The Bridge: The Life And Rise Of Barack Obama Part 19

"Well, it turns out there is no East Paraguay," Sharpton says. "That set me back a month."

In the history of American politics, race has been, in Valerie Jarrett's term, the sleeping giant. The political scientist Tali Mendelberg, in her 2001 book, The Race Card The Race Card, notes that the white-supremacist resistance to black men and women as political actors, as voters or candidates, began the moment that the slaves were freed. Just after Lincoln Just after Lincoln announced the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, the Democratic Party of Ohio added to its slogan "The Const.i.tution as it is, the Union as it was" the phrase "and the n.i.g.g.e.rs where they are." When blacks first started running for office, after the Civil War, white Southerners routinely deployed against them all the tropes of the racial grotesque: hyper-s.e.xuality, drunkenness, criminality, idleness, ignorance. It was the Presidential campaign of 1864 in which the parties made their first explicit racial appeals. announced the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, the Democratic Party of Ohio added to its slogan "The Const.i.tution as it is, the Union as it was" the phrase "and the n.i.g.g.e.rs where they are." When blacks first started running for office, after the Civil War, white Southerners routinely deployed against them all the tropes of the racial grotesque: hyper-s.e.xuality, drunkenness, criminality, idleness, ignorance. It was the Presidential campaign of 1864 in which the parties made their first explicit racial appeals. Speakers at the Democratic Convention Speakers at the Democratic Convention mocked "flat-nosed, woolly-headed, long-heeled, cursed of G.o.d and d.a.m.ned of man descendants of Africa." mocked "flat-nosed, woolly-headed, long-heeled, cursed of G.o.d and d.a.m.ned of man descendants of Africa."

In 1868, Georges Clemenceau, a French journalist who later became prime minister, observed the Democratic Party Convention and reported, "Any Democrat who did not manage to hint that the negro is a degenerate gorilla would be considered lacking in enthusiasm." At that Convention, the Democrats nominated Horatio Seymour, a two-time governor of New York, to run with Francis P. Blair, Jr., a Missouri senator and former Union general, against Ulysses S. Grant. The Seymour-Blair ticket's appeal was thoroughly racist. One of its campaign badges One of its campaign badges read, "Our Motto: This Is a White Man's Country; Let White Men Rule." read, "Our Motto: This Is a White Man's Country; Let White Men Rule." Democratic Party-controlled newspapers Democratic Party-controlled newspapers ran stories of the rape of white women and girls by black men, and Blair berated the Republican Party for yielding the South to "a semi-barbarous race of blacks who are worshippers of fetishes and polygamists." ran stories of the rape of white women and girls by black men, and Blair berated the Republican Party for yielding the South to "a semi-barbarous race of blacks who are worshippers of fetishes and polygamists."

The speeches, campaign posters, and party newspapers of Reconstruction and Jim Crow were filled with similarly explicit racist appeals that reflected the viciousness of the era. In the United States between 1890 In the United States between 1890 and 1920, there were more lynchings than state-sanctioned executions. and 1920, there were more lynchings than state-sanctioned executions. James Thomas Heflin James Thomas Heflin, a U.S. senator from Alabama in the nineteen-twenties known as Cotton Tom, said, "The white race is the superior race, the king race, the climax and crowning glory of the four races of black, yellow, red, and white. The South's doctrine of white supremacy is right and it is fast becoming the doctrine of the American Republic."

The period between 1930 and 1960 was a racial battleground, not least within the ranks of the Democratic Party. Southern politicians, like Theodore Bilbo Southern politicians, like Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi, continued to make appeals that were not only racist but incitements to murder: "You and I know what's the best way to keep the n.i.g.g.e.r from voting. You do it the night before the election. I don't have to tell you any more than that. Red-blooded men know what I mean." of Mississippi, continued to make appeals that were not only racist but incitements to murder: "You and I know what's the best way to keep the n.i.g.g.e.r from voting. You do it the night before the election. I don't have to tell you any more than that. Red-blooded men know what I mean." During a Senate hearing in 1946 During a Senate hearing in 1946, Mississippi's James O. Eastland felt perfectly free to declare, "I know that the white race is a superior race. It has ruled the world. It has given us civilization. It is responsible for all the progress on earth." After the pa.s.sage of a civil-rights plank at the 1948 Democratic Convention, at which Harry Truman was nominated, the entire Mississippi delegation and half of the Alabama delegation walked out and helped form a splinter party, the Dixiecrats; soon, they put forward Strom Thurmond, of South Carolina, to run for the White House.

Mendelberg writes that, as society changed, racial appeals gradually shifted from the explicit to the implicit. It took Lyndon Johnson, a white Southerner steeped in racial conflict and schooled in the Senate by the Georgian segregationist Richard Russell, to gather strength from the civil-rights movement and issue an explicit warning against racial appeals in American elections. "All they ever hear at election time is 'Negro, Negro, Negro!'" Johnson said in 1964, at a fund-raising dinner in New Orleans. He predicted that pa.s.sage of the Civil Rights Act would cost the national Democratic Party the South for at least a generation, but explicit racist demagoguery was replaced by appeals that were more cleverly coded. George Wallace dropped George Wallace dropped slogans like "Segregation today, segregation forever" and called on his followers to awaken to the threat of a "liberal-Socialistic-Communist design to destroy local government in America." slogans like "Segregation today, segregation forever" and called on his followers to awaken to the threat of a "liberal-Socialistic-Communist design to destroy local government in America."

In 1968, the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon, and his running mate, Spiro Agnew of Maryland, used the code of "law and order" to insure themselves of a solid white voting bloc in the South. Nixon, who was completely aware of the signals that he was sending, was first drawn to Agnew when the former Maryland governor denounced moderate black leaders for failing to "stand up" to militants. After filming a commercial After filming a commercial about law and order in the schools during the campaign, Nixon said, "Yep, this. .h.i.ts it right on the nose.... It's all about law and order and the d.a.m.n Negro-Puerto Rican groups out there." about law and order in the schools during the campaign, Nixon said, "Yep, this. .h.i.ts it right on the nose.... It's all about law and order and the d.a.m.n Negro-Puerto Rican groups out there."

As late as the nineteen-eighties, the Republican Party's two leading figures, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, made unmistakable, if implicit, racial appeals during their campaigns. On August 3, 1980, Reagan launched his general election campaign with a speech at the Neshoba County Fair, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the town where three civil-rights workers--James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner--were murdered by white supremacists during the 1964 voter-registration drives known as Freedom Summer. By delivering a speech in Philadelphia emphasizing his support of "state's rights," Reagan was making, at best, an insensitive and knowing appeal to George Wallace Democrats--an attempt to broaden what Nixon called the "Southern strategy."

