Rising Star

by David J. Garrow

  While Barack was busy practicing, invaluable contributor Tony Rezko was drawing unfavorable press attention. Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller had warned months earlier about “the sort of influence peddlers who surround the governor,” but only in midsummer 2004 did the Chicago Sun-Times and then the Tribune begin to cover Rezko’s behind-the-scenes role in choosing gubernatorial appointees for such obscure but powerful entities as the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board (IHFPB). Rich Miller observed that if Blagojevich’s “buddies are somehow mixing campaign contributions with appointments . . . all he has to do is look at George Ryan to see how his future will end up.” In mid-July, the Sun-Times reported that Rezko had gone “weeks without paying employees” at a fast-food chain he owned, and two days later, the Tribune detailed how a podiatrist and Rezko business partner who had contributed $25,000 to Blagojevich a year earlier had been rewarded with a seat on the IHFPB.

  With Republicans still lacking a candidate to oppose Barack, state Senate friend Kirk Dillard toyed with entering the race. “Barack Obama is beatable,” Dillard declared. “Somebody in the Republican Party needs to do some research on Barack’s record,” because Barack “is far to the left of where most Illinoisans are.” In a radio interview, Dillard revealed that “Barack and I kidded yesterday that it would probably be the most gentlemanly” face-off ever, but it “would be good for politics, not only in Illinois but nationally, to have people who genuinely admire each other and their families to wage a totally above-the-board, on-the-issues race.” Barack “is a wonderful man” and “has a great future in whatever he does,” but “Barack Obama is beatable,” Dillard insisted. Asked about Dillard, Barack responded that “with someone of his caliber, the race tightens immediately.” In a decidedly odd gesture, a New York Times editorial called upon Dillard to enter the race. “Run, Kirk, run. Illinois needs you—and so does Mr. Obama,” because “Illinois voters deserve to see a capable opponent force him to answer tough questions and defend his positions.” But just like Rauschenberger and Ditka before him, Dillard said he would give the race a pass, citing his two young daughters.

  In a cable-television interview, Jeff Berkowitz asked Barack how his recently professed opposition to a single-payer health care plan contradicted what he had said on Berkowitz’s show in November 2002. “The problem we have is what kinds of time frames are we talking about,” Barack responded. “Do I think that over time we are essentially going to have a system in which you have got a market system but people are getting basic health care of some sort and a market system superimposed on that for discretionary things—cosmetic surgery or elective surgery?” Barack added before Berkowitz interrupted. “There is going to be some sort of coverage that we want to provide everybody,” Barack explained, “minimum coverage. . . . Some people are going to be getting that through their jobs,” but “there are going to be other people that don’t have that.” As Berkowitz accused him of “backing off from single-payer,” Barack insisted, “I have been consistent in saying what I am in favor of is universal health care . . . we have to move in a direction of universal health care, because if we don’t, the question I have for people who argue against me is, ‘Who is it that you think shouldn’t be covered?’” From there, the conversation devolved into cross talk as school voucher enthusiast Berkowitz sought to interest Barack in health care vouchers.

  Early in the week of July 19, Barack finally sent his speech to Vicky Rideout in Boston. Stuck in Springfield as the Four Tops struggled to reach a budget accord with Blagojevich, Barack spoke with Associated Press reporter Chris Wills, who had covered the statehouse since 1998. Editors titled Wills’s story “Rising Democratic Star Readies for His Moment in the Lights,” and when a Honolulu-based AP writer followed up, Barack sounded every bit a native in anticipating his next visit. “I look forward to getting up in the morning, driving to Sandy Beach and doing some bodysurfing and then getting a shave ice and plate lunch.” Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller expressed astonishment at “Obama’s superstar status,” but Barack told the Journal-Register’s Bernie Schoenburg that his daughters preferred to stay in Chicago and attend day camp rather than accompany their parents to Boston.

  Barack had to be in Boston no later than first thing Sunday, July 25, for an early-morning taping of NBC’s Meet the Press. With the legislature hoping to complete its business and adjourn sometime on Saturday, NBC sent a chartered jet to Springfield to fly Barack directly to Boston. Only a little after 8:00 P.M. did the state Senate finally adjourn. Barack was pleased that an additional $55 million was allocated to expand FamilyCare, but the late hour meant that only at 1:30 A.M. did he and Michelle arrive at Boston’s Back Bay Hilton.

