Part 2 (1/2)

a”CRAIG ROBINSON, BARACK OBAMAaS BROTHER-IN-LAW.

Barack Obama seemed to know almost immediately upon meeting a round-eyed, statuesque African-American lawyer named Mich.e.l.le Robinson that she was his choice for a spouse; the young Miss Robinson was far less sure about her future husband. And that in itself says much about the two people: Barack is the romantic dreamer; Mich.e.l.le is the balanced realist. Upon meeting her, he was swept off his feet; she took some convincing.

Obama and Robinson met after Obamaas first year at Harvard Law, in 1988, when he was a summer intern in the Chicago office of the high-brow law firm now called Sidley Austin. Robinson, a young lawyer at the firm, was a.s.signed to be his mentor. Initially, Robinson was skeptical about Obama because, even before he arrived for the summer, he had been talked up by so many others at the firma”too many others, she thought. Secretaries gossiped about how handsome he was. a.s.sociates marveled at his magnificent first-year performance at Harvard. Senior partners hailed an introductory memo by Obama as nothing short of brilliant. aHe sounded too good to be true,a Mich.e.l.le recalled. aI had dated a lot of brothers who had this kind of reputation coming in, so I figured he was one of these smooth brothers who could talk straight and impress people. So we had lunch, and he had this bad sport jacket and a cigarette dangling from his mouth and I thought, aOh, here you go. Hereas this good-looking, smooth-talking guy. Iave been down this road before.a Later I was just shocked to find out that he really could communicate with people and he had some depth to him. He turned out to be an elite individual with strong moral values.a Obama suffered no false preconceptions about Mich.e.l.le and was immediately taken with her. Nevertheless, at first she resisted his amorous advances. She thought it would be improper to date an employee she was a.s.signed to train. In addition, they were the only two African Americans at the law firm. aI thought, aNow how would that look?aa Mich.e.l.le said. aHere we are, the only two black people here, and we are dating. Iam thinking that looks pretty tacky.a Mich.e.l.le tried to set up Obama with a friend, but he showed no interest in anyone but her. Eventually, she relented and agreed to a date, and, over chocolate ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins shop near the University of Chicago, he won her affection. When Obama returned to Harvard in the fall, the two carried on a long-distance relations.h.i.+p that Obama conceded would have been impossible just a few years before. aBefore I met Mich.e.l.le, I was too immature to hold something like that together,a Obama told me, acknowledging that as he approached thirty he gained a different perspective on a secure romantic relations.h.i.+p. As a community organizer, Obama had had a serious girlfriend (and a pet cat), but all three parted amicably when he went to Harvard.

During his late twenties, Obama s.h.i.+fted his thinking toward the value of marriage and family. Even though his restless mind and ambitious energy made him fear a static life, he was beginning to desire a stable relations.h.i.+p and family. He considered the upheaval of his fatheras family life and longed for a different outcome for himself. On trips back to Chicago from Harvard, Obama often visited Jerry Kellman and his wife at their house in the Beverly neighborhood, one of Chicagoas few racially mixed communities; he looked out at Kellmanas backyard and confided that he wanted athis kind of stability.a Mich.e.l.le Obama grew up in a tightly knit, working-cla.s.s family in the South Sh.o.r.e neighborhood of Chicagoas sprawling South Side African-American community. Obama, who sometimes described his own childhood as that of aan orphan,a is fond of chiding his wife for abeing raised by Ozzie and Harriet,a a reference to the idyllic American family from the 1950s sitcom.

