Obama - A Promise of Change

Chapter 4

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As a consequence of Jonesas patronage, over the next two years in the legislature, Obama sponsored nearly eight hundred bills, with the new Democratic governor, Rod Blagojevich, signing more than two hundred and eighty into law. Many of those bills allowed Obama to curry favor with key Democratic const.i.tuenciesa"such as organized labora"that Obama would call upon in his campaign for the Senate. Obama, for example, sponsored legislation that blocked overtime restrictions mandated by the Bush administration, and he sponsored a law that extended the reach of the Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor. Besides advancing Obamaas political career, the bulk of this legislation reflected his commitment to the liberal doctrine of expanding government powers to help the most vulnerable in society: children, the elderly, the poor. aBeing in the majority was critical. Accomplishing the things that I had wanted to accomplish, that pent-up demand of ideas that I had, was important,a Obama said. aIt gave me a lot of confidence. This is the kind of politics that I want to practice. This is why I am in this thing. It really bolstered my sense of why politics is important because I had seen what I could get done in a legislative context.a By early 2003, the field for the Democratic Partyas race for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois was nearly set, and surprisingly, it included no real powerhouse candidates. This was one of the reasons Obama felt he had a chance to win. Besides Obama, over the coming months, the contest to be decided in March 2004 would attract seven contenders, five of them seemingly having a shot at the nomination for the junior seat. Democrat d.i.c.k Durbin held the senior Senate seat.

The presumptive front-runner was Dan Hynes, the stateas comptroller. Hynes was the only candidate to have competed ina"and wona"a statewide race, meaning that voters in every corner of Illinois had at least seen his name on the ballot, if not voted for him. He had been the youngest comptroller in the stateas history when he was first elected in 1999, and most insiders perceived him as older and more experienced politically than he was. Though just in his late thirties, Hynes had graying temples and a serious face that gave him a mature look. He had seemingly the deepest political rsum in the field. His father, Thomas Hynes, had been president of the Illinois senate and still ran a powerful ward organization on the cityas Southwest Side.

Daley was the foremost Irish political name in Chicago; Illinois house speaker Michael Madigan placed second in that category; and Hynes arguably came in third. The other top contenders for the Senate would be Blair Hull, the securities trader who had promised to dump as much as thirty million dollars into his campaign; Gery Chico, Mayor Daleyas former chief of staff who had been Chicago school board president; and Maria Pappas, the Cook County treasurer. Also joining the contest were two others deemed more spoilers than anything: Joyce Washington, a health care consultant; and Nancy Skinner, a liberal bomb-throwing radio host.

Obamaas campaign operation in early 2003 was being run by Dan Sh.o.m.on from a small two-room office in Chicagoas Loop business district. Sh.o.m.on, however, did not want to spend the next year running a Senate campaign. Feeling burned out, he told Obama that he would help him launch an office, but he needed to find a long-term campaign manager by spring. Sh.o.m.on explained it wasnat that he didnat believe Obama could win, but he didnat want to be involved in the grind of another campaign. This news infuriated Obama, who could not understand how Sh.o.m.on could abandon him at this crucial juncture in his career. aThis Senate thing,a Sh.o.m.on tried to explain to Obama, athatas your thing, Baracka"itas not mine. My life is going a different way.a Obama, however, still felt betrayed. While the two men spoke frequently over the next months and years, their tight-knit relationship was never fully repaired. Obama, who had been deemed a special person since his childhood, clearly was not accustomed to being left at the altar.