In the 1988 Presidential campaign, in which Bush ran against Ma.s.sachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, he and his campaign manager, Lee At.w.a.ter, repeatedly seized on the case of William Horton, a murderer who was released on a furlough by Governor Dukakis while serving a life sentence. During the furlough, Horton committed an armed robbery and rape. Bush supporters ran commercials showing Horton, an African-American, as the threatening side of Democratic policy. (The commercial called him Willie Horton.) Bush pressed the Horton case Bush pressed the Horton case with such pa.s.sion that, At.w.a.ter said, "by the time this election is over, Willie Horton will be a household name." with such pa.s.sion that, At.w.a.ter said, "by the time this election is over, Willie Horton will be a household name." Bush's media consultant Bush's media consultant, Roger Ailes, who later became the president of the Fox News Channel, cracked, "The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it."

It was hard to believe that Hillary Clinton would indulge in racial appeals of any kind. One of her dearest memories as a high-school student was going to hear Dr. King speak. She worked closely with civil-rights-era figures like Marian Wright Edelman and Vernon Jordan, attracted support from leading black politicians, and relied for advice on Maggie Williams, Minyon Moore, Cheryl Mills, and other black political operatives. The Clintons--Bill, especially--were at ease in black churches and black civic organizations and as a political family they were immensely popular in the African-American community. No group was more forgiving of Bill Clinton during his impeachment saga than African-Americans. In 2008, Hillary Clinton's aides were hoping that she would be able to hold on to around half the African-American vote in the primaries and then sweep it up almost entirely in a general election campaign. that Hillary Clinton would indulge in racial appeals of any kind. One of her dearest memories as a high-school student was going to hear Dr. King speak. She worked closely with civil-rights-era figures like Marian Wright Edelman and Vernon Jordan, attracted support from leading black politicians, and relied for advice on Maggie Williams, Minyon Moore, Cheryl Mills, and other black political operatives. The Clintons--Bill, especially--were at ease in black churches and black civic organizations and as a political family they were immensely popular in the African-American community. No group was more forgiving of Bill Clinton during his impeachment saga than African-Americans. In 2008, Hillary Clinton's aides were hoping that she would be able to hold on to around half the African-American vote in the primaries and then sweep it up almost entirely in a general election campaign.

From the start, the leading strategist in her campaign urged her to emphasize Obama's otherness. On December 21, 2006 On December 21, 2006, Mark Penn--a pollster, public-relations executive, and longtime strategist for the Clintons--distributed a memorandum on "launch strategy." The goal, he wrote, was to elect the "fwp"--the first woman President--despite a "relatively hostile media" eager to anoint "someone 'new' who can be their own." A resentful att.i.tude toward the press was a longstanding fact of life in Clinton circles dating back to the days of the 1992 campaign--and not without reason. The wounds of Filegate, Travelgate, Whitewater, the impeachment, and much else persisted as a fact of psychological life. Even in retirement, the former President, as he worked mainly on his charitable foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative, sometimes let loose his rage at the press and other old enemies; a stray comment or mild question could set him off and Clinton's face would redden, his carotid artery engorge, as he re-engaged old arguments with his antagonists. His wife's election campaign represented a chance for redemption. Would Obama stand in the way of that chance?

Mark Penn wrote that he saw Obama as a "serious challenge" and counseled a cool head: "Research his flaws, hold our powder, see if he fades or does not run. Attacking him directly would backfire. His weakness is that if voters think about him five minutes they get that he was just a state senator and that he would be trounced by the big Republicans." His support came from a "Brie and cheese set" that "drives fund-raising and elite press but does not drive the vote. Kerry beat Dean. Gore easily defeated Bradley."

Three months later, on March 19, 2007, both Obama and Clinton were in the race, and Penn wrote another memo that distinguished between the two candidates primarily on the basis of cla.s.s: "We are the candidate of people with needs. We win women, lower cla.s.ses, and Democrats (about 3 to 1 in our favor). Obama wins men, upper cla.s.s, and independents (about 2 to 1 in his favor)." Penn called on Clinton to be the champion of "the invisible Americans" and attempted to establish an iconic distinction between Obama and Clinton: "He may be the J.F.K. in the race, but you are the Bobby." In this dichotomy, J.F.K. represented an ent.i.tled, intelligent, elite, cool politician, R.F.K. a man of privilege who had come to identify most closely with the dispossessed--the whites of Appalachia, the Hispanic immigrants of Southern California, Texas, and Florida, the blacks of the inner city. Obama, too, had spoken of the inspiration of R.F.K.'s 1968 Presidential campaign and the coalitions that it had created before his death, but Penn seemed convinced that Hillary Clinton could best summon that romantic, yet tragic, past.

Penn's memo did not necessarily represent the strategy and psychology of the candidate herself. Clinton's campaign was, in fact, top-heavy with veteran advisers--Harold Ickes, Mandy Grunwald, Howard Wolfson, Patti Solis Doyle--and they generally loathed Penn, seeing him as cynical, pompous, and profoundly mistaken. To them, he was forever the a.s.sociate of d.i.c.k Morris, the centrist operative who left the Clinton circle in disgrace, in 1996, after the tabloids published reports of his involvement with a prost.i.tute. Ickes, who had been an activist in Mississippi during Freedom Summer, Solis Doyle, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, and others counseled greater caution than Penn, particularly on the question of race, and felt that his memos encouraged the candidate to go far beyond the bounds of bra.s.s-knuckle campaigning. Penn made no secret of the fact that he was more conservative than the rest of Hillary's team; what he resented was his need to win consensus from advisers who, he felt, were constantly undermining him.

"It's clear that they resisted a lot of his more sinister suggestions," David Plouffe recalled. Nevertheless, Penn's memo accurately reflected the resentful att.i.tude toward Obama that reporters were noticing in Hillary Clinton's camp both before and during the campaign. Clinton and key advisers felt that Obama was an inexperienced, unschooled upstart, a novice with a talent for public speaking (as long as he was within range of a teleprompter). Obama, they believed, was relying almost solely on his speech-making abilities and the historically glamorous prospect of becoming the first black President.

In the March 19th memo, Penn suggested that the Clinton campaign target Obama's "lack of American roots." Using that supposed rootlessness, they could cast his candidacy as something fit only for the distant future. "All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light," he wrote. "Save it for 2050."

"It also exposes a very strong weakness for him--his roots in basic American values and culture are at best limited," Penn's memo continued. "I cannot imagine America electing a President during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values. He told the people of N.H. yesterday he has a Kansas accent because his mother was from there. His mother lived in many states as far as we can tell--but this is an example of the nonsense he uses to cover this up."

