Rising Star

by David Garrow

  Barack found the relentless schedule of a nationwide presidential campaign daunting. “I like a certain brand of green tea” and “I’m a big trail mix guy,” he told the Today show. “But the main thing is to get my workouts in . . . you’ve got to block out an hour somewhere.” In another interview, he confessed that “you never get over the sacrifice of being away from your family. I was home one day this week and rode bikes with my daughters, went to the dentist last week, and took them to dinner.” Asked if he dreamed of the White House, Barack said no. “I don’t dream of the White House. I dream of the beach. I dream of playing basketball. I dream about my kids.”4

  At a forum televised by CNN, Barack volunteered that “I am where I am today because of the education that I received,” and he appeared to have Keith Kakugawa in mind when he cited how “we have ex-offenders who are coming out of prisons constantly—thousands each and every day. We’re going to have to make a commitment to provide them a second chance,” which “will require a government investment in transitional jobs because” ex-offenders were such anathema to the private sector.

  In the Senate, on June 6 Barack offered a controversial floor amendment to a delicately crafted bipartisan immigration reform bill. The pending measure included a “points” system to prioritize visas for skilled immigrants over those with family ties for the next fourteen years. Barack wanted to “sunset” that factor, which liberals viewed with distaste, at five years. “I am willing to defer to those Senators who negotiated this provision and say we should give it a try, but I am not willing to say this untested system should be made virtually permanent.” That made South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, one of the architects of the bipartisan compromise, “very, very mad,” Graham recalled, and his floor response reflected that. “Some people, when it comes to tough decisions, back away, because when you talk about bipartisanship, some Americans on the left and right consider it heresy, and we are giving in if we adopt this amendment,” Graham warned. “It means that everybody over here who has walked the plank and told our base you are wrong” in opposing compromise would be shafted. “You are going to destroy this deal,” for “some people don’t want to say to the loud folks ‘No, you can’t have your way all the time.’” Then Graham directly addressed Barack. “So when you are out on the campaign trail, my friend, telling about why we can’t come together, this is why.”

  Obama “briefly appeared stunned” by Graham’s comment, the Associated Press reported, and replied meekly. The amendment, he said, says that “we will go forward with the proposal that has been advanced by this bipartisan group. It simply says we should examine after five years whether the program is working.” Barack asked senators to “consider the nature of the actual amendment that is on the floor as opposed to the discussion that preceded mine.” Just before the vote, Barack spoke again. “The authors of this legislation deserve credit for working diligently and coming up with a carefully balanced bill,” but the new system would be “a radical departure from the one we have had in the past” and his amendment “simply says that after five years, we will reexamine the bill.” Graham disagreed. “If we sunset the merit-based system at five years, there is no vehicle left,” he warned. Barack’s amendment was defeated 42–55, with eight Democrats, including lead negotiators Dianne Feinstein and Ted Kennedy, joining all but one Republican in voting against it. Immediately after the vote, Barack and Graham got into a “heated exchange” just off the Senate floor. “They were going at it,” Florida Republican Mel Martinez told the AP. “We could hear them inside.” Graham told the AP, “I said, ‘I’m very disappointed in you,’” explaining that Barack “gave in to pressure from the left, and the pressure from the left and right was enormous.” Barack said “it’s a matter of too much coffee and people being on the floor too long,” but Graham later remarked that Barack had “folded like a cheap suit.”5

  In mid-June, Barack reacted with unusual fury when the New York Times revealed that his campaign had given journalists a not-for-attribution document attacking Hillary Clinton’s close ties to the Indian American community and mocking her as “(D-Punjab).” Close friends like Hasan Chandoo had purposely kept a low profile once Barack announced. “We all disappeared. The last thing he needs is a bunch of Paki friends,” Hasan explained, but following the Times story Barack recounted that “I had to go and call some of my best friends and explain why my campaign was engaging in xenophobia. That was the most angry I’ve been in this campaign.” The following morning, a Chicago Tribune story headlined “Obama Team Can Play Rough” cited the Times’ “Punjab” story as one reflection of how “Obama has surrounded himself with operatives skilled in the old-school art of the political back-stab.”

  The Tribune also previewed a forthcoming biography of Barack by Tribune reporter David Mendell, who had covered his 2004 Senate campaign. The Trib said Mendell portrayed Barack as “a far more calculating politician than his most ardent supporters might imagine,” citing how Barack had given his October 2002 antiwar speech in part “to curry favor” with rally organizer and wealthy donor Bettylu Saltzman. “Barack was not happy,” Saltzman recalled, and when she told him she was submitting a letter of rebuttal, Barack’s response was “You better.” Early in the book Mendell highlighted Barack’s “imperious, mercurial, self-righteous and sometimes prickly nature” and said that after compiling an “aggressively liberal” record in Springfield, Barack in Washington had taken “a dramatic turn toward calculation and caution.”6

  On the campaign trail, Barack vowed that “I will sign a universal health care plan that covers every American by the end of my first term as president.” In Iowa, Barack cited how his childhood years in Indonesia and his Kenyan roots informed his opposition to the Iraq war, because they had taught him “how powerful tribal and ethnic sentiments are.” Journalists were astonished when Barack’s first Iowa television ad featured Illinois Republican state senator Kirk Dillard. “Senator Obama worked on some of the deepest issues we had and was successful in a bipartisan way. Republican legislators respected Senator Obama. His negotiation skills and an ability to understand both sides would serve the country well.” Dillard told reporters he supported Republican John McCain for the presidency, but said that Barack’s candidacy, “whether he wins or loses, is good for Illinois and it’s good for the United States.”

