Rising Star

by David J. Garrow

  Barack continued to say Ryan’s divorce was not “an appropriate topic for debate.” A Saturday campaign appearance at a College Democrats conference was followed by an evening party at Tony Rezko’s Wilmette mansion. Asked about Iraq on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight, Barack emphasized that “we’ve got to be sure we get the job done” and stressed that “our support of Israel is unequivocal.” On April 8 John Kerry arrived in Chicago for a gala evening fund-raiser at the Hyatt Regency and a Friday-morning appearance with Barack at a West Side job-training center. Barack spoke at the gala and gave Kerry a “stirring introduction” at the Friday event. That evening Barack and Michelle joined Kerry and his wife Teresa for a private dinner. A Washington Post story on their joint appearance called Barack one of the Democrats’ “rising stars,” and two days later the Chicago Sun-Times commented on how many such references to Barack were being made.

  On Monday, April 12, Paul Harstad presented his poll results to Barack’s team, followed by an all-day “consultants retreat” on Tuesday to plan the fall campaign. Harstad’s numbers were clear: “Target voters: women & Downstate” with “Women 70 percent of target” and emphasize “Pocketbook/Kitchen-table issues.” There was a “Big advantage in ‘change,’” and voters were concerned about “healthcare affordability.” “Need inoculation on crime & drugs. Need inoculation on raising taxes,” although John Kupper noted that “Ryan has terrific vulnerabilities on taxes & health care: we want those debates.” At Tuesday’s large gathering, there were “all these new faces,” with many newcomers being introduced for the first time. Nora Moreno, Gibbs’s deputy, recalled that Barack asked of his new communications director, “Is it Robert or Bob?” “We’re all trying to figure out what our roles are,” she explained. Gibbs “comes on board and he’s like ‘Who are you? Why you?’” Mostly the answer was “we all had relationships with David.”

  Paul Harstad and partner Mike Kulisheck reprised their poll presentation, Pete Giangreco and Terry Walsh outlined their general election targeting, and Axelrod and John Kupper addressed messaging. Susan Shadow spent an hour on fund-raising, warning everyone that “I didn’t know where the money was going to come from” because unless wealthy Jack Ryan began self-funding, individual general election donors would be limited to $2,000 apiece, not the five-figure contributions allowed in the primary. That meant a new emphasis on out-of-state fund-raising, rather than Barack’s Chicagoland acquaintances, which meant Axelrod’s promise of no more call time went out the window big time. Jimmy Cauley sketched out an overall budget of $13 million, with $8 million for broadcast media, $1.7 million for direct mail, and $1.8 million for salaries. Scheduler Peter Coffey recalled that throughout all the discussions, Barack “didn’t really say much. . . . He would sit there and let it play out. That was his management style,” just as it had been at the Harvard Law Review.

  At one point, Axelrod mentioned the upcoming Democratic National Convention (DNC) and the desirability of using it to showcase Barack to a wider audience. “We should really try to get a prime-time speaking slot.” Pete Giangreco spoke up. “I know Jack Corrigan. I can call him,” Pete volunteered. Corrigan, whom John Kerry’s campaign had named as its DNC manager three months earlier, had been Giangreco’s boss in 1988 as national field director of Michael Dukakis’s presidential campaign. Pete telephoned Corrigan. “Yeah, we know all about Obama,” Jack responded. Months earlier AFSCME’s Henry Bayer had told Corrigan that Abner Mikva, whom Corrigan had worked for a quarter century earlier, believed Barack was “the most talented politician he’s met in fifty years.” That had gotten Corrigan’s attention, and he called law school classmate Elena Kagan, who had clerked for Mikva and overlapped at the U of C with Barack from 1991 to 1995, to ask what she thought of him. “He’s great,” Kagan said, and Corrigan made a note to ask Barack to join Kerry’s campaign staff once “this kid” lost his March primary. Corrigan responded positively when Giangreco said, “It would be really great if we got a prime-time speaking slot” for Barack.71