  At much the same hour, a long-delayed rental truck pulled up at the Fleet Center’s loading dock in Boston’s North End. Ten days earlier, just after the public announcement of Barack’s keynote role, GOTV mastermind Tom Lindenfeld had called Jim Cauley and firmly advised him that if Barack’s address was going to have maximum impact on television, the campaign needed to ensure that the crowd on the convention floor had readily visible “Obama” placards in hand. Tom had long been a DNC floor manager, and he warned Jimmy, “You’ve got to get these signs printed up. If you don’t have the signs, your speech isn’t going to be the same.” Cauley hesitated, because printing the signs—with a huge white “Obama” on a blue background plus a new, shorter Web address, www.obama2004.com—came with a $20,000 price tag. Cauley wanted the DNC or Kerry’s campaign to pick up the tab, but Lindenfeld was insistent. “I like beat the shit out of them over this,” and Jimmy finally relented. The signs needed to arrive in Boston by Friday. Late that week campaign staffer Adam Stolorow helped twenty-one-year-old intern Alex Okrent load the newly printed placards into a rental truck before Okrent set out on the fifteen-hour drive to Boston. Then, somewhere in Ohio, the truck broke down, and only in the wee hours of Sunday morning did Alex call Lindenfeld with tardy good news: “We’re here.”

  Barack was up before 6:00 A.M. to get ready for Meet the Press, then CBS’s Face the Nation, ABC’s World News Tonight, and finally CNN’s Late Edition. On Meet the Press, Barack told host Tim Russert that he had been fortunate to grow up in Hawaii and endorsed comedian Bill Cosby’s call for African Americans to demand more of each other. “He’s right. . . . There’s got to be an element of individual responsibility and communal responsibility for the uplift of the people in inner-city communities.” On Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer called Barack “kind of a rock star of Democratic politics,” and on ABC’s World News Tonight, anchor Terry Moran told Barack that one Democrat had said that “most people who know Barack Obama believe that he will be a presidential candidate in the very near future.” Barack demurred, saying, “I may be flavor of the month this week,” but CNN’s Wolf Blitzer raised the same question on Late Edition, asking, “Do you want to be president?” Barack replied that he wanted to be the best U.S. senator “that I can be,” and when Blitzer followed up, saying “there’s people talking about this,” Barack again ducked. “That’s silly talk. Talk to my wife. She’ll tell me I need to learn to just put my socks in the hamper.”80

  In addition to the television tapings, Barack also met with Michael Sheehan, a prominent speaking coach who had tutored every top Democratic National Convention speaker since 1988. David Axelrod already had called Sheehan to sing Barack’s praises. “This guy’s special. This guy could be the one.” Sheehan recalled that in two decades of knowing Axelrod, “I never heard him that complimentary” about anyone, and Michael knew “they’re always looking for . . . a rising star.” The practice podium and teleprompter were located in a hastily converted locker room in the bowels of the Fleet Center, and on Sunday afternoon Barack had his first one-hour session with Sheehan. The essential thing for a first-time convention speaker to appreciate was “the difference between what you hear in the hall and what is heard at home on television,” Sheehan stressed. “You hear everything in the hall. You don’t hear everything at home,” so a skill
ful speaker should “surf the applause” rather than pause for too long. “As soon as you hear the volume start to drop, start talking again,” Sheehan explained. “You can talk on top of it, and we still hear you.” No matter how loud the hall became, “don’t yell,” because “you don’t have to scream” for television viewers to hear you.

  Kerry aides Vicky Rideout and John Corrigan watched silently as Barack worked on the pacing of his remarks under Sheehan’s guidance. By now, Barack barely needed the teleprompter because he had his text almost perfectly memorized, yet given the small, windowless practice room, “you can’t really orate in that circumstance,” so Barack’s delivery seemed flat. “First rehearsals are often underwhelming, and this one was no exception,” Rideout recalled. “I remember conversing with Corrigan after that and being like, ‘Well, I don’t know. I’m not sure if he’s got what it takes or not.”

