It's always a tiny thing that moves me to tears. The speeches are masterful and I always come away from them thinking what an authentic, decent man this is, and how amazing his mom must have been. But the speeches don't generally get me choked up.
Instead, little things that catch me off guard, and most of the time it's something else someone is saying about him. It's observing his impact on others. One from a couple months ago that really opened me up me was Geoff Stone's short piece the morning after Iowa, when the world seemed fundamentally different. Stone helped bring Obama to the U. Chicago Law School and observed him early on. His thoughts about what Obama should have done with his career are faultlessly common-sensical. His confession is our cultural confession - we have very low expectations of our public servants. (After, all, we don't need to be raising the false hopes of this country about what can be delivered, right?)