Penn counseled Clinton on how the campaign could "give some life" to these notions "without turning negative": Every speech should contain the line you were born in the middle of America to the middle cla.s.s in the middle of the last century. And talk about the basic bargain as about the deeply American values you grew up with, learned as a child and that drive you today. Values of fairness, compa.s.sion, responsibility, giving back.Let's explicitly own "American" in our programs, the speeches and the values. He doesn't. Make this a new American Century, the American Strategic Energy fund. Let's use our logo to make some flags we can give out. Let's add flag symbols to the backgrounds.We are never going to say anything about his background--we have to show the value of ours when it comes to making decisions, understanding the needs of most Americans--the invisible Americans.

"The invisible Americans" sounded a great deal like Nixon's "silent majority." Penn's strategy was to cast Obama as the candidate of the elite, a "phony," a neophyte, and an outsider--not quite as American as Hillary Clinton. Long after the race, Penn said to me that the memo "was not in any way, shape, or form meant to have any racial overtones. It was about the notion that [Obama's] childhood in Indonesia somehow better qualified him to manage international affairs--a fact he had repeatedly touted on the campaign trail."

Within the campaign, there was debate about Penn's tactics and an overall reluctance to highlight Obama's "otherness." But what could be expected of Bill Clinton, who had recovered from quadruple bypa.s.s surgery and was planning to campaign? Clinton had grown up in segregated Arkansas, comfortable in his relationships with black men and women. At Yale Law School he often made a point of sitting at the "black table" in the dining hall. Clinton's first adversary as a politician was James (Justice Jim) Johnson, a Klan-supported Democrat turned Republican who ran twice for governor and once for the Senate; Johnson was to the right of Orval Faubus, the infamous segregationist. As President, Clinton defended affirmative action, appointed African-Americans to his Cabinet, awarded Medals of Honor to black veterans whose heroism had been ignored, and apologized for the horrific Tuskegee syphilis experiment conducted on hundreds of black sharecroppers from 1932 to 1972. He delivered a number of speeches admired by the black leadership in Congress and cultivated friendships with leading civil-rights veterans like John Lewis, Andrew Young, and John Hope Franklin.

And yet Clinton was a politician to the core, a brilliant one, and sometimes a cynical one. Winning came first. During the 1992 campaign, in the midst of the Gennifer Flowers controversy and under attack as a Democrat "soft on crime," he flew to Arkansas and, to bolster his law-and-order bona fides, presided over the execution of a mentally handicapped black prisoner named Ricky Ray Rector, who, eleven years earlier, had killed a police officer. Then, attempting suicide, Rector shot himself in the head, in effect giving himself a lobotomy. The same year, Clinton accepted an invitation to speak at Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, in Washington, D.C., and then used the occasion to criticize the hip-hop performer Sister Souljah for a foolish comment she had made about black violence. ("If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?") With his host sitting nearby, Clinton compared Sister Souljah to the former Klansman David Duke and criticized Jackson for allowing her to be a member of his organization. It was a performance that infuriated Jackson but appealed to Reagan Democrats--as Clinton undoubtedly intended. "I can maybe work with him "I can maybe work with him, but I know now who he is, what he is," Jackson said of Clinton at the time. "There's nothin' nothin' he won't do. He's immune to shame. Move past all the nice posturing and get really down there in him, you find absolutely nothing ... nothing but an appet.i.te." Eventually, Jackson forgave him. he won't do. He's immune to shame. Move past all the nice posturing and get really down there in him, you find absolutely nothing ... nothing but an appet.i.te." Eventually, Jackson forgave him.

In 1997, President Clinton initiated a "conversation" on race, led by John Hope Franklin, but it was a pallid, ceremonial affair, which disillusioned some black critics. "The initiative displayed the parochial "The initiative displayed the parochial, shallow self-servingness that besmirches all too much of Clinton's talk about race relations," the Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy wrote. "Portrayed as an effort at dialogue, the President's conversation was from the beginning a tightly scripted monologue that regurgitated familiar nostrums while avoiding discussing real problems." Compared with commissions on race under Harry Truman in 1946 and Lyndon Johnson in 1967, Kennedy said, Clinton's effort was "laughable."

In the long months before the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, a generational drama played out among some of the most important figures in the civil-rights generation--a drama that reflected the dilemma of many ordinary African-Americans who were faced with a choice between Hillary Clinton and Obama. before the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, a generational drama played out among some of the most important figures in the civil-rights generation--a drama that reflected the dilemma of many ordinary African-Americans who were faced with a choice between Hillary Clinton and Obama.

Some made their choice without hesitation. Vernon Jordan, an attorney who had been president of the National Urban League, and who became a close adviser and friend of the Clintons, had given an early fundraiser for Obama's Senate campaign. But, before Obama announced for the Presidency, Jordan invited him to his house for dinner and told him, "Barack, I am an old Negro who believes that to everything there is a season--and I don't think this is your season.... If you do run, as I think you will, I will be with Hillary. I am too old to trade friendship for race. But, if you win, I will be with you."

Andrew Young, one of Martin Luther King's close advisers and, later, a mayor, a congressman, and Amba.s.sador to the United Nations, was far less subtle about his loyalties. Speaking on television in December Speaking on television in December, 2007, Young said that he wanted Obama to be President--but only "in 2016." In a strange ramble for such a serious man, Young warned about Obama's lack of "maturity" and the need for a "protective network."

"It's like somebody wanting to be the next Martin Luther King," Young said. "They say, I wouldn't wish that on a friend of mine. Martin's home got bombed the first year, they took all his money the second year, and sued him for income-tax evasion. He got stabbed the third year. The fourth year, he came to Atlanta to try to escape from Alabama. They locked him up for picketing ... and put him in a straitjacket, and took him from Atlanta to Reedsville before there were expressways.... Leadership requires suffering, and I would like to see Barack's children get a little older, see, because they're going to pick on them."

Young even went on about Bill Clinton's racial bona fides as a reason to vote for Hillary. "Bill is every bit as black as Barack," he said. "He's probably gone out with more black women than Barack. I'm clowning, but, when they went to Nelson Mandela's inauguration, they had a whole planeload of black folk who went down there. After the inauguration, there was a party. And Clinton was the one that said, 'Let's start a soul-train line.' All these middle cla.s.s, bougie folk looked around, 'A soul-train line?' And Bill did the moonwalk in the soul train.... And Hillary pulled her skirt up above her knees, and she got down and went through too.... You look at Barack's campaign, and, first of all, I've talked to people in Chicago, and they don't know anybody around him. To put a brother in there by himself is to set him up for crucifixion."