  Tax day was less painful for Barack and Michelle than in earlier years: rather than owing the Internal Revenue Service a five-figure sum, they were due a $1,500 refund. But the good financial news ended there. The University of Chicago had paid Barack half of his normal $64,000 annual salary even though he was not teaching in early 2004, but his primary win meant he would have to take a leave for the autumn as well. Michelle’s salary was $121,000, but with child care costs of more than $2,000 a month, family finances were about to get tighter than ever, with their 2004 income headed well below 2003’s $238,000. Michelle had long feared exactly this scenario, as she told the Tribune’s David Mendell. If Barack won in November, “now we’re going to have two households to fund, one here and one in Washington.” Her sarcasm could be cutting, if not demeaning. “Even if you do win, how are you going to afford this wonderful next step in your life?” By April they were discussing taking out a second mortgage on their East View condominium to make up for the loss of Barack’s law school salary.

  Over the past decade-plus, Barack had taught twenty-six courses: Racism and the Law twelve times, Con Law III eight times, and Voting Rights six. Among the roughly 750 students he taught, their cumulative evaluations documented the consensus expressed by Douglas Baird and other faculty colleagues: Barack had been a “splendid,” “sensational,” and “tremendously gifted teacher” who was “off-the-charts popular with students.” Given Barack’s consistent absence from the law school except for actual classroom time, most law faculty felt that “being here had zero effect on Barack’s thoughts.” Baird disagreed. “Being a teacher in a University of Chicago classroom makes a big difference. I think the kinds of conversations that he had to have had as a teacher of constitutional law here would be completely different than if he was doing it at Harvard or a place like that because he’s getting conservative students, and people are going to press him on issues,” and “that’s going to affect you,” Baird believed. “That kind of serious intellectual engagement that he had here makes a huge difference” in how Barack understood disagreements over constitutional interpretation.72

  Barack joined U.S. senator Dick Durbin for a three-day, twelve-stop downstate swing, spending one night at a Super 8 motel in Benton. While Barack was visiting Cairo, Metropolis, and Harrisburg, Jack Ryan held a Springfield news conference to demonstrate that as a state senator “Blank Check Barack” had backed no fewer than 428 tax and fee increases. But reporters realized something was amiss when Ryan displayed a chart showing that Illinois had 846,000 state employees, a vast exaggeration, and things got even worse when they sought documentation for the 428 claim. “We’ll get it to you later,” Ryan replied, but when Bernard Schoenburg of the State Journal-Register cornered Ryan aide Dan Proft, it immediately became clear that “Ryan didn’t know what bills he was talking about”: of the supposed increases, 146 dated from a single 1999 bill that seventeen Republicans, including Pate Philip and Frank Watson, had joined Barack and most Democrats in approving 42–17, and the balance of 282 came from a 2003 bill that Barack had voted against. The resulting headlines—“Ryan’s Chart Is Off” in the Chicago Sun-Times, “Jack Ryan Woefully Unprepared for Attack on Obama” in the Journal-Register—were “more proof that Ryan’s campaign is not yet ready for prime time,” Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller observed. Barack responded that “Mr. Ryan obviously hasn’t served in any policy-making position, so it’s not surprising he doesn’t have a very good grasp of the statistics and the issues involved.” Ryan’s campaign replied by sending out an e-mail claiming that Barack “has earned a reputation to the left of Mao Tse-Tung.”

  “I don’t recall ever covering a candidate who accused his opponent of being for something he had voted against,” Bernie Schoenburg wrote in the Journal-Register. While a court-appointed referee weighed what to do with Ryan’s divorce file, the candidate assured Republican Party chair Judy Baar Topinka and former governor Jim Edgar “that there was nothing in there that would be embarrassing to the pa
rty.” Edgar shared those reassurances with others while Ryan’s campaign turned up the pressure on Barack by assigning a twenty-four-year-old staffer to follow Barack and videotape all of his public comments. “Initially, I tried to talk with him. I said, ‘Listen, I don’t mind you following me, but please be fifteen feet away. I’m on the phone with my wife,’” Barack recalled. A New Yorker correspondent also spent several days with Barack, who at the end of a long one said, “I’d rather be doing what you’re doing: sitting in the corner listening, watching everybody, taking notes. That comes more naturally to me than this does.”

