Rising Star

by David Garrow

  For several of the new roles, Barack and his consultants knew almost immediately whom they wanted. Even before flying to Scottsdale, Barack asked Peter Coffey, who a year earlier had declined to become campaign manager, to take charge of scheduling just as he had done for Barack’s postprimary swing. Coffey agreed, as did Scott Kennedy, a former David Wilhelm aide whom Giangreco and Cauley asked to take charge of the FEC compliance work that Madhuri and Claire’s young assistant Liz Drew had been trying to stay on top of. Joe McLean asked his colleague Susan Shadow, who likewise had refused Barack’s initial offer a year earlier, to move to Chicago to join Claire in overseeing national fund-raising. “Can you be here Monday?” Barack asked Susan by phone, and with the campaign now able to pay senior staff $10,000 a month, Susan signed on too. For Barack’s personal “body man,” Michelle recommended Kevin Thompson, who accepted Barack’s invitation as well. The consultants also had someone in mind for the research job, plus several serious contenders to interview for the communications post.

  For the tight-knit group that had worked closely with Jimmy, Nate, and Claire to bring about such a stunning primary win, the transition was jarring. “Nothing will ever be like the closeness and camaraderie of that primary, and the chaos,” Liz Drew remembered. Adam Stolorow agreed that “it was such a fun staff,” but the arrival of so many higher-ranking, experienced newcomers made for hurt feelings. “I want people that have done this before,” Barack instructed. “Those are the exact words,” Dan Shomon recounted. Audra Wilson recalled that it was “almost as though there wasn’t appreciation or recognition of all that we had done to get to this point.” Lyndell Luster agreed that “it was a little rough” and “kind of cold.” Before the primary “it was like a family,” but it became “a business” afterward. In the ensuing weeks, “a lot of people got pushed aside” and “it was kind of heart-wrenching for me,” Lyndell confessed. Virtually all of the staff veterans who felt slighted were African American, and longtime AFSCME lobbyist Ray Harris complained to Barack about his treatment of Kevin Watson, who had been “with him day in, day out.” Barack replied, “You know, Ray, Kevin’s had me in an awful lot of bars,” not at all surprising for South Side campaigning. “Kevin was devastated,” Ray thought. “A lot of the staff wasn’t being properly utilized, so people started to quit,” Audra Wilson explained. “I had a long talk with Barack, and he was a little taken aback.”67

  As the Axelrod memo reflected, Barack’s aides expected a demanding general election campaign against Jack Ryan. John Kupper thought “he could be problematic,” because his well-publicized inner-city teaching stint at Hales Franciscan would make Ryan “more palatable to suburban whites” than other conservative Republicans. Nate Tamarin said, “We took him very seriously,” because with “a guy named Barack Obama . . . we anticipated that this thing was going to be a challenge.” Claire Serdiuk concurred. Ryan was “a very, very competitive candidate,” for with a “white Irishman” up against “Barack Hussein Obama,” the contest was “not at all a walk-away.” Many Republicans agreed. Barack’s lobbyist friend John Nicolay thought “Jack Ryan was probably by far the most dangerous opponent for Barack.” Senate minority leader Frank Watson had assumed Dan Hynes would be the Democratic nominee, but once Barack won, a lot of Republicans started thinking, “We’ve got a real chance at this.” In contrast, former governor Jim Edgar told reporters that Barack’s victory demonstrated that in Illinois, “race is no longer a hindrance. In fact, it’s a plus.”

  Barack and his family had returned from Scotsdale directly to Springfield for a special event on the Senate floor. “I am proud that today, I, I believe, in front of my five-year-old and two-year-old, I can justify my work in public service because I have the honor of introducing on the floor one of the biggest stars of stage and screen,” a character from the Chicago Children’s Museum. “I know the theme song. I know most of the plots of Clifford the Big Red Dog, who is here. Give it up for Clifford.” Many senators remembered Barack from that first day back, but not for his rousing introduction of Clifford. Poker buddy Tommy Walsh remembered that “he was struttin’ more than you’ve ever seen a guy.” Walsh was unperturbed, but senators who were not fans took umbrage.

