Obama - A Promise of Change Part 2

a"CRAIG ROBINSON, BARACK OBAMAaS BROTHER-IN-LAW.

Barack Obama seemed to know almost immediately upon meeting a round-eyed, statuesque African-American lawyer named Mich.e.l.le Robinson that she was his choice for a spouse; the young Miss Robinson was far less sure about her future husband. And that in itself says much about the two people: Barack is the romantic dreamer; Mich.e.l.le is the balanced realist. Upon meeting her, he was swept off his feet; she took some convincing.

Obama and Robinson met after Obamaas first year at Harvard Law, in 1988, when he was a summer intern in the Chicago office of the high-brow law firm now called Sidley Austin. Robinson, a young lawyer at the firm, was a.s.signed to be his mentor. Initially, Robinson was skeptical about Obama because, even before he arrived for the summer, he had been talked up by so many others at the firma"too many others, she thought. Secretaries gossiped about how handsome he was. a.s.sociates marveled at his magnificent first-year performance at Harvard. Senior partners hailed an introductory memo by Obama as nothing short of brilliant. aHe sounded too good to be true,a Mich.e.l.le recalled. aI had dated a lot of brothers who had this kind of reputation coming in, so I figured he was one of these smooth brothers who could talk straight and impress people. So we had lunch, and he had this bad sport jacket and a cigarette dangling from his mouth and I thought, aOh, here you go. Hereas this good-looking, smooth-talking guy. Iave been down this road before.a Later I was just shocked to find out that he really could communicate with people and he had some depth to him. He turned out to be an elite individual with strong moral values.a Obama suffered no false preconceptions about Mich.e.l.le and was immediately taken with her. Nevertheless, at first she resisted his amorous advances. She thought it would be improper to date an employee she was a.s.signed to train. In addition, they were the only two African Americans at the law firm. aI thought, aNow how would that look?aa Mich.e.l.le said. aHere we are, the only two black people here, and we are dating. Iam thinking that looks pretty tacky.a Mich.e.l.le tried to set up Obama with a friend, but he showed no interest in anyone but her. Eventually, she relented and agreed to a date, and, over chocolate ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins shop near the University of Chicago, he won her affection. When Obama returned to Harvard in the fall, the two carried on a long-distance relationship that Obama conceded would have been impossible just a few years before. aBefore I met Mich.e.l.le, I was too immature to hold something like that together,a Obama told me, acknowledging that as he approached thirty he gained a different perspective on a secure romantic relationship. As a community organizer, Obama had had a serious girlfriend (and a pet cat), but all three parted amicably when he went to Harvard.

During his late twenties, Obama shifted his thinking toward the value of marriage and family. Even though his restless mind and ambitious energy made him fear a static life, he was beginning to desire a stable relationship and family. He considered the upheaval of his fatheras family life and longed for a different outcome for himself. On trips back to Chicago from Harvard, Obama often visited Jerry Kellman and his wife at their house in the Beverly neighborhood, one of Chicagoas few racially mixed communities; he looked out at Kellmanas backyard and confided that he wanted athis kind of stability.a Mich.e.l.le Obama grew up in a tightly knit, working-cla.s.s family in the South Sh.o.r.e neighborhood of Chicagoas sprawling South Side African-American community. Obama, who sometimes described his own childhood as that of aan orphan,a is fond of chiding his wife for abeing raised by Ozzie and Harriet,a a reference to the idyllic American family from the 1950s sitcom.

The Robinsons lived in a small apartment on the top floor of a cla.s.sic low-slung Chicago bungalow. Mich.e.l.leas father, Frasier Robinson, worked odd-hour shifts overseeing the inner workings of boilers at the cityas water filtration plant. Her mother, Marian, did not work outside the home until Mich.e.l.le reached high school, when she took a position as an administrative a.s.sistant in the trust division of a bank, a job she still held in 2007. Mich.e.l.le has one sibling, a brother, Craig, sixteen months older than she. A talented basketball player, he ultimately left a lucrative job in high finance to coach in the college ranks. (In 2006 he became head coach at Brown University.) Their father suffered from a debilitating illness that family members believe was multiple sclerosis, although he never received an official diagnosis. Both children were indelibly shaped by their fatheras unstable physical conditiona"and the strong will he showed in coping with it. He was devoted to setting a st.u.r.dy paternal example and sufficiently providing for his family. He rarely missed work or time with his children, even as his physical state deteriorated. aWe always felt like we couldnat let Dad down because he worked so hard for us,a Craig Robinson said. aMy sister and I, if one of us ever got in trouble with my father, wead both be crying. Wead both be like, aOh, my G.o.d, Dadas upset. How could we do this to him?aa Much of Mich.e.l.leas childhood was spent scurrying on the heels of her older brother and, to some degree, living in the tall shadow he cast. Craig was a good student and popular athlete, and Mich.e.l.le had a deeply compet.i.tive spirit. Long limbed and extremely tall at five feet eleven inches, Mich.e.l.le showed great athletic prowess in the neighborhood, often holding her own on the basketball court with her brother and his friends. But to fight comparisons with her high-achieving brother, she decided against playing organized sports. Instead, she immersed herself in pursuits of her owna"learning the piano, writing short stories in her spiral notebook, serving as student council treasurer and excelling in school. She skipped the second grade and consistently made the honor roll at Whitney Young High School, one of the premier public inst.i.tutions in the Chicago system. Her academic excellence secured her acceptance at Princeton University. She graduated c.u.m laude from Princeton and then, like her husband, went to Harvard Law. Her brother also attended Princeton, at the urging of their father. Craig was gifted enough on the basketball court to attend a school with a strong Division I program, and he was offered full-ride scholarships at several colleges with top basketball programs. But his father said education was more valuable and sent him to Princeton, even though he had won only a partial scholarship. aDad said it didnat matter about the costa"it was the education that was important,a said Craig, who went on to be one of the top players in the history of the Ivy League.

