Rising Star

by David J. Garrow

  Appearing on CNBC with Tim Russert, Barack said that “the way we gerrymander congressional districts now has a big impact on the inability of the parties to get together, because if every district is drawn 70 percent Republican or 70 percent Democratic, then the congressional representatives in those districts don’t really feel rewarded by working with the other side” and instead fear a primary challenge. Barack favored “nonpartisan line-drawing” that would “make all these districts competitive.” Similarly, “reducing the impact of money on politics would have an impact because I think that part of the incentive here in Washington is to please the best-organized and most vocal interest groups. And they oftentimes aren’t representing the common good,” most strongly backing legislators “who are most orthodox in how they approach problems.”

  When Russert asked about his family, Barack explained “this is probably the one area of my life where I feel the most nagging doubt because I’m gone from home a lot. I like to tell myself that it’s worth the sacrifice,” that “the good that I’m doing in public office offsets” missing his daughters’ ballet recitals and soccer games. Describing Michelle as “a tough woman” who “constantly keeps me in line,” Barack said, “she’s not somebody who’s naturally political” but “tolerates it.” With “as much guilt as I already feel sometimes about being away, running for president” promised to be “extraordinarily stressful” for his family, “so that’s at the center of my considerations.” As he had told his aides in Chicago, seeking to be Americans’ president would require “a particular message” as well as “a belief in how you can improve their lives that is unique” and that he could “execute better than anybody else out there.” His newfound status, Barack emphasized, is “something that has happened very rapidly. It’s not something that’s gone according to my own internal clock and timetable.” Russert asked, “Has it changed you?” “So far it hasn’t, I don’t think,” Barack replied. “I ask my wife and I ask my close friends whether it has, and their estimation is that no, I’m still recognizably me.”41

  David Axelrod told an AP reporter that “if he decides to run,” Barack “can put the money together, and he can attract the talent.” In fact, Pete Rouse and Steve Hildebrand already had already reached out to Julianna Smoot, the finance director for Tom Daschle’s unsuccessful 2004 reelection race, to ask her to head up Barack’s fund-raising if he indeed ran. In a major speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Barack addressed “a way forward in Iraq,” “a conflict that grows more deadly and more chaotic with each passing day. A conflict that has only increased the terrorist threat it was supposed to help contain.” Noting that “al Qaeda is successfully using the war in Iraq to recruit a new generation of terrorists,” Barack called for “a strategy no longer driven by ideology or by politics, but one that’s based on a realistic assessment of the sobering facts on the ground.” Any belief that Iraq would become a “flourishing democracy” was “an ideological fantasy,” and “my deepest suspicions about this war’s inception have been confirmed and exacerbated.”

  With Iraq now “quickly spiraling out of control,” there are “no good options left in this war,” and Barack called for a withdrawal of U.S. forces, to begin within four to six months. He also warned that Afghanistan was “backsliding . . . toward chaos” on account of “our lack of focus and commitment.” Appearing live on CNN right after his address, Barack asserted that “almost every problem that we’ve confronted is one that I anticipated” in his October 2002 antiwar speech. “I seem to have gotten it right,” Barack told correspondent Don Lemon, who then asked about 2008. “I don’t have a particular timetable,” Barack replied, but when Lemon said “Very soon?” Barack responded, “absolutely.”

  Eight days later David Axelrod gave Barack a twelve-page memo making the case for why he should run. George W. Bush had been a “hyper-partisan, ideological, and unyielding” president, and voters were yearning for the opposite:

  You are uniquely suited for these times. No one among the potential candidates within our party is as well positioned to rekindle our lost idealism as Americans and pick up the mantle of change. No one better represents a new generation of leadership, more focused on practical solutions to today’s challenges than old dogmas of the left and right. That is why your convention speech resonated so beautifully. And it remains the touchstone for our campaign moving forward.

