Rising Star

by David J. Garrow

  Zeleny revealed that in Barack’s “early months in Washington, a handful of friends and close advisers wondered whether Obama actually enjoyed being a senator.” When Zeleny spoke with Michelle, she said, “it’s a tough choice between ‘Do you stay for Malia’s basketball game on Sunday or do you go to New Jersey and campaign for [Jon] Corzine,” who in November had won the governorship there. “It’s a constant pull to say, ‘Hey guys, you have a family here,’” but her “hope is that that is going to change, and we’re going to go back to our normal schedule of keeping Sundays pretty sacred.” On balance, “this has been a good year, but it’s still overhyped,” Michelle remarked. “If we don’t mature, Barack Obama is going to fall and fall hard because he’s going to have to make some decisions that people will not agree with. That’s the nature of politics.”17

  On Wednesday, January 4, Barack, Senators Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Kit Bond (R-MO), and Representative Harold Ford (D-TN) departed Washington en route to Kuwait City. After playing basketball and eating with some Illinois troops at Camp Arifjan and a brief visit to Qatar, Barack and his colleagues proceeded on to Baghdad on a U.S. C-130 that performed evasive maneuvers before landing. Fitted out in Kevlar vests and helmets, the group climbed into a Black Hawk helicopter to fly to the U.S.-controlled Green Zone. There Barack lunched with additional Illinois soldiers before the delegation dined with Iraqi president Jalal Talabani. Housed in a former Saddam Hussein pool house, Barack spoke by conference call with a trio of Illinois reporters. The next morning, again clad in vests and helmets, the delegation boarded a Black Hawk and flew to first Fallujah and then Kirkuk. Hours earlier another army Black Hawk had crashed in northwestern Iraq, killing all twelve Americans on board.

  Returning to Kuwait City, Barack proceeded on to Amman, Jordan, recording by phone another semiweekly podcast in which he praised the U.S. military as “probably the most capable institution on the planet.” From Amman Barack traveled to Israel, where the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago hosted his five-day visit. A planned meeting with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was canceled after Sharon suffered a serious stroke, and Barack met instead with foreign minister Silvan Shalom. The next day Barack boarded an Israeli Black Hawk for a visit to the remote Arab Catholic village of Fassouta on the Lebanese border, where he was welcomed at the century-old Mar Elias Church. “Thank you so much. I extend greetings from my pastor. He’s like my priest. His name is Jeremiah Wright,” Barack remarked as Chicago newsman Chuck Goudie stood nearby. On Thursday Barack crossed into the West Bank to meet both Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and a group of Palestinian students in Ramallah. On Friday, Barack met with AIPAC officials in Jerusalem before visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. “In stark silence, Obama placed a wreath next to the eternal flame,” Goudie reported, and on Saturday Barack headed home to Chicago.

  Michelle had been especially on edge during Barack’s time in Iraq, but back at 5046 South Greenwood for three days with his family, Barack turned his attention to a lingering property concern. An old swing set sat astride the boundary between their home and Tony Rezko’s adjoining lot, but construction of a new one for Malia and Sasha would require a bit more space than where the property line now fell. “That’s what triggered my thinking that it would be nice to widen the lot,” Barack explained, and he called Tony to ask if he would be amenable to such a deal as well as the construction of a fence between the two properties. Rezko quickly agreed to sell Barack a ten-foot strip of land and to pay for erecting a fence. Tony offered to convey the land at the appraised value of $40,000, but Barack, leery of accepting a large monetary favor, instead offered to pay $104,500, or about one-sixth of the $625,000 that Rezko and his wife had paid for the entire lot, and Tony agreed.18

  Returning to Washington, Barack accepted Senate minority leader Harry Reid’s offer to be Democrats’ point man on a new push for stronger congressional ethics reform. Also awaiting him was a memo from Pete Rouse. “It makes sense for you to consider now whether you want to use 2006 to position yourself to run in 2008 if a ‘perfect storm’ of personal and political factors emerges in 2007,” Rouse recommended. “If making a run in 2008 is at all a possibility, no matter how remote, it makes sense to begin talking and making decisions about what you should be doing ‘below the radar’ in 2006 to maximize your ability to get in front of this wave should it emerge and should you and your family decide it is worth riding.”