At Princeton, Mich.e.l.le underwent a racial ident.i.ty crisis similar to what Obama experienced in his formative college years. For the first time in her life, she had stepped into a nearly all-white cultural and academic setting. And even though she was popular and quickly acquired a handful of good friends, she admitted in a thesis, t.i.tled aPrinceton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community,a that she felt racially isolated as one of the few black women on the campus. aI have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and cla.s.smates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus, as if I really donat belong. Regardless of the circ.u.mstances under which I interact with Whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second.a Yet as she progressed through Princeton, Mich.e.l.le said she realized that as an alumna of an elite college, she probably would move in predominantly white circles later in her professional life. She had wanted to use her education to serve the black community in some way, but she wrote that aas I enter my final year at Princeton, I find myself striving for many of the same goals as my White cla.s.smatesa"acceptance to a prestigious graduate or professional school or a high-paying position in a successful corporation. Thus, my goals are not as clear as before.a The position at the firm now known as Sidley Austin certainly fit the description of a high-paying position in the upper echelons of the legal community. Yet a few years later, after marrying Obama, Mich.e.l.le found herself moving out of that predominantly white world of high-powered law and into the public service sector that she had always envisioned for herself. First she left Sidley Austin to work for a deputy chief of staff to Mayor Richard M. Daley. Then, in 1993, she was hired to launch the Chicago office of Public Allies, a program established under Bill Clintonas AmeriCorps to help young people find employment in public service. Mich.e.l.le, exceedingly efficient and excessively organized, built the program from the ground up. Over her three-year tenure as executive director, she a.s.sembled a solid board of directors and raised enough cash to establish the program for the long haul.

I first met Mich.e.l.le Obama during her husbandas U.S. Senate campaign, in January 2004, as I researched my first profile of her husband for the Chicago Tribune. At the time, she was directing community affairs for the University of Chicago Hospitals, just blocks from their town house and childrenas school in Chicagoas Hyde Park neighborhood. Her credentials made her seem considerably overqualified for the position of community liaison for a hospital, and as I walked to her office on a blisteringly cold morning, I noted mentally that she had made a career sacrifice for the sake of the family. Her small office was situated in a difficult-to-find back corner section of a sprawling medical building. The structure was designed with a mind-bending maze of hallways that, each time I would visit, gave me the feeling of the proverbial rat in a science experiment. Her office was much as I would find her to bea"highly functional with few frills. It was simply decorated with the same ma.s.s-produced wooden furniture found in her secretaryas waiting room. Attractive family photos of her children and her husband were atop seemingly every square inch of desk or cabinet s.p.a.ce, and no visitor needed to guess about her top priority in life.

Having previously interviewed wives (and husbands) of political candidates, I was uncertain what to expect. Some spouses, fearful of a verbal gaffe, are heavily scripted by campaign aides, equally fearful of a blunder. Others are more at ease with their own words but are still generally cautious in their approach. Mich.e.l.le Obama exuded neither quality. She was not the least bit scripted. She was open and relaxed and greeted me as if we had met many times before. As with her husband, one of her strengths is the ability to put others at ease in her presence. She answered my questions in such an unhurried and relaxed fashion that she seemed only mildly calculating, if at all. I found her to be comfortable with herself, personable, intellectually engaging and deeply committed to her husband. She knew that he badly wanted to win this election. Toward that end, she was adept at pointing out his positive traits; and yet she seemed to have little interest in putting an artificial gloss on her husbandas foibles and faults. aI call him aThe Fact Guy,aa she told me. aHe seems to have a fact about everything. He can argue and debate about anything. It doesnat matter if he agrees with you, he can still argue with you. Sometimes, heas even right.a She broke into a playful grin at this last remark.

She told me how Obamaas compet.i.tive streak sometimes led him to be overly boastful at winning family games, such as Scrabble or Monopoly. She stressed that her husband had made many sacrifices in his career, particularly financial sacrifices, in order to serve the public. The emphasis on this part of her husbandas character certainly would have been considered helpful to his campaign, but she spoke so openly about his faults that neither observation came across as overtly scripted.

Our interview ran almost two hours, at which time I ended the session. I stepped back into a maze of hallways with the impression of a woman who was confident in her own skills, confident in her marriage and her own career and also highly respectful of her husbandas abilities.

Obama has publicly portrayed Mich.e.l.le as a reluctant political wife, and that has unmistakably been true. His immense personal ambition and good political fortune have pushed his career into overdrive, sometimes leaving his family breathing exhaust fumes. And this has caused friction in the marriage. But initially, her attraction to Obama was wedded, at least in part, to his mission to serve the public. When Obama first mentioned his desire to enter politics, she was encouraging. aI told him, aIf thatas what you really want to do, I think youad be great at it,aa she said. aaYou are everything people say they want in their public officials.aa Their four-year courtship seemed rather effortless to outsiders. Both clearly were devoted to each other, although Mich.e.l.leas family expressed some initial hesitancy. Mich.e.l.leas mother, Marion Robinson, was fond of Obama but was concerned that his biracial ancestry might evoke a clash of cultures, or that their union might not be readily accepted by others. Mich.e.l.leas brother, meanwhile, wondered if Obama could live up to the rigorous standards that his exacting younger sister had placed on previous boyfriends. aMy mom and I and my dad, before he died, we were all worried about, aOh, my G.o.d, my sisteras never getting married because each guy shead meet, sheas gonna chew him up, spit him out.a So I was thinking, Barack says one wrong thing and she is going to jettison him. Sheall fire a guy in a minute, just fire hima. Unfortunately for these guys, and I donat want this to sound conceited, but my dad was my dad. And so she had a definite frame of reference for a guy. She had an imprint in her mind of the kind of guy she wanted. And my mom used to tell hera"and I used to tell her after she got oldera"I was like, aLook, youare not gonna find guys that are gonna be perfect, because they didnat have Dad as a father. So youave gotta sort of come up with your framework.a But she was hardheaded and refused to let that go.a Craigas first impression of Obama was positive: aHe was tall,a Craig said with a chuckle. Mich.e.l.le had dated men shorter than she, and one surmises that her confident demeanor and extreme tallness for a woman could be intimidating to any suitor, especially one deprived of height. Craigas most indelible impression of his sisteras new boyfriend came on the basketball court. Obama was not nearly as talented as Craig, who had played professionally in Europe after being drafted and cut by the NBAas Philadelphia 76ers. But Obama had never been reticent about his own basketball skills and he was eager to step on the court with the former college star. That moxie impressed Craig. aBarackas game is just like his personalitya"heas confident, not afraid to shoot the ball when heas open. See, that says a lot about a guy,a Craig said. aA lot of guys wanna just be out there to say they were out there. But he wants to be out there and be a part of the game. He wants to try and win and he wants to try and contribute.a This extreme level of confidence is something that was ingrained in Obamaas psyche early in life. His maternal grandfather would tell Obama that this was the greatest lesson he could learn from his absent father: aconfidencea"the secret to a manas success.a That is how Obamaas father led his life; and even in times of self-doubt, Obama has hearkened back to that wisdom.