Photographic Insert.

aBarrya Obama in his 1979 senior cla.s.s portrait at the Punahou Academy in Honolulu. (Courtesy of Punahou Academy) Obama, fourth from the right in the front row, with his ninth-grade graduation cla.s.s at Punahou Academy. In Honolulu, the private school was known as the school for the ahaole,a or the school for whites. (Courtesy of Punahou Academy) Obama with the Ka Wai Ola Club at Punahou Academy in 1976. (Courtesy of Punahou Academy) Obama is making a layup here, but he was largely relegated to warming the bench at Punahou after arguing with his coach about the lack of playing time. The experience taught Obama the pitfalls of challenging authority. (Courtesy of Punahou Academy) David Axelrod, the premier Democratic political consultant in Chicago, is Obamaas chief media strategist and was the lead architect of Obamaas Senate campaign. A Republican strategist once put Axelrod at the top of a list of aGuys I Never Want to See Lobbing Grenades at Me Again.a (Courtesy of Paul DaAmato) Obama files pet.i.tions with the Illinois Board of Elections in Springfield, Illinois, to be placed on the Democratic primary ballot for the U.S. Senate on December 8, 2003. At the right is his first long-term political adviser, Dan Sh.o.m.on. (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/Seth Perlman) Obama confers with Illinois Senate president Emil Jones Jr. on the floor of the state senate on July 24, 2004. Jones was Obamaas political patron in Springfield, helping Obama mold his legislative record in a fashion that would help Obama win his U.S. Senate race that year. (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/Randy Squires) Obama delivers his now-famous keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in Boston on July 27, 2004. The speech propelled him onto the national stage. (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/Ron Edmonds) Jack Ryan was Obamaas first Republican opponent in the 2004 U.S. Senate race until the former investment banker was felled by allegations from his ex-wife, a Hollywood actress, that he pressured her to have s.e.x in public. Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/ Nam Y. Huh) Alan Keyes was Obamaas second Republican foe in the 2004 Senate race. The bombastic Keyes got under Obamaas skin when he continually challenged Obamaas Christianity, even charging that aJesus would not vote for Barack Obama.a (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/Nam Y. Huh) Obama leaves a Chicago polling station with Mich.e.l.le and his daughters, Sasha, front left, and Malia, after voting in November 2004. (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/Nam Y. Huh) Obama and his oldest daughter, Malia, then 6, along with his wife, Mich.e.l.le, and their second daughter, Sasha, then 3, celebrate Obamaas Senate victory in November 2004. Obama became the third African American since Reconstruction to hold a U.S. Senate seat. (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/M. Spencer Green) Obama talks with his staff in his office in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in February 2006. (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/Manuel Balce Ceneta) Craig Robinson, Obamaas brother-in-law, initially worried that his sister Mich.e.l.le would ajettisona Obama if he failed to meet her expectations. (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/Stew Milne) As media chaos engulfs them, Obama greets his paternal grandmother, Sarah Hussein Obama, at his fatheras farming compound in the village of Kolego in western Kenya in August 2006. (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/ Sayyid Azim) Obama and his traveling entourage are swarmed by Kenyans as he visits the Nairobi slum of Kibera in August 2006. aI love all of you, my brothers, all of you, my sisters!a Obama told the crowd. (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/Gary Knight VII) Obama comforts Antoinette Sitole as they view the historic photo of her and her slain brother in the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto, South Africa, in August 2006. (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/Themba Hadebe) In Nairobi, Kenya, Gregory Ochieng held aloft a portrait of Barack Obama that he had painted and then delivered to the visiting U.S. senator in August 2006. aHe is my tribesman,a Ochieng said of Obama. (Courtesy of David Mendell) Obamaas traveling media entourage snuggles up close in August 2006 as the U.S. senator tours the Robben Island prison in South Africa, where Nelson Mandela and other antiapartheid activists were imprisoned. (Courtesy of David Mendell) Obama strikes a pose as he peers through the bars of the jail cell where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island just off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/Obed Zilwa) Joined by his half sister, Auma Obama, and his paternal grandmother, Sarah Hussein Obama, Barack Obama answers media questions on his fatheras farming compound in western Kenya in August 2006. Auma said she worries that her brother is driven by the same perfectionism and ambition that overtook their fatheras life. (Courtesy of David Mendell) Obama chats with top aide Robert Gibbs, one of the key architects of his ascension, while they await Obamaas appearance on CBSas Face the Nation in January 2007. (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/Aynsley Floyd) Anthony Direnzo of Norfolk, Ma.s.sachusetts, and Lauren McGill of Blacksburg, Virginia, appear to be enraptured as Obama speaks at a rally at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, in February 2007. Obamaas support is especially strong on college campuses. (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/Susan Walsh) Ten-year-old Donavan Dodds seems thrilled to shake hands with Obama after a campaign rally at Georgia Tech University in Atlanta in April 2007. (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/Gregory Smith) Now a full-fledged presidential candidate, Obama speaks at a campaign stop in Sioux City, Iowa, on April 1, 2007. (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/ Nati Harnik) Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obamaas half sister, said her ambitious, wandering brother was compelled to leave Hawaii, in part because of the isolated atmosphere of the Pacific islands. (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/Lucy Pemoni) Mich.e.l.le Obama, whom her husband describes as amy coconspirator,a has become a partner on the campaign trail as he seeks the presidency. She speaks here in Windham, New Hampshire, in May 2007. (Courtesy of a.s.sociated Press/ Jim Cole) While Obamaas campaign operation was stagnating under a lame-duck campaign manager, Bettylu Saltzman was working hard. She was pulling together fund-raisers and lobbying Axelrod hard on her belief that he indeed had a budding star on his hands in Obama. aIam sure she used the word magical,a Axelrod said with a smile. So as Axelrod moved fully on board, he reached out to Pete Giangreco to run the direct mail operation. Giangreco is a senior partner in the Strategy Group, based in suburban Evanston, and he is one of the leading political mail experts in the country. In that campaign season, he was handling targeted mail for John Edwardsas presidential campaign. He was also fully versed in working a statewide campaign in Illinois, having been an integral adviser to Rod Blagojevichas successful governoras race in 2002. So with Axelrod and Giangreco behind him, Obama had the top media and direct mail operatives in Illinois. Once they pulled in top-notch Washington-based pollster Paul Harsted, Obama suddenly began looking like quite a formidable candidate. All he needed now was staff.