  David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs shared Rouse’s view, and Axelrod remembered Barack jotting “This makes sense” on Pete’s memo. As fund-raising totals for 2005 emerged into public view, Barack’s fiscal stature among his colleagues was again underscored. Filings revealed that he had raised a total of $6.55 million: $2.1 million for his own Hopefund, $300,000 of which he had donated to other Democrats, plus $4.4 million that he had raised for others. At least twenty-three flights on private jets had helped him rack up those totals. Chicago Sun-Times correspondent Lynn Sweet tallied those numbers and surveyed reactions to Barack’s first year in Washington. Progressives both nationally and in Chicago expressed disappointment that Barack had not been a more outspoken figure, with veteran activist Marilyn Katz telling Sweet that “people project on him their own politics.” But New York senator Hillary Rodham Clinton gave Sweet a very different verdict. “He and I have talked often about how to get off on the right foot in the Senate, and he has done a superb job this year. He is a careful, thoughtful, effective person, and he is doing what is right for him.”

  Speaking with Fox News about his Iraq trip, Barack confessed that “I am probably less optimistic” now than he was before. “There is no military solution to the problems in Iraq” and “only political solutions are going to bring about some semblance of peace.” Appearing two days later on NBC’s Meet the Press, Barack explained that thanks to the continuing presence of U.S. forces, “we help spur the insurgency.” When host Tim Russert challenged him about his future plans, Barack vowed, “I will serve out my full six-year term” in the Senate. “So you will not run for president or vice president in 2008?” Russert asked. “I will not,” Barack answered.

  Barack announced that he indeed would vote against Judge Samuel Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court, and when he and other senators visited the White House to discuss Iraq with President Bush, what Barack called “a frank exchange of views” ensued. “We need to bring our troops home as quickly as possible, but to do so in a way that does not precipitate all-out civil war in Iraq,” Barack stated in a same-day podcast. As Barack’s ethics reform role drew greater attention, he told a lobbying reform summit that “how extensively money influences politics is the original sin of everyone who’s ever run for office, myself included.”

  Returning to Illinois for another round of town hall meetings, Barack sat down for a lengthy conversation with the Quad-City Times’ editorial board. “I’m actually surprised at how slow things move in the Senate,” Barack explained, but “I’ve gotten more done than I expected” and “the things I think I’m proudest of” were “some excellent work on veterans” and improving the VA’s responsiveness. With the Patriot Act, “the key principle in my mind is making sure that there’s somebody watching the watchers,” but ethics reform took up much of the discussion. “Over the last five years” congressional “corruption has gotten worse,” Barack told the editorial board, “and I don’t think, by the way, that the Democratic leadership is strong enough on this front.” What was needed was “some sort of independent commission that examines these issues, an Office of Public Integrity that is empowered to field complaints and investigate them,” Barack explained. He admitted that “Democrats aren’t without sin,” and said that “sometimes what my party does is uncomfortable to me, but I know that it has to be defended because it’s part of the job of being a member of a party.”

  Appearing two days later on ABC’s This Week, Barack on national television refused to acknowledge that Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid had insisted that Barack take
a more partisan stance on ethics reform than he wanted to. “The only way we’re going to get something passed is to make sure that we work with Republicans who are interested in serious reform,” Barack acknowledged, but “I do think that the Democrats can create a contrast by making sure that the ethics bill we present is big and meaningful and bold and not just tinkering around the edges.”19

  On Wednesday, February 1, following a phone invitation from Arizona Republican John McCain, Barack met with nine other senators—seven Republicans and two Democrats—to discuss possible ways forward on lobbying reform legislation. Republican majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee had suggested that a task force, rather than Senate committees, might be a way to proceed, but on Thursday a letter was drafted over Barack’s signature, addressed to McCain, citing “the culture of corruption that has permeated the nation’s capital” as reason for moving ahead with legislation rather than forming a task force. McCain had left for a quick trip to Germany, but on Friday Democratic minority leader Harry Reid’s staff e-mailed the Obama letter to reporters. McCain learned of the missive over the weekend during a phone conversation with Mark Salter, his speechwriter and closest staffer, and he told Salter to compose a response. “Brush him back,” McCain instructed.

