Rising Star

by David J. Garrow

  The day after his “Call to Renewal” address, Barack sat down with journalist Jacob Weisberg for an interview that was as remarkably revealing as his commencement speech in Boston four weeks earlier. Barack mentioned that “I kept a journal basically from my junior year in college until I went to law school,” and when former president Lyndon B. Johnson’s name came up, Barack remarkably stated that “there’s a piece of him in me—that kind of hungry, desperate to win, please, succeed, dominate—I don’t know any politician who doesn’t have some of that reptilian side to him. Or any person for that matter. But that’s not the dominant part of me.” Barack blamed his Hawaii childhood for how “there’s a big part of me that’s pretty lazy,” and when Weisberg asked whether it was a belief in God that had led Barack to join Trinity Church, Barack replied that “it wasn’t an epiphany. I didn’t have a revelation. It was a very quiet process where I came to understand many of the things I cared about in a religious way and as part of the tradition of the Christian church.” Barack went on to explain that “there was a voice inside me that I could hear that was true—a kernel of myself—this is from a Borges poem—sort of a love poem to a mistress of his,” one that Jorge Luis Borges had written in 1934. “He says ‘I offer you that kernel of myself that is basically untouched, doesn’t traffic in the trivial or the petty or is just there’” (a close rendition of Borges’s declaration, “I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow—the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams, and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities”). Barack told Weisberg, “I felt that. That sounds like god to me,” and “to me god is connection . . . making connections, and in that connection, that’s where I find god.” Barack admitted that “I don’t know what happens to us after we die,” but “when I tuck in my kids, I have a little piece of heaven . . . I genuinely mean that in a religious way. When I look at them at night sleeping, it is a religious experience. It’s miraculous to me.”

  Barack mentioned that Jeremiah Wright “was just here two weeks ago” and cited his own “frustrations of being here as opposed to being in the state legislature,” although “I actually find Congress identical to the state legislature.” When Weisberg asked about the presidency, Barack said, “my attitude about something like the presidency is that you don’t want to just be the president. You want to change the country. You want to make a unique contribution. You want to be a great president,” Barack emphasized. “There are what, maybe ten presidents in our history out of forty-something who you can truly say led the country? And then there are thirty-odd who just kind of did their best. And so I guess my point is, just being the president is not a good way of thinking about it.”

  Weisberg also spoke with Michelle Obama, who said, “politics is a completely unappealing way to live your life. There’s nothing that makes this attractive to go through as a family. But I also know very deeply and much more intimately than anyone out there how truly gifted Barack is. Anyone wondering, ‘Is he the real deal?’ and I know it.” She also said that “Barack would walk away from it tomorrow if I said so,” but “part of me looks at my children and the world that I want my kids and grandkids to live in and says, ‘How can I stand in the way?’ But I struggle with it every day.”28

  In early July, Barack’s office announced that he would take a two-week trip to Africa, including several stops in Kenya, in late August. On July 20, it was announced that Barack would attend Iowa senator Tom Harkin’s twenty-ninth annual “steak fry” on September 17, one of the state’s premier political events. At the invitation of Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu, Barack joined her and other senators on a brief trip to New Orleans, which was still struggling to rebuild from Hurricane Katrina almost a year earlier. Barack said he “was astonished by what I saw” and by “the terrible reality and scope of the destruction.”

  Sitting down at a D.C. event with NBC’s Tim Russert, Barack called for the “creation of nonpartisan maps” in federal and state legislative districting so as to “encourage and reward more bipartisanship.” Barack voiced disappointment that most members of Congress were so attached to “the status of office” that “they don’t want to take any risks” for fear of being defeated. “A good 50 percent of what’s wrong with Washington has to do with fear,” Barack explained. Being an elected official “puts a severe strain on your family,” and “the biggest challenge and the biggest strain on me has been the fact that I didn’t move my family to Washington, and so I’m away from my wife and kids three days, four days a week, and that’s very difficult, and it’s much more difficult for my wife.” In a similar conversation with John Patterson of suburban Chicago’s Daily Herald, Barack stressed that as a senator representing a large state “the schedule is relentless” and now “people recognize me” all the time. “The only time when it’s tough is when I’m with my kids,” because “a lot of times people will come up, and it kind of intrudes a little bit on our time together.” Barack believed he remained unchanged by all the public and media attention. “I really credit . . . the seven years of laboring in almost total obscurity in Springfield for a healthy attitude and healthy skepticism about this.” When Patterson mentioned the presidency, Barack said, “I think what you look for in presidents is good judgment and knowledge of the issues and the ability to make decisions.” “Do you think you could do a better job than the current president?” Patterson asked. “No comment,” Barack replied.