Though Obama and Craig bonded on the basketball court, Craig was taken aback at one of their first holiday gatherings when Obama confided what profession he might pursue after Harvard Lawa"politics. And not only that, but Obama seemed to hint that he was destined for great things in this often poisonous field of endeavor. Obama speculated to his future brother-in-law that he just might be president one day. aBarack was like, aWell, I wanna be a politician. You know, maybe I can be president of the United States.a And I said, aYeah, yeah, okay, come over and meet my Aunt Graciea"and donat tell anybody that!aa Mich.e.l.le, in contrast to her husband, was more circ.u.mspect about Obamaas lofty ambitions. She thought he had great talent, but looked at him as something of a dreamer as far as national politics was concerned. He might be a star in that realm one day, but that was of little interest to her. Beyond Obamaas keen intellect and personal charm, what sealed Mich.e.l.leas love for him was his civility and human compa.s.sion. She said she was intimately affected by his treatment of one of her uncles who had a drinking problem. Obama was studying at Harvard Law at the time and clearly had a bright future ahead of him. So he could easily have dismissed her uncle. Instead, aBarack treated him with respect and dignity, like an equal,a Mich.e.l.le said. (Perhaps Obama had compa.s.sion for her uncle because Obamaas own family was not immune to alcohol issues. His maternal grandfather, who helped raise Obama, drank to excess, as did Obamaas Kenyan father.) LOVE AND ATTRACTION ARE SUCH INTANGIBLE NOTIONS THAT IT IS impossible to definitively a.n.a.lyze what drew Obama to Mich.e.l.le Robinson so intensely. But people close to him believe that race probably played a factor. After coming to the mainland from Hawaii, he sought to find not only his own cultural ident.i.ty, but a comfortable human community in which to live. One can surmise that in choosing an African-American woman as his wife, he consciously (or subconsciously) decided to root himself in the black community. Kellman, for one, believes it was no fluke that Obama married a black woman. He said Obama was attracted to the black experience in America. aIf you are biracial, I think as a kid, you begin to identify with the underdog, the people who have injustice thrust upon them,a Kellman said. aI think that has great appeal to you, and that is what Barack began to care about, intellectually. You can see that in college and in other places. I mean, blacks in America, this is the great injustice of our history. So why not opt for that and choose that path? I think it is very natural, in that sense, for him to do that and to be inspired by thata. In writing more about his dad than his mother, the person he knew and [who] reared him, it makes the case that this is what he chose for his futurea"the fact he chose to marry Mich.e.l.le, the ideal person who could help him develop those kinds of roots, and the person to share this career with. And personally, it just seems to have worked out wonderfully for him.a The Obamas settled in Chicagoas Hyde Park neighborhood along the lakefront on the cityas South Side. With the University of Chicago as its epicenter, Hyde Park is one of just two or three communities in racially segregated Chicago that is populated by significant numbers of both blacks and whites, many with college educations. A particularly trendy place for upwardly mobile blacks, Hyde Park is also in vogue for mixed-race couples. So when Obama married Mich.e.l.le in 1990, he also married into her budding network among Chicagoas community of successful, white-collar African Americans. Indeed, as two attractive Harvard Law graduates, the Obamas made for a striking black professional couple. But despite this status, neither pursued financially rewarding careers. Mich.e.l.le left Sidley Austin in the wake of losing two people close to hera"her father (shortly before she and Obama married) and a college roommate who died suddenly at twenty-fivea"which prompted her to take a close look at how she conducted her own life. She interviewed for a Chicago City Hall post under Valerie Jarrett, then chief of staff to Mayor Richard J. Daley. When Jarrett offered her the job, Mich.e.l.le had one rather odd request: She asked that Jarrett first meet with Obama, then her fianc. It turns out that Obama had concerns about his impending bride going to work in Daleyas city hall. He worried that Mich.e.l.le might be too straightforward and outspoken to survive in such an overtly political environment; and suspicions about Daleyas administration, which had been criticized as an updated version of Chicagoas machine politics and a vehicle designed primarily to serve Daleyas political interests over community interests. Jarrett promised Obama that he would protect Mich.e.l.le from political backstabbing, and Obama eventually agreed to the job.

When Obama returned to Chicago from Harvard, he put off his legal career for six months to take a position directing a voter registration and education campaign targeting Chicagoas low-income blacks. Illinois Project Vote registered nearly one hundred and fifty thousand new voters for the 1992 presidential election. aItas a power thing,a declared the projectas radio commercials and brochures. The effort was critical in electing two Democrats. It helped Bill Clinton win Illinois, and it greatly a.s.sisted an African-American state lawmaker, Carol Moseley Braun, in becoming the first black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. But Obama was also working on another project at the time, and this dual workload caused strains in his marriage. Running Project Vote by day, Obama was writing his first memoir at night, leaving Mich.e.l.le feeling rather lonely. Mich.e.l.le is religious in her routine of going to bed early and rising at 4:30 a.m. to hit the treadmill, but her husbandas disappearance into his writing hole until the wee hours took some adjustment on her part. This was a pattern that the ambitious Obama would fall into throughout his political career: heavily burdening himself with work duties, much to the chagrin of his wife. Obama admits that this trait is a personal shortcoming. aThere are times when I want to do everything and be everything,a he told me. aI want to have time to read and swim with the kids and not disappoint my voters and do a really careful job on each and every thing that I do. And that can sometimes get me into trouble. Thatas historically been one of my bigger faults. I mean, I was trying to organize Project Vote at the same time as I was writing a book, and there are only so many hours in a day.a Mich.e.l.le has not been shy about grumbling in public regarding her husbandas busy career. Much like Obamaas no-nonsense grandmother, Mich.e.l.le has consistently played the role of stabilizing influence in the Obama home, particularly after their two daughters were born. aI cannot be crazy, because then Iam a crazy mother and Iam an angry wife,a she said. aWhat I notice about men, all men, is that their order is me, my family, G.o.d is in there somewhere, but amea is first. And for women, amea is fourth, and thatas not healthy.a Mich.e.l.le qualified the statement to say aall men,a which left her husband off the hook. But I think it would be fair to say that aall mena do not put themselves ahead of their family. More often than not in American households, it is indeed the mother who makes the career sacrifice for the sake of children, but not always. The man Mich.e.l.le married, however, is p.r.o.ne to placing his professional ambitions at the top of his priority list. Indeed, someone who writes a nearly four-hundred-page memoira"at the age of just thirty-threea"might be accused of self-indulgence. And Mich.e.l.le was not the first woman in his life to accuse Obama of a certain level of self-absorption. A female friend at Occidental College told Obama spitefully, aYou always think itas about you.a AFTER THE NOVEMBER 1992 ELECTION AND PROJECT VOTEaS CONCLUSION, Obama set out to practice law in Chicago. As a magna c.u.m laude graduate of Harvard Law and the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, he had his choice of top law firms. He picked Miner, Barnhill & Galland, which specialized in civil rights and discrimination cases. The firm was in many ways the ant.i.thesis of the corporate Sidley Austin. Miner, Barnhill was an activist firm that strove to rectify social and economic injustice through the courts. In this sense, it fit Obamaas mission agenda perfectly. Miner, Barnhill had picked up Ivy League graduates before, but when senior partner Judson Miner had called the Law Review the year before to inquire about Obama, the response gave him little cause for optimism. aLeave your name and take a number,a Miner was told. aYou are caller number six hundred and forty-seven.a Obamaas Law Review presidency had garnered him national media attention and put him at the top of the list of Harvard graduates.

