BOSTON—“What is Obama Barack?” a well-shaven man in a pinstriped suit asked me in the hall of the FleetCenter early Wednesday evening. “Everyone’s carrying signs for it,” he added.

“It is not Obama Barack,” I replied, “but he is Barack Obama.” And since his smash-hit keynote speech Tuesday night, nobody is asking who Barack Obama—or Obama Barack—is anymore.

The national media has unanimously dubbed Obama, half white, half black, the new star of the party. In his keynote address Tuesday night, Obama told audiences that the American Dream can be a reality, but also that “we have real enemies in the world” that must be “pursued—and they must be defeated. John Kerry knows this.” He criticized Bush’s policies in the speech, but never attacked the president by name.

Arriving at the convention as an unknown, he leaves a rising star, ready to win the Democrat’s nomination for the open U.S. Senate seat in Illinois.

Sen. Jon S. Corzine, D-N.J., called Obama “the epitome of the future of what America’s about” in an exclusive with The Crimson on Tuesday.

Obama’s speech began on an autobiographical note. Describing his father’s humble beginnings in Kenya as a goat herder and his grandfather’s ambitious dreams, Obama shared his own experiences with hardship as an example to the American people that “a brighter day will come.”

Obama himself has already had many bright days. At 42, he is already an accomplished state senator and an instructor at the University of Chicago Law School. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, Obama is as well-educated as they come.

But when Obama reached the autobiographical portion of his speech Tuesday night, he had two opportunities to mention Harvard, in the context of both himself and his father, who left the family to pursue his Ph.D. at Harvard. But instead, Obama steered clear of the H-Bomb: “Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America.”

Kirkand and Ellis Professor of Law David B. Wilkins, who knew both Obama and his wife Michelle when they were at the Law School, said yesterday that he wasn’t surprised Obama didn’t mention his Harvard background in his address.

“Most politicians who have Harvard in their background, well, let’s just say that they approach their relationship in their speeches with caution,” Wilkins said. “It is the kind of thing that always gets mentioned by the press, but not by the candidate.”

A political science major at Columbia, Obama spent five years after college working as a community organizer with black churches in both Harlem and Chicago before enrolling at Harvard Law School, where he made national headlines as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review.

In February of 1990, the Associated Press ran an article saying that Obama told them that he would “like to someday return to community work, and has not ruled out a future in politics.” The Los Angeles Times ran a story in March of that same year in which Obama was quoted as saying that he planned to run for public office sometime “down the road.”

In a Boston Globe story that ran in February 1990, John Owens, Obama’s former co-worker from Chicago, was quoted in a telephone interview: “This guy sounds like he’s president of the country already,” Owens said of Obama. “I’ve never met anyone who could leave that impression after only five minutes.’”

A champion of “core values that unite Americans,” Obama possesses a biracial appeal that has been said to have drawn widespread support in the Illinois Democratic primary, in which he garnered 53 percent of the vote in an election with six other candidates.

One of Obama’s most striking political strengths is his ability to draw support from even those who disagree with him. And it seems his ability to unite those who usually agree to disagree has always been with him. In March 1990, the Los Angeles Times ran a feature piece on Obama that pointed to this.