  After taking several days in early August to record the audio version of his new book in a Chicago studio, Barack held eight town hall meetings during a two-day downstate swing before attending Governor’s Day at the Illinois State Fair. House Speaker and state Democratic chairman Michael Madigan remained unwilling to support treasurer nominee Alexi Gianoullias, and communications director Robert Gibbs told Kristen McQueary of the Daily Southtown that “Barack cautioned the speaker that he might be viewed as petty and vindictive if he’s not united behind the party’s ticket in the fall.” In response, Madigan sarcastically dismissed Barack by telling McQueary, “There’s been no word from the messiah.” Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller later wrote that “sources close to the usually easy-going Obama say he has an enmity for Madigan unlike that for anyone else.”29

  On Friday, August 18, Barack, accompanied by Gibbs, foreign policy aide Mark Lippert, and three military officers, flew from Washington to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. Barack had specifically invited air force major general Scott Gration, who had spent much of his childhood in Africa and was fluent in Swahili. Also on the plane was a trio of reporters—Jeff Zeleny of the Tribune, Lynn Sweet of the Sun-Times, and Bill Lambrecht of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, as well as a pair of documentary filmmakers who had begun filming Barack off and on three months earlier. At Schiphol, Barack visited the meditation room before the whole party boarded a second KLM flight en route to Cape Town, South Africa, where they arrived on Saturday night. Barack told the reporters that “my goal is less personal and more about public policy, and my hope is that my visit can shine a spotlight on the enormous challenges Africa faces,” particularly the AIDS crisis and how its spread was fostered by “the lack of control women have over sex” in Africa. On Sunday Barack visited Nelson Mandela’s former prison cell on Robben Island, and on Monday he toured an AIDS treatment facility. “There needs to be a sense of urgency and an almost clinical truth-telling about AIDS,” Barack warned. “If it is not addressed in an unambiguous fashion, the percentage of people who are infected is going off the charts.” That afternoon, Barack met Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who told him “you’re going to be a very credible presidential candidate.” On Tuesday Barack toured Soweto and one of its anti-apartheid museums, telling journalists, “if it wasn’t for some of the activities that happened here, I might not be involved in politics and might not be doing what I am doing in the United States.”

  On Thursday, August 24, Barack and his party flew to Nairobi, Kenya, where Michelle and their daughters joined him for a six-day stay. Bara
ck’s group got an immediate introduction to Kenya’s endemic corruption when airport customs officials extorted more than $1,700 from the party’s videographers. The next morning Barack mentioned the rip-off to Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki, telling reporters afterward that “at every level, the people of Kenya suffer through corruption of political offices.” That evening, a Kenyan official gave Barack’s aide Mark Lippert “wads of cash in brown envelopes” to repay the camera crews.

  Barack drew huge crowds and ecstatic greetings everywhere he went in Nairobi, and on Saturday he, his family, and their traveling press corps boarded an East African Airlines flight to Kisumu on their way to Granny Sarah’s family homestead in Kogelo. In Kisumu, Barack and Michelle visited a mobile AIDS center to get tested for HIV, with Barack telling onlookers, “I just want everybody to remember that if a senator from the United States can get tested, and his wife can get tested, then everybody in this crowd can get tested, and everyone in the city can get tested.” Michelle was stunned by the mass enthusiasm for her husband. “It’s rare that I’m speechless, but it’s hard to interpret what all this means to me and means to us,” she told the Tribune’s Jeff Zeleny, who described Kenyans greeting Barack “more like a prophet than a politician.” The nineteen-car motorcade made the one-hour drive to Kogelo, where crowds forced the planned two-hour visit to be cut to hardly forty-five minutes before the return trip to Nairobi began. Villagers presented Barack with a well-fed three-year-old goat, but Barack declined the gift, explaining, “I don’t think they’d let me take it on the plane.”

  Back in Nairobi, Barack visited the huge Kibera slum, where an estimated 20 percent of the 700,000 residents were HIV-positive. On Monday Barack delivered an outspoken anticorruption speech at the University of Nairobi that was broadcast live by Kenya’s largest television station. “Where Kenya is failing is in its ability to create a government that is transparent and accountable, one that serves its people and is free from corruption,” Barack declared. Citing his own hometown, Barack said that “while corruption is a problem we all share, here in Kenya it is a crisis—a crisis that’s robbing an honest people of the opportunities they have fought for, the opportunity they deserve.” Terming corruption “one of the great struggles of our time,” Barack called for the Kenyan government to “downsize the bureaucracy” and channel the savings to higher salaries for the remaining officials. He also said that “ethnic-based tribal politics has to stop. It is rooted in the bankrupt idea that the goal of politics or business is to funnel as much of the pie as possible to one’s family, tribe, or circle with little regard for the public good.” In contrast, “when people are judged by merit, not connections, then the best and brightest can lead the country.”30

  Sitting down with two journalists from the Nation, Kenya’s largest newspaper, Barack answered a question about President Kibaki by saying that “sometimes in an environment where there’s a lot of pressure . . . maybe you forget what exactly you were trying to do in the first place, which is something all of us in politics have to contend with.” When they asked how could Kenyans “push our leaders toward being more accountable,” Barack returned to his Roseland roots in responding that “ultimately it’s going to come from the ground up, not the top down. . . . There’s got to be a very systematic organizing at the grassroots level in order for politicians to ultimately respond.” Barack stressed that “one of the dangers is that those who start out idealistic get pulled into the system,” and that in any multiethnic society, “the only way to have a strong grassroots movement is if it cuts across the different communities.” With 56 percent of Kenyans living below the poverty line, “Kenya can’t afford to be divided” along tribal lines, and knowingly or unknowingly, Barack invoked his father’s legacy by highlighting the mistreatment of Kenyan women. “An entire segment of the population is continuing to suffer sexual violence and abuse,” and Kenyans needed to appreciate that “the single biggest indicator of whether a country develops or not is how well it treats and educates its women.”