  Barack told an NPR host that “it’s important to make sure that I don’t lose my core honesty with myself and that I don’t start trimming my sails or biting my tongue in order to get elected.” Finishing a “downright tentative” speech to a predominantly black female audience at New Orleans’s Superdome, Barack had trouble finding an exit through the stage curtain as his lapel mike captured him telling himself, “If I can just find which way to go.” Back in Chicago, speaking to yet another South Side antiviolence rally, Barack noted that “in this last school year, thirty-two Chicago public school students were killed,” more deaths “than the number of soldiers from this whole state who were killed in Iraq. Think about that. At a time when we’re spending $275 million a day on a war overseas, we’re neglecting the war that’s being fought in our own streets.” To a black audience in Washington’s most forlorn neighborhood, Barack cited the millions of Americans who “cannot write thousand-dollar campaign checks to make their voices heard. They suffer most from a politics that has been tipped in favor of those with the most money.”7

  Appearing before the National Association of Black Journalists, Barack made fun of the number of commentators who had wondered whether he was “black enough” by arriving twenty minutes late. “I want to apologize for being a little late, but you guys keep on asking whether I’m black enough,” Barack began as the audience convulsed in laughter. “Uh-huh, that’s right—so I figured I’d stroll in about ten minutes after deadline. I’ve been holding that in my pocket for a while.” Then Barack turned serious. “The day I’m inaugurated, the racial dynamics in this country will change to some degree. If you’ve got Michelle as firs
t lady, and Malia and Sasha running around on the South Lawn, that changes how America looks at itself. It changes how white children think about black children, and it changes how black children think about black children.”

  Michelle too was now an almost full-time public figure. “As the campaign has moved along, her speeches have become stronger, funnier and more personable,” a Chicago Sun-Times correspondent wrote. “She speaks with more emotion than her husband; you feel she is the power propelling him, that she has the psychological mettle, the tough skin, the searing ambition.” As for campaigning, “the little sacrifice we have to make is nothing compared to the possibility of what we could do if this catches on,” Michelle now believed. Barack likewise said that “Michelle and I would not be doing this if we didn’t think that at some level it’s worth it. . . . You’re doing this because you genuinely think that you can bring the country together. . . . If I didn’t think I was going to be able to do that, then this wouldn’t be worth it. It exacts a high toll.”

  Reporter Ryan Lizza, who had begun covering Barack in 2004, expressed his “realization that Obama . . . is more of an old-fashioned pol than you think,” that “underneath the inspirational leader who wants to change politics . . . is an ambitious, prickly, and occasionally ruthless politician.” Judd Miner confessed to Lizza that “his biggest disappointment was that Obama hired as his top strategist David Axelrod,” whom Judd and other Harold Washington–era progressives rightly viewed as a Daley machine operative pretending to be something better. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote that Barack’s “almost eerie self-confidence” reflected a persona that is “closer to a rock star than a typical politician.” Without naming Axelrod, Ignatius quoted “a top Obama adviser” as explaining that Barack “is totally pragmatic. He asks what would work and what wouldn’t.”

  An enterprising Denver reporter visited the Hyde Park Hair Salon to ask barber Abdul Karim about Barack. “He’s changed a little bit. I’ll be honest with you. He’s not as vocal. He’s not as natural as he used to be. There’s two Baracks now. There’s the Barack who comes in on a Sunday when we’re all busy and he can’t be himself. He has to be the politician, shake all the hands. And then there’s the Barack who comes in here late on Saturday, nobody here. That’s the guy we always knew. Talk a little basketball, talk about the Bulls, the fight that was on last night. You know what I’m saying? I know that Barack. I don’t necessarily know the other one.”