  A second rehearsal session was set for Monday, and on Sunday night an exhausted Barack went to bed at 9:30 P.M. His schedule was filled with almost nonstop media interviews, and both the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune published front-page profiles. “Political Phenomenon Obama Vaults into National Spotlight,” read the Tribune headline, with reporter David Mendell noting that Barack “has been riding a wave of adoration by the national media.” Barack calmly observed that “the hype obviously has reached a fever pitch, and I think the fever will break.” Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. confessed, “I pray for him every day,” and warned that “we can’t allow him to be overburdened with too many expectations.” A Chicago Defender editorial echoed Jackson’s sentiments. “There needs to be a tempering of expectations” because “it is vital that Obama not be considered the next John F. Kennedy or the next Martin Luther King Jr. or the next Jesse Jackson Sr. He should be given the time and opportunity to stand on his own two feet and put forth a legislative agenda and record that will do us proud.”

  At a Monday lunch with Tribune journalists, Barack conceded that on Iraq, “there’s not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage.” Conservative columnist John Kass confessed, “I couldn’t help but be impressed by the man,” calling Barack “the real thing.” The reporters described how “nearly everywhere he goes” in Boston, Barack “is mobbed by well-wishers, reporters and others who want a moment of his time. ‘It’s getting incrementally harder to move him through crowds,’” Jim Cauley told them. Late that afternoon Barack’s buddy Marty Nesbitt witnessed the same phenomenon. “We were walking down the street in Boston, and this crowd was growing behind us. . . . I turned to Barack, and I said, ‘This is incredible. You’re like a rock star.’ And he looked at me and said, ‘If you think it’s bad today, wait till tomorrow.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘My speech is pretty good.’”

  In Honolulu, Madelyn Dunham told a caller that she was “a little overwhelmed,” because “this has all come on the national level really fast.” In a recent phone call, “I told him to smile when he’s on TV,” and “of course, I’m proud of him.” At a sunny, early-evening outdoor reception hosted by Rod Blagojevich, Barack ran into former law student Lisa Ellman, an Illinois delegate, who recalled him saying, “I’m excited but I’m not nervous,” explaining that giving the keynote speech would not be as tough as teaching a U of C law class because there would no hard questions from smart students.

  On Tuesday morning, newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic all featured the same phrase. New Jersey senator Jon Corzine told the Boston Globe that Barack was “a rising star,” and the Philadelphia Inquirer, Toronto’s Globe and Mail, and Britain’s Guardian all applied that label too. In Chicago’s suburban Daily Herald, DuPage County Democratic chairman Gayl Ferraro remarked that “it would be great for Illinois if he was to become the first African-American president,” and a column in Britain’s Independent asked, “Can Obama Be First Black President?” and emphasized that by 2012, Barack would have eight years experience as a U.S. senator.

  Barack was up before 6:00 A.M. on Tuesday for appearances on ABC’s, CBS’s, CNN’s, and NBC’s morning shows, plus PBS and NPR tapings. ABC’s Diane Sawyer introduced Barack as a “rising star” on Good Morning America, as did Hannah Storm on CBS’s Early Show. Welcoming Barack to NBC’s Today, Katie Couric told viewers that “some are already saying he could be the first African American president.” ABC and NBC interviewed Michelle as well. “Don’t screw it up” was her advice for tonight, and “I still remind him, ‘You still have to win my vote, buddy.’ And when I get mad at him, ‘I’m not voting for you.’” When NPR’s Melissa Block asked Barack about his late father, Barack responded, “I think in some ways I still chase after his ghost a bit, but also I think I try to balance the importance of family with my career in ways that he wasn’t able to accomplish.”

  Barack spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon doing remote interviews with ten Illinois TV stations as well as speaking at a League of Conservation Voters rally. For lunch he got a packaged sandwich from a convenience store, and in search of personal privacy, he happily chose a port-a-potty. “When I go into the regular restroom, all these people want to shake my hand, and that’s not the place I want to be shaking hands,” he told David Mendell.

