Rising Star

by David Garrow

  In mid-October, Barack had a strikingly expansive conversation with the Chicago Defender’s Chinta Strausberg about the 9/11 attacks. The new profusion of concrete barricades outside government buildings was “the saddest situation and aftereffect of the September 11th tragedy,” because “those barricades are a symbol of the fear that people are experiencing. I recognize the need for such precautions, but my strong hope is that over time, we’re able to diminish the daily threat of violence and return to the sort of openness and freedom that is the hallmark of our society.” While “it’s absolutely vital that we pursue a military response and a criminal investigation to dismantle these organizations of violence,” Barack said, “we should also examine the foreign policies of the U.S. to make sure that we occupy the moral high ground in these conflicts. In particular, we have to examine some of the root causes of this terrorist activity,” because in “nations like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, or much of the Middle East, young men have no opportunities. The only education they are receiving is that provided to them by religious schools that may not provide them with a well-rounded view of the world. They see poverty all around them, and they are angered by that poverty. They may be suffering under oppressive and corrupt regimes, and that kind of environment is a breeding ground for fanaticism and hatred.” Rather than hunker down, new initiatives should be launched. “It’s absolutely critical that the U.S. is engaged in policies and strategies that will give those young people and these countries hope and make it in their self-interest to participate and create modern, open societies like we have in the U.S.”

  In early November, Barack keynoted an affordable housing symposium one day and spoke at a lunch for well-heeled female supporters of his own future endeavors the next. At the housing session, Barack reprimanded advocates for failing to put together a coherent policy agenda for poor Chicagoans. For the women’s lunch, super-volunteer Laura Hunter pulled together ladies who already knew Barack well, like Judy Byrd, Jean Rudd, and Valerie Jarrett, as well as women of extremely serious means, such as heiress Abby McCormick O’Neil, some of whom would be among Barack’s new constituents. Barack said he was “100 percent prochoice” and a supporter of gay and lesbian rights, and he spoke about his efforts on behalf of campaign finance reform, expanded health care coverage, welfare-to-work policies, and tax justice.

  In mid-November, veto session got under way in Springfield amid reports showing that state tax revenues were dropping precipitously in the wake of 9/11. It was a desultory six days, with no attempt at overriding Governor Ryan’s veto of the gang-related death penalty bill. On the second to last day, the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the new legislative map, but the legislature adjourned without taking any action on the state’s surging budget deficit. Barack told Crain’s Chicago Business that “We didn’t plan for what happens when all the jobs that were generated evaporate. A lot of the big questions like that we never really tackled.” Soon after adjournment, Emil Jones’s wife Patricia died of cancer at age sixty-three, and Democratic senators gathered for her funeral.

  Politicians’ eyes turned increasingly toward the upcoming 2002 elections, with no one filing to oppose Barack in either the March primary or the November general election. In the Democratic gubernatorial race, Rod Blagojevich won the support of the Illinois AFL-CIO and gathered increasing momentum over Paul Vallas and Roland Burris. Just before Christmas, Crain’s Chicago Business reported that millionaire businessman Blair Hull, who had sold his Hull Trading Company to Goldman Sachs two years earlier for $531 million, had spoken with Mayor Richard Daley about seeking the Democratic nomination to take on Republican U.S. senator Peter Fitzgerald in 2004. Hull had met with Daley at City Hall on November 14, but Hull initially had been interested in challenging Democratic operative Rahm Emanuel for the congressional seat Blagojevich would be vacating. Hull had already spoken with Chicago political hand Jason Erkes, Denver-based consultant Rick Ridder, and Washington-based media expert Anita Dunn about the congressional race, but Daley suggested that instead Hull consider running for the Senate. When Crain’s reporter Steven Strahler called him for comment, Hull asked, “Who would have told you that? I’m trying to fly under the radar at this point.” But Hull confirmed that his discussion with Daley had been “a positive conversation,” and Hull also was supporting Blagojevich’s gubernatorial campaign.48

  Michelle was now in her new job at the University of Chicago Medical Center, and her hands were more than full with a protest campaign launched against the hospital by the African American Contractors Association. Unhappy that a construction contract had been awarded to a Hispanic firm, the protesters complained further when university executives shunted them toward “underlings” like Michelle and African American trustee Ralph Moore. “We should not have to be meeting with people who have jobs to protect or don’t have the best interests of blacks at heart,” protest supporter Rev. Gregory Daniels told the Defender, which reported that Daniels “also demanded the removal of Obama and Moore because of their incompetence and inexperience in regards to grassroots community organizations and their assistance in dividing the African American community in these issues.” Within less than seventy-two hours, however, the university patched up the dispute, with both the Defender and Chicago Weekend publishing stories proclaiming the U of C’s support for black employment opportunities.