  Old friend Rob Fisher explained that Barack was coming to realize “that the public image of who he is is not who he actually is.” Another unnamed friend made the same point to The New Yorker’s Larissa MacFarquhar: “I think sometimes he feels phony to himself.” Barack has “to struggle with . . . being a regular guy who has become a persona named Barack Obama. The persona is going to get . . . more and more distant from him and the way he used to live his life.” Barack himself later acknowledged how “there’s me, and then there’s this character named ‘Barack Obama.’” A wide range of longtime acquaintances now saw a “veneer” that had not existed before 2004. “There’s a little bit of a wall there. You don’t really get to know him,” explained a Law Review colleague who continued to host fund-raisers for Barack. There is a “wall that’s up,” or a “drawbridge” marking “as close as Barack lets you get to him,” explained another old friend. Prior to his fame, Barack “was much more accessible emotionally,” former Chicago aide Cynthia Miller explained. “To everyone.”8

  Barack’s campaign had outdone all other candidates in both parties by raising over $58 million during the first half of 2007, but by mid-September, with national polls showing Hillary Clinton maintaining a commanding lead, nervousness among donors led Barack and Michelle to ask Valerie Jarrett to assume an active role in his campaign. Although Jarrett had known Barack since 1991, she had played almost no role in his 2000 congressional race and became an active presence in his U.S. Senate campaign only in early 2004. With no campaign experience, to staffers and reporters alike Jarrett seemed like an odd addition, but Valerie’s regard for Barack knew no bounds. “He’s always wanted to be president,” she told The New Yorker. “He didn’t always admit it, but oh, absolutely. The first time he said it to me, he said ‘I just think I have some special qualities, and wouldn’t it be a shame to waste them.’” To New Yorker editor David Remnick, Jarrett went even further. “I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. . . . He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows he has that ability—the extraordinary, uncanny ability—to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them, and make sense of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually.” Jarrett told another interviewer that Barack was “really by far smarter than anybody I know,” and to Remnick she emphasized that Barack was “somebody with such extraordinary talents . . . he’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.” In another conversation, Valerie emphatically stated that Barack “is a man who is devoted to his wife. There aren’t going to be any skeletons in his closet in terms of his personal life at all. Period.”

  Following a pair of mid-September news stories, a more critical evaluation came from someone who had once known Barack far better than even Jarrett. On September 20, reports quoted Jesse Jackson Sr. as privately complaining that Barack was “acting like he’s white” given his disinterest in a racial controversy in Jena, Louisiana. Later that day the Senate debated a resolution denouncing a MoveOn.org ad that had mocked General David Petraeus as “General Betray Us.” Barack declined to vote for or against it, saying that “the focus of the United States Senate should be on ending this war, not on criticizing newspaper advertisements. . . . By not casting a vote, I registered my protest against this empty politics.” A Washington Post politics blog ran a story on the contretemps, and by 11:00 A.M. the following morning logged-in readers had posted eleven comments on the report. Then came a twelfth:

  I can’t believe the excuses the Obamamanics give their gutless leader. He should have taken a stand—yea or nay—on the Moveon.org ad. He claims he’s above such politics but his decision not to vote was motivated by politics: he doesn’t want to alienate the Moveon.org people since he needs to compete in the Democratic primaries, but he still wants to be seen as a moderate in the general elections. It was a political move, not a courageous one. Leadership is about courage. If he’s too pure for dirty politics, then what does he want to be President for? And where was he in Jena, by the way??

  The commenter signed off as “Recovered Obamamanic,” but her Web log-in showed that it was “Posted by: sheila.jager.” Six years had passed since she and Barack had last been in touch; Barack had launched his presidential campaign without contacting her. Sheila later explained, “I remember being really, really upset at this time over the ‘Betray Us’ ad and really mad at Barack for not being courageous enough to smack them down.” Courage had been “a big issue between us”; “it was a passing fury, though. I’ve forgiven him since.”9

  Barack’s campaign manager David Plouffe admitted to one reporter that winning “Iowa—that’s the whole shebang!” before adding, “I guess I’m not supposed to say that.” On October 11, all of Barack’s top aides gathered in Chicago for a comprehensive review of strategy and messaging. Voters wanted a president “who can unite the country and restore our sense of purpose,” an overview memo said. Barack’s “change you can believe in” slogan was aimed at creating a character contrast with Hillary Clinton, who was “driven by political calculation, not conviction.” Appearing on Tavis Smiley’s television show, Barack acknowledged that for many people his appeal “has to do less with the positions I’m taking than the tone I’m taking.”

  On October 30, Barack turned in his best debate performance to date. That same day, however, Sheila Jager weighed in with yet another biting critique, this time in response to a Washington Post story detailing how Barack “has changed his positio
n” on Social Security since last May. “Obama had moved from being open to a solution that might include raising the retirement age or indexing benefits to prices rather than wages . . . to one of making the protection of benefits one of his three core principles,” the Post stated. “Obama’s decision to wall off benefits might be interpreted as a political calculation,” and “Obama now owes it to voters to explain his own evolution.” Sheila was similarly disappointed:

  One cannot help but feel Obama’s desperation, especially when his stance on the issues are now presented in stark contrast to what he said before (e.g. on Iran and now Social Security). Does he think that the electorate is too dumb to remember his earlier pronouncements or that we cannot see political maneuvering when he does it in our face? Is this the politics of hope? What happened to the Obama of old? Where did he go????10