  All told, “this is a splendid time to be an outsider. That’s one of the principal reasons to run now.” Hillary Clinton “is a formidable candidate,” but “she is not a healing figure” and “will have a hard time escaping the well-formulated perceptions of her among swing voters as a left-wing ideologue.” Then Axelrod turned up the volume. “History is replete with potential candidates for the presidency who waited too long rather than examples of people who ran too soon. . . . You will never be hotter than you are right now” and “there are many reasons to believe that if you are ever to run for the presidency, this is the time.”

  Axelrod warned that with Dreams, “the disarming admissions of weakness in your book will become fodder for unflattering, irritating inquiries,” such as “How many times did you use cocaine . . . When did you stop?” Such questions will be

  more than an unpleasant inconvenience. It goes to your willingness and ability to put up with something you have never experienced on a sustained basis: criticism. At the risk of triggering the very reaction that concerns me, I don’t know if you are Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson when it comes to taking a punch.

  You care far too much what is written and said about you. You don’t relish combat when it becomes personal and nasty. When the largely irrelevant Alan Keyes attacked you, you flinched.

  In conclusion, Axelrod contended that “all of this may be worth enduring for the chance to change the world. And many, many people who believe in you are ready to march because we think the world so badly needs the change and leadership you have to offer. . . . If you pull the trigger, I am confident that we can put together a great campaign and campaign message of which we can all be proud.”42

  The next day, New Hampshire Democrats announced that Barack would visit the state to speak at their December 10 rally. Evangelical pastor Rick Warren invited Barack to join him and ultraconservative Kansas senator Sam Brownback for a World AIDS Day summit at his Orange County megachurch. When Brownback greeted Barack by saying, “Welcome to my house,” Barack demonstrated his bona fides to the crowd: “Sam, this is my house too. This is God’s house.” Telling the audience, “I don’t demonize other folks,” Barack exclaimed that “faith is not just something you have, it’s something you do.” The crowd was impressed, with one Christian journalist explaining that Barack “almost speaks here like a pastor. That’s why he gets a standing ovation from an ardently, ardently pro-life audience” despite Barack’s prochoice position.

  In a front-page New York Times story headlined “Early ‘Maybe’ from Obama Jolts ’08 Field,” Republican political consultant Mark McKinnon called Barack “the most interesting persona to appear on the political radar screen in decades.” Barack was “a walking, talking hope machine, and he may reshape American politics.” That evening liberal billionaire George Soros hosted a Manhattan session at which Barack met with a dozen top Democratic donors. In an editorial “Obama Should Run,” Barack’s hometown Chicago Tribune joined the chorus. “When a leader evokes the enthusiasm that Obama does, he should recognize that he has something special to offer, not in 2012 or 2016, but right now.” Stating that Barack has “an approach that transcends party, ideology and geography,” the Tribune declared, “no one else has shown a comparable talent for appealing to the centrist instincts of the American people.” With “a voice that celebrates our common values instead of exaggerating our differences,” Barack’s “magnetic style and optimism would draw many disenchanted Americans back into the political process. . . . He and the nation have little to lose and much to gain from his candidacy.”

  Returning to
Washington, Barack met privately with former secretary of state Colin Powell, who a decade earlier had refused to run for the presidency because of his wife’s opposition. Barack also met former senator Tom Daschle for dinner at his favorite restaurant, Tosca, where they “took the kitchen table in the back where nobody could see us. We had a bottle of wine and a great meal and what was supposed to be a conversation that lasted about an hour I think went over three,” Daschle recalled. “I told him that I thought his lack of Washington experience was one of his greatest assets” and “that windows of opportunity for running for the presidency close quickly, and that he shouldn’t assume, if he passes up this window, that there will be another. I had that experience” and Daschle did not want “to see the same thing happen to him.”43

  As Barack prepared to fly to New Hampshire for his Sunday Democratic event, he told the Associated Press “the whole prospect of a presidential race for me is not something I’ve engineered. I was on a different internal clock,” and “it’s only been in the last couple of months that the amount of interest in a potential candidacy reached the point where I had to consider seriously” actually running. Barack told the state’s largest newspaper that he believed people “are looking for somebody who is authentic,” for “a pragmatic politician rather than an ideologue.” David Axelrod told another journalist that Barack was doing “a lot of soul searching” in wrestling with multiple questions. “Some are very personal. Some are political. And some are the largest questions, about the contribution he thinks he can make.” Just as he had in his memo, Axelrod stressed that “I think this country is very hungry for new leadership that will take us past the kind of hyper-partisanship and hyper-ideological kind of politics we’ve seen” over the last decade.