The Robinsons lived in a small apartment on the top floor of a cla.s.sic low-slung Chicago bungalow. Mich.e.l.leas father, Frasier Robinson, worked odd-hour s.h.i.+fts overseeing the inner workings of boilers at the cityas water filtration plant. Her mother, Marian, did not work outside the home until Mich.e.l.le reached high school, when she took a position as an administrative a.s.sistant in the trust division of a bank, a job she still held in 2007. Mich.e.l.le has one sibling, a brother, Craig, sixteen months older than she. A talented basketball player, he ultimately left a lucrative job in high finance to coach in the college ranks. (In 2006 he became head coach at Brown University.) Their father suffered from a debilitating illness that family members believe was multiple sclerosis, although he never received an official diagnosis. Both children were indelibly shaped by their fatheras unstable physical conditiona”and the strong will he showed in coping with it. He was devoted to setting a st.u.r.dy paternal example and sufficiently providing for his family. He rarely missed work or time with his children, even as his physical state deteriorated. aWe always felt like we couldnat let Dad down because he worked so hard for us,a Craig Robinson said. aMy sister and I, if one of us ever got in trouble with my father, wead both be crying. Wead both be like, aOh, my G.o.d, Dadas upset. How could we do this to him?aa Much of Mich.e.l.leas childhood was spent scurrying on the heels of her older brother and, to some degree, living in the tall shadow he cast. Craig was a good student and popular athlete, and Mich.e.l.le had a deeply compet.i.tive spirit. Long limbed and extremely tall at five feet eleven inches, Mich.e.l.le showed great athletic prowess in the neighborhood, often holding her own on the basketball court with her brother and his friends. But to fight comparisons with her high-achieving brother, she decided against playing organized sports. Instead, she immersed herself in pursuits of her owna”learning the piano, writing short stories in her spiral notebook, serving as student council treasurer and excelling in school. She skipped the second grade and consistently made the honor roll at Whitney Young High School, one of the premier public inst.i.tutions in the Chicago system. Her academic excellence secured her acceptance at Princeton University. She graduated c.u.m laude from Princeton and then, like her husband, went to Harvard Law. Her brother also attended Princeton, at the urging of their father. Craig was gifted enough on the basketball court to attend a school with a strong Division I program, and he was offered full-ride scholars.h.i.+ps at several colleges with top basketball programs. But his father said education was more valuable and sent him to Princeton, even though he had won only a partial scholars.h.i.+p. aDad said it didnat matter about the costa”it was the education that was important,a said Craig, who went on to be one of the top players in the history of the Ivy League.

At Princeton, Mich.e.l.le underwent a racial ident.i.ty crisis similar to what Obama experienced in his formative college years. For the first time in her life, she had stepped into a nearly all-white cultural and academic setting. And even though she was popular and quickly acquired a handful of good friends, she admitted in a thesis, t.i.tled aPrinceton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community,a that she felt racially isolated as one of the few black women on the campus. aI have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and cla.s.smates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus, as if I really donat belong. Regardless of the circ.u.mstances under which I interact with Whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second.a Yet as she progressed through Princeton, Mich.e.l.le said she realized that as an alumna of an elite college, she probably would move in predominantly white circles later in her professional life. She had wanted to use her education to serve the black community in some way, but she wrote that aas I enter my final year at Princeton, I find myself striving for many of the same goals as my White cla.s.smatesa”acceptance to a prestigious graduate or professional school or a high-paying position in a successful corporation. Thus, my goals are not as clear as before.a The position at the firm now known as Sidley Austin certainly fit the description of a high-paying position in the upper echelons of the legal community. Yet a few years later, after marrying Obama, Mich.e.l.le found herself moving out of that predominantly white world of high-powered law and into the public service sector that she had always envisioned for herself. First she left Sidley Austin to work for a deputy chief of staff to Mayor Richard M. Daley. Then, in 1993, she was hired to launch the Chicago office of Public Allies, a program established under Bill Clintonas AmeriCorps to help young people find employment in public service. Mich.e.l.le, exceedingly efficient and excessively organized, built the program from the ground up. Over her three-year tenure as executive director, she a.s.sembled a solid board of directors and raised enough cash to establish the program for the long haul.

I first met Mich.e.l.le Obama during her husbandas U.S. Senate campaign, in January 2004, as I researched my first profile of her husband for the Chicago Tribune. At the time, she was directing community affairs for the University of Chicago Hospitals, just blocks from their town house and childrenas school in Chicagoas Hyde Park neighborhood. Her credentials made her seem considerably overqualified for the position of community liaison for a hospital, and as I walked to her office on a blisteringly cold morning, I noted mentally that she had made a career sacrifice for the sake of the family. Her small office was situated in a difficult-to-find back corner section of a sprawling medical building. The structure was designed with a mind-bending maze of hallways that, each time I would visit, gave me the feeling of the proverbial rat in a science experiment. Her office was much as I would find her to bea”highly functional with few frills. It was simply decorated with the same ma.s.s-produced wooden furniture found in her secretaryas waiting room. Attractive family photos of her children and her husband were atop seemingly every square inch of desk or cabinet s.p.a.ce, and no visitor needed to guess about her top priority in life.

