Part 7 (1/2)

Obamaas careful language was in stark contrast to the anger and frustration vented by black leaders of older generations. The Superdome became a temporary home to tens of thousands of storm evacuees who were stranded without supplies for days. Princeton University scholar Cornel West (ironically a hero of Obamaas) said caustically, aFrom slave s.h.i.+ps to the Superdome was not that big a journey.a The Reverend Jesse Jackson likened the Superdome in New Orleans to the ahull of a slave s.h.i.+p.a Jackson was a close friend and supporter of Obamaas, so I asked him what he thought about their different approaches toward race. The question clearly irritated him. He said he worried that the careful language of younger black leaders would cede ground that had been acquired in the long struggle to equalize the playing field for blacks and whites. (In short, he meant that many of his own crusades for racial justice might be undone.) aEvery speaker has the right to use his own style and try to a.s.sess his own angle,a Jackson said. aBut I was on I-90 in New Orleans when we saw people by the thousands and they were dying in peopleas arms. They were putting people in buses by blocks, women here and children there. And I said it looked like the hull of a slave s.h.i.+p. And it did.a Jackson was particularly perturbed by an editorial in the editorially conservative Chicago Tribune that compared the words of Obama and Jackson. The newspaper harshly criticized Jackson for viewing the tragedy in racial terms while Obama saw the issue not as entirely racial but as a matter of social justice among all economic cla.s.ses. Jacksonas aracism charge is simplistic and ridiculous,a the newspaper said. aBut it also could prove dangerous if it fosters the impression that government emergency plans arenat whatas really in need of fixinga. What played out in New Orleans was more about economic cla.s.s than race. The Senateas only African-American understands the distinctiona”and the need for the nation to address it with more than inflammatory rhetoric.a Thinking back on the editorial agitated Jackson, who shuffled his feet and wriggled in his chair. Obama asaid he didnat see race, he saw cla.s.s. I saw race because I was there. It was impossible not to see race if you were there,a Jackson said, his tone growing almost defensive. aThe Tribune editorial board took the position that an enlightened young guy saw cla.s.s, but an old guy saw race. But the whole world saw what it was. It was poor cla.s.s and black race in the hull of a Louisiana s.h.i.+p.a Jackson then worried that young blacks who had not gone through a tumultuous racial past might be more immune from seeing racism when it was before them. He also said that the conservative bent of the country since the Reagan era gave black politicians less ability to talk boldly about racial injustice. aI was jailed [for] trying to use the public library. I remember blacks being drafted for World War II and you couldnat vote,a Jackson said. aI think Barack chooses to walk a very delicate balance, but sometimes it is not your walking that is the issue, it is what is beneath your feet. The right wing radically s.h.i.+fted the earth. It isacontract compliance and affirmative action that has made [Obama] possible. When the laws of the last fifty-one, fifty-two years that made his advance possibleathey are taken away, you have to fight.a Jacksonas racial anger and Obamaas conciliatory tone represented the debate within the black community about how to approach modern race relations. As Jerry Kellman pointed out, there is no cause that Obama felt more deeply about in his heart than advancing the situation of African Americans. So far, Obamaas political ac.u.men has placed him in the perfect niche of white and black appeal that has eluded almost every black politician before him. Historically, black officials hewing too closely to so-called black issues, such as safeguarding government programs for the poor and challenging the Republican Party commitment to a fairer society, often found themselves losing support among whites. Conversely, black politicians reticent about venting racial anger and who challenge African Americans to study and correct their own deficiencies often lose support in their own community. Obama has followed both of these paths and thrived nonetheless. Thus, in political terms, Obama has struck gold when it comes to race. Instead of being torn asunder trying to please each racial camp, he has strung a tightrope between the two and walked it with precision. Obama shrugged his shoulders when I offered this theory to him at the end of 2005: I think there is a generational s.h.i.+ft taking place in how core values that are important to the African-American community are expressed in a way that builds bridges with other communities. I think thereas a majority in the African-American community who recognize that we have a multiplicity of voices, and not everybodyas going to serve the same rolea”that Reverend Jackson or Reverend [Al] Sharpton is going to have a different role to play than someone like myself, whoas representing all sorts of people. I just think that I am the most prominent of a new generation of African-American voicesa[and] I actually have felt very comfortable speaking on issues that are of particular importance to the African-American community, without losing focus on my primary task, which is to represent all the people of Illinois. And I havenat felt contradictions in that process. I think that on every issue, whether itas a racially tinged issue or a foreign policy issue or a social issue, if Iam speaking honestly, if Iam speaking what I think, then usually things turn out all right.