  A little before 3:00 P.M., Barack headed back to the Fleet Center for his final rehearsal session with Michael Sheehan. On the way, word arrived that John Kerry’s speechwriting team wanted Barack to remove five sentences from his text because they too closely echoed a line in the acceptance speech Kerry would deliver on Thursday night. “Obama was furious,” David Axelrod recalled. Cauley remembered that “Axelrod was in the van, I was in the van when we thought John Kerry was stealing a piece of the speech, and Barack said, ‘Fuck him. That fucker is trying to steal a line from my speech. They didn’t have that in Kerry’s speech. They saw it, they liked it, and now they’re stealing it.’ Barack was real frustrated with that,” and Jimmy had never seen Barack so angry.

  The Kerry team was divided, with speechwriting chief Vicky Rideout believing that Kerry’s personal speechwriters were overreaching about what they wanted Barack to delete. “It was the emotional peak of the speech,” Rideout realized, and when Barack called her “and made the case of why it was important to him to keep it in there” and pressed as to whether Kerry himself was requesting the change, Rideout was entirely sympathetic. “There was really not a very good reason for them wanting him to take it out,” and Vicky pushed back. “Do you really understand what you’re asking of Obama here?” she told Kerry speechwriter Josh Gottheimer. Rideout called Barack back. “It’s Kerry’s convention,” Vicki explained, but she thought Barack could deal with the perceived overlap by rewording one sentence in his text rather than removing the entire paragraph.

  Soon Barack was back in the Fleet Center’s “blue room,” almost directly underneath the stage where six hours later he would speak to a national audience. A dour David Axelrod, a pensive Robert Gibbs, and a glum Michelle Obama sat along the wall and watched as Barack went through his final rehearsal with Sheehan. Then the juniormost member of Kerry’s speechwriting team, Jon Favreau, arrived to ask if the offending sentence—“We’re not red states and blue states; we’re all Americans, standing up for the red, white, and blue”—had indeed been dropped. Favreau remembered that Barack “kind of looked at me, kind of confused, like ‘Who is this kid?’” before evenly asking, “Are you telling me I have to cut this line out?” Sheehan recalled that Favreau told him, “We’d like you to take it out,” and Barack replied, “No. It’s staying in.”

  Axelrod asked Favreau to join him in the hallway to see if they could work out a compromise. Kerry’s text stated, “Maybe some just see us divided into those red states and blue states, but I see us as one America: red, white, and blue.” Looking at Barack’s “not red states and blue states,” Axelrod instead wrote, “We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.” Favreau concurr
ed, remaining in the hallway with Rideout as Barack’s session continued. Then Gottheimer called to say that he wanted Barack’s entire paragraph removed. Rideout recalled, “I was standing outside of the rehearsal room” when Gottheimer called Favreau. “He was on the phone with them when they’re saying, ‘No, actually it has to be the whole paragraph that comes out.’” Then Rideout instructed Favreau, “Tell him you can’t hear him,” and then she took the phone herself. “I just did an ‘I can’t hear you,’” she said. “‘Are you there? Hanging up now.’” The battle was over, and thanks to Rideout, Barack had won. “It stayed in,” she self-effacingly explained.

  Barack was due back at the Fleet Center that evening for a 9:45 P.M. curtain call. Illinois senator Dick Durbin would introduce him, but DNC officials had caviled when Barack said that he wanted Michelle with him backstage. DNC officials also resisted when Darrel Thompson from Barack’s campaign had protested the DNC’s initial provision of only four floor passes. With Darrel, Joe McLean, and Robert Gibbs all working the phones, a podium pass for Michelle materialized along with a DNC apology and the offer of John Kerry’s personal skybox for that evening for Barack’s friends and donors. On the way back to the Fleet Center, Barack called Madelyn Dunham in Honolulu. Backstage, Chicago political consultant Kevin Lampe, the Podium Operations Team’s “speaker tracker” assigned to Barack, was ready with a large-type hard copy of Barack’s text in case the teleprompter failed. Debating with Michelle and several aides which of several ties to wear, Michelle’s dislike of the entire lot led someone to suggest the one Robert Gibbs was wearing. Everyone agreed, and Gibbs removed his tie and Barack put it on. Only seven years later would he ceremonially return it. As Durbin delivered his introduction, Michelle hugged her husband and invoked her favorite line: “Just don’t screw it up, buddy!”81