  Michelle was not the only one tackling a new opportunity, for throughout December most of Barack’s attention was focused on the possibility of becoming the next president of the Joyce Foundation. In November Paula DiPerna, whose two-and-a-half-year tenure had not gone well, submitted her resignation. Former president Debbie Leff, program officers like Unmi Song and Margaret O’Dell, and ranking board figures like chairman Jack Anderson and veterans Chuck Daly and Dick Donahue all saw Barack as a thoughtful and well-informed board member. Barack’s legislative interests in campaign finance reform, the earned-income tax credit, and gun violence overlapped extensively with Joyce’s policy agenda. Similar Springfield overlap existed with the Woods Fund, and Barack’s Annenberg experience also contributed to the Joyce board’s discussions of education issues.

  When DiPerna resigned, several board members immediately considered Barack before they decided to have Michael Claffey, an old friend of Daly’s who had overseen previous presidential searches, handle this one as well. Carlton Guthrie, Barack’s fellow African American board member and a Hyde Park neighbor, would run into Barack at the East Bank Club and played golf with him several times a year. Guthrie appreciated that Barack was a politician through and through, but he also knew that Barack “was desperately looking for a way to get out of” Springfield. Guthrie had contributed to Barack’s campaigns, but he believed Barack’s loss to Bobby Rush had underscored how he “wasn’t of the community” and how many people saw him as “a fairly arrogant guy.” Guthrie was not on the Joyce board’s five-member search committee, but “I didn’t see Barack as the next president of the Joyce Foundation” or even “as a serious candidate,” because “it didn’t seem to be a logical progression for him.”

  Barack’s own view, as he discussed it extensively with Michelle and Dan Shomon, was that the Joyce presidency would allow him to take home a significant salary and accumulate some meaningful savings before reentering the electoral arena some years later. Michelle immediately liked the idea. “My hope was that, okay, enough of this, now let’s explore these other avenues for having impact and making a little money so that we could start saving for our future and building up the college fund for our girls.” Dan Shomon, who envisioned going with Barack to Joyce as his chief of staff at a higher salary than he could earn in politics, loved the idea too. “We had it all figured out,” Dan recalled. “Do it for five years and then run” for a major office. Barack stoked Dan’s hopes, leading him to believe that Barack was a hands-down favorite for the job. Barack made similar comments to Cynthia Miller, Newton Minow, Ab Mikva, and Rob Fisher, and they were all left thinking s
imilarly. Like Dan, Cynthia knew “Michelle wants him to take it,” but Cynthia, more clearly than Dan, saw that Barack’s interest in the job really was just to placate Michelle. Newt Minow enthusiastically supported the idea, as did Mikva, who knew that Michelle was “hoping he would make a firm break with politics” and “get out of the legislature and be a normal person.” Rob and Lisa Fisher remembered Barack saying, “I think I’m going to step aside and make money and then go back.” They had the impression there “was an offer on the table” and Barack was weighing whether to accept it. “Michelle is saying, ‘Are you nuts?’” Lisa recalled, because when the Senate was in session and Barack “wasn’t home,” Michelle “was a single parent.”

  Joyce consultant Mike Claffey talked with Barack several times to discuss and then confirm his interest. “Yes, I’m a candidate,” Barack told him. Claffey also spoke with mutual acquaintances like Allison Davis and Jean Rudd before Joyce’s search committee selected five finalists for formal interviews just after New Year’s. Two of the other contenders were Ellen Alberding, Joyce’s program officer for culture and the arts, and attorney Mark Real, who since 1981 had directed the Ohio branch of the Children’s Defense Fund. Real sensed from preliminary conversations with Claffey and search committee members that “they were looking for somebody who would do real work” and “would show up at the office every day,” because “they asked me a lot of questions about work ethic.”

  Senior board member Dick Donahue tried to dissuade Barack from being a candidate. “For God’s sake, Barack, this is a great job. But you don’t want it.” Underlying Donahue’s advice was board members’ view that Barack “was insufficiently nonpartisan” and that “it just didn’t make any sense to politicize the foundation,” as Wisconsin law professor Carin Clauss explained. Board chairman Jack Anderson, who Claffey knew “adored Barack,” had evolved like Donahue in his view of Barack’s candidacy. The Joyce presidency was “a real full-time job,” and it was doubtful “whether you can do it and be active in politics,” because they knew Barack wanted to remain a plausible future candidate.

  Just before the finalists’ formal interviews with the search committee, Mike Claffey briefed each of them. Claffey thought Barack “approached it with some diligence but not a lot,” and once the interview got under way, Claffey realized that Barack “was not prepared” and had “ignored my briefing.” Later that day, Barack phoned Dan Shomon and confessed that “I was literally shaking with fear that I would get the job because I realized I was deathly fearful.” Dan realized that Barack had “walked in there, and he fell apart. He literally just fell apart.” In the room, that was what Mike Claffey saw. “This is a thing where he failed,” Claffey explained, and Claffey suspected the same thing Dan Shomon, Cynthia Miller, and Rob Fisher all realized: “maybe he didn’t want it.”