CHAPTER.

23.

South Africa.

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

a”ROBERT F. KENNEDY, aDAY OF AFFIRMATIONa SPEECH, CAPE TOWN, JUNE 1966.

I realize that I offer these words of hope at a time when hope seems to have gone from many parts of the world. As we speak, there is slaughter in Darfur. There is war in Iraqa. And I have to admit, it makes me wonder sometimes whether men are in fact capable of learning from history, whether we progress from one stage to the next in an upward course, or whether we just ride the cycles of boom and bust, war and peace, ascent and declinea. And then I thought that if a black man of African descent would return to his ancestorsa homeland as a United States Senator, and would speak to a crowd of black and white South Africans who shared the same freedoms and the same rightsathen I thought: things do change, and history does move forward.

a”BARACK OBAMA, aA COMMON HUMANITY THROUGH COMMON SECURITYa SPEECH, CAPE TOWN, AUGUST 2006.

Barack Obamaas journey to Africa had been planned since early 2005, shortly after he took the oath of office for the U.S. Senate. Scheduled for August 2006, it was one of the final pieces of The Plan, the two-year outline to keep Obamaas star rising and his political power at its highest ebb. As with The Plan, the trip was devised by his top political mindsa”Chief of Staff Pete Rouse, media consultant David Axelrod, Communications Director Robert Gibbs and Obama himself. The acongressional delegationa trip, or CODEL in the official parlance of Was.h.i.+ngton, was designed to be various things: a fact-finding mission for the new senator, a family visit to his paternal relatives in rural Kenya and, perhaps most important, a public relations splash. The hope among Obamaas team: to raise the senatoras profile nationally and internationally; to solidify his support among a key const.i.tuency, African Americans; and to bulk up his foreign policy credentials.

Obamaas trip, in many ways, would echo the excursions of two other iconic Democrats, both of whom took high-profile trips to Africa and reaped political benefits in the African-American community back home. President Bill Clinton, still beloved among blacks in the United States, was greeted deliriously over his twelve-day trip to Africa in 1998. And, in particular, Senator Robert Kennedyas 1966 journey to South Africa, where he forcefully denounced apartheid, sent a clear message to blacks in the United States. Kennedyas trip is the venture that Obamaas most resembleda”two young, charismatic, idealistic senators with presidential aspirations reaching out to desperately poor blacks on the globeas most often ignored continent. Images of Kennedy being mobbed by African blacks were beamed back to America through newspaper and television. aI believe there will be progress,a Kennedy told residents of Soweto. aHate and bigotry will end in South Africa one day. I believe your children will have a better opportunity than you did.a And Kennedyas aripple of hopea speech (actually t.i.tled aDay of Affirmationa) is considered by some RFK biographers to be his best.

Because of the trappings that accompanied Obamaas incredible star power, the African enterprise was much more successful as a major media hit than as a mission to imbue a first-term senator with greater knowledge about Africa. The trip took on a special fascination among the press because of the astounding market success of Dreams from My Father, of which a large portion was devoted to Obama traveling to Kenya in his early thirties to study his paternal African heritage and connect with his Kenyan relatives. In August 2006, the national media and various segments of the American public were enthralled with Obamaas life story, and this was another way for them to explore his history and, consequently, another way for Obama and his aides to advance the rapidly growing legend around that unique ancestry. Thus, the trip became the focus of enormous media attention. Needless to say, with a swarm of Kenyan, American and international reporters doc.u.menting his every public move, it proved difficult for Obama to have anything close to a anormala CODEL.

This is not to say that Obamaas goal in traveling to Africa was not rooted in a certain idealism. Even before he was elected, he had visions of visiting that continent as a senator. In addition, conversations I had with Obama along the 2004 campaign trail made it abundantly clear that the atrocities of Darfuras civil war were a deep source of concern for him. In those conversations, Obama was hesitant to prescribe a specific solution for the civil war, but he believed that the African conflict deserved greater attention in U.S. foreign policy. As such, he also told a roundtable of journalists at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 that the two places he would most certainly visit after his election were the Middle East and Africa. Also, as a senator, Obama was successful in pa.s.sing an amendment to a 2006 Iraqi spending bill that increased aid to the Republic of Congo, one of his few legislative accomplishments as a new member of the minority party.

