Rising Star

by David J. Garrow

  Thanks in significant part to Rob Fisher’s insistent advocacy, Barack had “radically restructured” the book into a far more personal narrative than he initially had envisioned. “Originally it was going to be very much an academic book, focusing on civil rights law and civil rights policies,” Barack explained a few months later. But “as I wrote it, it ended up becoming much more of a personal reflection on what it means for me to be an African American, and what my relationship is to this community as well as to Africa.” Several years later Barack confessed that he had “sometimes thought ‘Was it worth it for me to write the book?’” but Rob’s encouragement, plus the $40,000 he owed Simon & Schuster, had helped force him to make the successful expedition to Bali to carry out the restructuring Rob had advocated. “In retrospect I can’t imagine anything harder actually than writing a book,” Barack later explained, “because it’s very hard to feel confident consistently that what you have to say about your life is interesting in any way whatsoever.”

  But Henry Ferris’s reaction made that self-doubt moot, and when Henry shared the manuscript with his immediate boss, Times Books publisher Peter Osnos, his response was similar. “I liked it, Henry liked it,” and they told Dystel they would offer a $40,000 advance, but they wanted to meet Barack in person before issuing a contract. Sometime late that spring, Barack, and apparently Michelle, flew to New York so that Barack could introduce himself to Ferris and Osnos at Times Books’ offices on East 50th Street. Their conversation was “spectacularly routine,” Osnos later recounted, and “led fairly rapidly to the acquisition of the book, whereupon it moved into Henry’s hands” to edit. By early summer Ferris was immersed in recommending condensation after condensation to Barack so as to shrink and tighten the oversized manuscript, and a formal contract was executed. Times Books would pay that $40,000 not to Barack, but directly to Simon & Schuster, thereby removing a huge load from the finances of a young couple who still faced substantial Harvard Law School loan debts. There had been no reason for Michelle to accompany Barack to Times Books’ offices, but a most unlikely witness clearly remembered seeing them together on that visit.

  “It was a sunny day,” somewhere “in the 50s” on Manhattan’s East Side. “I saw him walking down the street, Madison Avenue, and he was with a young African American woman . . . and they had shopping bags, and I was walking towards them,” Alex McNear recalled, “and all of a sudden they crossed the street.” Presumably Alex was a beautiful blond part of his past that Barack did not want to revisit, at least not with Michelle in tow, and Alex always remembered the sudden avoidance. “I can almost picture it.”15

  With their modest finances now in relatively good order, thanks primarily to Barack’s $70,000 salary at Davis Miner, the young couple began to look for a home of their own as they approached the two-year anniversary of their co-occupancy of Marian Robinson’s modest house in South Shore. They focused on Hyde Park, and by midsummer, they were ready to close on a spacious, 2,200-square-foot, four-bedroom first-floor condominium in handsome East View Park. Built in the 1920s as a rental development and converted to condominiums in 1976, East View’s eleven three-story brick and stone buildings each had six flats of side-by-side floor-through units that faced a handsome private park with convenient, resident-only roadway parking. From the entrance of the Obamas’ unit, a living room with a beautiful green-tiled fireplace plus an adjoining front sun parlor preceded three private bedrooms and a pair of bathrooms. A spacious dining room led into the kitchen, off of which were a small maid’s room, a half bath with laundry facilities, and a small outdoor rear porch.

  The price was $277,500, and with a 40 percent down payment—$111,000—the Obamas obtained a good mortgage rate. Barack later said that his grandmother Madelyn “helped a little bit on the down payment,” which was likely quite an understatement: neither Barack nor Michelle had any significant savings, and a retired, now-widowed bank vice president who for the last quarter century had lived in a modest apartment may well have provided the entire $111,000. Barack later acknowledged that “our combined monthly student loan” payments were “more than our mortgage,” and although Michelle had a nice Saab, which Barack borrowed whenever he could, Barack was still driving the rusty, off-yellow Toyota Tercel that had carried him to Harvard in 1988 and offered passengers a clear view of the pavement below.