  One month earlier a reporter had noted that Barack had “a slightly stiff manner of walking that some people close to him suspect is an affectation of John F. Kennedy.” Judiciary Committee Republican Ed Petka remembered that Barack “had a gait in his walk,” a “type of gait that was sending off a signal of cockiness.” A foul-mouthed Chicago senator recalled Barack’s “pimp-ass fuckin’ gait” that Wednesday. “Too bad you couldn’t be with me,” Barack remarked. When the colleague offered pro forma congratulations, Barack told him to “save it” and uttered an ethnic put-down. “Barack, go fuck yourself,” the senator replied, explaining that “Barack was an arrogant motherfucker.” Barack’s postprimary demeanor led senators to ask “Who the fuck made him king?” or, as one African American colleague remarked to a black lobbyist, “Who this nigger think he gonna be? President?”

  The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) had sent Barack’s campaign their opposition research report on Jack Ryan, whom it labeled “an extreme right wing ideologue.” Ryan “is virtually incapable of answering a question in a succinct yet comprehensive fashion,” the DSCC believed, and “his facts . . . are often wrong.” That Wednesday in Springfield, Barack’s top staff and consultants assembled for a long meeting to discuss policy stances as well as a proposed general election media budget of more than $8 million.

  The next day Illinois Times, Springfield’s alternative newsweekly, posted online a piece by Todd Spivak, who previously had covered Barack for the Hyde Park Herald. Spivak noted that African American House Democrats like Lou Jones and Monique Davis had refused to back Barack in the primary. But Spivak’s lede—“It can be painful to hear Ivy League–bred Barack Obama talk jive,” using words like “homeboy” while being “perhaps more vanilla than chocolate”—easily overshadowed the House members’ put-downs. Early the next morning Spivak’s phone rang. It was Barack, “screaming at me” while denying he had ever used “homeboy.” Spivak recounted that “it seemed so silly; I thought for sure he was joking. He wasn’t.” Another reporter had heard Barack call Spivak an “asshole” at a fund-raiser, but Spivak was left “stunned” and “trembling” as Barack “shouted me down” when Spivak tried to respond. “I asked if there was anything factually inaccurate,” but Barack “cut me off” when he tried to say more. Barack had previously told Spivak not to call his cell phone, but now Barack insisted that he should have after Barack’s staff dropped the ball on Spivak’s interview request.

  A landslide victory had not made Barack any less thin-skinned, but later that day on the Senate floor he acknowledged how conscious he was of his new status. Speaking in favor of a bill to allow for the sealing of former drug offenders’ criminal records in order to improve their employment chances, Barack explained that “nobody, obviously, right now in this room, probably is more mindful of the politics of issues and how he or she votes than I am right now. Nevertheless, I feel obliged to support this bill, knowing that it could cause me problems in a mailer come November.” Given “the enormous numbers of people who are now going through the criminal justice system,” Barack cast a crucial thirtieth vote to “give people a second chance” as three other Democrats joined with unanimous Republicans in voting no.68

  On Saturday afternoon, Barack met Chicago Sun-Times religion reporter Cathleen Falsani at the coffee shop a few doors south of his campaign office. “I have a deep faith,” and “I’m rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power,” Barack explained. He spoke about his 1985–88 experiences in Roseland, erroneously saying he had joined Trinity United Church of Christ in “1987 or ’88.” Asked if he still attended Trinity, Barack answered “Every week. Eleven o’clock service,” though four years later, he accurately
acknowledged that “there was quite a big chunk of time, especially during the Senate race, where we might not have gone to Trinity for two, three months at a time.”

  Barack told Falsani that he believed that “religion at its best comes with a big dose of doubt,” especially given that “there’s an enormous amount of damage done around the world in the name of religion and certainty.” Barack said, “I think I have an ongoing conversation with God,” and that “the biggest challenge, I think, is always maintaining your moral compass. Those are the conversations I’m having internally. I’m measuring my actions against that inner voice that for me at least is audible, is active, it tells me where I think I’m on track, and where I think I’m off track.”