So in charting Obamaas first two years in office, Obama and his advisers carved the Africa trip in stone. The idea, Gibbs told me in March 2005, just a few months into Obamaas term, was to send the senator into the 2007a”2008 national election cycle with his public image as strong as ahumanly possible.a Gibbs was not specific about whether that meant readying Obama for a presidential run or as a viable vice-presidential selection for whomever the 2008 Democratic Party nominee turned out to be. Gibbs was not specific because, in early 2005, Obamaas long-term political fortunes as a senator remained a mystery, and at that point it would have been viewed as arrogant to have 2008 presidential aspirations, even if that was the case for Obama, Gibbs or other advisers. Furthermore, if a presidential run was the ultimate hope, there was no way to gauge if Obamaas celebrity would remain strong enough to make a 2008 bid for the White House politically viable. But his advisers certainly were charting a bold course to strengthen and expand Obamaas national reputation quickly, and those larger career decisions would come as events unfolded, all dependent on the execution and outcome of The Plan.

aKenya will just be crazya”the media, the people, everything will be insane,a Gibbs told me over a breakfast plate of eggs Benedict in a Chicago restaurant back in March 2005, a year and a half before the trip. As usual, his instinct was dead on the mark. The fifteen-day trip was organized to include visits to five countries, but the bulk of the journey was to be spent in South Africa and then Kenya. After Kenya, Obama had planned brief visits to the Congo, Djibouti and the Darfur region of Sudan, site of the b.l.o.o.d.y conflict that was killing thousands of Sudanese a month and displacing millions more. But Kenya, the homeland of his father, was the physical and emotional centerpiece of the CODEL. Since Obamaas election to the U.S. Senate, Kenyans had adopted him as one of their own, and his rapid ascent to political power in the United States had made him a living folk hero in the East African nation, especially among his fatheras native tribe, the Luo. A beer named for Obama had gone on the Kenyan market after his 2004 convention speech (Senator beer); a school in rural Kenya was named in his honor; and a play based on his Dreams memoir had been staged earlier in 2006 at the Kenyan National Theater. Thus, Obamaas brain trust expected large, enthusiastic crowds once he reached Kenya. And they were not to be disappointed.

On my way to Africa, I encountered Obama in a bookstore in the Amsterdam airport on the layover between my flight from Chicago, his from Was.h.i.+ngton and our connecting flight to South Africa. He wore his typical uniform designed for anonymitya”a light charcoal gray synthetic jacket and a Chicago White Sox baseball cap fixed low over his eyes. We exchanged greetings and I did not try to engage him in a long conversation, realizing that we would be seeing each other every day for the next two weeks. Instead, I went into my campaign posture of giving him s.p.a.ce, largely because of what I had seen awaiting him at the gate for the plane: nearly a dozen journalists, a handful of them toting video equipment. The media insanity was about to ensue. For the next couple of weeks, it would seem, Obamaas every utterance and mannerism would be captured on video or audio.

OBAMAaS AFRICAN ADVENTURE BEGAN IN CAPE TOWN, THE PICTURESQUE city at the far southern tip of the continent. His first morning opened rather inauspiciously. At our hotel, the Table Baya”a modern, upscale facility that anch.o.r.ed a sprawling mall complex on the Cape Town harbora”an emba.s.sy official greeted him by asking if he had ventured out the night before with some of the media and other members of his CODEL. aI canat hang with these guys in their twenties and thirties,a a tired-looking and raspy-voiced Obama answered somewhat tersely. By then, Obama had completed his second book, The Audacity of Hope. But a year filled with late nights of writing, a day job as a senator and weekend duties as a husband and father had taken its toll on him physically. Now, after another night in a faraway hotel at the end of a seemingly endless plane ride (actually, it was twenty-two hours), Obama tried to suppress his routine morning grumpiness. In any case, Obama no longer drank and was never one to grab a beer in the hotel lobby while on the road. At the end of the day, he would disappear into his hotel room and watch ESPN or touch up his speech for the next day or, more likely, both.