Over the nine years that Obamaas law license was active in Illinois, he never handled a trial and mostly worked in teams of lawyers who drew up briefs and contracts in a variety of cases. He was one of the lawyers representing an activist group in a successful lawsuit that accused the state of Illinois of failing to apply a federal law designed to help the poor register to vote. In another case, Obama wrote a large portion of an appeals brief for a whistle-blower who exposed misconduct by Cook County and a private research inst.i.tute in the handling of a five-million-dollar federal research grant. The grant money was used to study the treatment of pregnant substance abusers, and the whistle-blower was a doctor fired from the program after raising questions about expenditures. Obama was also among a group of attorneys who sued on behalf of black voters and Chicago aldermen who alleged that new ward boundaries drawn up after the 1990 census were discriminatory. An appeals court ruled that the new ward map violated the Voting Rights Act, and another set of boundaries was drawn.

But beyond the firmas legal work, it was Judson Miner himself who appealed to Obama, for another reason. Miner had been corporation counsel in Harold Washingtonas administration. Miner, in fact, was one of the lawyers who helped Washington lead the fight against the white political machine on the city council. From those days, Miner had a bevy of contacts in Chicagoas political circles. And as Obama had mentioned to friends and family, politics greatly interested him. He had seen how effective Washington had been in quickly altering the racial and social dynamics of the city. The speed of this change impressed Obama. aThe courts are generally very slow and they are generally pretty conservative, not ideologically conservative necessarily, but conservative as inst.i.tutions,a he said. aLaw school and practicing law put the framework around how this country works, but it also drove home that social change through the court system is a very difficult thing. There are very few moments in our history, Brown v. Board of Education being a singular exception, where substantial change was initiated through the court systema. So it was at this point that I started thinking more seriously about political office.a

CHAPTER.

8.

Politics.

I am surprised at how many elected officialsa"even the good onesa"spend so much time talking about the mechanics of politics and not matters of substance. They have this poker chip mentality, this overriding interest in retaining their seats or in moving their careers forwarda.

a"BARACK OBAMA.

Barack Obamaas first foray into electoral politics revealed both the burning intensity of his personal ambition and his deeply held desire to press for social change, particularly in poor African-American communities. To Obama, it displayed once again the th.o.r.n.y thicket of intramural politics that besets Chicagoas black community. The cityas African-American political universe is lighted by a select group of insiders who have ama.s.sed power and prestige, and they are loath to relinquish it. It is also a society of unyielding internal rancor, which often impedes overall black progress. For these reasons, as Obama entered the public political sphere, the eternal optimist began to express pessimism about the state of black Chicago.

aUpon my return to Chicago,a he wrote in Dreams from My Father, which was published around this period, in 1995, aI would find the signs of decay accelerated throughout the South Sidea"the neighborhoods shabbier, the children edgier and less restrained, more middle-cla.s.s families heading out to the suburbs, the jails bursting with glowering youth, my brothers without prospects. All too rarely do I hear people asking just what it is that weave done to make so many childrenas hearts so hard, or what collectively we might do to right their moral compa.s.sa"what values we must live by. Instead I see us doing what weave always donea"pretending that these children are somehow not our own.a Running Project Vote and working for Judson Miner provided Obama with entree to the diverse constellation of black politicos on Chicagoas South Side. So when an opportunity to run for public office presented itself in 1995, Obama seized it. A respected state senator in her first full term, Alice Palmer, had decided to run for Congress, which led to Obama cutting his first deal to advance his career in politics. Palmer was a progressive African American in the vein of Obama, and she threw her support behind Obama as her replacement.

But that is only where the story begins.

In Obamaas version of events, Palmer agreed that even if she was not successful in the three-person race for Congress, she would retire from politics and he would run for her seat. But when Palmer began to falter badly in the congressional contest, she changed course dramatically. Her supporters met with Obama and asked him if he would step aside if Palmer was to lose. This would allow her to run again for the Illinois Senate seat she was holding, but it would leave Obama out in the cold. After pulling together a campaign, Obama had no interest in ditching the effort. And he did not equivocate in expressing that sentiment to Palmeras representatives. At thirty-four, Obama was eager for this next step in his evolution. This was, after all, a man who had mused to his brother-in-law a couple of years earlier that, hey, you never know, he might be the president of the country one day. Palmer, in Obamaas view, was reneging on an agreement that they had negotiated in good faith. So he told Palmeras people that she had promised to relinquish her seat and support him, and that he would not withdraw from the race.

Predictably, this did not sit well with Palmer. She, indeed, lost the congressional primary contest in November 2005 to Jesse Jackson Jr., and then quickly filed to run for her old seat in the March 2006 Democratic primary against Obamaa"even though she had publicly supported him for the seat. aSince she endorsed me, I can always use, aEven my opponent wants mea as a campaign slogan,a Obama quipped to the Chicago Tribune.

But humor aside, this established a problematic election for the upstart Obama. Suddenly, instead of running at the head of the pack with the inc.u.mbentas blessing, he was running against the inc.u.mbent herself. He had worked the hustings and acc.u.mulated a great deal of support for his candidacy, but he would have been hard pressed to match Palmeras power of inc.u.mbency: a ready-made army of supporters to distribute literature and get people to the polls on election day, as well as the endors.e.m.e.nt of an array of established black politicians. Indeed, Palmer called a press conference and accepted a pet.i.tion from more than one hundred supporters urging her to seek reelection. Also in her corner was the new congressman, Jesse Jackson Jr. In fact, fresh from the congressional victory, Jacksonas field organizer attended Palmeras press conference and pledged full a.s.sistance. Palmer also possessed an inc.u.mbentas most potent weapona"name recognition from her previous electiona"while Obamaas name was not a plus to his campaign. When it came to his name, the debate generally revolved around which was oddera"his first name or his last.