  Asked who in his life he looked to for guidance, Barack immediately cited Rev. Jeremiah Wright as “certainly someone I have an enormous amount of respect for,” adding that Father Michael Pfleger is “a dear friend and somebody I interact with closely.” Barack volunteered that “I think there is an enormous danger on the part of public figures to rationalize or justify their actions by claiming God’s mandate,” and he confessed that “the nature of politics is that you want to have everybody like you and project the best possible traits onto you. Oftentimes that’s by being as vague as possible.” He added that “nothing is more powerful than the black church experience,” and said that “in my own sort of mental library, the civil rights movement has a powerful hold on me.” In closing, Falsani asked Barack what he remembered about his decision to join Trinity. Barack said it was “a gradual process,” not “an epiphany,” because “there is a certain self-consciousness that I possess as somebody with probably too much book learning and also a very polyglot background.”

  Asked several years later whether he prayed, Barack said, “Yes, I do . . . every day.” Asked what he prayed for, Barack answered, “Forgiveness for my sins and flaws, which are many, the protection of my family, and that I’m carrying out God’s will, and not in a grandiose way, but simply that there is an alignment between my actions and what he would want.” Michelle said the family prayed at every meal, but among the scores of people who knew Barack well over the years, very, very few believed that religious faith played any significant role in his life. One who did was state Senate colleague Ira Silverstein, an Orthodox Jew whose Springfield office for four years adjoined Barack’s and whose daughters attended the same preschool as Barack’s. “We used to talk about Israel all the time,” Silverstein recalled. “We talked about religion a lot. He is a very religious person.” Another was attorney and author Scott Turow, with whom Barack had discussed capital punishment in such “a very spiritual way” that Scott was certain Barack’s religious faith “was really sincere.”69

  On Monday, Barack, Jim Cauley, and Claire Serdiuk flew to Washington to meet with DSCC officials and attend a Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) fund-raiser. They also met Robert Gibbs, Axelrod’s preferred candidate for communications director, a white Alabaman who until four months earlier had worked on John Kerry’s presidential campaign, and Amanda Fuchs, a Northwestern Law School graduate whom the consultants were recommending as the new policy director. Like Peter Coffey, Susan Shadow, and Kevin Thompson, Gibbs and Fuchs were both white—“nobody was whiter than Gibbs,” Pete Giangreco explained—and Barack’s insistence upon maintaining a racially balanced staff was teetering badly with the departures of Pam Smith, Kevin Watson, and Audra Wilson, and the influx of white newcomers. Barack “was very insistent that the staff be diverse,” and Giangreco recalled that agreeing to hire Gibbs “was a little bit of a pill for Barack to swallow,” especially because another candidate, Jamal Simmons, was African American. In addition, Axelrod recruited Nora Moreno, a young woman who knew Chicago well, as Gibbs’s deputy.

  “Barack’s really pounding for black operatives with some experience,” Cauley explained, and he, Joe McLean, and Tom Lindenfeld recommended Darrel Thompson, an African American who had served as a top aide to House Democrat Richard Gephardt. Barack remembered Thompson from Alice Palmer’s congressional campaign nine years earlier, but Darrel sought assurance of Barack’s political toughness when he and Cauley asked Darrel to join the campaign. “Well, if you’re asking me if I’m a punk, the answer is no,” Barack replied. “I intend to run this race and win it.” Pleased by that, Darrel agreed to come on board as chief of staff under Cauley. African American Vera Baker, who had staffed the CBC fund-raiser, agreed to move to Chicago to join Barack’s finance team. Susan Shadow added two more young fund-raisers, Jenny Yeager and Jordan Kaplan, to her and Claire’s growing team. When Gibbs asked Cauley to hire another young white press assistant, Tommy Vietor, Cauley did so knowing there would be blowback. “Barack chewed me out one afternoon and told me if I hired another white person he was going to kick my ass. ‘Jimmy, you’ve got too many white folk in here,’” Barack complained. Cauley replied by saying Vietor was only a volunteer. “I just lied to Barack,” he recounted.

  While in Washington, Barack also taped a radio program and a TV show with African American broadcaster Tavis Smiley. “I’m certainly black enough to have trouble catching a cab in New York City,” Barack assured Tavis, and on TV Barack remarked that viewers could get confused by telecasts. “Sometimes they’re watching Fox News. You know that’s gonna get ’em confused.” In an article for Salon.com entitled “The New Face of the Democratic Party—and America,” Scott Turow wrote that “Obama is the very face of American diversity.” Comparing him to prominent African American Republicans Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Turow predicted that Barack “may become the first black Democrat able to rise above race.”