  Monday afternoon, February 6, the Salter-McCain reply arrived in Barack’s office as a political letter bomb.

  I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere. When you approached me and insisted that despite your leadership’s preference to use the issue to gain a political advantage in the 2006 elections, you were personally committed to achieving a result that would reflect credit on the entire Senate and offered the country a better example of political leadership, I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable. Thank you for disabusing me of such notions with your letter to me dated February 2, 2006, which explained your decision to withdraw from our bipartisan discussions. I’m embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in politics to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble. Again, sorry for the confusion, but please be assured I won’t make the same mistake again.

  Three paragraphs then summarized McCain’s long-standing support for bipartisan reform legislation. It closed with this:

  I understand how important the opportunity to lead your party’s effort to exploit this issue must seem to a freshman Senator, and I hold no hard feelings over your earlier disingenuousness. Again, I have been around long enough to appreciate that in politics the public interest isn’t always a priority for every one of us. Good luck to you, Senator.

  Barack was astonished. “The perception in our office was that this was a very innocuous boilerplate letter,” Barack said of his initial missive. He immediately called McCain’s office, but McCain was not back from Germany. Barack and Robert Gibbs quickly set to work drafting a defensive response that sought to dial down the temperature on what was already a Capitol Hill e-mail sensation. “I am puzzled by your response,” and “I have no idea what has prompted your response,” Barack’s Monday-evening reply stated. “The fact that you have now questioned my sincerity and my desire to put aside politics for the public interest is regrettable.” By Tuesday, reporters were all over the story, with Barack explaining to the Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet that McCain had misunderstood his initial letter. “I think there was confusion over the reference to a task force. We were specifically referring to the proposal that Bill Frist had had, to set up a formal task force to do this,” not McCain’s more informal bipartisan meetings. Tuesday afternoon Barack and McCain spoke briefly by phone, and Barack told the Chicago Tribune’s Jeff Zeleny that while the tone of the Arizonan’s letter “was a little over the top . . . John McCain’s been an American hero and has served here in Washington for twenty years, so if he wants to get cranky once in a while, that’s his prerogative.” In private, Barack was more scathing: “I’m not interested in being bitch-slapped by John McCain.”

  On Wednesday Barack and McCain both testified about lobbying reform before the Senate Rules Committee. “I’m particularly pleased to be sharing this panel with my pen pal, John McCain,” Barack joked. Republicans declined to embrace Barack’s call for an independent “Congressional Ethics Enforcement Commission,” and afterward Barack told Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times that since Congress is “a clubby institution . . . the idea that there might be a watchdog process outside of it . . . will be tough to achieve.” That evening Barack got an emotional lift when he was awarded the spoken word Grammy, and Thursday on his semiweekly podcast he praised McCain as “a good and decent man.” The news cycle quickly moved on, with McCain aide Mark Salter realizing he had overdone his boss’s “brush him back” instruction. “I guess I beaned him instead.”20

  The McCain tiff aside, Barack continued to win plaudits. Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy told the Associated Press, “I’ve been here 31 years and seen a small handful of people that have made as much of an impression as he has, and he has done it by working hard.” In a five-page profile in Time magazine, Barack remarked that “I probably always feel on some level I can persuade anybody I talk to,” but reporter Perry Bacon Jr. noted that “liberals in particular have often projected onto him views he doesn’t have.” The Chicago Tribune’s Jeff Zeleny agreed that “Obama remains largely undefined on a broad spectrum of issues,” but he realized that “Obama is purposely increasing his visibility as he steps beyond an early strategy of political caution.” Barack joined thirty-three other Democrats in supporting a compromise extension of the Patriot Act that won Senate approval by a vote of 89–10, but well-known liberal Democrats like Patrick Leahy, Tom Harkin, and Ron Wyden, plus conservative Robert Byrd, joined longtime opponent Russ Feingold in voting no.