  Before moving in, Barack and Michelle wanted to modernize some features, particularly the kitchen, and Barack’s uncle Charles Payne, whose own Hyde Park home remodeling they much admired, gave them the names of his contractors. Some months later, when a prospective purchaser of another East View unit asked his realtor about the prospects of updating the apartment, the Obamas “graciously and politely” gave the agent and her client a tour of their home. “Their apartment was shown to us as an example of how you can take a dump and make a gorgeous pearl out of it. It was breathtakingly beautiful,” he recalled. “Most striking” of all was the Obamas’ kitchen, which was “gorgeously renovated.”

  The move to Hyde Park, where all manner of retail stores, casual restaurants, lakefront parkland, basketball courts, and even the law school were within comfortable walking distance, represented a significant quality-of-life upgrade from South Shore, whose principal shopping street, East 71st, was littered with countless tattered storefronts. The barbershop Barack had patronized since he first arrived in Hyde Park was just a few blocks away, and a wide variety of local men, from grad students to old Harvard acquaintances to UC security guards, remember Barack as a regular basketball player at the UC’s gym, at a lakefront court a few blocks south, and at a small church across from Jesse Jackson Sr.’s Operation PUSH headquarters.

  Soon after moving to East View, Barack also became a customer at the local movie rental store, Video Good Guys on East 55th Street. Owner Garland Cox noted that the new patron had the same first name as a friendly regular, to whom he mentioned the coincidence later that day. “We just had another Barack sign up today,” Cox told Barack Echols, whose mother, Sandra Hansen, twenty-six years earlier had named her son after the impressive friend who had helped her flee Nairobi and return home to Illinois. Echols had spent four years in the U.S. Army before resuming his undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago, and he had read about the younger Obama when Barack was elected Law Review president.

  “Is it Barack Obama?” Echols asked Cox, who confirmed his guess. “I’m actually named after his father,” Echols explained, mentioning his mother’s time in Kenya. Echols lived right across the street and told Cox to call him the next time Obama came in. A week or so later, Cox telephoned, and Echols ran across to introduce himself. “My name is Barack too,” he told an astonished Obama, and pulled out his driver’s license as proof. “I heard all these stories about ‘big Barack’ growing up,” he told Obama. “Wow, that’s really interesting. What an incredible story,” Obama replied. “‘We should talk again,’ which of course we never did,” Echols later recounted, for in truth Barack was no more interested in revisiting his father’s years in Kenya than he was in running into Alex McNear.

  The move to East View put Barack and Michelle just a block from where her brother Craig and his wife Janis lived. Given their proximity, Janis recalled that Michelle “would come over all the time,” and Janis and Craig regularly visited Barack and Michelle’s “huge” apartment. Craig remembered that at one family gathering, Barack said that some day he might run for public office, and when Craig mentioned alderman, Barack demurred. “He said no—at some point he’d like to run for the U.S. Senate. And then he said, ‘Possibly even run for president at some point.’” Craig was puzzled. “President? President of what?” he asked. Barack made his intent clear, but Craig balked. “Don’t say that too loud. Someone might hear you and think you were nuts.”

  Craig, as Michelle’s only sibling, and Maya Soetoro, as her brother’s closest relative, each believed that Barack and Michelle were very good for each other. Maya had just married a fellow University of Hawaii und
ergraduate, Gary Forth, a New Zealand–born rugby player four years her senior, and Barack later starkly regretted something he said to her about it. “The worst piece of advice that I have given to anybody was to my younger sister,” he replied to a questioner. “I once told her that she should—well no, actually, I probably shouldn’t tell that story . . . Let me pull back on that . . . I think it’s too personal.” By the next spring, Gary would file for an uncontested divorce, and the short-lived union formally dissolved some months later.