The first full-time hire was Nate Tamarin, the thirtyish son of a Chicago union organizer who hailed from Giangrecoas Strategy Group. Tamarin joined the campaign as a deputy campaign manager in March, just a couple of days before Chicagoas annual Saint Patrickas Day Parade. Politicians never miss the downtown Chicago parade. Itas a ready-made opportunity to preen before a good-sized crowd and before the television cameras. The most telling aspect of a campaignas strength is often the placement of a candidateas float or car in the paradea"the nearer to the front of the pack, the more powerful the candidate or officeholder. Tamarin might have wondered what kind of campaign he had just joined: aWe were dead last,a he said. Hynes, meanwhile, was among the first half dozen.

As the spring wound down, Obamaas team still lacked a full-time manager, and Axelrod began beating the bushes. He wanted someone experienced in electing a black candidate in a predominantly white area. He had followed a race in which a new black mayor was elected in Jersey City, New Jersey, a community of diverse races and cultures. The campaign manager for that candidate was Jim Cauley, who surprisingly came from one of the least diverse places in the countrya"the Appalachian territory of Kentucky. Axelrod had worked with Cauley on the successful Baltimore mayoral campaign of Martin OaMalley, and it seemed to him that Cauley had a knack for urban political warfare. Cauley was in his mid-thirties at the time but was an experienced political hand. He had run OaMalleyas campaign and a couple of congressional campaigns and had worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. At the time, Cauley held a steady job at the DCCC, but he was chafing at the day-to-day office work, which lacked the adrenaline highs of a political campaign. So Axelrod called Cauley, and like most people at that time, Cauley reacted skeptically to the name aBarack Obama.a But he did a bit of research and was impressed that Obama had raised more than half a million dollars in his first congressional effort. Besides, Cauley thought, Axelrod was a abig-time player,a and if he was vouching for Obama, he must be worth looking at. aJust come to Chicago and meet Barack and see if you see what I see,a Axelrod said. aIf you donat see it, no sweat.a So Cauley flew to Chicago and lunched with Obama near Chicagoas famed Michigan Avenue. Cauley was impressed with Chicago in June, but he did not necessarily see what Axelrod saw in Obama. aThey were working out of two small rooms, and frankly,a Cauley said, ait looked like a campaign for the state senate, not the U.S. Senate.a But, Cauley said, aa lot of influential people were asking me to do it and I respected thema"so I said okay.a Still, Cauley climbed aboard with some apprehension. Even Cauleyas father, who was a certified public accountant and had been involved in Kentucky Democratic politics for decades, wondered if Cauley knew what he was doing by handling a candidate named Barack Obama. aHave you really thought this one through, Jim?a his father asked.