That morning, the reporters and videographers in the entourage got their first taste of the lack of organization behind the media end of the trip. The American-based reporting gaggle was already about a dozen deep, including several magazine writers, two doc.u.mentary film crews and newspaper reporters from the Tribune and Sun-Times in Chicago and the Post-Dispatch in St. Louis. Yet despite all these inquiring minds, there was no physically produced schedule for the dayas events. A couple of reporters openly groused about this state of affairs, and it was obvious that Gibbs had no clear idea how to control or appease all of us. He explained the night before that Obama had been permitted by Senate ethics officials to bring along only two Senate staff members on the CODELa”himself and Mark Lippert, Obamaas foreign policy adviser. The lack of advance planning would soon wear on all involved, including Gibbs. But this was another example of Obamaas lack of real power in Was.h.i.+ngton. Democrats were in the minority, and he had no leverage to convince the Republican administration that his trip was different from that of the rest and that he would need additional staffing, particularly to handle the media. Axelrod suggested that he hire a professional public relations firm from campaign funds to help organize the trip. aBut the lawyers wouldnat let us do it,a complained Axelrod, who was not on the trip. The result was that Gibbs told the reporting entourage in scattershot fas.h.i.+on what would be happening next.

The first event that day was the most significant: a cruise to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent eighteen of his twenty-seven years in prison. This would be a day of symbolisma”a black American politician visiting the solemn site where Mandela was incarcerated for leading, and ultimately winning, the fight against an unjust, virulently racist society in South Africa. If Obama were lucky, this story line would play across the globe on major networks and in major journalistic publications. And to this point in his Senate career, Obama had not been short on luck.

As the ferry pushed off from the Cape Town harbor, Obama settled into a seat next to his guide for the day, Ahmed Kathrada, an apartheid-era African National Congress leader who was jailed for eighteen years on Robben Island, much of that time alongside his friend Mandela. Kathradaas current appearance belied his youth as a rebel. He was slight of stature, bespectacled and wore white Nike running shoes and a maroon fleece jacket, which gave him the look of an innocuous tourist rather than a retired antiapartheid activist. As the low morning suns.h.i.+ne illuminated Kathrada and Obama in a yellowish glow, still photographers snapped pictures and doc.u.mentary film crews scurried about. Furry boom microphones hovered overhead as Kathrada provided Obama with a historical overview of the prison site. Obama initially shot a wary glance at the big microphones but soon went about his business as just another celebrity tourist to the island, a place that had been visited by such luminaries as Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey. Over the course of the day, Kathrada would tell Obama that guards kept the roughly fifteen hundred prisoners in nearly complete societal isolation, refusing, for example, to tell them that Americans had landed on the moon. They were permitted only to send out one five-hundred-word letter every six months. Obama also learned that a caste system based on the shade of oneas skin had been in place in the prison. Lighter-skinned prisoners of Asian heritage like Kathrada, who were called aAsiatics,a were treated slightly better than darker-skinned African blacks.

Once the boat docked, Obama and Kathrada led the march of media and other interested parties up to the uninhabited prison about fifty yards away. The spotlessly clean facility was constructed of gray stone, quarried on the island by the former prisoners, and had been slightly renovated into a museumlike showpiece. The two men stepped down the narrow hallways and quickly reached Mandelaas cramped prison cell. Photographers and reporters pushed together outside the door to doc.u.ment the moment inside, hoping to hear anything that Obama might utter and grab a clear photo of him inside the cell. Just then, Pete Souza, the veteran Chicago Tribune photographer, with a keen eye for the dramatic, scrambled away from the pack and into the prison yard, where he hopped up on a gray wooden bench just outside the small, barred window to Mandelaas cell. Souza later explained that he had remembered a famous photo of Clinton visiting the cell that had been shot from that external vantage point, and he sensed that the same image of Obama would be perfect. Several others followed Souzaas lead and ran after him in hot pursuit. A photographer inside the cell mentioned the Clinton shot to Obama, prompting the senator to respond with aOh, really?a Talking with Kathrada, Obama had already taken clear notice of the history behind hima”and now he suddenly took notice of the historic media opportunity before him. With Souza outside shooting through the window, Obama straightened his shoulders, pushed his jaw forward and squinted his eyes into a serious gaze. Souzaas photo in the Tribune the next day, which ran across the globe on wire services, offered a pensive-looking Obama peering out the window from behind the steel bars. Several other photographers filed a similar captivating image. Though there were several more hours of public appearances, with that serious pose, Obamaas work for this day had been done.