Having previously interviewed wives (and husbands) of political candidates, I was uncertain what to expect. Some spouses, fearful of a verbal gaffe, are heavily scripted by campaign aides, equally fearful of a blunder. Others are more at ease with their own words but are still generally cautious in their approach. Mich.e.l.le Obama exuded neither quality. She was not the least bit scripted. She was open and relaxed and greeted me as if we had met many times before. As with her husband, one of her strengths is the ability to put others at ease in her presence. She answered my questions in such an unhurried and relaxed fas.h.i.+on that she seemed only mildly calculating, if at all. I found her to be comfortable with herself, personable, intellectually engaging and deeply committed to her husband. She knew that he badly wanted to win this election. Toward that end, she was adept at pointing out his positive traits; and yet she seemed to have little interest in putting an artificial gloss on her husbandas foibles and faults. aI call him aThe Fact Guy,aa she told me. aHe seems to have a fact about everything. He can argue and debate about anything. It doesnat matter if he agrees with you, he can still argue with you. Sometimes, heas even right.a She broke into a playful grin at this last remark.

She told me how Obamaas compet.i.tive streak sometimes led him to be overly boastful at winning family games, such as Scrabble or Monopoly. She stressed that her husband had made many sacrifices in his career, particularly financial sacrifices, in order to serve the public. The emphasis on this part of her husbandas character certainly would have been considered helpful to his campaign, but she spoke so openly about his faults that neither observation came across as overtly scripted.

Our interview ran almost two hours, at which time I ended the session. I stepped back into a maze of hallways with the impression of a woman who was confident in her own skills, confident in her marriage and her own career and also highly respectful of her husbandas abilities.

Obama has publicly portrayed Mich.e.l.le as a reluctant political wife, and that has unmistakably been true. His immense personal ambition and good political fortune have pushed his career into overdrive, sometimes leaving his family breathing exhaust fumes. And this has caused friction in the marriage. But initially, her attraction to Obama was wedded, at least in part, to his mission to serve the public. When Obama first mentioned his desire to enter politics, she was encouraging. aI told him, aIf thatas what you really want to do, I think youad be great at it,aa she said. aaYou are everything people say they want in their public officials.aa Their four-year courts.h.i.+p seemed rather effortless to outsiders. Both clearly were devoted to each other, although Mich.e.l.leas family expressed some initial hesitancy. Mich.e.l.leas mother, Marion Robinson, was fond of Obama but was concerned that his biracial ancestry might evoke a clash of cultures, or that their union might not be readily accepted by others. Mich.e.l.leas brother, meanwhile, wondered if Obama could live up to the rigorous standards that his exacting younger sister had placed on previous boyfriends. aMy mom and I and my dad, before he died, we were all worried about, aOh, my G.o.d, my sisteras never getting married because each guy shead meet, sheas gonna chew him up, spit him out.a So I was thinking, Barack says one wrong thing and she is going to jettison him. Sheall fire a guy in a minute, just fire hima. Unfortunately for these guys, and I donat want this to sound conceited, but my dad was my dad. And so she had a definite frame of reference for a guy. She had an imprint in her mind of the kind of guy she wanted. And my mom used to tell hera”and I used to tell her after she got oldera”I was like, aLook, youare not gonna find guys that are gonna be perfect, because they didnat have Dad as a father. So youave gotta sort of come up with your framework.a But she was hardheaded and refused to let that go.a Craigas first impression of Obama was positive: aHe was tall,a Craig said with a chuckle. Mich.e.l.le had dated men shorter than she, and one surmises that her confident demeanor and extreme tallness for a woman could be intimidating to any suitor, especially one deprived of height. Craigas most indelible impression of his sisteras new boyfriend came on the basketball court. Obama was not nearly as talented as Craig, who had played professionally in Europe after being drafted and cut by the NBAas Philadelphia 76ers. But Obama had never been reticent about his own basketball skills and he was eager to step on the court with the former college star. That moxie impressed Craig. aBarackas game is just like his personalitya”heas confident, not afraid to shoot the ball when heas open. See, that says a lot about a guy,a Craig said. aA lot of guys wanna just be out there to say they were out there. But he wants to be out there and be a part of the game. He wants to try and win and he wants to try and contribute.a This extreme level of confidence is something that was ingrained in Obamaas psyche early in life. His maternal grandfather would tell Obama that this was the greatest lesson he could learn from his absent father: aconfidencea”the secret to a manas success.a That is how Obamaas father led his life; and even in times of self-doubt, Obama has hearkened back to that wisdom.

