Rising Star

by David J. Garrow

  After a brief postdebate press conference, Barack appeared on Fox News’s Hannity & Colmes with Sean Hannity, who introduced him as “the new rock star of the Democratic Party.” Barack said, “we can disagree without being disagreeable,” and declared that “the most important thing that we have to do in improving our politics is not assuming bad faith on the part of other people.” With opponents of legal abortion, for example, “I don’t assume that they’re automatically trying to oppress women.” The next day, in an implicit reflection of just how uncompetitive the Senate race was, Barack spoke at two Naperville high schools, where the proportion of eligible voters among his listeners was very modest. A St. Louis Post-Dispatch poll showed a lead of 67 to 25 percent, and on the final Friday before election day, Barack enjoyed a leisurely lunch with Chicago mayor Richard Daley at Manny’s Deli on the Near South Side, David Axelrod’s favorite eatery.

  Barack campaigned for real on Saturday and Sunday before returning home to join his daughters for Halloween trick-or-treating in Hyde Park. Meanwhile, Alan Keyes had declared that any Roman Catholic voting for Barack would be committing “a mortal sin.” Barack responded, “I think everyone is accustomed now to Mr. Keyes’s histrionics, and I don’t think it is going to have much of an impact on this election.” On Monday, Barack headed downstate for a Springfield rally at state AFL-CIO headquarters and another stop in Madison County’s Granite City before returning home. On election morning, the whole family was up early, with Barack and Michelle arriving to vote at 7:58 A.M. at Hyde Park’s Catholic Theological Union, two blocks west of their home. Then all eyes turned toward that evening’s victory celebration at the downtown Hyatt Regency Chicago.91

  Close to two thousand people, including 167 journalists, filled the Hyatt’s Grand Ballroom once Illinois’s polls closed at 7:00 P.M. Only the precise extent of Barack’s victory was in question, and as results came in, it was clear that Barack’s landslide win reached from Chicago’s suburbs to all but a few small, heavily Republican downstate counties. In Chicago, Barack received 88 percent of the vote, winning at least 75 percent in all fifty wards. In nearby Will County, Barack’s huge ninety-thousand-vote margin helped Senate colleague Larry Walsh win a “stunning upset” in his race for county executive. Across downstate, Barack carried 61 percent of the vote, with Keyes winning only ten of Illinois’s 102 counties. In the final statewide tally, Barack trounced Keyes by a margin of 3,597,456 to 1,390,690, or 70 to 27 percent, with two minor candidates receiving the balance. It was, unsurprisingly, the most overwhelming U.S. Senate victory in Illinois history.

  At the Hyatt Regency, an exasperated Robert Gibbs received a series of apologetic phone calls from Keyes aide Dan Proft, who was trying without success to persuade his candidate to call Barack and concede defeat. Keyes never called. “I’m supposed to make a call that represents the congratulations toward that which I believe ultimately stands for and will stand for a culture evil enough to destroy the very soul and heart of my country?” Keyes told a Christian radio station. “I can’t do this. And I will not make a false gesture.”

  Realizing there was no point in waiting for Keyes to concede, Barack appeared onstage at the Hyatt to thank “the best political staff that has been put together in this state.” Singling out only “my pastor Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. of Trinity United Church of Christ” for thanks by name, Barack “most of all” thanked his family members who had joined him onstage, including sister Maya and brother-in-law Craig Robinson. In remarks that the suburban Daily Herald called “eloquent,” Barack made no reference to his defeated opponent, but he did praise retiring senator Peter Fitzgerald for serving “ably and with integrity.”

  It had been a long and grueling campaign since Barack had formally announced his candidacy in a far smaller room at the Hotel Allegro twenty-one months earlier, on January 21, 2003—so grueling that Barack got the math wrong, saying that was “656 days ago,” when actually it was 650. “This is really just the end of the beginning,” Barack stressed, emphasizing that “in the ultimate equation we will not be measured by the margin of our victory” but by “whether we are able to deliver concrete improvements to the lives of so many” Illinoisans who were struggling. Barack’s answer to that challenge was the same slogan he had trumpeted in his first television ad: “Yes we can!”