But Obama had one card up his sleeve. He could not envision how Palmeras supporters, even as solidified as they seemed to be, had gathered the necessary number of voter signatures on her nominating pet.i.tions in such a short time. Palmer herself confessed at her press conference that the nearly sixteen hundred pet.i.tions she had filed with the state elections board had been acc.u.mulated in just ten days. So a volunteer for Obama challenged the legality of her pet.i.tions, as well as the legality of pet.i.tions from several other candidates in the race. As an elections board hearing on the pet.i.tions neared, Palmer realized that Obama had called her hand, and she acknowledged that she had not properly acquired the necessary number of signatures. Many of the voters had printed their names, rather than signing them as the law required. Palmer said she was desperately trying to get affidavits from those who had printed their names, but time was running out. She had no choice but to withdraw from the race. The other opponents were also knocked off the ballot, leaving Obama running unopposed in the primary.

Publicly, Palmer claimed she held no grudges; privately, she was extremely bitter. This turn of events was embarra.s.sing to her, especially after her poor showing in the congressional contest. But more important than embarra.s.sment, it effectively ended her once promising political career. So she refused to support Obama in the primary or the fall election, telling a Chicago journalist, aIave since discovered that heas not as progressive as I first thought.a Nevertheless, since the Republican Party is almost nonexistent in African-American districts on the South and West Sides of the city, Obama cruised to victory in the fall election.

For Obama, the saga pointed up several things. Rather than winning a position in the Illinois General a.s.sembly by ousting an inc.u.mbent or taking an open seat, he appeared to have slipped in the back door on a technicality. And by challenging Palmer, who was highly regarded in black political circles as a fighting progressive, he had left a bad taste in the mouths of many black political leaders, influential people whom he would have to work with in the state capitol and in his district. Palmer, for her part, seemed more than happy to see this bitterness and resentment toward Obama spread to as many people as possible.

But most significantly, the whole episode showed that Obama was an extraordinarily ambitious young man willing to do whatever it took to advance not only his agenda of community empowerment but his own political career.

OBAMAaS STATE SENATE DISTRICT ON CHICAGOaS SOUTH SIDE WAS one of the most economically diverse in the state. It included some of the poorest African-American neighborhoods and public housing projects in the country, but it was also home to middle-and upper-middle-cla.s.s residents, most living in Hyde Park. In addition, his district ran up into the South Loop area, just south of the main downtown commercial district of the city. As development spread outward from the cityas high-rises from the 1980s through today, the South Loop and neighborhoods to its near south experienced intense development pressures. The South Loop was undergoing gentrification, with new condominium buildings and town-house communities drawing downtown professionals and others back to city living. Attendant stores, businesses and restaurants sprouted alongside these developments.

Obamaas fratricidal state senate race provided some inside-page grist for the Chicago media, but it was still a relatively obscure contest in a city filled with higher-stakes political intrigue. Yet the emergence of Obama onto the cityas political scene did not go completely unnoticed. Obamaas Harvard pedigree, the release of his first memoir and his own personal eloquence combined to draw some interest from the press and from influential people outside the South Side environment.

He was named one of the cityas top movers and shakers by NaDIGO magazine, a publication tailored to black professionals in Chicago. But the most substantial interest came in the form of a long front-page profile in the cityas leading weekly alternative newspaper, the Chicago Reader. The four-thousand-word article was highly laudatory of Obama, and the last third of the piece was largely an account in Obamaas own words of his views on the complicated intersection of race and politics. The article served as a manifesto of sorts for Obama. This was the first time he was able to voice his political philosophy to the broader Chicago community, especially the all-important liberal set. His vision for a anew kind of politicsa was still in its nascent stage, and he was speaking primarily to the more narrow concerns of his future black South Side const.i.tuents. But the overall principle was essentially identical to what he preaches politically today: If America is to progress as a free society, people must learn to work together to build healthy communities rather than fight with each other over parochial, self-serving interests. As Obama put it: The political debate is now so skewed, so limited, so distorted. People are hungry for community; they miss it. They are hungry for change. What if a politician were to see his job as that of an organizer, as part teacher and part advocate, one who does not sell voters short but who educates them about the real choices before them? As an elected public official, for instance, I could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer. We would come together to form concrete economic development strategies, take advantage of existing laws and structures, and create bridges and bonds within all sectors of the community. We must form gra.s.s-root structures that would hold me and other elected officials more accountable for their actions. The right wing, the Christian right, has done a good job of building these organizations of accountability, much better than the left or progressive forces have. But itas always easier to organize around intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and false nostalgia. And they also have hijacked the higher moral ground with this language of family values and moral responsibility. Now we have to take this same languagea"these same values that are encouraged within our familiesa"of looking out for one another, of sharing, of sacrificing for each othera"and apply them to a larger society. Letas talk about creating a society, not just individual families, based on these values. Right now we have a society that talks about the irresponsibility of teens getting pregnant, not the irresponsibility of a society that fails to educate them to aspire for morea. I am surprised at how many elected officialsa"even the good onesa"spend so much time talking about the mechanics of politics and not matters of substance. They have this poker chip mentality, this overriding interest in retaining their seats or in moving their careers forward, and the business and game of politics, the political horse race, is all they talk about. Even those who are on the same page as me on the issues never seem to want to talk about them. Politics is regarded as little more than a career.

One of Obamaas central themes was the powerful potential of multiculturalism in American society. Rather than continually fighting white interests and castigating whites for an oppressive history of mistreating blacks, Obama suggested, blacks would do better if they infiltrated the mainstream power structure and worked from there to effect social change.

aAny solution to our unemployment catastrophe must arise from us working creatively within a multicultural, interdependent, and international economy,a Obama said. aAny African Americans who are only talking about racism as a barrier to our success are seriously misled if they donat also come to grips with the larger economic forces that are creating economic insecurity for all workersa"whites, Latinos, and Asians.a At Harvard, Obamaas practice of patiently listening to all sides of a debate made him popular and defused conflict with members of the schoolas conservative ranks. But his steadfast beliefs about multiculturalism and race made him less than a unifying force in Chicagoas black community. The idea of building bridges to people of all races was anathema to many old-school black leaders and so-called black nationalists who still sounded a voice in Chicagoas African-American community. These individuals practiced a form of ident.i.ty politics. They were not only pessimistic about the capacity of whites to share economic wealth with minority groups, but they were especially wary of blacks like Obama who were educated in elite white inst.i.tutions, had a.s.similated into mainstream white society and now espoused these kinds of multicultural notions. It did not help Obamaas cause in these circles that, in addition to his law practice, he was lecturing in const.i.tutional law at the University of Chicago School of Law. The university was situated in Hyde Park, and to some South Side blacks the campus represented the encroachment of the white establishment into what had historically been claimed as African-American turf. The school was considered a physically forbidding and intellectually impenetrable inst.i.tution of white elitism sitting in the middle of struggling black communitiesa"and there was Harvard Lawa"trained Obama, teaching cla.s.ses at this establishment.