Cauley was something of the ant.i.thesis of whom one might expect to find as Obamaas campaign manager. Slightly balding and barrel-chested, he exuded every bit of his Kentucky upbringing. His accent was thick and his phrasing southern, down-home and straightforward. His plainspoken nature, his lack of interest in policy matters and his attention to minor details all ran counter to Obamaas larger, philosophical vision. Cauley did not claim to be a Rhodes Scholar, and he knew what his role was: to help Obama raise money, hire and organize staff and volunteers and then turn out Obamaas voters on election day. aSomebodyas got to keep the trains running on time and make sure the money is coming ina"and thatas me,a Cauley said.

AS HE OFFICIALLY SET OUT ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL, OBAMA charted a course to sh.o.r.e up his two core const.i.tuencies, African Americans and liberals. Among key liberals, he won the support of Representative Jan Schakowsky, who represented a lakefront district on Chicagoas North Side. She had considered a run for the Senate but decided against it and instead ardently threw her support behind Obama. Also officially coming on board was the Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., the best-known black leader in the country. Jackson, whose Rainbow/PUSH organization was headquartered in Hyde Park, had been an informal adviser to Obama for several years. This was an example of Mich.e.l.le helping to ingratiate her husband with Chicagoas African-American network; she had been friends with Jacksonas daughter, Jacqueline, while they grew up on Chicagoas South Side. As a teenager, Mich.e.l.le had even babysat young Jesse Jr.

Beyond the endors.e.m.e.nts, Obama put his most vigorous on-the-stump efforts into winning votes in the black community. Blacks are a key voting bloc for any Democrat, with about 75 percent of black voters being Democrats compared with 45 percent of white voters. In Illinois, roughly one in five Democratic primary voters is black, and Obama would need a large percentage of the African-American vote on election day to be successful. And judging by his uneven relationship with some members of the legislative black caucus and the ill feelings from the Bobby Rush race, his black support was by no means guaranteed. Indeed, Rushas grudge against Obama was as intense as ever, and the congressman did everything he could to poison Obamaas image among blacks. Rush even signed on to be cochairman of Blair Hullas campaign. Moreover, Obamaas foes in the Senate contest were more than willing to point out the race issues that percolated beneath the surface from the Rush race. This left various observers to ask: Was Obama black enough to win widespread African-American votes?