Young eventually apologized, but his rhetorical flight did betray some commonly held anxieties about Obama--anxieties not only about his inexperience but also about his safety and about his authenticity as an African-American. Yet again in the life of Barack Obama, there were the old questions: Was he black enough? Was he ready? Was he tough enough?

Among all the living heroes of civil rights, the figure whom Obama admired most was John Lewis. At first, Lewis had signaled broadly to Obama that he would support him. Even though Obama had come to Washington only in January, 2005, the two men had formed a bond. That year, Obama went to Atlanta to speak at Lewis's sixty-fifth-birthday party.

Lewis was astonished by Obama's post-Boston appeal. "We walked the streets of Atlanta together and blacks and whites were asking him to run for President," Lewis recalled. "When we got to the restaurant, the waiters and waitresses were asking him to run. And when I introduced him that night I said, 'One day this man will be the President of the United States.'"

At the Selma speech in March, 2007, Obama felt confident that Lewis would be for him, but through the summer and into the early autumn, the Clintons kept appealing to Lewis on the basis of their long shared history.

"I've known Bill Clinton for so long--it was more than friendship, it was like a brotherly relationship.... And when Hillary would come to Georgia to speak, she would say, 'When I grow up I want to be like John Lewis,'" Lewis says. Lewis's bond with the Clinton family deepened at their worst moment. In August, 1998, after Bill Clinton went on television to admit to his relationship with Monica Lewinsky--an unprecedented humiliation--Lewis invited him to Union Chapel, on Martha's Vineyard, to commemorate the thirty-fifth anniversary of the March on Washington. "He didn't want to come, but I convinced him," Lewis recalled. "And, when the time came, I got up to introduce him and said, 'Mr. President, I was with you in the beginning and I will be with you in the end.' We both cried.... How could I abandon a friend like that?"

In October, 2007, Lewis finally came down on the side of the Clintons--there was just too much history to overlook. Lewis is one of the most principled figures in government, but there were also political considerations. Lewis represents the Atlanta area, a majority-black district, and Obama was not yet as well known or as popular as the Clintons among his const.i.tuents. "They didn't know him (a), and (b), they thought it was a long shot," Jesse Jackson said. "Black voters are comparatively conservative and practical." In 1984, Jackson had also struggled to get support from African-Americans who didn't think he had a chance.

For John Lewis, it was an agonizing time. Even before the Iowa caucuses, he was beginning to realize that Obama's candidacy was becoming increasingly serious and that his const.i.tuents were shifting away from Clinton. "If I had gone maybe with my gut," he said, "I probably would have gone with Obama from the outset."

The dilemma was plain. "These were people who knew Bill and Hillary and thought well of them and couldn't quite believe that this young guy with a foreign name had a chance to get elected," the civil-rights activist Julian Bond said. "After two Jackson campaigns, after Al Sharpton's campaign, after Shirley Chisholm, it seemed that these symbolic races hadn't delivered much. The promise had been that these candidates would extract some kind of benefits from the winners and the black cause would be advanced. That turned out to be less true than they had hoped."

Some civil-rights leaders did side with Obama early. The Reverend Joseph Lowery The Reverend Joseph Lowery, a co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a leader of the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, told an audience in Atlanta in January, 2007, that "a slave mentality" still haunted those African-Americans who had counseled Obama to wait his turn. He compared those who discouraged Obama to the white ministers who told Martin Luther King, a half century ago, that the time was not ripe for civil dissent. "Martin said the people who were saying 'later' were really saying 'never,'" Lowery said. "The time to do right is always right now." A resident of John Lewis's district, Lowery signed on immediately with the Obama campaign.

When Lowery heard the news about Lewis's decision, he was just relieved he wasn't a politician. "John wasn't a civil-rights leader anymore, he was a politician, he had relationships and entanglements," Lowery said. "I told the Clintons that if Hillary got the nomination, I would support her, but, in the meantime, I felt Obama was destined to shake up the system."

Not that every black political or cultural leader was so understanding. The director Spike Lee, whose films include "Do the Right Thing" and a biopic of Malcolm X, was brutally dismissive of those who wavered. "These old black politicians "These old black politicians say, 'Ooh, Ma.s.suh Clinton was good to us, ma.s.suh hired a lot of us, ma.s.suh was good!' Hoo!" he said. "Charlie Rangel, David d.i.n.kins--they have to understand this is a new day. People ain't feelin' that stuff. It's like a tide, and the people who get in the way are just gonna get swept out into the ocean." say, 'Ooh, Ma.s.suh Clinton was good to us, ma.s.suh hired a lot of us, ma.s.suh was good!' Hoo!" he said. "Charlie Rangel, David d.i.n.kins--they have to understand this is a new day. People ain't feelin' that stuff. It's like a tide, and the people who get in the way are just gonna get swept out into the ocean."

Similarly, not everyone in the Obama campaign was quite as forgiving of older black leaders like Lewis as the candidate himself. "Movements are led by the young," the pollster Cornell Belcher said, "and it was comical that the same people who were in their twenties during the civil-rights movement and demanded a seat at the table were now telling Barack Obama it wasn't his time."

Jesse Jackson, who also sided early with Obama, is an American character of emotional complexity, glaring weaknesses, and, far more than he is ordinarily given credit for, immense importance in the political advance of African-American politicians, including Barack Obama.

Jackson's flaws--his conceits, his neediness--are so well known that he is readily dismissed by those who do not bother to understand him. George H. W. Bush once called him George H. W. Bush once called him a "Chicago hustler." Even Martin Luther King, who, in Selma, brought Jackson close, raged against Jackson's need to thrust himself forward. a "Chicago hustler." Even Martin Luther King, who, in Selma, brought Jackson close, raged against Jackson's need to thrust himself forward. Mario Cuomo, however Mario Cuomo, however, may have been right to say that when the definitive history of the 1984 election was finally written, "the longest chapter will be on Jackson."

"The man didn't have two cents," Cuomo said. "He didn't have one television or radio ad. And look at what he did." What Jackson did was to run the most serious Presidential campaign ever conducted by an African-American--a feat that he repeated in 1988. Even the Chicagoans in Obama's circle who are most dismissive of Jackson admit that he opened the door for them to the White House. Roger Wilkins worked for Jackson in 1984, he said, not because he thought he could win but, rather, to give the country a "civics lesson that there are black people in this country smart enough to be President of the United States."