  On Tuesday Barack and his party flew from Nairobi to the Masai Mara National Reserve in southern Kenya for a safari tour, during which they saw a lion devouring a wildebeest. The next evening, minus Barack’s family, the group left Nairobi on a U.S. military aircraft bound for Djibouti. Barack had the page proofs of his book to read and correct, and at Crown Books in New York, an assistant editor answered her phone to hear Barack report, “I’m calling from Djibouti” and was wondering where he could find a fax machine. On Thursday, August 31, Barack visited a tent camp in eastern Ethiopia filled with people displaced by flooding. On Friday he flew to N’Djamena to meet with Chadian president Idriss Déby, and the next morning Barack’s group flew to a dirt airstrip in eastern Chad to join a UN convoy for a one-hour drive to a Darfur refugee camp just inside Chad’s border with Sudan. Barack’s visit to the sprawling, fifteen-thousand-person camp, one of a dozen in Chad housing some 235,000 Sudanese refugees, lasted only ninety minutes, but he told accompanying journalists that “it is important that these folks here are not forgotten.” On Sunday morning, Barack’s military aircraft departed N’Djamena for Frankfurt, from where Barack and his aides returned to the U.S. A Chicago Sun-Times editorial praised his trip as “admirable and honorable,” and Barack told the paper’s Lynn Sweet that meeting Desmond Tutu and fellow Noble Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai had been two high points of the journey. “There is something about when people serve; somehow it enriches them in all sorts of ways. They just seemed like happy, fulfilled people, even though they are not particularly wealthy.”31

  Two days after Barack returned to Washington, the Senate without recorded objection passed his and Tom Coburn’s Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, sending the measure aimed at ending no-bid federal contracting to the House. Recording a podcast, Barack welcomed that move in seeming amazement, remarking that “every once in a while, you actually get something done around here.” Three days before Barack was due at Iowa senator Tom Harkin’s much-heralded steak fry, former Illinois competitor Dan Hynes called to give ten minutes’ advance notice that he was about to tell the press he believed Barack should run for the presidency. “Well, Dan, I’m flattered,” Barack replied, but “Michelle will never forgive you.” Hynes told reporters “what we need to do is both create a real movement for those of us who believe he’s the right man for the presidency and to give him a better understanding of just how broad and deep and emotional the support is for him across the state.”

  Sun-Times reporter Lynn Sweet observed that “the charismatic Obama is now on a pedestal,” and she believed Barack already was giving “answers that suggest the thought of running for president has crossed his mind.” Indeed, within days of his return from Africa, Barack told David Axelrod that “with so many folks talking to me about running, I feel like I have an obligation to at least think about this in a serious, informed way.” In Newsweek, African American journalist Ellis Cose called Barack “a political phenomenon unlike any previously seen” and described him as “the perfect mirror for a country that craves to see itself as beyond race, beyond boundaries, beyond the ugly parts of its past.” On the same morning that Barack arrived in Iowa for the Harkin event, the nearby St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Illinois poll results showing Barack with “an unheard-of 70 percent approval rating” and cited Cose’s essay as a prime example of the “runaway train of gushing publicity” Barack was receiving.

  Pete Rouse had recruited veteran Democratic operative Steve Hildebrand, who had managed Al Gore’s 2000 Iowa campaign, to squire Barack to the Harkin steak fry, at the Warren County Fairgrounds in Indianola. “I thought, let’s have a little fun with this. I wanted to create a little buzz,” Rouse explained, and political reporters immediately took notice. Tom Harkin introduced Barack by citing the U2 musician Bono: “I couldn’t get him, so I settled for the second biggest rock star in America today!” as the huge turnout of thirty-five hundred attested. But “Obama turned in a rare mediocre pe
rformance,” David Mendell of the Tribune reported, offering only what Salon’s Walter Shapiro called “an artful pastiche of earlier rhetoric” and speaking for far too long—thirty-eight minutes. Still, Barack received what influential Des Moines Register political columnist David Yepsen called “a nearly unprecedented response,” and as he was “mobbed by fans,” another Register reporter caught Barack’s self-satisfied reaction: “I’m going to have to come back to Iowa. This is all right!” When Shapiro asked whether this meant he would change his thinking about 2008, Barack said, “nothing has changed in my mind. But you never know.” Shapiro immediately interrupted: “You mean things can change?” “Yeah, things can change,” Barack replied.