  Barack’s 70 percent landslide certainly lived up to journalists’ expectations, but across the rest of the United States, election night results were not what he had hoped for. In South Dakota, Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle lost his seat to Republican John Thune by forty-five hundred votes. Five other previously Democratic seats also went to Republicans, and with Colorado’s Ken Salazar representing the only other Democratic pickup, Republican control of the Senate jumped from 51–49 to a healthy 55–45. Even more crucially, only well after midnight did it become clear that President George W. Bush had narrowly carried Ohio, thereby defeating John Kerry, who formally conceded the race at 11:00 A.M. Wednesday.

  By then Barack, after only two hours’ sleep, had already appeared on all three networks’ morning news shows. Accepting congratulations, he told Today Show host Matt Lauer that as a politician “the most difficult thing is dealing with the lack of time for my family.” A bit later, Barack told broadcaster Tavis Smiley that “I am taking my wife out on a date this weekend, and I’m going to take the kids to the park.” Gently rebuffing Smiley’s suggestion that as the only African American senator, he would be representing black America, Barack stressed that “my first obligation is to my family, my second obligation is to the people of Illinois.” Once “I get more experience,” Barack added, “then hopefully I can also be an important voice at the national level.” Citing the efforts he had made on behalf of Democratic Senate candidates nationwide, Barack believed he would be “getting some good committee assignments,” but Democrats’ failure to capture the presidency showed that “we haven’t perfected a language that describes our values as effectively as the Republicans have.”

  President Bush called Barack to congratulate him on his election, and Barack thanked him, saying, “I’m not rooting for your failure. I’m rooting for your success” in Iraq and elsewhere. The president said he was eager to collaborate on tax reform, and Barack assured him, “I hope we can find common ground.”

  On Wednesday afternoon Barack met with reporters at his campaign office. “I want to be seen as a workhorse and not a show horse,” Barack told them, because “ultimately what is most important is your ability to shape the world around you.” He became “slightly testy” when Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times pestered him repeatedly about his presidential possibilities. “It’s a silly question,” Barack insisted. “I’m a state Senator. I was elected yesterday. I have never set foot in the U.S. Senate. I have never worked in Washington. And the notion that somehow I am going to start running for higher office, it just doesn’t make sense.” When Sweet persisted, Barack declared, “I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years, and my entire focus is making sure that I’m the best possible Senator on behalf of the people of Illinois.” For Sweet’s benefit, Barack repeated his insistence three times. “I am not running for president. I am not running for president in four years. I am not running for president in 2008.”92

  Chapter Ten

  DISAPPOINTMENT AND DESTINY

  THE U.S. SENATE

  NOVEMBER 2004–FEBRUARY 2007

  On Thursday, November 4, less than forty-eight hours after his election victory, Barack resigned his Illinois Senate seat, ended his affiliation with Miner, Barnhill & Galland, and went on indefinite leave from the U of C Law School. He also formally retained prominent Washington lawyer Robert Barnett as his new literary representative, ending his fourteen-year relationship with Jane Dystel. Weeks earlier, Dystel had secured a two-book contract for Barack, one of which would lay out “What I Believe,” but Washington attorney Vernon E. Jordan had told Barack to consider Barnett prior to signing. Eleven years earlier, Dy
stel had all but saved Barack’s life when she succeeded in reselling “Journeys in Black and White” following Poseidon’s cancellation of his initial contract, but Barnett was Washington’s superagent for political stars, charging an hourly rate for his services rather than taking a traditional 10 or 15 percent agency commission on a contract’s total value.

  On Saturday, the Democratic ward committeemen from the 13th Senatorial District met to elect Barack’s successor. Barack’s young protégé Will Burns, now back on Senate staff, was one of several highly qualified applicants, and Barack and Senate president Emil Jones Jr. both supported his candidacy. Fourth and Fifth Ward aldermen Toni Preckwinkle and Leslie Hairston effectively controlled the choice, and neither felt that Barack or Jones had gone out of their way to be helpful to their wards. Forty-year-old attorney Kwame Raoul, a Haitian American Hyde Park native and Trinity UCC member who had twice challenged Preckwinkle and possessed a $60,000 campaign bankroll, was Burns’s top competitor. “I was Barack’s guy,” Will recalled, but Barack did not press Preckwinkle or Hairston to select Burns. “Barack stayed out of the competition,” Kwame confirmed, and when the committeemen cast their votes, Raoul was their almost unanimous choice. Barack’s disinterest infuriated Burns’s closest friends, and when Kwame called Barack on his cell phone a few hours later to ask his advice, Barack semiseriously responded, “Stay out of jail!” Barack added that Raoul should be very careful about who worked in his district office, but then quickly said he was at a theater and ended the call by saying, “Hey, man, this is family time. I have to see a movie with my daughters, so I have to let you go.” Many in the audience applauded when they saw Barack with Malia and Sasha.