  On Saturday evening, December 9, Barack stayed in Chicago to attend Malia’s ballet recital before flying to Manchester and arriving close to midnight. A bookstore appearance in Portsmouth and a private reception at the state’s top law firm were on Sunday’s schedule in addition to the sold-out, two-thousand-person Democratic rally. New Hampshire governor John Lynch introduced Barack, telling the cheering crowd that “we originally scheduled the Rolling Stones . . . but then we canceled them when we realized Senator Obama would sell more tickets.” More than 150 journalists and twenty-two camera crews covered Barack’s remarks, with former Dover mayor Jack Buckley telling the Boston Globe that “I have never seen anything like this in my forty years of being active in politics.” He added that “if I were Hillary, I would be more than a little concerned,” and in Monday’s New York Times, reporter Adam Nagourney wrote that Barack had received “the kind of reception typically afforded a movie star,” one that was “nothing short of a spectacle.” Taking questions afterward, Barack said, “I want to take my time” on making a decision and brushed aside an inquiry about “Hussein”: “the American people are not concerned with middle names.” One journalist observed that Barack was “a politician who happens to be black, not a black politician,” and a conservative columnist warned that Barack was “an uncommonly opaque rock-star politician.” But veteran political reporter Walter Shapiro stated “something is happening around Obama that we have not seen in American politics for decades.”44

  On Monday morning, David Axelrod’s warning about “unflattering, irritating inquiries” proved prescient when Crain’s Chicago Business ran a story headlined “Sen. Obama Sees No Hypocrisy in His Wife’s Post at a Firm That Does Business with Wal-Mart.” Three weeks earlier, in a gesture covered only by the Associated Press, Barack had endorsed the efforts of a union-backed group called Wake Up Wal-Mart, which was attacking the giant employer’s salaries and health benefits for its workers. TreeHouse Foods, whose board Michelle served on, sold more of its products to Wal-Mart than to any other retailer, and also had recently closed a pickle plant in La Junta, Colorado, costing 153 workers their jobs. Crain’s reporter Greg Hinz, noting Michelle’s $45,000-a-year board fee and the CEO’s $26 million annual salary, called TreeHouse a “company that pays its executives a very hefty amount of money while laying off mostly minority workers in an economically-deprived area.” Contacted by Hinz, Michelle claimed that “my income is pretty low compared to my peers,” and told Hinz “you wouldn’t ask that question if, like some people in politics, we had trust funds and were rich.” Four months later, the Obama’s IRS Form 1040 would show that Michelle’s 2006 income had totaled $324,000—$273,00 from the U of C Hospitals and an additional $51,000 from TreeHouse. La Junta mayor Don Rizzuto told Hinz that “if she and her husband are the champions of the little guy, it’s amazing what they’re doing.”

  With a second and potentially decisive meeting of Barack’s closest advisers scheduled for Wednesday, December 13, Barack sat down with his brother-in-law Craig Robinson to talk about the pending decision. “Barack asked if I minded talking to Michelle about how this window of opportunity might not ever be available again,” Craig recounted. “He didn’t expect me to convince her, since he himself hadn’t been able to do that yet,” but Craig realized that a second, preliminary obstacle loomed too: Marian Robinson, who was among the many people who worried about Barack surviving a presidential run. Speaking first to his mother, Craig won her over to reluctant acceptance, but “you’ll never get Michelle to agree to it,” she told her son. Then Craig spoke with Michelle. “Just let him take his shot. You can’t deprive him of that. He wouldn’t hold you back if the roles were reversed.”

