers. I have no say in this.”

Richardson, whose mother was Mexican and who spent his early days living in Mexico City, argues that the Latino vote will be crucial in the coming election.

“I believe the Latino vote is going to decide this election and it's going to be in states like Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida. That is the key constituency. The issue is not who is going to get the winning margin. We will – the Democrats. The issue is can the Republicans get 40 percent. They got 35 percent last year. If they get 40 percent – in other words an extra 5 percent – they win the election. And our objective is to keep them under 35. I saw a poll where they were 31, we are at 59 (percent).”

As one of the country’s most prominent Hispanic politicians, Richardson has the freedom to joke in a way that would cause a firestorm if done by others.

He noted that he is scheduled to appear this weekend in a re-enactment of a Revolutionary battle. “I hope I don’t have to do anything. Just sit there. They had a couple of Hispanics … they were the waiters.”

As to the prospects of the Democratic ticket, Richardson voiced the expected optimism. “I believe it will be a 2 percent race but Senator Kerry will win.”

While loathe to discuss much in the way of dangers to the Kerry-Edwards ticket, Richardson did admit that, “there is no question that Ralph Nader is a threat. In my state, he got 4 percent [of the vote] last time and Al Gore won by …366” votes.

Thus the convention’s expected focus on undecided voters. “This will be the first time those undecided voters get a sense of Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards together and the Democratic ticket. This is why we are so conscious of sending a positive message,” Richardson said. “This is why so many of the candidates who ran in the primary are going to be so positive about Senator Kerry and the need to unite.”