  One reader of Turow’s essay was Rachel Klayman, an editor at Crown Publishing who dimly remembered that Barack had once published a book. Searching online, Klayman discovered that not only was the paperback edition of Dreams From My Father long out of print, but the rights to issue a reprint were held by Crown itself. Neither the company nor agent Jane Dystel still had a copy of Dreams, but Barack still had copies of the original paperback, and sent several to Klayman. Reading Dreams, Klayman quickly resolved to reissue the book and asked Dystel if Barack could write a preface to the new edition. Within a few weeks, Barack did just that in the space of an afternoon. Briefly surveying his life since 1995, Barack wrote that his legislative work had proven “satisfying” because “the scale of state politics allows for concrete results.” Explaining how his primary win had led to Dreams’ republication, Barack predicted, “I have a tough general election coming up.” Rereading it “for the first time in many years . . . I have the urge to cut the book by fifty pages or so,” without saying how. Citing 9/11, Barack wrote that “the bombs of Al Qaeda have marked, with eerie precision, some of the landscapes of my life . . . Nairobi, Bali, Manhattan,” but demonstrated how “the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe dooms us all.”

  Not only were Honolulu newspapers trumpeting Barack’s new fame, Columbia University’s student newspaper also wrote that the 1983 alumnus was “one of the rising stars of the Democratic party.” Barack’s campaign sent out a fund-raising e-mail warning that “our precious civil liberties are threatened by the Patriot Act,” and his policy team volunteers turned their attention to Jack Ryan’s record. Andrew Gruber surveyed the issues content on Ryan’s campaign Web site and wrote Raja Krishnamoorthi to express amazement: “it has a section on the 2nd Amendment, but does not have a section on health care.” Illinois Republicans remained privately worried about how the Tribune’s effort to unseal Ryan’s divorce file would play out, with Capitol Fax reporting that Illinois congressman and U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert had told Ryan he would be unable to raise funds in Washington until the problem was resolved. Given Ryan’s problems and the strength of Barack’s primary win, “unless Ryan unearths some very damaging political stances, legislative votes or personal ethical lapses of Obama’s, Obama will win in a walk,” Chicago columnist Russ Stewart predicted.

  A serious Republican effort was under way to investig
ate Barack’s background and record. Matt Tallmer, a former Republican National Committee operative, was tasked with much of the work, and he began by reading Dreams From My Father. “Most of the potential problems involve very minor issues,” and the book “omits whole portions of his life,” Tallmer reported. He concluded that Barack “is not certain whether he is black or white,” but resolved his racial conflict “by joining the white world.” A review of Miner Barnhill’s legal clients was also unproductive, and two memos examining Barack’s major donors were badly off-target. Only contributors to his Senate campaign, but not his earlier races, were reviewed, and although Tony Rezko’s close relationship with Governor Blagojevich was noted, neither Rezko nor any of his associates were included in a list highlighting possible “bad actors.” Instead Valerie Jarrett, an old friend who had fought an expressway, and a close friend of Michelle’s who opposed corporal punishment in schools were all oddly prioritized. An initial effort to examine Barack’s Springfield record floundered badly, but several weeks later Debbie Lounsberry, who had previously staffed the Public Health and Welfare Committee for Republicans, compiled a highly competent analysis of Barack’s potentially problematic Senate votes.70

  Barack’s campaign received encouraging news from Paul Harstad’s first general election poll. A plurality of Illinois voters felt negatively about President George W. Bush, and Democrat John Kerry led Bush 52 to 38 percent. Barack registered 85–1 in favorability among black voters, 74–3 among Democratic women, a surprising 35–13 among Republican women, and 17–28 among Republican men. Burrowing down into positive and negative themes, “represents change” was a clear plus for Barack, with health care and retirement security ranked high as well. Initially voters chose Barack over Jack Ryan by 52 to 33 percent. After both candidates’ issue positions and biographies were detailed, Barack’s lead increased to 53–30, with Ryan weakened more by his views on policies than he was strengthened by his résumé. In a summary memo to Barack’s campaign team, Harstad highlighted that even with a 19-point lead, Barack’s overall name recognition was only 73 percent, as compared to an ostensible 84 percent for Ryan. “Thus Obama has more room for growth in support than does Ryan.”