  Maya viewed Michelle as “fiercely pragmatic,” and thus “much more like our grandmother” than their mother Ann. Craig believed it was “readily apparent” that Barack “could stand up to” Michelle’s outspoken demeanor, but he thought the real key to Barack and Michelle’s relationship was that Barack “knew how to manage my sister’s personality,” and Michelle’s startling move to Public Allies clearly reflected the impact of her husband’s counsel.16

  Michelle now faced the challenge of running a start-up organization whose first class of twenty-seven Public Allies would be chosen and introduced to their organizational sponsors by early September. On many Sundays Barack and Michelle attended the 11:00 A.M. service at Trinity United Church of Christ, but neither of them became active in any of Trinity’s extensive range of volunteer ministries. An Ebony magazine survey of “The 15 Greatest Black Preachers” ranked fifty-two-year-old Jeremiah Wright as number two in the nation, and Trinity’s membership now approached eight thousand.

  Barack also disdained any serious involvement in a new political venture that organizing veterans Keith Kelleher of SEIU Local 880 and Madeline Talbott of ACORN were trying to launch in Chicago. The “New Party” was the brainchild of two progressive electoral strategists, Danny Cantor and Joel Rogers, the latter of whom was married to Sarah Siskind, a Madison-based partner in the Davis Miner law firm. The founders initially envisioned the party as a left-wing “fusion” presence in New York State, where candidates could run for office on multiple parties’ ballot lines. They hoped to build an entity whose independent presence would encourage Democratic politicians to move leftward so as to secure supplementary support. In Illinois they would also launch a sibling group, “Progressive Chicago,” as a “support organization to . . . bring people into the New Party.”

  Once again, Jacky Grimshaw told Kelleher to be sure to contact Barack, and at a late-July meeting, Keith explained both vehicles. They wanted to recruit signers for an initial introductory letter that would announce the creation of Progressive Chicago, and Kelleher noted that Barack is “more than happy to be involved” but was busy with Davis Miner’s work on the Chicago City Council redistricting case. Barack thought Chicago politicians would see value in the fusion concept—“some of those guys would love to get support outside [their] normal constituency”—but “will be cautious if it offends regular Democrats” and you “don’t want to have to force people into [the] New Party.” Barack recommended to Keith a number of people whom he had met during Project VOTE!—Sam Burrell and several other black aldermen, Carol Harwell, South Side political activist Ron Davis, and South Side state senator Alice Palmer. Barack wanted to see the initial Progressive Chicago letter his name would go on, and he said he “could make a mtg. but can’t put too much into it.”

  Some weeks later the letter, featuring former Project VOTE! chairman Joe Gardner’s name atop a modest list of signers that also included Talbott, Kelleher, Harwell, and Davis, explained that the new group would “unite progressive activists and organizations for progressive, grassroots electoral activity in local elections” in “a renewal of the old Harold Washington coalition.” But national cofounder Joel Rogers, writing in the socialist weekly In These Times, emphasized far grander plans. Since “both major parties are dominated by big business interests” and offered only “permanent candidates” who are “literally addicted to the private money that regularly returns them to office,” the New Party hoped “one day to be the new majority party of the United States.” Repeated efforts by Kelleher, Talbott, and Rogers to interest Barack in the New Party fell on entirely deaf ears.17

  Before summer’s end, Barack agreed to again teach Current Issues in Racism and the Law in the spring of 1994, and he updated his UCLS biographical sketch to indicate that his forthcoming book would be published by Random House—Times Books’ parent company—rather than Poseidon’s Simon & Schuster. Barack turned down an offer from Northwestern University law dean Robert Bennett, who five years earlier had been unable to convince him to accept that full-tuition scholarship, to pursue a full-time faculty post there, although Barack did “jokingly tell me that he had made a bad mistake” in not accepting the previous offer. On the first Saturday in September, Barack and Michelle drove out to Oak Park for his organizing colleague David Kindler’s wedding, and the organizers all ended up in the balcony of the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Unity Temple.

  “Very shortly after the wedding began, two doves began to procreate on the ledge of the rafters,” Kevin Jokisch recalled. “The doves were very active, feathers were flying,” and they were “very visible and close to us.” Barack “was one of the first to notice and point out the doves,” and stage-whispered that “this marriage is truly blessed.” Those around him tried to suppress their laughter as Michelle shooshed her husband and “told all of us to be quiet” and watch the proceedings, not the copulating birds.