Obama might have been wary of Jackson's presence in the campaign, but he could not escape his influence. In 2007 and 2008, when Obama quoted from King's speeches--quoted them with the same sense of reverence as a jazz musician quoting a pa.s.sage in Armstrong or Coltrane--this was something fresh and affecting for younger voters. But it was hardly new. "When you are unkind to the homeless "When you are unkind to the homeless, disparaging them as derelicts, you on treacherous moral ground, Mr. Bush," Jackson said in the 1988 campaign. "'cause there is another power. 'The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.' Those who cannot defend themselves, they got a silent partner, they got ... got another another power. And when you, when you attack liberals, good-hearted folks, lovers of civil liberties, Mr. Bush--Mr. Bush, watch out! You tamperin' with another power!" Jackson had a distinctively different style from Obama, but the sources of their inspiration converged. power. And when you, when you attack liberals, good-hearted folks, lovers of civil liberties, Mr. Bush--Mr. Bush, watch out! You tamperin' with another power!" Jackson had a distinctively different style from Obama, but the sources of their inspiration converged.

Jackson did not intend merely to quote the prophetic voice of King for political purposes; he spoke in that voice because it was his own. Jackson pushed issues that were not always permissible in mainstream politics in 1984 and 1988, including Palestinian rights and opposition to South African apartheid. He received so many death threats that he often wore a bulletproof vest when he gave a speech.

Jackson did not have access to places like Punahou, Columbia, and Harvard. He was born and reared in segregated Greenville, South Carolina, a textile-mill town. His family had Cherokee and Irish blood. "We are a hybrid people "We are a hybrid people," he said. "We are of African roots, with a little Irish, German, Indian. We are made up of America's many waters. Which makes us a new people, a true American people."

Jackson's father abandoned him before he was born, though he continued to live nearby. "I never slept under "I never slept under the same roof with my natural father one night in my life, the same roof with my natural father one night in my life," Jackson has said. When he spoke on the campaign trail, he would talk about his deprived upbringing as the una.s.sailable mark of his authenticity, the basis of his relationship to the poor and dispossessed. Jackson has said. When he spoke on the campaign trail, he would talk about his deprived upbringing as the una.s.sailable mark of his authenticity, the basis of his relationship to the poor and dispossessed. "You know, people'd always ask "You know, people'd always ask why is Jesse Jackson running for the White House," he would say. "They never seen the house I'm running from. Three rooms, tin-top roof, no hot or cold running water, slop jar by the bed, bathroom in the backyard in the wintertime. Wood over the windows, wallpaper put up not for decoration but to keep the wind out ... In ways, it seems like a century ago ... Yet I remain connected to all this. By continuing to live in those experiences here, you have high-octane gas in your tank--keep those experiences flowing through your soul, it gives you authenticity." why is Jesse Jackson running for the White House," he would say. "They never seen the house I'm running from. Three rooms, tin-top roof, no hot or cold running water, slop jar by the bed, bathroom in the backyard in the wintertime. Wood over the windows, wallpaper put up not for decoration but to keep the wind out ... In ways, it seems like a century ago ... Yet I remain connected to all this. By continuing to live in those experiences here, you have high-octane gas in your tank--keep those experiences flowing through your soul, it gives you authenticity." When Jesse was a boy When Jesse was a boy, Marshall Frady writes in his biography of Jackson, people still talked about the lynching of an epileptic black youth named Willie Earl; that murder was the subject of Rebecca West's cla.s.sic essay "Opera in Greenville."

As a child in Greenville, Jackson was mocked by his schoolmates without mercy. "Jesse ain't got no daddy "Jesse ain't got no daddy," they chanted. "Jesse ain't got no daddy." It was a d.i.c.kensian world of hurt transported to the segregated American South. "That's why I have always been able to identify with those the rest of society labels as b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, as outcasts and moral refuse," he told Marshall Frady. "I know people saying you're nothing and n.o.body and can never be anything. I understand when you have no real last name. I understand. Because our very genes cry out for confirmation."

Greenville was a small town in those days and young Jesse would stealthily follow his father around town, spying on him, all the while wondering why he was denied his love. When he came to Greenville When he came to Greenville to give his first sermon as a preacher in his mother's church, both Charles Jackson, his mother's husband, and Noah Robinson, his birth father, were there, sitting in the front. For several minutes he just stood there in silence, tears streaming down his cheeks, looking down at his stepfather and the father who had disowned him. to give his first sermon as a preacher in his mother's church, both Charles Jackson, his mother's husband, and Noah Robinson, his birth father, were there, sitting in the front. For several minutes he just stood there in silence, tears streaming down his cheeks, looking down at his stepfather and the father who had disowned him.

In his twenties, Jackson became such a loyal acolyte of Martin Luther King, Jr., that he almost named his first son, who was born in 1965, Selma. When he was arrested and briefly imprisoned at demonstrations in Greensboro, North Carolina, he wrote, in imitation of King, "Letter from a Greensboro Jail."

Jackson's ambition was equal to his pa.s.sion. In Selma, in 1965, when he was just twenty-four, he quickly made himself known around Brown Chapel; he pushed his way to the front of marches. Unasked, he would give speeches from the steps of the church that imitated King's language and cadences, offending Andrew Young and other King lieutenants. "Jesse wanted to "Jesse wanted to be be Martin Martin," Ralph Abernathy recalled.

Jackson alienated some of his civil-rights comrades when, in the days after Dr. King's a.s.sa.s.sination, he wore a shirt smeared with King's blood, a sign both of his grief and of his inheritance. Within days of King's death, he was wondering aloud whether he would now become the leader of the black freedom struggle. Jackson ascended rapidly in the world of African-American politics, making the cover of Time Time in 1970, but he also cemented his reputation, in some quarters, as a self-interested publicity hound, forever inserting himself into every high-profile domestic funeral and foreign negotiation. In 1983, Harold Washington did everything he could to avoid a too close a.s.sociation with Jackson during his campaign for City Hall. On victory night Washington was irritated when Jackson tried to hoist his arm in victory. in 1970, but he also cemented his reputation, in some quarters, as a self-interested publicity hound, forever inserting himself into every high-profile domestic funeral and foreign negotiation. In 1983, Harold Washington did everything he could to avoid a too close a.s.sociation with Jackson during his campaign for City Hall. On victory night Washington was irritated when Jackson tried to hoist his arm in victory.

It was Harold Washington's triumph, however, that helped give Jackson the idea that he could run for President in 1984. And the pictures of him campaigning in the nearly all-white communities of Iowa forever altered the imagery of American politics. "They'd never seen a black man in the cornfields before," Jackson said. One night, Jackson was talking with some older farmers in Iowa and they told him that they had heard him speak, and liked him, but "we're not quite there yet. But don't give up on us."