  Over the course of more than an hour, Craig gradually wore down his younger sister’s opposition. As Michelle remembered her change of heart, she explained, “I would have felt guilty not doing it. I would have felt I was being selfish.” In the end she came to believe “I had no choice,” and Craig privately exulted over what he remembered as “that long but ultimately successful phone call.”45

  On Monday Barack taped a special surprise appearance for that evening’s Monday Night Football telecast:

  Good evening. I’m Senator Barack Obama. I’m here tonight to answer some questions about a very important contest that’s been weighing on the minds of the American people. This is a contest about the future, a contest between two very different philosophies, a contest that will ultimately be decided in America’s heartland. In Chicago they’re asking, ‘Does the new guy have the experience to lead us to victory?’ In St. Louis they’re wondering, ‘Are we facing a record that’s really so formidable, or is it all just a bunch of hype?’ Let me tell you, I’m all too familiar with these questions, so tonight I’d like to put all the doubts to rest. I would like to announce to my hometown of Chicago and all of America that I am ready for the Bears to go all the way, baby!

  Barack put a Chicago Bears cap on his head during the last sentence. On Tuesday morning the segment was replayed on NBC’s Today show, with host Matt Lauer saying it “shows he’s got a sense of humor.”

  The next day Barack’s closest advisers reconvened in David Axelrod’s conference room. Valerie Jarrett already had given Barack her verdict: “I think it’s a go. I think it’s your moment.” Pete Rouse recalled that Barack told the group, “I’m still inclined not to do this, but I’ve talked to Michelle about it, and if we’re going to do this at some point, this may be the best time. I’m worried about my daughters, how this will affect them.” Michelle concurred, but said that the family issues were manageable, and David Plouffe presented a draft budget, an early strategy outline, and a list of issues that would have to be tackled before any actual kickoff. Then Michelle turned to her husband to pose a bigger question. “You need to ask yourself why do you want to do this? What are you hoping to uniquely accomplish by getting the presidency?” Barack had a ready answer. “There are a lot of things I think I can accomplish, but two things I know. The first is, when I raise my hand and take that oath of office, there are millions of kids around this country who don’t believe that it would ever be possible for them to be president of the United States, and for them the world would change on that day. And the second thing is, I
think the world would look at us differently the day I got elected. . . . I think I can help repair the damage that’s been done” to America’s international reputation during George Bush’s presidency. Some of Barack’s aides were more hesitant than Axelrod, Jarrett, and even Barack himself, but over the course of the discussion, it became clear that in Barack’s mind the odds were shifting modestly but perhaps decisively toward an affirmative decision. As the meeting ended, Barack said, “I think I’ve moved past the 50-50 mark and I’m inclined to do it.” His aides should continue planning, and “I’m going to go to Hawaii to think about it” during his family’s annual winter vacation.46

  In Thursday morning’s Washington Post, conservative columnist George Will joined the chorus: “Run Now, Obama.” Will termed Hillary Rodham Clinton “the optimal opponent” for a challenger who “offers a tone of sweet reasonableness,” but in the conservative Washington Times, chief political correspondent Don Lambro warned that Barack seems “deeply risk-averse to getting into a principled fight about anything larger than himself.” In Chicago, Barack met with Mayor Richard Daley and then the editorial boards of the Tribune and the Sun-Times. At the Trib, Barack voiced the same question that Michelle had posed to him a day earlier: “Do I have something that is sufficiently unique to offer the country that it is worth putting my family through a presidential campaign?” Politically, “I think I would be a viable candidate. So that’s a threshold question, and I wouldn’t run if I didn’t think I could win.” Asked about Tony Rezko’s adjoining lot, Barack called the purchase of the ten-foot strip “stupid,” “a boneheaded move,” but the discussion focused on the questions he was pondering. “Do I have a particular ability to bring the country together around a pragmatic, commonsense agenda for change that probably has a generational element to it as well?”