To get to the White House: Tell us a story, Mr. Castro

SAN DIEGO -- Political consultants will say that running for president is about raising money, hiring staff, building organization, studying issues and lining up endorsements.

That's wrong.

Take it from a journalist: Running for president is about telling a story.

This is especially true at a time when Americans are standing in front of fire hydrants that spew information, and their attention spans are shorter than ever. You have to boil down everything you are, believe in and have ever done into a short and clear narrative that tells people who you are, what you stand for and why you want this crazy job.

Julian Castro has one heck of a good story to tell, and now the 44-year-old former San Antonio Mayor and U.S Secretary of Housing and Urban Development has a national soapbox from which to tell it.

Castro has announced that he is running for president in 2020. His first decision was brilliant -- choosing his twin brother, Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, as his campaign chairman. Who better to shepherd you through this meat grinder than someone who has loved you since birth, knows you better than anyone and isn't afraid to tell you what you need to hear?

In what will be a crowded field of Democratic hopefuls vying for their party's nomination, Castro's first goal has to be to make it onto the short list.

And no -- as someone who has known the San Antonio native for 15 years, interviewed him dozens of times, and written thousands of words about him -- take it from me, he is not running for vice president or applying for another Cabinet post. He'll be perfectly content, and highly employable, in the private sector if this White House thing doesn't work out.

If it does work, and Castro finds himself on a national debate stage in March or April of next year, it will be because of one thing above all else: his story.

The most important part of my friend's story isn't family. It's geography.

We got a preview of that part of the story -- for the Netflix generation, consider it a "trailer" -- during Castro's official announcement on the West Side of San Antonio, where he and his brother grew up.

This is the place that sculpted and shaped Julian Castro. Before Stanford University and Harvard Law School, and getting elected mayor of the nation's seventh largest city and being vetted as a possible running mate for Hillary Clinton, and being chosen by Barack Obama to give the keynote speech at the 2012 Democratic convention and later join the Cabinet, and writing his memoir for a major publishing house -- before all the accomplishments and accolades, it was the West Side that formed how Castro sees the world and his place in it.

If you don't understand it -- or neighborhoods like it, all across America -- you'll never understand him.

It was here -- in this hardscrabble neighborhood, built by immigrants, where the only way out is your dreams and the hard work that makes them real -- that the twins were raised by a single mother with grit. Just as their mother had been raised by her mother, a Mexican immigrant who worked as a housekeeper, cook and babysitter.

Rosie Castro is the Rose Kennedy of San Antonio, except that she raised her prodigies on a budget.

I once asked Joaquin Castro why neither he nor his brother had swagger. He said it came from their humble upbringing on the West Side where, as teenagers, with no money for a family car, they rode the bus -- in fact, on the same bus route that the two rode the morning of Julian's special announcement.

At 23, Rosie Castro ran unsuccessfully for city council in 1971 as part of a slate of candidates calling itself the Committee for Barrio Betterment put forth by the Raza Unida Party. She would go on to a career in higher education at a local community college.

Oh, and it turned out, she was pretty good at raising children.

As Julian recalled in his speech, after she lost her election, Rosie told a reporter: "They'd be back."

"Well, Mom," the candidate said in front of a cheering crowd. "I think we're back."

You had better believe it -- and to the delight of those of us who love a great story.

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Ruben Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. His daily podcast, "Navarrette Nation," is available through every podcast app.