His second day in Cape Town again revealed his deft political touch, although it was more cerebral and less theatrical in nature. He visited a community health center that mostly treated AIDS patients, consulted with an outspoken AIDS activist and shared a private moment with a beloved global figure, n.o.bel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu.

In 2006, South Africa was suffering through one of the most severe AIDS epidemics in the world, with one in five people in the nationa”nearly five milliona”infected with the virus, according to the United Nations. South Africaas leaders had come under heavy criticism for promoting its spread through unsound public statements that flew in the face of scientific evidence. A former South Africa vice president, for example, had recently conceded that he had unprotected s.e.x with a woman suffering from AIDS. And not only that, the politician claimed that a shower afterward would reduce his risk of infection.

The health center was located in Khayelitsha, a poor towns.h.i.+p amid miles and miles of tin-roofed shantytown shacks in stark contrast with the modernity of Cape Town. Outside the clinic, Obama was pressed by reporters to speak about South Africaas AIDS crisis and what should be done to quell it. Obama had been seeking a meeting with the countryas president, Thabo Mbeki, who was one of the politicians who seemed least concerned about the deadly impact of AIDS on his const.i.tuents. Mbeki had publicly questioned whether the HIV infection led to AIDS, a scientific fact known the world over. Here, Obama was caught in something of a dilemma. How broadly should he criticize the current government and risk scuttling his potential meeting with Mbeki?

Obama chose to come out swinging. He charged that the government was in adeniala about the crisis, and he advocated a asense of urgency and an almost clinical truth-tellinga about the spread of the disease. aItas not an issue of Western science versus African science,a he said. aItas just science, and itas not right.a He then dropped that dayas major headline: He would take an AIDS test when he reached Kenya in hopes of erasing the stigma behind the disease among Africans. AIDS is spread primarily by heteros.e.xual s.e.x in Africa, yet most Africans choose to die rather than be tested. With these controversial proclamations, it now looked unlikely that Obama would meet with Mbeki to lobby him to address the AIDS crisis. Yet however ephemeral his statements were that morning, Obama gave voice to a crisis that was killing hundreds of South Africans per day. Few world leaders had spoken out so vigorously on the handling of the crisis by the South African government. aIt sends this message of political leaders.h.i.+p, of being prepared to be open about HIV,a said Zackie Achmat, one of South Africaas most notable AIDS activists. aWe wish more politicians were that honest.a The afternoon meeting with Desmond Tutu was a low-key affair. It was held in Tutuas office inside a rather prosaic stretch of two-story, yellow-brick commercial buildings that looked as if they would fit comfortably into a nondescript office park in suburban middle America. Tutu wore a gray cardigan sweater and gray pants. In a brief appearance before reporters, he lavished praise on his celebrity visitor. He told Obama, aYouare going to be a very credible presidential candidate.a To this, Obama replied with his aAw, shucksa demeanor, although he didnat seem at all rattled by such a prominent figure envisioning great things for him. Tutu joked, aI hope that I would be equally nice to a young white senator.a After a chuckle from Obama, Tutu added: aBut I am glad you are black.a Back in Cape Town that evening, Obama delivered a fairly noncontroversial forty-three-minute address before an attentive audience culled by a progressive think tank. Gibbs handed reporters a copy of the speech, but as he often did, Obama deviated from the prepared remarks almost immediately. aWell, he stayed with it through the first ten words,a Gibbs said to me with a roll of his eyes.

In this speech, t.i.tled aA Common Humanity through Common Security,a Obama stressed his familiar theme of an interconnected humanity. But here in South Africa, the common bond was not just among good-hearted Americans but among well-meaning people stretching across borders and across continents. He cited Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther Kingas influence on the antiapartheid movement in South Africa, and how that movement, in turn, spurred activism back in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. He said modern threats such as AIDS, nuclear proliferation, terrorism and environmental degradation should bind people together across the globe, not divide them. He offered few specifics as to how that should occur, but a.s.serted that there should be an aoverarching strategya to coordinate cooperation among nations, with the United States playing a leading role. He called on America and South Africa to partner to help weaker nations abuild a vibrant civil society.a His penultimate moment came when he observed that his very presence in Africa provided living proof that humanity was moving forward. He closed with that favorite quote from Reverend King about the arc of the moral universe slowly bending toward justice.