  Barack had long believed that “simply pursuing lots of money displays a poverty of ambition, and that there are higher goals and higher aspirations that I could go after,” a belief he had held since his 1987 self-transformation. He confessed as much to Cynthia, who knew that Joyce “was never, for him, an option . . . as far as him being true to himself,” she explained. “He said, ‘This is who Michelle met when she met me.’ Now that is a quote. He was saying he’s the same person, so he didn’t mislead her in terms of where his aspirations are.” Yet now, more than a decade later, Michelle’s aspirations were far more modest: financial security and a home life where two full-time parents took equal roles in raising their daughters. But when Barack faced a high-pressure situation that ran counter to his deepest beliefs about his destiny, he fell apart and failed.

  Mark Real’s interview followed Barack’s. “I got the sense that they had reservations about other candidates” for whom “this would be sort of their second or third priority. They were looking for somebody for whom this would be their first priority,” Real recalled. “They wanted somebody whose principal priority was making the Joyce Foundation work and not somebody who was just a public face.” With the interviews complete, the five-member search committee—Jack Anderson, Chuck Daly, Dick Donahue, attorney Roger Fross, and Paula Wolff—voted. The result was not unanimous, but there was a clear number one, Mark Real, and a runner-up, Ellen Alberding. But Real, who hoped to transform the Ohio Children’s Defense Fund into a more influential statewide policy organization with the support of wealthy Columbus patron Abigail Wexner, seemed underwhelmed when he was offered the Joyce presidency at a salary just over $200,000. “He wants $350,000,” Mike Claffey recalled, and “Jack Anderson almost falls out of his chair.” Real may not have wanted to leave Ohio any more than Barack wanted to abandon electoral politics, and with Joyce unwilling to meet Real’s asking price, little time passed before Abigail Wexner and Ohio political leaders announced the creation of a new organization, Kids Ohio, headed by Mark Real. Joyce’s search committee turned to Ellen Alberding, who accepted. When Mike Claffey phoned Barack to tell him the news, there was “no moaning and groaning, no anger, no frustration.” With that, the Joyce Foundation announced Alberding’s appointment and concluded a search in which three finalists all got what they really wanted.49

  By this time, Barack had already taught the first two classes of his winter quarter Voting Rights course. An embarrassed Barack learned that unbeknownst to him, a new, 2001 second edition of The Law of Democracy had been published and stocked at the bookstore, so he quickly updated his syllabus. The early Mondays–late Fridays class drew thirty-five students, including four who had taken either Con Law III or Racism and who realized that Barack’s “engagement with the subject matter” made Voting Rights “an even better class” than the other two. “He really came alive, particularly when he was talking about some of the more practical issues,” such as “how districting lines were drawn,” 2L Karen Schweickart recalled. Barack was also a “very, very nice man” who let Karen bring her baby daughter to class. When someone asked how long it took to drive to and from Springfield, Barack responded, “How long for you, or how long for me, because I have Senate plates?” Byron Rodriguez remembered that when “someone in class once asked who was his favorite circuit judge to argue in front of, he said [Richard] Posner,” the senior member of the three-judge panel in Josephthal, Barack’s only circuit court appearance, “because Posner was smart enough to know when you were right.” When Barack casually asked Schweickart what her husband did, and Karen said she was not married, Barack “didn’t miss a beat” before saying, “Oh, my mother wasn’t married either.”

  With the Senate’s spring session off to a leisurely start, Barack delivered two Martin Luther King Day talks while political eyes all focused on the upcoming November election, with Emil Jones seemingly guaranteed at least a thirty-two-seat Senate majority. Jones had more than $1.6 million in hand to ensure victory. In the Democratic gubernatorial race, Rod Blagojevich had more than $4 million available, former school superintendent Paul Vallas only $300,000, and Roland Burris was being bankrolled by one sole donor, African American TV station owner Joseph Stroud, who had contributed upward of $1 million. By early February Barack had introduced seventeen new bills, only one of which, requiring that state government institute a program to address postpartum depression, would make it to the Senate floor.

  When the Chicago Tribune ran a story headlined “Philip Urges Review of Pork-Barrel Funds,” Barack chimed in to agree with the Senate president that “members’ initiatives” had gotten out of hand. “What started off as a good idea to give legislators some control over how money got spent in their districts has become this enormous, unwieldy and unsupervised process that needs to be changed.” Three days later a more prominent Tribune story, “2 Accused in Scheme at Pork-Rich Charities,” reported that the state attorney general had filed suit against Yesse Yehudah, whose FORUM had received more than $750,000 in member initiative funding, beginning with more than $425,000 from Emil Jones plus additional monies from Michael Madigan and Donne Trotter as well as the $75,000 from Barack. In less than forty
-eight hours, Obama for Congress 2000 refunded the five $1,000 contributions FORUM employees had made to Barack’s congressional campaign in November 1999, although not the five additional $1,000 checks from Yehudah’s friends that were received three days after Barack approved the $75,000 grant in October 2000. So as to repay that $5,000, Barack had to loan his federal campaign committee an identical amount, increasing what it owed him and Michelle to $10,500. Even with that embarrassing turn of events, a few days later Barack signed off on an unusually large $500,000 member initiative grant to a Southwest Side women’s domestic violence group that within several years would be defunct.