  On Wednesday, May 19, Barack brought to the Senate floor the final version of his longest-standing legislative commitment, the Health Care Justice Act. As reintroduced early in the 2003 session by House counterpart Willie Delgado, HB 2268 mandated that by 2007, the state “shall implement a health care access plan” that would provide “quality health care for all residents of Illinois.” A thirty-member “Bipartisan Health Care Reform Commission” would submit a report that “shall make recommendations that shall be the basis for a health care access plan or plans” that would be passed into law. The House had narrowly approved the bill on April 1, 2003, but soon thereafter insurance industry opponents pointed out that the Illinois Supreme Court had long held that “the General Assembly cannot bind its successors unless authorized by the Constitution.” Barack amended the bill to say that the commission “shall make recommendations that shall be considered by the General Assembly as the basis” for a health plan, but insurance industry entreaties and more to Senate president Emil Jones Jr. halted the bill’s progress. “We had to keep on meeting with the insurers,” top proponent Jim Duffett of the Campaign for Better Health Care (CBHC) explained.

  Duffett offered to find another chief sponsor, telling Barack he realized “you’re getting beat up on this issue pretty bad,” but Barack said, “No, absolutely not. I’m really committed, and I’m going to do this.” At a 2003 AFL-CIO conference that Duffett and Barack both addressed, Barack had spoken out strongly for the bill. “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program,” he told the audience. “I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. . . . And that’s what Jim’s talking about when he says ‘everybody in, nobody out.’ A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we’ve got to take back the White House, we’ve got to take back the Senate, and we’ve got to take back the House.”

  In Springfield, a number of Democratic senators “did not want to oppose the bill but they did everything they could to try to water it down,” Duffett explained, because they, just like Emil Jones, benefited from insurance industry support. In early March, Barack told the Chicago Defender that “the resistance of special interests means it will not be possible to craft a new national program,” and the same held true in Springfield. Encouraged by David Wilhelm, a CBHC board member, Duffett endorsed Barack’s view that the bill would have to be significantly weakened to pass the Senate. As Illinois Planned Parenthood’s Pam Sutherland put it, “you always knew with Barack you were going to compromise, whether you liked it or not.” Fervent single-payer proponents like Hyde Park’s Dr. Quentin Young, who practiced alongside Barack’s personal physician, David Scheiner, strongly rued “Barack’s penchant for compromise,” and when on May 11 Barack filed a thoroughgoing rewrite of HB 2268, Health Committee ranking Republican Dale Righter realized it now looked “absolutely nothing like what had been introduced” fifteen months earlier.

  In place of the original mandate that “On or before January 1, 2007, the State of Illinois shall implement a health care access plan,” the revised bill said, “Illinois is strongly encouraged to implement a health care access plan.” What had been the “Bipartisan Health Care Reform Commission” was now renamed the “Adequate Health Care Task Force.” The already-amended language instructing that the commission’s final report “shall be considered by the General Assembly as the basis for a health care access plan” was supplanted by a statement that “the final report by the Task Force shall make recommendations for a health care access plan.” Insurance industry opposition weakened because, as Barack’s poker buddy and insurance lobbyist Phil Lackman explained, “it’s hard to oppose a task force.” Ranking Republican Dale Righter saw that single-payer proponents were “very unhappy” with Barack, because “they believed that they had a champion there.” Quentin Young agreed: Barack “abandoned” HB 2268’s original call for universal access and “sold out to the insurance companies.”