In 1984, Jackson won nearly a fifth of all votes cast in the Democratic primaries and won South Carolina, Louisiana, and Washington, D.C.; in 1988, he won nine states and Washington, D.C. Two decades later, the children of those Iowa farmers had come along even further. They'd been brought up in schools where they learned about the civil-rights movement. They'd been brought up watching black and white athletes competing together. They pinned up posters of black athletes and musicians. Their popular culture was, in large measure, African-American popular culture. America was hardly the post-racial paradise imagined in some fantastical press accounts, but things had changed, and Jackson's candidacies in 1984 and 1988 had been essential in preparing the ground.

"My father's generation came out of World War II when returning black soldiers didn't have the same rights on the military bases that lots of German P.O.W.s had," Jackson says. "Barack once told me that when he was at Columbia as a student, he saw me debate Walter Mondale and Gary Hart there"--in March, 1984--"and he said he watched this and thought, This thing can happen." Jackson said that "the whole idea" of his Presidential campaign was "to plant seeds."

Mainline politicians, black and white, criticized Jackson for his ego and his presumption, but his Convention speeches were anthologized alongside those of William Jennings Bryan and Mario Cuomo, and he got credit both for registering two million African-American voters and for changing the sense of the possible.

The first time Jackson ever heard of Obama was in his kitchen when his children were talking about Obama's efforts in Project Vote. Of course, he knew Mich.e.l.le Obama from her childhood friendship with his daughter Sant.i.ta. In the 2000 congressional campaign, Jackson had supported his old comrade Bobby Rush, but four years later during the Senate run, he was for Obama. The two men were never close--Jackson's pride and Obama's desire to be a different kind of leader prevented that--but at the East Bank Club, the downtown gym and hitching post for the Chicago elite, Jackson and Obama had occasionally talked about politics, and Obama sometimes spoke at Jackson's Sat.u.r.day-morning meetings at Operation PUSH.

Jackson supported Obama in his run for the White House but he also understood why John Lewis, Andrew Young, and many other black politicians of his generation supported Hillary at first. "They had relationships," he said. "They'd known Hillary longer, they'd known Bill longer. No more, no less. And they believed Hillary would win. They thought they were betting on a winning horse. It was not anti-Obama. They didn't even know who he was, really. He'd never worked with us and dealt with blackness in Mississippi. She'd been with Marian Wright Edelman, working in legal-defense work. Hillary had a track record. Whatever his work was as a community organizer and all that, it's not as long and deep as Hillary's. She worked in the Arkansas Delta, the Mississippi Delta, and then eight years in the White House, and the work in Africa--I mean, there's a long list of accomplishments, and some people, as Vernon Jordan has said, do not switch horses without a reason that is compelling."

Nevertheless, once the Presidential campaign began, Jackson was not hesitant to show his displeasure with Obama when, in his judgment, he failed to speak out on racial issues. During a prolonged and ugly racial conflict at a school in the small town of Jena, Louisiana, Obama did not join a march--and Jackson let him hear about it. "If I were a candidate "If I were a candidate, I'd be all over Jena," Jackson said at the time. According to a South Carolina paper According to a South Carolina paper, Jackson thought that Obama, in his restraint, was "acting like he's white." Looking back, Jackson says he felt that Jena was an emblematic case in a country where there are over two million prisoners, nearly half of them black. "I thought it was the moment to send a statement about a change in criminal justice," he says. "Barack apparently did not want to be openly identified with that. But one can disagree with one's friends without jumping off a bridge. It wasn't no deal-breaker."

Barack Obama does not easily betray his emotions, but he was deeply disappointed that black leaders did not rally to him in greater numbers. John Lewis's decision to side with Hillary, in particular, felt like a stab in the back, he confided to aides. But in Iowa he was engaged in a much more immediate project--proving himself capable of winning white votes. does not easily betray his emotions, but he was deeply disappointed that black leaders did not rally to him in greater numbers. John Lewis's decision to side with Hillary, in particular, felt like a stab in the back, he confided to aides. But in Iowa he was engaged in a much more immediate project--proving himself capable of winning white votes. "If Barack doesn't win Iowa "If Barack doesn't win Iowa, it's just a dream," Mich.e.l.le said, in September, 2007. As Obama campaigned in the state and his remarkably devoted and well-organized network of young campaign workers outpaced their rivals, his appeal was looking less like Jesse Jackson's in 1984 and more like Gary Hart's. His most active support came from what strategists call "better-educated, upper-status whites," mainly college-educated, younger people who appreciated his outspoken opposition to the invasion of Iraq when he was still a state senator.

Oprah Winfrey endorsed Obama--the first time she had ever endorsed a Presidential candidate--and started to campaign in the early primary states. She threw him a dinner at her estate in Montecito, California, and invited Stevie Wonder, Tyler Perry, Quincy Jones, and other members of the black elite in show business, finance, and academia. Where Oprah Winfrey helped most, however, was with ordinary people. Her appeal transcended race, reaching huge numbers of middle-cla.s.s, lower-middle-cla.s.s, and working-cla.s.s women, white and black.

With the Iowa caucuses getting closer, one could sense the panic in the Clinton ranks. Bill Clinton went Bill Clinton went on the "Charlie Rose Show" on December 14th and tried to plant the idea that Obama's election would be an enormous risk. "I mean, when is the last time we elected a President based on one year of service in the Senate before he started running?" Clinton said. "When I was a governor and young and thought I was the best politician in the Democratic Party, I didn't run the first time"--a reference to the 1988 campaign. "I knew in my bones I shouldn't run. I was a good enough politician to win, but I didn't think I was ready to be President." Inside the Clinton campaign, one former adviser said, "they were beyond furious"; they were convinced that the press was enamored of Obama and the narrative of an African-American candidate beating an entrenched machine. "Bill, especially, had to confront mortality," the former aide said. "They had once been young and romantic, but it's hard for a machine to be romantic. Their coverage had been good until November, December, 2007, but when it turned, it turned hard." on the "Charlie Rose Show" on December 14th and tried to plant the idea that Obama's election would be an enormous risk. "I mean, when is the last time we elected a President based on one year of service in the Senate before he started running?" Clinton said. "When I was a governor and young and thought I was the best politician in the Democratic Party, I didn't run the first time"--a reference to the 1988 campaign. "I knew in my bones I shouldn't run. I was a good enough politician to win, but I didn't think I was ready to be President." Inside the Clinton campaign, one former adviser said, "they were beyond furious"; they were convinced that the press was enamored of Obama and the narrative of an African-American candidate beating an entrenched machine. "Bill, especially, had to confront mortality," the former aide said. "They had once been young and romantic, but it's hard for a machine to be romantic. Their coverage had been good until November, December, 2007, but when it turned, it turned hard."