Though Obama and Craig bonded on the basketball court, Craig was taken aback at one of their first holiday gatherings when Obama confided what profession he might pursue after Harvard Lawa”politics. And not only that, but Obama seemed to hint that he was destined for great things in this often poisonous field of endeavor. Obama speculated to his future brother-in-law that he just might be president one day. aBarack was like, aWell, I wanna be a politician. You know, maybe I can be president of the United States.a And I said, aYeah, yeah, okay, come over and meet my Aunt Graciea”and donat tell anybody that!aa Mich.e.l.le, in contrast to her husband, was more circ.u.mspect about Obamaas lofty ambitions. She thought he had great talent, but looked at him as something of a dreamer as far as national politics was concerned. He might be a star in that realm one day, but that was of little interest to her. Beyond Obamaas keen intellect and personal charm, what sealed Mich.e.l.leas love for him was his civility and human compa.s.sion. She said she was intimately affected by his treatment of one of her uncles who had a drinking problem. Obama was studying at Harvard Law at the time and clearly had a bright future ahead of him. So he could easily have dismissed her uncle. Instead, aBarack treated him with respect and dignity, like an equal,a Mich.e.l.le said. (Perhaps Obama had compa.s.sion for her uncle because Obamaas own family was not immune to alcohol issues. His maternal grandfather, who helped raise Obama, drank to excess, as did Obamaas Kenyan father.) LOVE AND ATTRACTION ARE SUCH INTANGIBLE NOTIONS THAT IT IS impossible to definitively a.n.a.lyze what drew Obama to Mich.e.l.le Robinson so intensely. But people close to him believe that race probably played a factor. After coming to the mainland from Hawaii, he sought to find not only his own cultural ident.i.ty, but a comfortable human community in which to live. One can surmise that in choosing an African-American woman as his wife, he consciously (or subconsciously) decided to root himself in the black community. Kellman, for one, believes it was no fluke that Obama married a black woman. He said Obama was attracted to the black experience in America. aIf you are biracial, I think as a kid, you begin to identify with the underdog, the people who have injustice thrust upon them,a Kellman said. aI think that has great appeal to you, and that is what Barack began to care about, intellectually. You can see that in college and in other places. I mean, blacks in America, this is the great injustice of our history. So why not opt for that and choose that path? I think it is very natural, in that sense, for him to do that and to be inspired by thata. In writing more about his dad than his mother, the person he knew and [who] reared him, it makes the case that this is what he chose for his futurea”the fact he chose to marry Mich.e.l.le, the ideal person who could help him develop those kinds of roots, and the person to share this career with. And personally, it just seems to have worked out wonderfully for him.a The Obamas settled in Chicagoas Hyde Park neighborhood along the lakefront on the cityas South Side. With the University of Chicago as its epicenter, Hyde Park is one of just two or three communities in racially segregated Chicago that is populated by significant numbers of both blacks and whites, many with college educations. A particularly trendy place for upwardly mobile blacks, Hyde Park is also in vogue for mixed-race couples. So when Obama married Mich.e.l.le in 1990, he also married into her budding network among Chicagoas community of successful, white-collar African Americans. Indeed, as two attractive Harvard Law graduates, the Obamas made for a striking black professional couple. But despite this status, neither pursued financially rewarding careers. Mich.e.l.le left Sidley Austin in the wake of losing two people close to hera”her father (shortly before she and Obama married) and a college roommate who died suddenly at twenty-fivea”which prompted her to take a close look at how she conducted her own life. She interviewed for a Chicago City Hall post under Valerie Jarrett, then chief of staff to Mayor Richard J. Daley. When Jarrett offered her the job, Mich.e.l.le had one rather odd request: She asked that Jarrett first meet with Obama, then her fianc. It turns out that Obama had concerns about his impending bride going to work in Daleyas city hall. He worried that Mich.e.l.le might be too straightforward and outspoken to survive in such an overtly political environment; and suspicions about Daleyas administration, which had been criticized as an updated version of Chicagoas machine politics and a vehicle designed primarily to serve Daleyas political interests over community interests. Jarrett promised Obama that he would protect Mich.e.l.le from political backstabbing, and Obama eventually agreed to the job.