  When Barack brought HB 2268 to the Senate floor on May 19, he said, “we have a full-blown health care crisis” and explained that “what this bill does is to create a task force that over the next years will examine mechanisms by which we can expand affordability and accessibility of health care.” The Four Tops would appoint six task force members each, and the governor an additional five. In contrast to months earlier, Barack emphasized, “I want to say on record that I am not in favor of a single-payer plan. I don’t think we can set up that kind of plan, and if we were going to even attempt to some sort of national health care, that would have to obviously be done at the federal level.” Stressing that “we can’t expand accessibility and affordability unless the baseline costs of health care are curbed,” Barack also said that “what we don’t have right now is any kind of sense of urgency about the extraordinary difficulties that our constituents are experiencing with respect to health care costs.” Oak Park Democrat Don Harmon commended Barack for his work. “I know this has been no easy task for Senator Obama, but I applaud him for navigating this bill and building a truly impressive list of organizations and entities that are supporting the bill.”

  When conservative Republican Bill Brady questioned Barack about the insurance industry’s view, Barack explained that “we radically changed” HB 2268 “in response to concerns that were raised by the insurance industry. The assurance that I received from the insurance industry was that if we took out the mandate, that the legislature would have to implement the bill, then, in fact, their objections would be lifted, and I got repeated commitments from the insurance industry to that effect. What then happened is, after we removed the provisions that initially had been the source of criticism and made it a bill that studies the problem and does not mandate that the legislature act on it, I got a reversal from industry which said ‘No, we’re still not interested in it.’ And it was in the face of that obstinance” that Barack had the Health Committee send it to the Senate floor.

  Brady conceded, “I don’t disagree with the fact that you did everything you could to try to get an agreement,” and Barack deplored how “insurance lobbyists here in Springfield had been engaging in such fear-mongering.” Minority floor spokesman Peter Roskam was already Barack’s least-favorite Republican, and after Roskam invoked the phrase “socialized medicine” in calling HB 2268 “a bill with an agenda,” Barack objected, saying, “the notion that you would blatantly characterize this bill as being that is dishonest.” “Don’t lie about it,” Barack told Roskam. Veteran Democrat Miguel del Valle thought that exchange was “the angriest I’ve ever seen Barack,” and del Valle commended him, saying, “you’ve got to get angrier more often!” On the floor, Evanston Democrat Jeff Schoenberg rose to commend “Senator Obama’s hard work, his perseverance, and perhaps most importantly, his integrity and sense of fairness.” Objecting to Roskam’s words, Schoenberg found it “very distressing that when all else fails, we have to try to discredit the personal integrity of a member of this chamber because we may have a political or ideological difference. I don’t think it should ever reach that point.”

  Barack agreed, and on an almost straight party-line vote, the Senate approved the Health Care Justice Act 31–26–1.
Barack’s good friend Denny Jacobs, who realized Barack “has that ability to be a little bit of all things to all people,” was the only Democrat to vote no. Press coverage was limited to a single, page 10 story in the State Journal-Register. One week later the House ratified the bill, and in late summer Governor Blagojevich signed it into law. Two and a half years would pass before the task force submitted its final report, with eleven of its twenty-nine members supporting a single-payer plan. Republican Dale Righter felt the enactment was “meaningless by the time it was over,” producing only a report that “gathers dust and is really never to be seen or heard from again.” Fellow Health Committee Republican Christine Radogno, who had voted present rather than no, agreed. The Health Care Justice Act had allowed Barack to “claim success even though it was nowhere near what he initially started with.” But HB 2268 as it was passed “gave him a fig leaf and gave him something to claim as a win.”73

  Meanwhile David Axelrod had been crafting a six-page fall campaign memo to “Team Obama” entitled “Message: Yes We Can!” “The remarkable strength of the Obama candidacy” demonstrates that “Barack inspires a vision of an honest and uplifting politics, and fires hope for real change,” Axelrod wrote. “Barack stands apart” by “preaching a politics of civility and community, of mutual respect and responsibility.” Voters “respond to his character and sincerity. Our challenge is to maintain that tone, protect that special character and sincerity and always bear in mind that the brain dead politics of Washington is as much our target as Jack Ryan.” Axelrod warned that “if we begin to operate in much the same fashion, singing from the partisan hymn book, slinging mud . . . and sliding around on issues in an overtly political way, we will destroy what people like best about our man.” The campaign needed to emphasize “strengthening the embattled middle class” through “making health care affordable,” “creating quality jobs,” and “improving the quality and affordability of education.”