  Several weeks later Crain’s Chicago Business published a prototypical “40 Under Forty” feature, and cited Barack for having “galvanized Chicago’s political community as no seasoned politician had before” with Project VOTE!’s 1992 success. In a comment starkly illuminating his view of law practice, Barack told Crain’s, “it is an accomplishment to make a difference,” while “it’s no accomplishment to be a partner in a law firm.” When another interviewer asked about Barack’s political plans, his answer was similarly revealing:

  My general view about politics and running for office is that if you end up being fortunate enough to have the opportunity to serve, it’s because you’ve got a track record of service in the community, and I think right now I’m still building up that track record, and if it, a point comes where I think that I can do more good in a political office than I can doing the things I’m doing now, then I might think about it, but that time is certainly in the future.

  Late that year, Barack accepted invitations to join two boards. The Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) had an eclectic interest in grassroots development initiatives and was now home base for both Jacky Grimshaw and the late Al Raby’s closest friend Steve Perkins. Barack attended a few meetings, but never connected substantively with CNT’s work. Barack’s good friend Jean Rudd initiated a similar invite from the Woods Fund, which had just added a third professional staff member, Kaye Wilson, to direct a new grant program focusing on welfare-to-work policies that impacted poor families. “You don’t decide to go on a foundation board. You get asked,” Jean emphasized, noting how “it was quite an honor for someone of that age to be invited on.”

  On one snowy Friday that winter, Barack did a traditional Alinsky-style power analysis training for Michelle’s first-year group of twenty-seven Public Allies. “He talked about what power meant,” Michelle’s assistant Julie Alfred remembered, “money or numbers.” Michelle had spent countless hours obtaining organizational placements for her trainees, plus moving the group to better quarters and cadging secondhand furniture from McKinsey & Co.’s Chicago office thanks to old Harvard acquaintance Bernard Loyd, for whose recent home purchase Barack had done the legal work. Along with her top aide Julian Posada, Michelle also worked to assemble a local advisory board of interested civic figures. Foundation director Sunny Fischer was an early recruit, as were two executives from the investment firm William Blair & Co., which provided financial assistance as well. Posada also approached attorney Jan Anne Dubin, who was surprised when Michelle Obama turned out to be the former summer associate who had worked for her eight years earlier at Cha
dwell & Kayser as Michelle Robinson.

  With her young staffers and trainees, Michelle’s “demeanor was always tough love,” Posada explained. She was “a great boss” but also “pretty tough,” Julie Alfred agreed. Bethann Hester, a 1993–94 Ally who then went on staff, recalled how at 10:00 A.M. they often saw Barack reading the sports section at a Starbucks equidistant from both Public Allies’ new office and Davis Miner. When writing legal briefs, Barack explained, “you have to relax your brain.” Michelle regularly had her staffers over to East View, where Barack was working on his book, and Julie Alfred remembered being “really taken aback that he had a pack of Marlboro Reds there.” Barack’s heavy smoking—always heavier than he was willing to admit—was the subject of recurring objections from Michelle. “They were constantly making deals” about it, Bethann recalled. “He could smoke until he finished” the book, and “he had to go outside,” on the wooden porch “in the back of the house.”

  Michelle’s vices were limited primarily to television series like MTV’s The Real World, which she told Public Allies colleagues counted as professional development work. When Barack’s old friend Phil Boerner wrote in early March 1994 to announce the birth of his and his wife Karen’s first child, Barack replied with an informative note that confirmed the Allies’ impressions. “I must say that I’m thinking about a family of my own. In fact, I’m more than half-way there, since I got married last year,” he told Phil while enclosing a picture of Michelle. Barack mentioned his law practice and his course at UCLS, and said, “I’m finishing up a book that will hopefully be published next year.” Their old freshman roommate Imad Husein “seems to be doing fine in Pakistan,” and Barack had lost touch with old friend Paul Carpenter. “I still have the nicotine habit, but Michelle has made me promise to quit as soon as the book is done. Otherwise, no babies!”18