The Obama-Clinton race was historic for reasons of both race and gender, but, while Obama was able to adopt the language, cadences, imagery, and memories of the civil-rights movement and graft it onto his campaign, giving it the sense of something larger, a movement, Clinton never did the same with the struggle for women's rights. Clinton herself resisted it. Some inside the Clinton campaign later admitted that they were late to see the potency of Obama and race, and to realize the cost of their failure to connect the fight for women's rights to Clinton's candidacy and, thereby, enhance its power.

"We were just too late with gender," one of her senior aides said. "Also, in the minds of so many people, especially the press and the cognoscenti, Hillary had this hard, tough, anything-goes political ethos. She was branded that way, and that diminished her cachet and l.u.s.ter as the first real woman candidate for President. People saw something tawdry in her bra.s.s-knuckle political sense. She was battered and tarnished coming out of the White House years. She was the wicked witch. It is a cliche by now, but political toughness in a man is not criticized the way it is in a woman."

On January 3, 2008, Obama won the Iowa caucuses in commanding fashion. Hillary Clinton came in third behind John Edwards. The opening strains of Obama's victory speech that night were emblematic of the way that he treated race throughout the campaign. Amid the cheering in Des Moines, he began: You know, they said this day would never come. They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose. But on this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do.... We are one people. And our time for change has come! this day would never come. They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose. But on this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do.... We are one people. And our time for change has come!

An astonishing set of rhetorical gestures: Obama called on the familiar cadences and syntax of the black church, echoing Jesse Jackson's more overt lines: "Hands that picked cotton can now pick presidents: Our time has come!" He gestured toward what everyone was thinking about--the launching of a campaign that could lead to the first African-American President. Jon Favreau, Obama's speechwriter, said that the two of them were immersed in all of King's rhetoric, in the two Lincoln inaugurals, and in Robert Kennedy's 1968 campaign speeches. The opening of the Iowa speech--"they said this day would never come"--deliberately echoed King, but it was not explicitly racial; it was a way of intensifying a universalist purpose with a specific, historical ring. "I knew that it would have multiple meanings to multiple people," Favreau said.

Obama went on, "This was the moment when we tore down barriers that have divided us for too long. When we rallied people of all"--wait for it--"parties and ages." The displacement was deft and effective. The listener knew that he meant racial barriers--we could feel feel it--but the invocation was more powerful for being unspoken. The key p.r.o.noun was always "we," or "us." The historical fight for equal rights came only at the end of a peroration on national purpose: it--but the invocation was more powerful for being unspoken. The key p.r.o.noun was always "we," or "us." The historical fight for equal rights came only at the end of a peroration on national purpose: Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire; what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation; what led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom's cause. Hope--hope is what led me here today.

In Obama's speech the civil-rights struggle was recast in terms not of national guilt but of national progress: the rise of the Joshua generation, black and white, red and yellow. The black freedom struggle became, in Obama's terms, an American American freedom struggle. freedom struggle.

African-Americans watched Obama's victory speech in Des Moines with a sense of wonder. By winning Iowa and performing that night with such eloquence and force, Obama had proved that he had a chance, and now the black vote started to migrate steadily in his direction. A coalition of antiwar whites and blacks--perhaps something even wider than that--was now conceivable.

The tableau of Obama's victory-night speech, the television picture of him standing there with his family, also had a deep emotional impact. "Iowa was amazing," said Cliff Kelley, a leading host on WVON, the black talk-radio station in Chicago that had promoted Obama so heavily in recent years. "When Barack came out onstage with his wife and two gorgeous daughters, all of them looking like they were out of central casting, there were only five black people there in the room. Them and me." Until that moment, how many African-Americans--how many Americans--allowed themselves to believe that a black President was possible? Had the world really changed that much?

"It was only after Iowa, that they began to say, Oh my Lord, this could happen," Julian Bond said. "With Iowa you saw Obama could get white votes in the whitest of states. That made it all seem possible."

Iowa crushed Hillary Clinton's dream of an unstoppable juggernaut and endangered her candidacy. The New Hampshire primary was to take place five days later, and she was trailing in the state. But when she pulled out a victory there, both sides recognized that they were in for a long campaign. Clinton's dream of an unstoppable juggernaut and endangered her candidacy. The New Hampshire primary was to take place five days later, and she was trailing in the state. But when she pulled out a victory there, both sides recognized that they were in for a long campaign.

Once more Jeremiah Wright came along to complicate things for Barack Obama. The Nevada caucus was to be held on January 19th, and, just before, Wright declared that the idea that the Clintons had been a friend to African-Americans when they were in the White House was preposterous. Bill Clinton, he said Bill Clinton, he said, "did the same thing to us that he did to Monica Lewinsky."

Once more Obama was forced to distance himself from his minister. "As I've told Reverend Wright, personal attacks such as this have no place in this campaign or our politics," he said in a statement. "That doesn't distract from my affection for Reverend Wright or appreciation for the good works he's done."

Chapter Fourteen.

In the Racial Funhouse In October, 2000, Anton Gunn, a community organizer in South Carolina and a former offensive lineman for the University of South Carolina Gamec.o.c.ks, traveled to Arlington National Cemetery to bury his younger brother Cherone. A twenty-two-year-old Navy signalman, Cherone Gunn was among the seventeen crewmen of the U.S.S. Cole who were killed when Al Qaeda attacked the ship in the port of Aden, in Yemen. Cherone's father, Louge, a career Navy officer, and his mother, Mona, an elementary-school princ.i.p.al, wept as Anton knelt over his brother's flag-draped coffin and spoke softly to it, as if to someone half asleep. "I told him that I loved him "I told him that I loved him," he said later, "and that I was going to miss him."

Even before his brother was killed, Anton Gunn had felt the urge to public service. After graduating from U.S.C., he worked for a variety of community groups around the state whose programs were aimed at helping poor families. In 2002, Gunn heard from one of his organizer friends about a guy named Obama, a former organizer in Chicago, who was running for statewide office in Illinois. He thought little of it. "The guy's name sounded foreign to me," Gunn says. "And I had no idea he was black."

Two years later, Gunn went to his local church to hear Obama speak in support of Inez Tenenbaum, a former teacher who was running for the Senate against a right-wing Republican, Jim DeMint. Tenenbaum lost the race but Gunn never forgot Obama.

