Promised Land (9781524763183)

by Obama Barack

  “Obama! Hey, look…it’s Obama! Hey, Obama, can I take a picture with you?”

  The next thing I knew, we were surrounded by families, people reaching for a handshake or an autograph, parents arranging their kids next to me for a photo. I signaled to Mike to take the girls to see the sea lions without me. For the next fifteen minutes, I gave myself over to my constituents, appreciative of their encouraging words, reminding myself that this was part of what I’d signed up for, but feeling my heart sink a little at the thought of my daughters wondering what happened to their daddy.

  I finally rejoined my kids, and Mike suggested we leave the zoo and find a quiet place to get ice cream instead. As we drove, Mike stayed mercifully quiet—the girls, not so much.

  “I think you need an alias,” Malia declared from the backseat.

  “What’s an alias?” Sasha asked.

  “It’s a fake name you use when you don’t want people to know who you are,” Malia explained. “Like ‘Johnny McJohn John.’ ”

  Sasha giggled. “Yeah, Daddy…you should be Johnny McJohn John!”

  “And you need to disguise your voice,” Malia added. “People recognize it. You have to talk with a higher voice. And faster.”

  “Daddy talks so slow,” Sasha said.

  “Come on, Daddy,” Malia said. “Try it.” She shifted into the highest-pitched, fastest voice she could muster, saying, “Hi! I’m Johnny McJohn John!”

  Unable to contain himself, Mike burst out laughing. Later, when we got home, Malia proudly explained her scheme to Michelle, who patted her on the head.

  “That’s a great idea, honey,” she said, “but the only way for Daddy to disguise himself is if he has an operation to pin back his ears.”

  * * *

  —

  ONE FEATURE OF the Senate that excited me was the ability it gave me to influence foreign policy, something that the state legislature didn’t afford. Since college, I’d been particularly interested in nuclear issues, and so even before my swearing in, I’d written to Dick Lugar, the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, whose signature issue was nuclear nonproliferation, to let him know that I hoped to work with him.

  Dick’s response was enthusiastic. A Republican from Indiana and a twenty-eight-year veteran of the Senate, he was reliably conservative on domestic issues like taxes and abortion, but on foreign policy he reflected the prudent, internationalist impulses that had long guided mainstream Republicans like George H. W. Bush. In 1991, shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Dick had teamed up with Democrat Sam Nunn to design and pass legislation that allowed America to aid Russia and former Soviet states in securing and deactivating weapons of mass destruction. Nunn-Lugar, as it came to be known, proved a bold and durable achievement—more than 7,500 nuclear warheads would be deactivated over the next two decades—and its implementation helped facilitate relationships between U.S. and Russian national security officials that were critical in managing a dangerous transition.

  Now, in 2005, intelligence reports indicated that extremist groups like al-Qaeda were scouring poorly guarded outposts throughout the former Soviet bloc, searching for remaining nuclear, chemical, and biological materials. Dick and I began discussing how to build on the existing Nunn-Lugar framework to further protect against such threats. Which is how in August that year I found myself with Dick on a military jet, headed for a weeklong visit to Russia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan. Though the need to monitor Nunn-Lugar’s progress had made such visits routine for Dick, this was my first official foreign trip, and over the years I had heard stories about congressional junkets—the less than strenuous schedules, the lavish dinners and shopping sprees. If that was supposed to be the deal, though, Dick had not gotten the memo. Despite being in his seventies, he maintained a relentless pace. After a day full of meetings with Russian officials in Moscow, we flew a couple of hours southeast to Saratov and then drove another hour to visit a secret nuclear storage site where American funding had helped upgrade the security surrounding Russian missiles. (We were also treated to a meal of borscht and a type of fish gelatin, which Dick gamely ate while I spread it around my plate like a six-year-old.)

  Visiting the city of Perm near the Ural Mountains, we wandered through a graveyard of SS-24 and SS-25 missile casings, the last remnants of tactical nuclear warheads once aimed at Europe. In Donetsk, in the eastern part of Ukraine, we toured an installation where warehouses of conventional weapons—ammunition, high-grade explosives, surface-to-air missiles, and even tiny bombs hidden in children’s toys—had been collected from around the country and were now slated for destruction. In Kiev, we were taken by our hosts to a dilapidated, unguarded three-story complex in the center of town, where Nunn-Lugar was funding the installation of new storage systems for Cold War–era biological research samples, including anthrax and bubonic plague. It was sobering, all of it, proof of people’s capacity to harness ingenuity in the service of madness. But for me, after so many years spent focused on domestic issues, the trip was also invigorating—a reminder of just how big the world was and of the profound human consequences of decisions made in Washington.

  Watching Dick operate would leave a lasting impression. His gnomish face always fixed in a placid smile, he was tireless in answering my questions. I was struck by the care, precision, and mastery of facts he demonstrated anytime he spoke in meetings with foreign officials. I observed his willingness to endure not only travel delays but also endless stories and noontime vodka shots, knowing that common courtesy spoke across cultures and ultimately could make a difference in advancing American interests. For me, it was a useful lesson in diplomacy, an example of the real impact a senator could have.

