Julian Castro, the mayor of San Antonio and the keynote speaker at last year’s Democratic National Convention, will be appearing at Obama’s White House event in favor of immigration reform today.

Last year I looked at what Castro had done in his three years as mayor, and found limited results, particularly in the areas of crime and education. But that hasn’t prevented Castro from being a frequent visitor to Washington:

It is not an exaggeration to say that Castro visits the White House more frequently than some top military leaders; according to White House visitor logs, Castro had visited the White House twelve times as of August 1. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey had visited eleven times.

Tomorrow’s Morning Jolt will feature quite a few thoughts on the first night of the Democratic National Convention. I think Michelle Obama gave about as persuasive a case as can be made for her husband’s reelection — primarily because it so quickly and casually glanced at the record of her husband and focused instead on the tales of a much poorer, little-known Barack and Michelle starting their family life, with coffee tables out of dumpsters and cars with holes in the floor. As more than a few noticed on Twitter, about 90 percent of Michelle Obama’s speech could have been given four years ago.

The early governors all seemed to aim to hit the same note, and if any of them broke through, it was Deval Patrick. But Ted Strickland, Martin O’Malley, San Antonio mayor Julian Castro . . . they all blended together. It’s as if the convention organizers gave them a template to personalize, only slightly:

“The country was on the edge of economic apocalypse when Barack Obama took office. It was entirely the fault of free-market economics, and policies encouraging large home loans to people who had spotty or worse credit ratings had absolutely nothing to do with it. Since then, we . . . have . . . made . . . progress! Don’t look too hard at how much progress, or whether 8.3 percent unemployment with a lower labor-force participation rate really counts as progress to you, or whether that’s even remotely close to what we promised four years ago. Lilly Ledbetter now has a much longer period of time to sue her employers, and this is the single most important development for women in the workplace since Rosie the Riveter! If this speech is before 9:45 p.m. Eastern, we must protect women’s right to abortion! If this speech is after 9:45 p.m. Eastern, we trust women to make the best choices . . . (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) about their bodies! We must keep government away from the all-important doctor-patient relationship! Also, we passed health-care reform, and ignore all of that polling you’ve seen since passage, you’re going to love it! The 26-year-old kids among you most of all!”

“And then there’s Mitt Romney. He’s out of touch! He has a Swiss bank account! He’s out of touch from his Swiss bank account! He’s got money in lots of places, and you and I both know, there must be something criminal involved! The Romney-Ryan budget calls for taking away all of your money! And giving it to millionaires and billionaires — and just the ones you really don’t like, not the celebrities and movie stars you’ll be hearing from later this week!”

If you have any doubt about what Democrats think of their keynote speaker tonight, San Antonio mayor Julian Castro, take a gander at this cover image from the San Antonio Current, one of the alternative weeklies out there:

Beside the C in the style of the Obama logo, in case you can’t read the small print at the bottom, it says, “CASTRO FOR (insert here)”.

When convention organizers announced Castro would be their keynote speaker, I took a look at his record . . . and found little to cheer about in his three years as mayor:

When Democrats announced that San Antonio mayor Julián Castro would deliver the keynote address of the 2012 party convention, the media’s comparisons of the mayor to President Obama intensified: a little-known, charismatic member of a minority group, getting a big opportunity to address his party and the country — perhaps a steppingstone to the highest of offices.

In fact, Castro’s dramatic debut on the national stage seems almost preordained: In May 2010, The New York Times Magazine ran a lengthy profile portraying Castro as “The Post-Hispanic Hispanic Politician,” with explicit comparisons to President Obama and predictions that he will be the first Hispanic president of the United States. NPR notes he’s been called “the great Latino hope.” CNN’s Soledad O’Brien featured Castro in a documentary about Latinos in America. He’s given a TED talk on “The Power of Education: How It Changed My World.”

Castro is indeed a lot like the Barack Obama of 2004: a subject of endless glowing media profiles, touted as the voice of an entire ethnic group, charisma by the bucketful . . . and a short record of quite modest achievements. The vast majority of the discussion about Castro focuses on his enormous potential and what is to come, not on his accomplishments and what he has done.

That is not an accident. Castro was elected by a populace facing serious problems, and in his time in office, the city has made very little measurable progress in addressing those problems.

Today and tomorrow, every morning paper/newsweekly/politico will run their Castro profiles, and almost all of them will include the same five or six things:

1. He’s a rising star.
2. Stanford undergrad! Harvard Law! Swoon!
3. Hispanics are a growing demographic.
4. He’s so young! Obama asked if he was an intern, tee-hee!
5. His complicated heritage (here they’ll soft-pedal his mother).
6. He went up against Charles Barkley to defend his city’s reputation!

