I don’t know how formidable an organization Barack Obama’s presidential campaign eventually might build in Rhode Island. But it certainly has an impressive local advocate in Brown University basketball coach Craig Robinson, the candidate’s brother-in-law.

Robinson, whose sister, Michelle, is the wife of the Illinois senator, will address a June 13 Obama fundraiser in Providence.

Democrat Obama, 45, fabled for his oratory, has proven to be a powerhouse at raising money. Still, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York has outpaced him in national polls, there are questions about Obama’s experience, and everyone is curious — if not downright skeptical — about whether America is ready to elect a black man president.

Robinson, also 45, knows that Obama will come in for intense scrutiny, and he declares, “If that’s all it takes for him to win, I welcome it. But, unfortunately, it isn’t.”

He tells me Obama is going to have to appeal to all kinds of people and overcome doubts they might have. All the planets have to be aligned, he says.

“People who wouldn’t necessarily vote for him because he was young or because he was black or because he’s whatever, have to vote for him. They have to find some reason that would change the way they think. Even middle-class black people or even working class or poverty-level black people who don’t usually vote — this has got to make them come out to vote.

“Everything’s got to work perfectly for him to win. It’s sort of like Brown playing Kentucky. If we want to win that game, we have to play the perfect game. The perfect game. You can’t slip up at all, because that team’s too good.”

So how can Obama pull this off? “He’s doing it with a lot of help and he’s doing it with a lot of work and he’s doing it with a lot of ability. But he’s going to need people to be open minded.”

Of course, it once seemed unlikely that Obama would even be running for president in 2008. In a telephone interview last fall, he told me he wasn’t going to. But his admirers continued to clamor and he announced in February.

“Sometimes greatness is thrust upon us,” Robinson says.

As for his own input in helping Obama decide whether to run, the coach, who just finished his first season here, says he told the senator, “Right now, I’m not ready for the UCLA job, but if they offer it to me, I’m taking it, ’cause it’s not coming back again.”

And the response? “The proof is in the running,” Robinson chuckles.

But wait a minute. We want our presidents to be ready, don’t we? Um, on the other hand, some of the most experienced men ever to assume the office — Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson quickly come to mind — steered the nation into disaster.

What does Robinson say to someone troubled by the fact that Obama is only in his third year in the Senate?

“He’s extremely capable of being a leader and organized. He’s the type of guy who can bring people to a table and get things accomplished. He’s got terrific negotiating skills….

“I like my president to be as smart, if not smarter, than me. So we’ve got that covered. I like my president to be the type of person, when he’s wrong, to be able to admit he’s wrong and not try and bluff his way through. I think that’s what Barack is. That’s the kind of personality he has.”

Robinson grew up in a black working-class neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.

The 2006-’07 Ivy League men’s basketball coach of the year did his playing at Princeton. He remembers games against Brown at the old Marvel Gym. “It reminded me of my old high school gym … same colors, brown and white, the same track around the gym.”

Robinson went to business school at the University of Chicago, made a fortune in high finance, then made a mid-life career switch to coaching.

Rhode Island being Rhode Island, you won’t be surprised that a Robinson pal is Bernie Buonanno, the lawyer and investment banker who chairs the Friends of Brown Basketball booster group and is himself the brother-in-law of a presidential candidate (Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut).

“It can’t happen anywhere else!” Buonanno says. He adds, “I have great respect for Craig Robinson. He has brought tremendous life into this basketball program.”

The $230-a-person Obama fundraiser is being staged by the Obama for Rhode Island finance committee. Leaders include Providence city solicitor Joe Fernandez, Rhoades Alderson, communications director for Mayor David Cicilline, and lawyer Jeff Padwa.

Cicilline is for Clinton. He says Fernandez and Alderson are free to support Obama, but he’s going to work on them. “They’ll see the light eventually,” he quips.

Fernandez and his wife, Emily Maranjian, a state prosecutor, were Obama classmates at Harvard Law.

Fernandez says, “He was so sort of unusually calm, almost regal in his bearing. … He obviously is superbly intellectually qualified. He really did seem to attract a lot of people who wanted to be around him.”

Obama is the son of a Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother. He grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia. His fans say his appeal transcends the normal boundaries of race or nationality.

Fernandez, who is of Chinese and Filipino heritage, says it’s exciting to see that Obama has embraced his African-American background and that Americans actually can imagine him as a president.

Maranjian says everyone in their class was smart but that Obama was “super smart.”

She adds, “I don’t think he has an ego problem.” She says he would be confident enough to surround himself with capable people and ask questions of them.

The fundraiser is being held at the Peerless Building, which is owned by Johnnie Chace and her husband, Buff. She likes Obama’s “pretty powerful message.”

Robinson’s message also is powerful.

He and Michelle, now 43, grew up as children of Marian and the late Fraser Robinson. The coach says the parents drummed into them that “whatever you’re doing, do the best you can at it and always finish what you start.”

One theme of conversation was the treatment of blacks in America. The parents said, “Life’s not fair. It’s not. And you don’t always get what you deserve, but you have to work hard to get what you want. And then sometimes you don’t get it; even if you work hard and do all the right things, you don’t get it.” Robinson says, “That always seemed so unfair to me, and yet it prepared me for handling life.”

Robinson says his father often would say that a black person some day would be this or that — even president.

He says he never doubted his father, but that a black person’s winning the presidency seemed so far into the future he couldn’t imagine who it would actually be.

Robinson’s father worked for the Chicago water department and kept at it even after he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Robinson says, “Initially he walked with a limp, then he used a cane, and by the end he used crutches that wrapped around the arm.”

Michelle Robinson Obama, who went to Princeton and Harvard Law, has cut way back on her hours as a vice president of the University of Chicago Hospitals.

Coach Robinson says he liked Obama since they first met. “There would be no reason for me to dislike any of my sister’s boyfriends. It was always more you sort of felt sorry for them because you knew it was just a matter of time before they were getting fired.”

It’s not just that she’s smart, he says. She’s tough. And, “Her role model for guys was my father, and that’s a tall order for anybody. … He was smart, he was hardworking, he raised two bright kids, great family atmosphere, and he did that on a laborer’s salary.”

So how did Barack survive Michelle’s elimination process?

“He was a smart guy who didn’t act like he was smarter than anybody else. That was the first thing. And he was tall and he knew how to manage my sister’s personality.”

And what does that say about Obama’s ability to win election and serve as president?

“All I can think about is him being in meetings with different kinds of egos and being able to bring them all together … including senators, including foreign officials, anybody. I don’t want to trivialize the presidency, but a lot of it has to do with being a people person, being a diplomat.”

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal’s political columnist.