When Obama returned to Chicago from Harvard, he put off his legal career for six months to take a position directing a voter registration and education campaign targeting Chicagoas low-income blacks. Illinois Project Vote registered nearly one hundred and fifty thousand new voters for the 1992 presidential election. aItas a power thing,a declared the projectas radio commercials and brochures. The effort was critical in electing two Democrats. It helped Bill Clinton win Illinois, and it greatly a.s.sisted an African-American state lawmaker, Carol Moseley Braun, in becoming the first black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. But Obama was also working on another project at the time, and this dual workload caused strains in his marriage. Running Project Vote by day, Obama was writing his first memoir at night, leaving Mich.e.l.le feeling rather lonely. Mich.e.l.le is religious in her routine of going to bed early and rising at 4:30 a.m. to hit the treadmill, but her husbandas disappearance into his writing hole until the wee hours took some adjustment on her part. This was a pattern that the ambitious Obama would fall into throughout his political career: heavily burdening himself with work duties, much to the chagrin of his wife. Obama admits that this trait is a personal shortcoming. aThere are times when I want to do everything and be everything,a he told me. aI want to have time to read and swim with the kids and not disappoint my voters and do a really careful job on each and every thing that I do. And that can sometimes get me into trouble. Thatas historically been one of my bigger faults. I mean, I was trying to organize Project Vote at the same time as I was writing a book, and there are only so many hours in a day.a Mich.e.l.le has not been shy about grumbling in public regarding her husbandas busy career. Much like Obamaas no-nonsense grandmother, Mich.e.l.le has consistently played the role of stabilizing influence in the Obama home, particularly after their two daughters were born. aI cannot be crazy, because then Iam a crazy mother and Iam an angry wife,a she said. aWhat I notice about men, all men, is that their order is me, my family, G.o.d is in there somewhere, but amea is first. And for women, amea is fourth, and thatas not healthy.a Mich.e.l.le qualified the statement to say aall men,a which left her husband off the hook. But I think it would be fair to say that aall mena do not put themselves ahead of their family. More often than not in American households, it is indeed the mother who makes the career sacrifice for the sake of children, but not always. The man Mich.e.l.le married, however, is p.r.o.ne to placing his professional ambitions at the top of his priority list. Indeed, someone who writes a nearly four-hundred-page memoira”at the age of just thirty-threea”might be accused of self-indulgence. And Mich.e.l.le was not the first woman in his life to accuse Obama of a certain level of self-absorption. A female friend at Occidental College told Obama spitefully, aYou always think itas about you.a AFTER THE NOVEMBER 1992 ELECTION AND PROJECT VOTEaS CONCLUSION, Obama set out to practice law in Chicago. As a magna c.u.m laude graduate of Harvard Law and the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, he had his choice of top law firms. He picked Miner, Barnhill & Galland, which specialized in civil rights and discrimination cases. The firm was in many ways the ant.i.thesis of the corporate Sidley Austin. Miner, Barnhill was an activist firm that strove to rectify social and economic injustice through the courts. In this sense, it fit Obamaas mission agenda perfectly. Miner, Barnhill had picked up Ivy League graduates before, but when senior partner Judson Miner had called the Law Review the year before to inquire about Obama, the response gave him little cause for optimism. aLeave your name and take a number,a Miner was told. aYou are caller number six hundred and forty-seven.a Obamaas Law Review presidency had garnered him national media attention and put him at the top of the list of Harvard graduates.