  Jennifer Mason handled the district office transition to Kwame. Within days she and Cynthia Miller discarded all of Barack’s old files, but on Tuesday, Barack returned to Springfield for several send-off events with his ex-colleagues. Emil Jones introduced a resolution congratulating Barack, saying that his DNC speech represented “my proudest moment in politics.” Then Barack took the podium, acknowledging that it was “a bittersweet moment” and saying “I have to give special credit to President Jones for his friendship and support, because if it weren’t for him, I don’t think I would be standing here today.”

  Those in the know throughout the statehouse and all of Illinois politics unanimously concurred. “Emil was more instrumental in him winning that U.S. Senate race than anybody,” lobbyist and poker buddy Mike Lieteau stressed. Chicago civic powerhouse Eden Martin said, “I think Emil played a much bigger role in his career than anybody knows.” Dan Shomon emphasized that Emil “was critical,” and even top donors acknowledged that Jones was “actually the most critical person to Barack’s success.” Barack happily acknowledged that Emil was his “political godfather,” but on the floor of the state Senate, even Republican leader Frank Watson warmly wished Barack “good luck” while humorously adding that “if you need any humility, you know where you can find it, right back here.” After an evening reception, his closest Springfield friends held a special poker game to drive home Watson’s point. “We brought him down to earth real quick,” explained Terry Link, describing how they worked together so that Barack lost every hand. By night’s end he had “lost everything he had,” Mike Lieteau remembered, and had to write someone a personal check. “He didn’t throw his cards or take a swing at anybody, but he wasn’t a happy person,” Terry recalled.

  Barack told reporters that the Senate committees he was most interested in were Finance, Foreign Relations, and Agriculture, and senior Illinois senator Dick Durbin stressed that Barack had “really helped himself immeasurably” with his out-of-state fund-raising work. “He’s contributed to every single Senate candidate, and that goes a long way. People really appreciate it.” Barack had already called Republican Foreign Relations Committee chairman Richard Lugar to express interest, and old Harvard Law School friend Cassandra Butts took charge of setting up Barack’s Capitol Hill office while other former classmates warned him against taking a seat on the often-contentious Judiciary Committee. Postponing for the moment any decision about whether the whole family would move to Washington, Barack said he would commute back and forth from Chicago at least until the end of the school year.1

  On Sunday morning, November 7, Barack appeared on both ABC’s This Week and NBC’s Meet the Press. Saying that “George Bush and I shared a million voters” across Illinois, Barack called for people to “disagree without being disagreeable.” Asked if he would serve his full six-year Senate term, Barack answered, “Absolutely . . . I expect to be in the Senate for quite some time.” Barack devoted the next week to a five-day “Thank You, Illinois” tour, holding town hall meetings in Peoria, Moline, Belleville, and other cities. In Peoria, Barack met with Republican congressman Ray LaHood to talk about “how we would work together for Illinois.” In Moline, Quad-City Times reporter Ed Tibbetts listened as one man told another, “You better get his autograph. He may be president one day.” A woman interjected, “He will be president someday.” In Belleville Barack declared, “it’s irresponsible to add more debt onto future generations,” while in Bloomington, the Pantagraph advised him to “stay humble” and “don’t forget you were sent to Washington, D.C. to represent Illinois.” Time magazine ran an eight-page Obama profile that described him as “charismatic” and “meticulously self-aware.” George Galland from Miner Barnhill said, “There aren’t many blindingly talented people, and most of them are pains in the ass. Barack is the whole package.” Former Virginia governor Doug Wilder said, “Obama could be president. There’s nothing to stop him.”