Most of this grumbling occurred behind the scenes, although some was aired in public. An African-American political science professor at Northwestern University criticized Obama for his avacuous-to-repressive neo-liberal politics.a The head of a task force on black empowerment was more direct and more cynical, charging that Obama was little more than a tool of forces beyond the black community. These kinds of concerns from blacks were nothing new to Obama, of course. He had rankled some African Americans at Harvard for trying to promote harmony among partisans by appointing conservatives to editorial posts at the expense of pushing specific blacks up the ladder.

SOME OF THESE ISSUES IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY FOLLOWED Obama into the Illinois General a.s.sembly, where he received a cool reception from some members of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus. This group of black lawmakers was not immune from internal squabbling. Chicago has two significant communities of African Americansa"West Siders and South Sidersa"and legislators representing districts from each part of town were often at odds, in part because they were competing in Springfield for the same state resources. And Obama did not necessarily ingratiate himself with the legislators by making some privately disparaging comments about the disorganized, free-for-all atmosphere in Springfield. While some lawmakers acknowledged that Obamaas criticisms were on the mark, others wondered, Just who is this hotshot new guy from Harvard Law who shows up in Springfield and immediately takes potshots at us? aAt the swearing-in, there was already some heat from certain people,a a Springfield politico recalled.

In fact, the man who soon became Obamaas chief political adviser acknowledged that he did not care for Obama upon their first meeting. Dan Sh.o.m.on was a hardworking, gregarious, bespectacled wire service reporter who had left journalism to become an aide to Democrats in the state capital. By 1997, Sh.o.m.on had worked in Democratic Party politics in Springfield for eight years and he knew the terrain. Obama was displeased about the amount of time that his a.s.signed aide was devoting to his staff work and noticed that Sh.o.m.on was a dogged worker for the senator in the office next door. So Obama pressed the Black Caucus leader, Emil Jones Jr., to have Sh.o.m.on a.s.signed to him, as well.

Sh.o.m.on was initially reluctant because he had heard some of the scuttleb.u.t.t about Obama. He had also met Obama a couple of times the year before when Obama helped campaign door-to-door for other Democratic legislative candidates. On one of his volunteer walking efforts, Obama ran into another volunteer apparently a.s.signed to walk the same precinct and grew miffed because he felt his time had been wasted. This gave Sh.o.m.on the impression that Obama could be rather testy and elitist. So when Sh.o.m.on was approached about working for Obama, his first reaction was: aI am thinking that I am really busy. He wants to change the world and that is great, but I donat really like the guy that much.a Still, Sh.o.m.on agreed to meet with Obama, and when Obama took Sh.o.m.on out for dinner, the two wound up hitting it off. So Sh.o.m.on went to work for Obama, mostly in the capacity of helping the freshman lawmaker with legislative strategy. Sh.o.m.on offered to help with media affairs, since that was his specialty as a former reporter. But Obama told Sh.o.m.on that he did not need a press aide because he dealt with reporters on his own. Obama wanted full control over his own public message, and he didnat want a spokesperson interpreting his language and ideas.

(Thus began Obamaas cordial, but not chummy, relationship with the news media. He was known for an occasional thoughtful quote, but capitol reporters were not so charmed by him that they consistently sought him out. Obama joked in later years that only one reporter, Dave McKinney of the Chicago Sun-Times, paid him any attention at all. aAnd McKinney only talked to me to be nice,a Obama said.) One of Sh.o.m.onas first tactical moves would later prove pivotal in pushing forward Obamaas budding political careera"and it would convince Obama that he could win a statewide political contest. Sh.o.m.on told Obama that, because he would be voting on issues that affected Illinoisians outside the Chicago region, he should consider traveling to the southern reaches of the state to gain an understanding of Illinoisas vastly divergent cultures. Obama thought the trip would be instructive for that reason and for another: Springfield was not his final political destination. He harbored notions of running for statewide office one day. This was 1997, before Obamaas first child was born, and there were fewer enc.u.mbrances on his time. So, according to Sh.o.m.on, Obama responded without hesitation: aLetas do it.a (In Obamaas second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, he takes credit for the idea of this first far downstate trip.) Behind Sh.o.m.onas thinking was this: Illinois suffers from a constant geographic tussle between the Chicago region and the rest of the state. About two-thirds of the stateas population lives in the Chicago area, which, at roughly eight million people, is the third-largest metropolitan region in the United States, behind New York City and Los Angeles. The remaining third live in rural and small urban communities across Illinois, and these communities consistently complain that they are overwhelmed by Chicago and its collar counties, especially when resources are divvied up by lawmakers in Springfield. Because of this dynamic, most politicians from Chicago are viewed with some suspicion by voters in Chicagoas immediately surrounding suburbs and with even greater suspicion outside the metro region altogether.

But in central and southern Illinois, another factor might play a role in how Obama would be considered: race. Obama was not only a Chicago politician but an African-American one. This was potentially a second strike against him in this part of the world. Southern Illinois, in particular, more resembled the Deep South than the Midwest. It had endured a long history of racial intolerance. At Illinoisas southern tip, where the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers meet, the small town of Cairo has a particularly unsettling past that includes the public lynching of black men in the early 1900s and a race riot in 1967. The riot was so ugly that it helped to spur the departure of thousands of residents. On several trips into this potentially hostile environment, Obama would not only measure his overall reception but also seek to make political and fund-raising contacts. The key question: Had the racial equation changed enough that he would be viewed as a friend or, at the very least, a nonthreatening outsider? aI said that we will go for a week and play golf and we will see the state,a Sh.o.m.on recalled.

