Obama - perspectives

[chuck]

Superb article written about Obama - back in 2004, when he was just becoming noticed in Illinois.

The Candidate

A couple of choice quotes:

Kirk Dillard, a leading Republican senator from the Chicago suburbs, looked chagrined when I asked him about Obama. “I knew from the day he walked into this chamber that he was destined for great things,” he said. “In Republican circles, we’ve always feared that Barack would become a rock star of American politics.” Still, Dillard was gracious. “Obama is an extraordinary man,” he said. “His intellect, his charisma. He’s to the left of me on gun control, abortion. But he can really work with Republicans.” Dillard and Obama have co-sponsored many bills.

People are whupped,” Obama told me. “I’m whupped. My wife is whupped. Unless it’s your job to be curious, who really has the time to sit and ask questions and explore issues?”

He didn’t look whupped. Still loose and alert after a long day, Obama was sipping iced tea in a busy, Caribbean-themed restaurant in a small shopping center in Hyde Park. But he had already spent sixteen months running for the Senate—and seven years as a state senator—and he could ruefully sympathize with the political apathy of the average beleaguered citizen. Tonight, he had turned his cell phone off and dismissed his aides; he just wanted to get home for the bedtimes of his daughters, who are two and five. His wife, Michelle, is also a lawyer, and their daily lives are the familiar three-ring American family circus—even without the steroidal additive of Barack’s political career. Yet Barack had been reluctant to take even a semester off from teaching while campaigning, partly because he needs the income. To survive this campaign financially, the Obamas will take out a second mortgage on their apartment.


“Teaching keeps you sharp,” Obama said. “The great thing about teaching constitutional law”—his subject—“is that all the tough questions land in your lap: abortion, gay rights, affirmative action. And you need to be able to argue both sides. I have to be able to argue the other side as well as Scalia does. I think that’s good for one’s politics.”

Jan Schakowsky told me about a recent visit she had made to the White House with a congressional delegation. On her way out, she said, President Bush noticed her “obama” button. “He jumped back, almost literally,” she said. “And I knew what he was thinking. So I reassured him it was Obama, with a ‘b.’ And I explained who he was. The President said, ‘Well, I don’t know him.’ So I just said, ‘You will.’ ”

Pretty sure he does now.