  Later on Sunday, Barack flew to Washington for the Senate’s four-day orientation for new senators. A temporary basement office with two desks and two telephones was an inauspicious start for a U.S. senator, and Barack told one reporter he and Michelle had “a lot of big decisions to make on how to protect our kids and keep our marriage strong.” On a more mundane level, Barack also had to decide how to allocate the significant staff budget he would have once he was officially sworn into office on January 4, 2005. “I’m tapping into friends and colleagues who have worked in Washington before to give me some sense of how to shape the office.” Most important was Cassandra Butts’s outreach to Pete Rouse, Tom Daschle’s longtime chief of staff. “I had thirty years in the federal retirement system, so I figured this was a time to go,” Rouse explained, but Cassandra had other plans, and asked Pete to meet her and Barack one evening in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel restaurant, southwest of the Capitol.

  “We talked for the first hour about how he should approach getting organized and getting established and getting set up,” Rouse recalled. Then Barack asked “would I be interested in being his chief of staff.” Pete first said no, but Barack and Cassandra persisted. “It was very much us selling Pete on why he’d want to work for a freshman senator who was like ninety-ninth in seniority,” Cassandra remembered. Barack explained how invaluable Pete could be. “I know what I’m good at. I know what I’m not good at. I know what I know, and I know what I don’t know,” Barack told Pete. “I can give a good speech. . . . I know policy. I know retail politics in Illinois. I don’t have any idea what it’s like to come into the Senate and get established in the Senate. . . . I want to get established and work with my colleagues and develop a reputation as a good senator.” Also, “I don’t know how to build a large staff and negotiate the potential pitfalls of being a relatively high-profile newcomer to the Senate. I have no intention of running for president in 2008.” Barack stressed, “I don’t want to be a black senator, I want to be a senator who happens to be black.” Given Pete’s unique level of respect within the Senate, Barack wanted him “to partner with me to make sure I get off on the right foot.” As Rouse warmed toward Barack’s request, Barack told Pete he wanted to hire a staff that was diverse in multiple ways, and would leave most of the D.C. hiring decisions to him. “It was really important to bring Pete on board,” Cassandra explained, because with Rous
e as chief of staff, it all but eliminated Barack’s learning curve as a newcomer to Capitol Hill. Pete “knew the Senate. He knew what it took to be a good senator,” especially how representing one’s home state well was crucial to building a great reputation.

  To oversee what would be multiple offices across Illinois, Barack asked first Paul Williams and then Ray Harris to take charge, but both turned him down. “Barack, this only makes sense to me if you’re going to be president in the next few years,” Paul responded, and Barack said that would not be so. Before flying back to Chicago to take his daughters to the circus, Barack met with Peter Fitzgerald and joined him for lunch in the Senate Dining Room. Fitzgerald had given up his seat by choice, and he told Barack about “all the downsides of life in the Senate.” Barack asked, “‘Do you ever have time to think?’ and I said ‘No,’” whereas in Springfield, “in the state Senate, you did have time to think.”2

  Barack stressed to journalists that “I don’t intend to be a major spokesman for the Democrats,” but a two-day visit to Manhattan to help promote Dreams From My Father’s paperback sales turned into a media blitz. Speaking on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate Show, Barack noted, “I’ve got to set up a good constituent service office” for Illinoisans and said that New York senator “Hillary Clinton has been a terrific model for me.” On CBS’s The Early Show, host Hannah Storm told Barack, “you are such a big star. Everyone’s calling you the future, the savior of the Democratic Party,” and said that “you’ve been compared to everyone from Tiger Woods to Abe Lincoln.” Barack told Charlie Rose, “I was surprised by the degree to which” his DNC speech had resonated but admitted having “what my wife considers probably too strong a sense of self-esteem.” On The Late Show, Barack joked to host David Letterman that “the main reason my wife married me was I still had family in Hawaii,” but in a subsequent radio interview Barack said, “I’ve been broke for the last ten years.” Billionaire investor Warren Buffett invited Barack to have lunch with him and his daughter Susan, and Barack chartered a private jet to fly from Chicago to Omaha for the luncheon and then back.