On this first trip, Obamaas eyes were opened to this largely white part of the worlda"the so-called red state world. The two men disagreed over some logistical and political aspects of the trip, but overall it was a resounding success, signaling to both of them that Obama probably could compete in that rural, small-town environment. Obama may have written four hundred serious pages in Dreams about the painful odyssey of finding comfort with his mixed racial ancestry, but he seemed comfortable with his ident.i.ty by this time.

aWe are driving through Perry Township and we pa.s.s the Pinckneyville c.o.o.n Club,a Sh.o.m.on recalled, spelling out the word aC-O-O-Na for special emphasis. (c.o.o.n in this case was a truncated colloquialism for racc.o.o.n, but historically in the United States it has been used as an epithet for a black person.) aAnd, you know, this guy has never really been in the South. So Barack looks at the sign, and looks at me, and he says, aI donat think theyare going to let me join the Pinckneyville c.o.o.n Club.a He then starts laughing and he is laughing so hard he almost fell off his chair.a While traveling in another small town on a later trip, Obama and Sh.o.m.on were pulled over by a police officer in DuQuoin County when they inadvertently turned the wrong direction down a one-way street. When the officer questioned the state license plate on Obamaas green Jeep Cherokee and Sh.o.m.on told him that Obama was a state senator, the officer alooked flabbergasted,a Sh.o.m.on said. aHeas not a state senator from these parts!a the officer told Sh.o.m.on.

Still, in setting after setting on these downstate trips, Obama discovered that everyday people reacted warmly to him. In some cases he was treated like a dignitary because people were not accustomed to a state senator visiting them. aIt was just a great trip because it really did open Barackas eyes,a Sh.o.m.on said. aHe thinks these people are really cool, and they could relate to hima"although, you know, they couldnat p.r.o.nounce his name.a The trips were also helpful in yet another regard, allowing Sh.o.m.on to school Obama in another lesson of politics: Try to adapt as best you can to the culture you are stepping into. Obama did not always take well to Sh.o.m.onas unsolicited advice. While Obamaas family never had a great deal of money, his private schooling and Harvard degree meant that he had been immersed in an elite culture, especially during his adult years. One morning, Sh.o.m.on met Obama coming out of their hotel and noticed that Obama was wearing khaki pants and a silky black shirt with a flat collar and b.u.t.tons all down the front, a shirt more typically worn to a picnic than to a round of golf. Most significantly, it was not the universal golf uniform of a two-or three-b.u.t.ton polo shirt. (Obama shows his minimalistic tendencies by consistently wearing khaki pants and black shirts in casual settings. aBuy him a black shirt for Christmas and he is a happy man. Heas not flashy. Thatas all he wears,a his wife once told me.) aSo I asked him what was going on with the shirt? And he asked what I meant,a Sh.o.m.on said. aI told him that we have the golf outing today. He didnat think anything was wrong with the shirt. I told him that he needed to wear a golf shirt like everyone else. And he asked me why, because he only had one golf shirt and he had worn it playing golf the day before. I said, aWell then, wear it again.a So he put it back on. I reminded him that this was southern Illinois and you donat want to look too auptown.a He got mad and kind of frustrated about that. He didnat have a problem with changing after I explained it to him, but he really had not been exposed to that stuff. He is fairly sophisticated.a Obama recounted a slightly different version of this anecdote in his second book. He wrote that Sh.o.m.on told him to wear polo shirts and khakis throughout the trip, in order to fit in. Obama also recalled the story of Sh.o.m.on advising him in a downstate restaurant to eat regular yellow mustard rather than the more pretentious Dijon mustard. Obama portrays Sh.o.m.onas advice as rather petty. These disagreements might appear insignificant on the surface, but they reveal something about each man. Both could be stubborn and opinionated, but each also had legitimate points. And the discussion itself crystallizes a dilemma that political aides have consistently had with Obama: his occasional air of elitism coupled with his skin color. Rightly or wrongly, Sh.o.m.on was concerned that Obamaas urbane sophistication, coming as it did from a black man, would alienate working-cla.s.s white votersa"and Sh.o.m.on sought to temper that image. Obama, however, was wise enough to know that if he tried to morph into something that he was not, he would be perceived as inauthentic.

In any case, Sh.o.m.on and Obama would take more of these trips downstate, and the excursions satisfied Obama that he could win votes among this electorate. These mostly white, middle-cla.s.s, down-to-earth midwestern people reminded him of his grandparents and he felt completely comfortable in their midst. And that comfort obviously was reciprocated. aI understand these folks,a Obama told me on a downstate campaign trip during his U.S. Senate race. aMy grandmother was Republican. I grew up with these people.a

CHAPTER.

9.

The Legislator.

For Barack, itas not a constant flow of glorious defeats. He has good attention to ideals and core principles, but a recognition that it is good to get things done from year to year.

a"JOHN BOUMAN, ANTIPOVERTY ADVOCATE.

For the first six of Barack Obamaas almost eight years in the Illinois General a.s.sembly, he suffered from an aggressive legislatoras most debilitating afflictiona"membership in the minority party. In national politics today, Illinois is a pure blue state, considered an immediate loser for a Republican presidential candidate. But Illinois voters have a long history of electing moderate Republican governors, as well as turning over state legislative chambers to the Grand Old Party. Rural areas of Illinois are known for sending Republicans to the state legislature, as are the suburban counties that encapsulate Chicago. The Illinois House of Representatives has been dominated by Democrats for some time, but Republicans captured control of the Illinois Senate in 1992 and held on to it for a decade.

No red carpet unfurled for Obama when he arrived in the state capital of Springfield in January 1997. If anything, his fellow senators cast a cold eye. Many of his colleagues viewed him in the same visceral way that his aide, Dan Sh.o.m.on, first reacted to him: Here comes an aloof Ivy League good-government type who too often mentions his years of sacrifice as a community organizer and his Harvard Law pedigree. aThe fact that he had a Harvard Law degree and was a const.i.tutional law professora"that made some eyes roll,a said Kirk Dillard, a Republican senator from suburban Chicago.

Despite his time organizing the poor on the cityas Far South Side, Obamaas ability to connect on a broad scale with urban blacks outside his collegial Hyde Park neighborhood was highly questionable. And even though he had spent several years as an organizer in the cityas economically depressed communities, he exhibited far more comfort in university-type settings where he could woo the white lakefront liberal seta"environments that highlighted and celebrated his cerebral, mission-oriented, policy-wonk nature. His public speeches tended to be policy-heavy and overly intellectuala"fine for Harvard Law students, but fairly dry for everyday people. Indeed, some of his senate colleagues, especially in the Legislative Black Caucus, saw in him an Ivy League elitist unwilling to sully himself with the unseemly universe of Chicago ward politics or the muck of the legislative process. aIt wasnat like Barack took Springfield by storm,a Sh.o.m.on said. aThe first few years he was thought of as intelligent, thoughtful, bright. But he certainly wasnat considered to be a major player.a Rich Miller, the publisher of Capitol Fax, a statehouse newsletter, was less diplomatic. aBarack is a very intelligent man,a Miller said in 2000. aHe hasnat had a lot of success here, and it could be because he places himself above everybody. He likes people to know he went to Harvard.a Milleras characterization might be unduly harsh, but in charitable terms, Obama initially toiled in relative obscurity in the statehouse. His intellectualism initially did not translate well to Springfield, where most grunt legislative success is accomplished over spirits in a local tavern or between iron shots on the fifth fairway. In addition, Obamaas palpable disdain for some of the petty antics of his fellow legislators did not endear him to those colleagues. At the same time, Springfield had its share of self-absorbed, monosyllabic hacks with little use for an urbane sophisticate like Obama.