aAs a politician, the Obama character has a tragic flaw,a worried commentator Laura Washington in the Chicago Sun-Times. aHe may be too smart, too reserved, and perceived as too elitist for regular black folk. Itas the Uncle Leland problem. My uncle says that low-income and working-cla.s.s blacks donat think Obama is adowna enough. Itas a cultural phenomenon, and itas rooted in an unfortunate strain of anti-intellectualism and distrust of those with close a.s.sociations with the white power structurea. Some of the black nationalists are whispering that aBarack is not black enough.a Heas of mixed race, he hangs out in Hyde Park, and is a darling of white progressives; heas not to be trusted. And there are the black Machine Democrats. Theyare all crabs in the barrel, trying to get to the top. And they donat want Obama to get there first.a In these early days of his U.S. Senate campaign, aggressively trying to establish a kinship with ordinary blacks, Obama still seemed a tad uncomfortable trying to win acceptance, or at least win votes. Sometimes he could work just a little too hard. When addressing African Americans, he would drop into a southern drawl, pepper his prose with a neatly placed ayaalla and call up various black colloquialisms. The cadence of his sentences would change dramatically, moving faster and then slower and then faster. He would hit crescendos and then fall back into a slower rhythm again until the next crescendo, taking a page from the many African-American preachers he had first encountered in his days as a community organizer on Chicagoas Far South Side. Sometimes this worked; other times it seemed forced.

Obama explained to me the change in his speech pattern this way: aThere is going to be a certain rhythm you feel from the audience, any audience. An all-black audience is going to respond in a different way. They are not going to just sit there. I am not a minister and I canat pretend to be Dr. King, nor would I want to. He spoke poetry and I am prose. But it takes a different speaking pattern to connect with your audience.a Aides would occasionally worry that his change of tone and diction from precise English could be viewed as talking down to his audience. aItas been mentioned, but most times, you know Barack, he just canat help himself,a said David Katz, his campaign photographer. Sometimes Obama clearly would go overboard in all-black settings, yet no one could dispute that he did anything but campaign tirelessly in the black community. From early 2003, he filled nearly every Sunday morning with speaking appearances in Chicagoas black churches. And when stepping before the congregation, always careful to be respectful and stand astride the preacheras pulpit, always certain to mention his own pastor, Jeremiah A. Wright, Obama would use inspiring oratory and his credentials as a state legislator to educate the audience about himself and his candidacy. By the end, he had clearly won over most of the crowd.

Obamaas message to black audiences was similar to his proclamations to other Democratic crowdsa"a theme of hope in the goodness of the human spirita"although he wrapped that message in a language tailored to African Americans. He consistently mentioned his Christian faith and his home church on the cityas South Side, Trinity United Church of Christ, and suggested that the teachings of the African-American church should be a primary guide for lawmakers and other decision makers. But in these speeches to blacks, Obama went one step further. He linked his own political ascendance to the forward momentum of the black cause in general. He spoke in terms of his own success being a step in the larger success of blacks nationwide. To a nearly all-black audience at Mars Hill Baptist Church in Chicagoas Austin neighborhood in November 2003, Obama declared: aI am not running a race-based campaign. I am rooted in the African-American community, but not limited by it. I am campaigning everywhere. The way we are moving so far, if we can sustain it, and if our community can rise up and we recognize this opportunity, I am confident we are gonna win. This is a campaign based on truth and based on honesty and based on the values that I learned in the church.a Not enough emphasis can be placed on Obamaas claim of not being alimiteda to only winning black votes. This sentiment strikes at the heart of black America: a desire for full emanc.i.p.ation into the white world, not to be alimiteda by skin color alone, to be given an equal shot. In making himself part of that cause, Obama was conveying that a vote for him was a vote for freedom of all blacks, a vote for blacks not to be held down.

In January 2004, at the opening of his south suburban campaign office, he implored an audience of largely black supporters to look beyond immediate disappointments, not to let painful thoughts of the black struggle cloud a vision of future possibilitiesa"with the greatest possibility, of course, being his election as a U.S. senator: We just a.s.sume that young people in our communities wonat aspire to higher education and we are not surprised when they drop out. We automatically a.s.sume that they are going to be two or three grades behind in national reading scores. That is just something that we have come to expect. We are not shocked that there are more African-American men in prison than there are in college. We are not shocked that fifty percent of African-American men between twenty-one and twenty-four are not in school and are out of work. And when it comes to Washington, we just a.s.sume that the game is fixed for the powerful, for the special interestsa. The essence of this campaign is for us to no longer accept the unacceptable, to raise the bar, to set a new set of standards, to start thinking differently about what is possible in our communities and in our politics.