  A front-page USA Today headline proclaimed that “Democrats See Obama as Face of ‘Reform and Change,’” and Barack explained to the New York Times’ Sheryl Stolberg his recent decision to stop flying on corporate jets. “This is an example where appearances matter,” because “very few of my constituents have a chance to travel on a corporate jet.” Under Senate rules, Barack had been reimbursing the planes’ owners the normal first-class fare, rather than actual cost, and “I said to my staff, ‘We may be following the rules but it’s hard for me to reconcile this.’” On March 11, Barack was the Democratic headliner at the annual Gridiron Club dinner, turning in what New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd called “a smooth, funny performance” that included singing the lyrics “If I only had McCain” to the Wizard of Oz tune “If I Only Had a Brain.” The next morning on CBS’s Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer gushed to Barack that “you were the absolute star of last night’s Gridiron show.” Barack replied that “in my family, my wife is the funny one,” and that if asked, Michelle “could’ve done a rip on me that would’ve lasted twenty minutes.” Barack cited energy independence, health care, and education as his top issues beyond drawing down U.S. forces in Iraq, but he also addressed abortion. “I think the Democrats historically have made a mistake in just trying to avoid the issue, or pretend that there’s not a moral component to it. There is,” as he had known going back eighteen years. “I also think that it’s important, even as I indicate that I’m prochoice, to say this is not a trivial issue.”

  African American syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. bluntly warned readers that “Barack Obama is not Jesus.” Pitts explained, “I feel the need” to say that given how “seemingly every exhalation of his name” is “accompanied by angels singing hosannas and sighs of adoration from a congregation of Democrats looking to him for political salvation. Or, if you prefer, resurrection.” Pitts plaintively wondered, “Is it asking too much that people wait until he actually does something before they start chasing his name with a hallelujah chorus?
” The Times’ Maureen Dowd, so impressed by Barack’s Gridiron performance, told Democrats that instead of nominating Hillary Rodham Clinton for president in 2008, they “should find someone captivating with an intensely American success story—someone like Senator Obama,” but whoever wrote Dowd’s headline—“What’s Better? His Empty Suit or Her Baggage?”—inserted an insult where none was intended.21

  Barack consented to two long interviews with the National Journal’s Kirk Victor for what became a ten-page profile in the widely read D.C. weekly. “I am surprised by the lack of deliberation in the world’s greatest deliberative body,” Barack again stressed, drawing a contrast to Springfield, “where every bill had to be defended and subject to questions. Here, there is a lot more of competing press releases, and I think that contributes to some of the partisanship and lack of serious negotiation” he had witnessed in the Senate. Barack again denied that minority leader Harry Reid had made him take a more partisan position on ethics reform than he wanted. “Is there some tension there between my role as a member of the Democratic Caucus and how I might operate as an entirely free agent? Yes . . . that is the role that I have been placed in,” but “I was very explicit that I wouldn’t do something like this if the ultimate objective was not to actually get a bill passed that would move the country forward,” rather than score political points. Barack again cited his work on the Veterans Affairs Committee as his most consequential work to date, and said that the 2008 Democratic presidential ticket was “not something that I am spending a lot of time thinking about.” He also obliquely highlighted how out of place he felt in the Senate because most of his colleagues “are significantly older” and “have raised their families here in Washington.” In contrast, “I am not a part of the Washington social set. A lot of the interactions . . . I just can’t participate in because I want to get home to see my wife and two daughters.”