Nevertheless, with Sh.o.m.on as his main tutor, Obama eventually adapted to this environment. He picked up golf. He established close working and personal friendships with a number of fellow legislators, and these a.s.sociations would greatly a.s.sist him as his political career unfolded. By the time his tenure in Springfield ended, it could be argued that he had evolved into a very successful state lawmaker. Viewed warily by some of his fellow blacks, Obama primarily formed alliances with downstate Democrats and a handful of Republicans. These friendships would show that while some people, especially some blacks, regarded Obama as elitist, he could mix with other everyday legislators quite comfortably.

Perhaps most significantly, Obama joined a weekly poker game that included fellow senators Terry Link and Denny Jacobs, white Democrats who represented districts outside Obamaas home base of Chicago. The son of a man who studied economics at Harvard, Obama was not surprisingly a skilled poker player. As when playing board games at home, the highly compet.i.tive Obama took the game seriously. He played carefully and was adept at not revealing his hand. Senator Link joked that Obama took his money at the card table and Link won it back on the golf course, where Obama was still learning the game.

The loose poker atmosphere, however, did not always fit with Obamaas exceedingly strict sense of propriety and morality, traits instilled primarily by his mother. During one poker game, Obama was irked when a married lobbyist arrived with an inebriated woman companion who did not acquit herself in a particularly wholesome fashion. Without offending his buddies, Obama registered his displeasure with the situation. aHe didnat think much of that,a an Obama a.s.sociate said. aHe didnat see the purpose of bringing her.a Legislatively, Obama managed to pa.s.s a decent number of laws for a first-term lawmaker in the minority party. His first major legislative accomplishment was shepherding a piece of campaign finance reform in May 1998. The measure prohibited lawmakers from soliciting campaign funds while on state property and from accepting gifts from state contractors, lobbyists or other interests. The senateas Democratic leader, Emil Jones Jr., a veteran African-American legislator from the South Side, offered Obama the opportunity to push through the bill because it seemed like a good fit for the do-good persona projected by Obama. Obama was also recommended to Jones by two esteemed Chicago liberals who had taken a liking to him: former U.S. senator Paul Simon and former congressman and federal judge Abner Mikva. Working the bill was an eye-opening experience for the freshman senator. It was a tough a.s.signment for a new lawmaker, since he was essentially sponsoring legislation that would strip away long-held privileges and perks from his colleagues. In one private session, a close colleague angrily denounced the bill, saying that it impinged on lawmakersa inherent rights. But Obama worked the issue deliberately and delicately, and the measure pa.s.sed the senate by an overwhelming 52a"4 vote. aThis sets the standard for us, and communicates to a public that is increasingly cynical about Springfield and the General a.s.sembly that we in fact are willing to do the right thing,a Obama told reporters immediately after the billas pa.s.sage. The bill was not a watershed event anywhere but Illinois. It essentially lifted Illinois, a state with a deep history of illicit, pay-to-play politics, into the modern world when it came to ethics restrictions. The bill gave Obama a legislative success, but his public criticism of Springfieldas old-school politics did not sit well with some of his colleagues, who already considered the Ivy League lawyer overly pious.

Furthermore, this highly publicized success stood rather alone. Obama was learning that, like the court system, the legislative branch of government could move at a snailas pace. Indeed, as his time wore on in the minority party, he became increasingly frustrated by the workings of the Illinois legislature. He was especially irritated that too many grandstanding, feel-good measures seemed to go forward easily, while bills that offered structural change were bottled up in committee or never got off the ground. For instance, lawmakers easily pa.s.sed a bill that strictly outlawed graffiti painting, but were reluctant to take on deeper juvenile justice issues. The graffiti bill garnered its sponsors a political gold mine of media attention.

IN SPRINGFIELD, OBAMA RAN INTO SOME OF THE SAME ISSUES WITH blacks that he experienced at Harvard. He was not shy about criticizing black leaders and their legislative strategy; also, he did not necessarily follow his caucusas talking points. Moreover, he worked closely with white Democrats and even conservatives to pa.s.s his own bills. Obama, to be sure, had allies in the black caucus, but he had his share of critics as well. His chief antagonists were Rickey Hendon, who represented a district on the cityas West Side, and Donne Trotter, who would run against Obama for Congress.

Hendon and other African-American lawmakers from the West Side often found themselves at odds with their South Side brethren, but the rift between Hendon and Obama was particularly acute. Hendon and Trotter would ajust give Barack h.e.l.l,a said Senator Kimberly Lightford, an Obama ally in the black caucus. Hendon, nicknamed aHollywooda because he once aspired to produce films, was a flamboyant personality in Springfield, known for his smart-aleck humor and occasionally inappropriate public manner. In one legislative session, the two nemeses nearly came to physical blows when Obama, apparently inadvertently, voted against a bill that included funding for a project that a.s.sisted Hendonas district. Years later, details of the incident remain in the eye of the beholder. Obama supporters say that Obama had stepped away from his seat and asked someone else to vote for him, not an uncommon practice considering the thousands of votes cast each session. His proxy, however, accidentally voted against his wishes. When Obama asked that the record reflect that he voted the wrong way, Hendon publicly accused Obama of duplicity. Hendon has never been shy about holding back his feelings, and he had a special way of penetrating Obamaas usually smooth exterior. Soon, the two men were shouting at each other on the senate floor. They took their disagreement into a nearby room, and a witness said that Obama had to be physically restrained. Neither man cares to discuss the incident today, but Hendon remains unconvinced of Obamaas explanation that his vote was accidental. Individuals close to the situation say Hendon still believes that Obama voted against his project in order to pacify North Side fiscal conservatives who were leery of some West Side projects. For his part, the rarely reticent Hendon wonat discuss the altercation, except to confirm that it occurred. aI have been advised to leave Barack alone and that is what I am going to do,a Hendon said. aI am going to let things stay in the past. It happened. Thatas all I can say. It happened.a Though Obama alienated some colleagues like Hendon and gained scant public attention, he nevertheless accrued a rather impressive record as a first-term legislator for the out-of-power Democrats. Much of it was like his community-organizing successa"low-key and