This hopeful oratory aside, his most convincing argument to blacks was not his eloquent language but the basics of his political rsum. Obama had acc.u.mulated a list of concrete accomplishments during his tenure in the Illinois senate, many of which a.s.sisted blacks. In Obamaas oft-repeated words, aI have not just talked the talk, I have walked the walk.a Before black crowds, Obama ticked off all the laws aiding the black community that he had personally written and ushered through the legislature: a law that forced police to record the race of people pulled over in order to stem racial profiling; a law that forced authorities to videotape confessions in the wake of Chicago Tribune investigative reports that more than a dozen innocent men, all of them black, had been placed on Illinoisas death row; a law that greatly expanded the number of poor children covered under the stateas medical insurance. When blacks in churches like Mars Hill heard this, they would nod their heads approvingly, and any thoughts that they might have been harboring that Obama was a tool of whites soon evaporated.

Another factor that greatly inoculated him from these charges of lacking black authenticity was his wife, Mich.e.l.le. Obama had married a black woman from the cityas South Side. Cynthia Miller, his office manager in his congressional campaign, said when questions about Obamaas blackness would arise among her African-American friends and acquaintances, she would consistently be asked if he married a black or a white woman. aIt was the first question I would geta"and I would get it a lot,a Miller said. When she answered that he had married a black woman, the wariness would subside: His choice of a black wife seemed to give him legitimacy in the community.

Mich.e.l.le, for her part, defended her husband vigorously against suggestions that he lacked black credentials. In a Chicago public television profile of her husband during the Senate race, she practically jumped out of her seat when the interviewer noted that Obama had been cast by a previous political opponent as a mercenary for white elites. aBarack is a black man!a she said emphatically, her eyes widening. In an interview with me, she expanded on that sentiment and explained why her response was so emotional. She said that blacks who achieve academic success and do not adhere to popular stereotypes within black culture can often be ostracizeda"and she encountered similar issues when growing up. So when her husband was accused of not being fully black, it struck a raw nerve. Said Mich.e.l.le: The anger and frustration that comes with that whole issue has just as much to do withathe frustration of the challenge within the community, and I faced it too. Here I am, you know, South Side, doing just what I thought I was supposed to do. But Princeton and Harvard do certain things and, you know, itas like that growing up, you know. You talk a certain type of English and then you have to cover that up on your way to school so you donat get your b.u.t.t kicked. You know, we grew up with that. My brother faced it, we all faced it whereathereas frustration of feeling like you have to camouflage your intellect in order to survive in your own community. And fortunately I came from a family on both sides that didnat believe in that, that didnat foster it, that fostered any courage, intellectual discourse and, you know, all of that. So that just brings up all of [what] I experienced. So I didnat view that as something that was particular to Baracka. The point isathat heas a black mana. So thatas not even the issue. You canat even focus on that. But what it points to that is frustrating is thereas still an ability of people to use intellect and race as a way to drive a wedge between certain people in their own community. And thatas the frustration, I think, that I felt with that issue because it reminded me of just the kind of things that I had to deal with growing up.

CHAPTER.

14.

The Real Deal.

I have been chasing this same goal my entire adult career, and that is creating an America that is fairer, more compa.s.sionate and has greater understanding between its various peoples.

a"BARACK OBAMA.