By January, 2007, with Obama now a senator and preparing to announce his candidacy for President, Gunn was sold. On a trip to Washington, D.C., he bought a copy of The Audacity of Hope The Audacity of Hope at the airport; he was so engrossed in the book that he failed to hear the boarding announcement and missed his flight. He resolved to help Obama in any way he could. First, he tried a blunt approach reminiscent of his days as a pile-driving blocker for the Gamec.o.c.ks. He called Obama's office in Washington and informed aides that Obama was going to lose the South Carolina primary if he lacked the services of Anton Gunn. The response, at first, was silence. at the airport; he was so engrossed in the book that he failed to hear the boarding announcement and missed his flight. He resolved to help Obama in any way he could. First, he tried a blunt approach reminiscent of his days as a pile-driving blocker for the Gamec.o.c.ks. He called Obama's office in Washington and informed aides that Obama was going to lose the South Carolina primary if he lacked the services of Anton Gunn. The response, at first, was silence.

Gunn then tried calling the Chicago office of Obama's nascent campaign. He left a similar message on the answering machine: "I may not know a lot about politics, but I know South Carolina. South Carolina is an early primary state. If you want to run for President, you need to have me involved."

That day, Obama himself called Gunn, expressing interest and saying that he was going to have Steve Hildebrand, the deputy national campaign director, get in touch. A few weeks later, Gunn went to Washington to talk with Hildebrand, who was planning the strategy for the early primary states, and David Plouffe, the campaign manager. They discussed Gunn's ideas for gra.s.sroots organizing in South Carolina. Plouffe, the most important figure in the development of Obama's campaign organization, knew something about working with black candidates; he had helped Axelrod run Deval Patrick's successful 2006 gubernatorial run in Ma.s.sachusetts. But Gunn had special experience to offer, especially in the subtle racial politics of South Carolina. Gunn described how, as a neophyte, he had run for the state legislature, in 2006, in the majority-white, Republican stronghold of Richland and Kershaw Counties, which had never elected an African-American. He lost by only two hundred and ninety-eight votes.

At the time, the Obama campaign was still a minimalist operation. It had just a few people starting to work in Iowa and precisely no one in South Carolina, whose primary, on January 26, 2008, followed the Iowa caucuses by just twenty-three days. The Obama team hired Gunn as its South Carolina political director--its first employee in the state. During the next few weeks, Gunn began to set up a proper office. The Obama team also hired Stacey Brayboy, an experienced campaigner and aide on Capitol Hill, as state director, and Jeremy Bird, a Midwestern labor advocate and divinity student, as field director. Brayboy and Gunn are black; Bird is white. Together they built a structure based on community-organizing principles.

The Clinton campaign set up a fairly traditional organization in South Carolina, with an emphasis on acquiring the endors.e.m.e.nts of local civic and religious leaders and handing out "walking around money" to them to help hire canva.s.sers and poll watchers. At first, the Obama campaign tried to match the Clinton organization at this game. It offered a five-thousand-dollar-per-month It offered a five-thousand-dollar-per-month fee to Darrell Jackson, a state senator who was the pastor of a church in Columbia with more than ten thousand congregants, and his public-relations firm to help turn out the vote. Reverend Jackson, who had gained a reputation for being able to get thousands of people to the polls, earned three times that amount in 2004, when he worked for John Edwards in the state. fee to Darrell Jackson, a state senator who was the pastor of a church in Columbia with more than ten thousand congregants, and his public-relations firm to help turn out the vote. Reverend Jackson, who had gained a reputation for being able to get thousands of people to the polls, earned three times that amount in 2004, when he worked for John Edwards in the state. He finally accepted a competing offer He finally accepted a competing offer from the Clinton campaign and, according to the from the Clinton campaign and, according to the Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal, earned a hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars between February, 2007, and September, 2007.

With the backing of the Chicago headquarters, Gunn, Brayboy, and Bird decided to rely more on the gra.s.s roots-organizing style of their candidate. They knew that South Carolina was different from Iowa, where the caucus-goers are motivated civic activists. South Carolina is a primary state, and African-Americans form a large core of the potential Democratic Party vote. Obama's team wanted to register and reach African-Americans who had never gone to the polls before. In order to emphasize the campaign's universalist message, they also intended to make serious gains among white voters.

The campaign team quickly discovered that many African-Americans in South Carolina not only didn't know Obama's political positions but they had no idea who he was--or even that he was black. Those same voters knew a great deal about the Clintons and, in the main, admired them. To reach black voters, the Obama team had volunteers make repeated calls on churches, barbershops, and beauty salons, handing out a poster with a picture of Obama getting his hair cut in a South Carolina barbershop. If they were lucky, they won the endors.e.m.e.nt of the proprietor, who would thereafter wear an Obama b.u.t.ton. At churches, they targeted not the pastor, necessarily, but the informal community leaders. "Sometimes we'd rather have 'Miss Mary,' the woman everybody talks to, supporting us than the pastor himself," Anton Gunn said. They organized gospel concerts in Charleston and Florence where the only price of admission was to provide an address or e-mail contact. "We captured six or seven thousand people that way," Gunn said.

Early in the campaign, Gunn called the campaign offices in Chicago and said that the b.u.t.tons and b.u.mper stickers they were getting were inadequate. "We told David Plouffe, 'You can't keep giving out these b.u.t.tons--they don't mean anything to anyone,'" Gunn said. "'Design a b.u.t.ton with his picture on it and say "Obama for President" so people can see this is a black black man named Obama running for President.'" Gunn was a hip-hop fan, and he knew how performers marketed themselves by pa.s.sing out free mix tapes and posters on the street. Gunn informed headquarters that the campaign had to give away, not sell, "chum," the term of art for T-shirts, stickers, leaflets, and b.u.t.tons. The campaign responded with new campaign literature that featured pictures of Obama: some with him and his family, some with him preaching in a church. New volunteers, like novice organizers, got rigorous training and guidance, and pa.s.sed out the new chum at churches, fish fries, beauty salons, barbershops, ball games, public-housing projects, medical clinics, and political rallies. man named Obama running for President.'" Gunn was a hip-hop fan, and he knew how performers marketed themselves by pa.s.sing out free mix tapes and posters on the street. Gunn informed headquarters that the campaign had to give away, not sell, "chum," the term of art for T-shirts, stickers, leaflets, and b.u.t.tons. The campaign responded with new campaign literature that featured pictures of Obama: some with him and his family, some with him preaching in a church. New volunteers, like novice organizers, got rigorous training and guidance, and pa.s.sed out the new chum at churches, fish fries, beauty salons, barbershops, ball games, public-housing projects, medical clinics, and political rallies.

Long before the Iowa caucuses, Obama's campaign drew young volunteers who were willing to uproot and devote themselves to a long-shot candidacy. In South Carolina, one of those volunteers was a twenty-three-year-old woman from Venice, Florida, named Ashley Baia. Ashley Baia was white. She moved to Horry County, South Carolina, in June, 2007, and for the next six months campaigned in the beauty salons and barbershops of Florence and Myrtle Beach. For months, whites sp