But as Representative Bobby Rush asked of congressional candidate Barack Obama, “What’s he done?” It is kind of creepy to see just how many hurrahs and hosannas a politician can generate without actually doing much of anything, particularly on bread-and-butter issues like crime and education. If a Castro defender wants to argue he’s only been in office three years, fine . . . but that just raises the question of why an unaccomplished mayor is giving the keynote address. It’s like watching the Obama playbook from 2004 all over again . . .

UPDATE: For those not familiar with Rosie Castro, the mayor’s mother:

She handles her ‘First Mom’ status with quiet equanimity, pausing to smile and greet all passersby. When I ask her which one of her sons will become President, she smiles mischievously, “You mean which one will become President first?”

And there, dear reader, is one of the savviest politically correct answer of the year. Enjoy!

“I was born in San Antonio and I’ve lived here my whole life. I was an only child, raised by my mother, who emigrated from San Luis Potosí, Mexico when she was 8. Mom died the year Julián and Joaquín graduated from Stanford. I grew up in the neighborhood around Culebra and Zarzamora, near the Little Flower Basilica. I moved a couple of times when the boys were younger but we spent their junior high to high school years living right by St. Mary’s University. They both graduated from Jefferson High.”

“At the time I was growing up, Mexican-American women weren’t typically involved in politics. When I attended Our Lady of the Lake, I had a mentor, Dr. Margaret Kramer, who introduced me to a lot of local politicians. I got involved with the Young Democrats and later became chair of the Bexar County Raza Unida Party for a time. I ran for city council in 1971 with the ‘Committee for Barrio Betterment.’ I didn’t win but I learned a very valuable lesson: I’m a good organizational person. I like working behind the scenes and pulling it together.

From the Times profile of the mayor:

She was born in San Antonio in 1947 to an immigrant mother who didn’t get past fourth grade; she didn’t meet her father till she was 34. To Rosie, the Alamo is a symbol of bad times. “They used to take us there when we were schoolchildren,” she told me. “They told us how glorious that battle was. When I grew up I learned that the ‘heroes’ of the Alamo were a bunch of drunks and crooks and slaveholding imperialists who conquered land that didn’t belong to them. But as a little girl I got the message — we were losers. I can truly say that I hate that place and everything it stands for.”

To Julian Castro’s credit, when your mother hates the Alamo and you are elected mayor of San Antonio twice, you have some serious campaigning skills.

UPDATE: Chuck Kerr, the artist at Current who created the memorable image above, invites Campaign Spot readers to build their own Castro campaign posters, proudly endorsing the mayor for President, Governor, Senator, Mayor, Jedi Master, or ‘Top Chef’ contestant.

Over on NRO’s homepage, a long look at the record of the Democrats’ 2012 Convention Keynote speaker, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro:

Castro’s dramatic debut on the national stage seems almost preordained: In May 2010, The New York Times Magazine ran a lengthy profile portraying Castro as “The Post-Hispanic Hispanic Politician,” with explicit comparisons to President Obama and predictions that he will be the first Hispanic president of the United States. NPR notes he’s been called “the great Latino hope.” CNN’s Soledad O’Brien featured Castro in a documentary about Latinos in America. He’s given a TED talk on “The Power of Education: How It Changed My World.”

Castro is indeed a lot like the Barack Obama of 2004: a subject of endless glowing media profiles, touted as the voice of an entire ethnic group, charisma by the bucketful . . . and a short record of quite modest achievements. The vast majority of the discussion about Castro focuses on his enormous potential and what is to come, not on his accomplishments and what he has done.

That is not an accident. Castro was elected by a populace facing serious problems, and in his time in office, the city has made very little measurable progress in addressing those problems.

With little progress on serious city problems in crime and education, and a regional economy fueled by factors well beyond the reach of Castro’s policies, one can argue that after three years on the job, he’s not a bad mayor… just not a particularly effective problem-solver. Or at least not yet; perhaps it is unrealistic to expect dramatic results after three years on the job (although some mayors, like Rudy Giuliani in New York City, do generate dramatic results within a few years). But if Castro is a charismatic young city leader with a lot of potential but few concrete results… should he really be discussed as a potential president? Shouldn’t a political figure have to demonstrate some real changes for the better in his community before he gets all this hype?