  Then a storm hit, and everything changed.

  * * *

  —

  OVER THE COURSE of the week I’d spent traveling with Dick, a tropical weather system that had formed over the Bahamas crossed Florida and deposited itself in the Gulf of Mexico, picking up energy over the warmer waters and aiming itself ominously at the southern shores of the United States. By the time our Senate delegation landed in London to meet with Prime Minister Tony Blair, a ferocious and full-blown catastrophe was under way. Making landfall with 125 mph winds, Hurricane Katrina had leveled entire communities along the Gulf Coast, overwhelmed levees, and left much of New Orleans underwater.

  I stayed up half the night watching the news coverage, stunned by the murky, primordial nightmare washing across the television screen. There were floating corpses, elderly patients trapped in hospitals, gunfire and looting, refugees huddled and losing hope. To see such suffering was bad enough; to see the slow government response, the vulnerability of so many poor and working-class people, made me ashamed.

  A few days later, I joined George H. W. and Barbara Bush, along with Bill and Hillary Clinton, in a visit to Houston, where thousands of people displaced by the hurricane had been bused to emergency shelters set up inside the sprawling Astrodome convention complex. Together with the Red Cross and FEMA, the city had been working around the clock to provide basic necessities, but it struck me as I moved from cot to cot that many of the people there, most of whom were Black, had been abandoned long before the hurricane—scratching out a living on the periphery without savings or insurance. I listened to their stories about lost homes and loved ones missing in the flood, about their inability to evacuate because they had no car or couldn’t move an ailing parent, people no different from those I’d worked to organize in Chicago, no different from some of Michelle’s aunts or cousins. I was reminded that no matter how my circumstances may have changed, theirs had not. The politics of the country had not. Forgotten people and forgotten voices remained everywhere, neglected by a government that often appeared blind or indifferent to their needs.

  I felt their hardship as a rebuke, and as the only African American in the Senate, I decided it was time to end my moratorium on national media appearance
s. I hit the network news shows, arguing that while I didn’t believe racism was the reason for the botched response to the Katrina disaster, it did speak to how little the ruling party, and America as a whole, had invested in tackling the isolation, intergenerational poverty, and lack of opportunities that persisted in large swaths of the country.

  Back in Washington, I worked with my colleagues drafting plans to help rebuild the Gulf region as part of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. But life in the Senate felt different. How many years in that chamber would it take to actually make a difference in the lives of the people I’d met in Houston? How many committee hearings, failed amendments, and budget provisions negotiated with a recalcitrant chairman would be required to offset the misguided actions of a single FEMA director, Environmental Protection Agency functionary, or Department of Labor appointee?

  Such feelings of impatience were compounded when, a few months later, I joined a small congressional delegation on a visit to Iraq. Nearly three years after the U.S.-led invasion, the administration could no longer deny the disaster the war had become. In disbanding the Iraqi military and allowing the Shiite majority to aggressively remove large numbers of Sunni Muslims from government positions, U.S. officials had created a situation that was chaotic and increasingly perilous—a bloody sectarian conflict marked by escalating suicide assaults, roadside explosions, and car bombs detonating on crowded market streets.

  Our group visited U.S. military bases in Baghdad, Fallujah, and Kirkuk, and from the Black Hawk helicopters that carried us the entire country looked exhausted, the cities pockmarked by mortar fire, the roads eerily quiet, the landscape coated with dust. At each stop, we met commanders and troops who were smart and courageous, driven by the conviction that with the right amount of military support, technical training, and elbow grease, Iraq could someday turn the corner. But my conversations with journalists and with a handful of high-ranking Iraqi officials told a different story. Wicked spirits had been unleashed, they said, with the killings and reprisals between Sunnis and Shiites making the prospect of reconciliation distant, if not unattainable. The only thing holding the country together appeared to be the thousands of young soldiers and Marines we’d deployed, many of them barely out of high school. More than two thousand of them had been killed already, and many thousands more injured. It seemed clear that the longer the war dragged on, the more our troops would become targets of an enemy they often could not see and did not understand.

  Flying back to the United States, I couldn’t shake the thought of those kids paying the price for the arrogance of men like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who’d rushed us into war based on faulty information and refused, still, to fully consider the consequences. The fact that more than half of my Democratic colleagues had approved this fiasco filled me with an altogether different kind of worry. I questioned what might happen to me the longer I stayed in Washington, the more embedded and comfortable I became. I saw now how it could happen—how the incrementalism and decorum, the endless positioning for the next election, and the groupthink of cable news panels all conspired to chip away at your best instincts and wear down your independence, until whatever you once believed was utterly lost.

  If I’d been on the edge of feeling content, thinking I was in the right job, doing the right thing at an acceptable pace, Katrina and my Iraq visit put a stop to all that. Change needed to come faster—and I was going to have to decide what role I would play in bringing it about.