Over the nine years that Obamaas law license was active in Illinois, he never handled a trial and mostly worked in teams of lawyers who drew up briefs and contracts in a variety of cases. He was one of the lawyers representing an activist group in a successful lawsuit that accused the state of Illinois of failing to apply a federal law designed to help the poor register to vote. In another case, Obama wrote a large portion of an appeals brief for a whistle-blower who exposed misconduct by Cook County and a private research inst.i.tute in the handling of a five-million-dollar federal research grant. The grant money was used to study the treatment of pregnant substance abusers, and the whistle-blower was a doctor fired from the program after raising questions about expenditures. Obama was also among a group of attorneys who sued on behalf of black voters and Chicago aldermen who alleged that new ward boundaries drawn up after the 1990 census were discriminatory. An appeals court ruled that the new ward map violated the Voting Rights Act, and another set of boundaries was drawn.

But beyond the firmas legal work, it was Judson Miner himself who appealed to Obama, for another reason. Miner had been corporation counsel in Harold Was.h.i.+ngtonas administration. Miner, in fact, was one of the lawyers who helped Was.h.i.+ngton lead the fight against the white political machine on the city council. From those days, Miner had a bevy of contacts in Chicagoas political circles. And as Obama had mentioned to friends and family, politics greatly interested him. He had seen how effective Was.h.i.+ngton had been in quickly altering the racial and social dynamics of the city. The speed of this change impressed Obama. aThe courts are generally very slow and they are generally pretty conservative, not ideologically conservative necessarily, but conservative as inst.i.tutions,a he said. aLaw school and practicing law put the framework around how this country works, but it also drove home that social change through the court system is a very difficult thing. There are very few moments in our history, Brown v. Board of Education being a singular exception, where substantial change was initiated through the court systema. So it was at this point that I started thinking more seriously about political office.a

CHAPTER.

8.

Politics.

I am surprised at how many elected officialsa”even the good onesa”spend so much time talking about the mechanics of politics and not matters of substance. They have this poker chip mentality, this overriding interest in retaining their seats or in moving their careers forwarda.

a”BARACK OBAMA.

Barack Obamaas first foray into electoral politics revealed both the burning intensity of his personal ambition and his deeply held desire to press for social change, particularly in poor African-American communities. To Obama, it displayed once again the th.o.r.n.y thicket of intramural politics that besets Chicagoas black community. The cityas African-American political universe is lighted by a select group of insiders who have ama.s.sed power and prestige, and they are loath to relinquish it. It is also a society of unyielding internal rancor, which often impedes overall black progress. For these reasons, as Obama entered the public political sphere, the eternal optimist began to express pessimism about the state of black Chicago.

aUpon my return to Chicago,a he wrote in Dreams from My Father, which was published around this period, in 1995, aI would find the signs of decay accelerated throughout the South Sidea”the neighborhoods shabbier, the children edgier and less restrained, more middle-cla.s.s families heading out to the suburbs, the jails bursting with glowering youth, my brothers without prospects. All too rarely do I hear people asking just what it is that weave done to make so many childrenas hearts so hard, or what collectively we might do to right their moral compa.s.sa”what values we must live by. Instead I see us doing what weave always donea”pretending that these children are somehow not our own.a Running Project Vote and working for Judson Miner provided Obama with entree to the diverse constellation of black politicos on Chicagoas South Side. So when an opportunity to run for public office presented itself in 1995, Obama seized it. A respected state senator in her first full term, Alice Palmer, had decided to run for Congress, which led to Obama cutting his first deal to advance his career in politics. Palmer was a progressive African American in the vein of Obama, and she threw her support behind Obama as her replacement.

But that is only where the story begins.