Obama was still fatigued, and consequently he walked fairly dryly and slowly through the well-written text. A magazine writer asked me later if I had ever seen Obama look this tired, and thinking back to that commencement address when he was so sleep-deprived that his knee buckled onstage, as well as other such occasions, I replied that I had. But as is often the case, his energy level spiked when he finished with the prepared speech and took audience questions. At the conclusion, audience members, many of whom had never heard of Obama, showered him with hearty applause. Several attendees whom I interviewed said they were in full agreement with his hopeful message, but one noted that it fell well within a conventional political framework. aIt was very interesting and he is very level-headed. I certainly think he is a very good amba.s.sador, a very able politician,a said David Wheeler, a retired university instructor. aHe put across the position of the United States as being beneficial to the rest of the world.a It was also worth noting that Obamaas underlying message was that a black politician from the United States who had African roots might just be beneficial to the rest of the world as well.

BY THE THIRD DAY, FATIGUE WAS SETTLING OVER THE MEDIA ENTOURAGE, and frayed nerves were evident from even the most patient individuals in the group. Immediately following Obamaas speech the night before, we had left Cape Town and driven a couple of hours to Pretoria. The next morning, after a short nightas rest, reporters gathered in the Pretoria hotel lobby and readied themselves to be hauled off to that dayas events, which at this point were unknown to them. This fact had already irritated several reporters, who had wanted to know how to prepare for the day. As the media grumbled, an emba.s.sy official appeared. He informed us that Obama had no public events scheduled for that day. This did not shock me or anger me, since Gibbs had told me before we departed that there would be adown days.a But it did come without fair warning. The news particularly unsettled several newspaper reporters, whose editors most likely were expecting a story to be filed every day. What were they to file today?

Patience with Gibbs and the lack of advance work was now extremely thin. It did not go unnoticed that he did not deliver this unwelcome news himself, but sent an emba.s.sy official to face the media. aHeas a total obfuscator,a a doc.u.mentary filmmaker said of Gibbs. (One doc.u.mentary film crew had been hired by Axelrod. The second was on contract with Hollywood actor Edward Nortonas production company.) Not only had precise scheduling been absent, but there had been virtually no access to Obama in private moments. Unstaged moments often make the most tantalizing scenes of a doc.u.mentary. But as I had learned two years before in the Senate campaign, Obama intensely guards his personal time, what precious little of it there is. And in his weary state, he certainly would not agree to cameras invading his hotel room or his traveling vehicle. Nor would he countenance a writer sitting next to him and gauging his private moods. My long-standing relations.h.i.+p with Obama perhaps gave me the best opportunity for direct access to the senator, but ever since Gibbs appeared on the scene in the general election campaign and began his long, tightly controlled reign over media relations, I had learned to live with greatly restricted access compared with the early Senate campaign days. And by now, I had also reconciled myself to the fact that no amount of pus.h.i.+ng Gibbs would change this reality. Indeed, even the doc.u.mentary crew most sympathetic to Obamaa”the group hired by his own media consultant to produce flattering footage that would be used as campaign materiala”was irritated about the lack of private access to the senator.

Fortunately for the newspaper reporters, the day soon provided some real newsa”none of it good for Obama. He learned that, indeed, President Mbeki would not meet with him. The official reason: an Iranian delegation was in Johannesburg for a summit to discuss their countryas decision to move forward with a uranium enrichment program. aIt would look inappropriate if the president were to meet with Obama with the Iranians here,a an official with the U.S. Emba.s.sy said. Obama later speculated that his harsh words about the government on the AIDS crisis did not help his cause. The second bit of bad news was that Obama was forced to cancel his visit to the Congo because of violence surrounding a presidential runoff election. These events occurring in tandem emphasized that, despite the media glorification of this trip, Obama had no actual power to affect global policy. Indeed, even if he were a senator idolized by Americaas progressives and canonized in the media, he really was not a major player on the world stage. At least not yet.