  CHAPTER 4

  RARELY DOES A WEEK GO by when I don’t run into somebody—a friend, a supporter, an acquaintance, or a total stranger—who insists that from the first time they met me or heard me speak on TV, they knew I’d be president. They tell me this with affection, conviction, and a certain amount of pride in their political acumen, talent spotting, or soothsaying. Sometimes they will cloak it in religious terms. God had a plan for you, they’ll tell me. I’ll smile and say that I wish they had told me this back when I was thinking about running; it would have saved me a lot of stress and self-doubt.

  The truth is, I’ve never been a big believer in destiny. I worry that it encourages resignation in the down-and-out and complacency among the powerful. I suspect that God’s plan, whatever it is, works on a scale too large to admit our mortal tribulations; that in a single lifetime, accidents and happenstance determine more than we care to admit; and that the best we can do is to try to align ourselves with what we feel is right and construct some meaning out of our confusion, and with grace and nerve play at each moment the hand that we’re dealt.

  I know that by the spring of 2006, the idea of me running for president in the next election, while still unlikely, no longer felt outside the realm of possibility. Each day, our Senate office was inundated with media requests. We were getting twice as much mail as other senators. Every state party and candidate for the November midterm elections wanted me to headline their events. And our rote denials that I was planning to run seemed only to fuel speculation.

  One afternoon, Pete Rouse walked into my office and closed the door behind him.

  “I want to ask you something,” he said.

  I looked up from the constituent letters I’d been signing. “Shoot.”

  “Have your plans changed for 2008?”

  “I don’t know. Should they?”

  Pete shrugged. “I think the original plan to stay out of the limelight and focus on Illinois made sense. But your profile’s not going down. If there’s even a remote chance you’re considering it, I’d like to write a memo outlining what we need to do to keep your options open. You all right with that?”

  I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling, knowing the implications of my answer. “Makes sense,” I finally said.

  “Okay?” Pete asked.

  “Okay.” I nodded, returning to my paperwork.

  “The Memo Master” is how some on the staff referred to Pete. In his hands, the lowly memorandum approached an art form, each one efficient and oddly inspiring. A few days later, he distributed a revised road map for the remainder of the year for my senior team to consider. It called for an expanded travel schedule to support more Democratic candidates in the midterms, meetings with influential party officials and donors, and a retooled stump speech.

  For months to come, I followed this plan, putting myself and my ideas before new audiences, lending my support to Democrats in swing states and swing districts, and traveling to parts of the country I’d never been to before. From the West Virginia Jefferson-Jackson Dinner to the Nebraska Morrison Exon Dinner, we hit them all, packing the house and rallying the troops. Anytime someone asked if I was going to run for president, though, I continued to demur. “Right now, I’m just focused on getting Ben Nelson back to the Senate, where we need him,” I’d say.

  Was I fooling them? Was I fooling myself? It’s hard to say. I was testing, I suppose, probing, trying to square what I was seeing and feeling as I traveled around the country with the absurdity of my launching a national campaign. I knew that a viable presidential candidacy wasn’t something you just fell into. Done right, it was a deeply strategic endeavor, built slowly and quietly over time, requiring not only confidence and conviction but also piles of money and enough commitment and goodwill from others to carry you through all fifty states and two straight years of primaries and caucuses.

  Already, a number of my fellow Democratic senators—Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Evan Bayh, and, of course, Hillary Clinton—had laid the groundwork for a possible run. Some had run before; all had been preparing for years and had a seasoned cadre of staff, donors, and local officials lined up to help. Unlike me, most could point to a record of meaningful legislative accomplishments. And I liked them. They had treated me well, broadly shared my views on the issues, and were more than capable of running an effective campaign and, beyond that, an effective White House. If I was becoming convinced that I could excite vo
ters in ways that they couldn’t—if I suspected that only a wider coalition than they could build, a different language than they used, could shake up Washington and give hope to those in need—I also understood that my favored status was partly an illusion, the result of friendly media coverage and an over-stoked appetite for anything new. The infatuation could reverse itself in an instant, I knew, the rising star transformed into the callow youth, presumptuous enough to think he could run the country less than halfway through his first term.

  Better to hold off, I told myself. Pay dues, collect chits, wait my turn.

  On a bright spring afternoon, Harry Reid asked me to stop by his office. I trudged up the wide marble stairs from the Senate chamber to the second floor, the unsmiling, dark-eyed portraits of long-dead men staring down upon me with each step. Harry greeted me in the reception area and led me into his office, a big, high-ceilinged room with the same intricate moldings, tile work, and spectacular views that other senior senators enjoyed, but short on memorabilia or photos of handshakes with the famous that adorned other offices.

  “Let me get to the point,” Harry said, as if he were known for small talk. “We’ve got a lot of people in our caucus planning to run for president. I can hardly count them all. And they’re good people, Barack, so I can’t be out there publicly, taking sides…”