In Obamaas version of events, Palmer agreed that even if she was not successful in the three-person race for Congress, she would retire from politics and he would run for her seat. But when Palmer began to falter badly in the congressional contest, she changed course dramatically. Her supporters met with Obama and asked him if he would step aside if Palmer was to lose. This would allow her to run again for the Illinois Senate seat she was holding, but it would leave Obama out in the cold. After pulling together a campaign, Obama had no interest in ditching the effort. And he did not equivocate in expressing that sentiment to Palmeras representatives. At thirty-four, Obama was eager for this next step in his evolution. This was, after all, a man who had mused to his brother-in-law a couple of years earlier that, hey, you never know, he might be the president of the country one day. Palmer, in Obamaas view, was reneging on an agreement that they had negotiated in good faith. So he told Palmeras people that she had promised to relinquish her seat and support him, and that he would not withdraw from the race.

Predictably, this did not sit well with Palmer. She, indeed, lost the congressional primary contest in November 2005 to Jesse Jackson Jr., and then quickly filed to run for her old seat in the March 2006 Democratic primary against Obamaa”even though she had publicly supported him for the seat. aSince she endorsed me, I can always use, aEven my opponent wants mea as a campaign slogan,a Obama quipped to the Chicago Tribune.

But humor aside, this established a problematic election for the upstart Obama. Suddenly, instead of running at the head of the pack with the inc.u.mbentas blessing, he was running against the inc.u.mbent herself. He had worked the hustings and acc.u.mulated a great deal of support for his candidacy, but he would have been hard pressed to match Palmeras power of inc.u.mbency: a ready-made army of supporters to distribute literature and get people to the polls on election day, as well as the endors.e.m.e.nt of an array of established black politicians. Indeed, Palmer called a press conference and accepted a pet.i.tion from more than one hundred supporters urging her to seek reelection. Also in her corner was the new congressman, Jesse Jackson Jr. In fact, fresh from the congressional victory, Jacksonas field organizer attended Palmeras press conference and pledged full a.s.sistance. Palmer also possessed an inc.u.mbentas most potent weapona”name recognition from her previous electiona”while Obamaas name was not a plus to his campaign. When it came to his name, the debate generally revolved around which was oddera”his first name or his last.

But Obama had one card up his sleeve. He could not envision how Palmeras supporters, even as solidified as they seemed to be, had gathered the necessary number of voter signatures on her nominating pet.i.tions in such a short time. Palmer herself confessed at her press conference that the nearly sixteen hundred pet.i.tions she had filed with the state elections board had been acc.u.mulated in just ten days. So a volunteer for Obama challenged the legality of her pet.i.tions, as well as the legality of pet.i.tions from several other candidates in the race. As an elections board hearing on the pet.i.tions neared, Palmer realized that Obama had called her hand, and she acknowledged that she had not properly acquired the necessary number of signatures. Many of the voters had printed their names, rather than signing them as the law required. Palmer said she was desperately trying to get affidavits from those who had printed their names, but time was running out. She had no choice but to withdraw from the race. The other opponents were also knocked off the ballot, leaving Obama running unopposed in the primary.

Publicly, Palmer claimed she held no grudges; privately, she was extremely bitter. This turn of events was embarra.s.sing to her, especially after her poor showing in the congressional contest. But more important than embarra.s.sment, it effectively ended her once promising political career. So she refused to support Obama in the primary or the fall election, telling a Chicago journalist, aIave since discovered that heas not as progressive as I first thought.a Nevertheless, since the Republican Party is almost nonexistent in African-American districts on the South and West Sides of the city, Obama cruised to victory in the fall election.

For Obama, the saga pointed up several things. Rather than winning a position in the Illinois General a.s.sembly by ousting an inc.u.mbent or taking an open seat, he appeared to have slipped in the back door on a technicality. And by challenging Palmer, who was highly regarded in black political circles as a fighting progressive, he had left a bad taste in the mouths of many black political leaders, influential people whom he would have to work with in the state capitol and in his district. Palmer, for her part, seemed more than happy to see this bitterness and resentment toward Obama spread to as many people as possible.

But most significantly, the whole episode showed that Obama was an extraordinarily ambitious young man willing to do whatever it took to advance not only his agenda of community empowerment but his own political career.