My first encounter with Barack Obama in his U.S. Senate race came on a cold fall morning in November 2003. I had been a.s.signed to cover the Democrats vying for the nomination and I began reporting profiles of the top-tier candidates: Obama, Dan Hynes, Gery Chico and Blair Hull. By now, Obama had contracted with a communications director named Pam Smith. Good-natured and usually smiling, Smith was a Chicago-based public relations consultant in her forties who was rather inexperienced in politics at this level, and she could be a bit overwhelmed with the daunting task of serving as the lead spokeswoman for a high-profile Senate candidate. She was aware of the importance of the campaigna"and Obama understood the significance of hiring a black woman as his public face to Chicago area votersa"but she acted more as a conduit to reporters than as a mouthpiece for Obama. Just as Obama had told Sh.o.m.on years before, Obama handled his own press for the most part. He wanted control over his message, especially when it came to his image in such a powerful local media outlet as the Chicago Tribune. I told Smith that I wanted to attend one of Obamaas const.i.tutional law cla.s.ses at the University of Chicago and we arranged for me to sit through a lecture later that week.

But when I arrived at 8:50 a.m. at the room number Smith had given me, I found no students and no Obama, even though the cla.s.s was to begin in ten minutes. After a series of cell phone callsa"to Smith, who called Obama, who called mea"we straightened out the matter. His cla.s.s was down the hall. Political campaigns, especially in the early stages, are rarely well-oiled machines. They are like a start-up company tossed together, usually populated by young people barely removed from college. So this disorganization was irritating, especially at 9 a.m., but not surprising. What surprised me was Obamaas handling of the foul-up. He apologized and told me that he had given Smith the wrong room number. He emphasized that it was his fault. aDonat blame Pam,a he said. aIt was my mistake.a I found this odda"and rather refreshing. Obama could easily have made his aide the culprit but chose to accept the blame himself. Politicians are not known for admitting to mistakes. Settling into a chair in his cla.s.sroom, I thought, He is either honest, naive or endeavoring to change my first impression of him from several years agoa"as one who would blame an ill child for his missing a key Illinois senate vote while he vacationed in Hawaii.

Dressed in blue shirt and tie, Obama strode into the cla.s.sroom about five minutes late and did not acknowledge my presence, another act I found somewhat strange. How many times does a Tribune reporter sit through your cla.s.s? He pulled off his winter coat and his navy suit coat, and I noted that his frame was even thinner than I had remembered from that press conference a couple of years earlier. He opened the discussion and, as he paced the room, he loosened his tie and reached down to roll up the sleeves of his shirt. He turned over each layer of light blue cotton so slowly and with such precision that it was impossible not to fix your eyes on his movements. Obama certainly knew how to call attention to himself, and in the most subtle manner. It was understated, but he definitely had a confident presence, if not overly confident.

To Obamaas far right, I spotted two young African-American female students gazing at him from above their laptop computer screens. One of the young women looked positively enraptured, while the other appeared just slightly entranced. Even if they did not have crushes on the instructor, they seemed more focused on his physical being than the subject of his lecture. Obama went through the material of the day, cases involving civil rights and voting rights, in a clear and methodical manner. He challenged some students but in no way seemed bent on embarra.s.sing them. The University of Chicago is an elite inst.i.tution, and the students were bright and alert. It was evident that they had read the a.s.signments and were at least minimally prepared. As the cla.s.s ended, the two young African-American women approached Obama. The woman with the intense gaze was fidgety and nervous in his presence, even as she asked a common question about an a.s.signment. He folded his arms with a detached coolness that did little to put her at ease. I smiled. If Obama runs any kind of television ad campaign that gets him noticed by large numbers of voters, I thought, itas crystal clear where the vote of college-educated black women is going.

As students departed, Obama walked up and shook hands with me. His handshake was not as tight and firm as I had come to expect from politicians. He joked that he was going to call on me a couple of times in the cla.s.s, but awasnat sure you had read the a.s.signment.a I laughed mildly. I then explained that I would be covering the campaigns of the Democratic candidates for the Tribune over the next five months, and I suggested that we grab a cup of coffee and talk about the race. aGreat idea,a he said. So we walked out and headed down the hallway. A student with a blue-white aObama, Democrat for Senatea b.u.t.ton fastened to his backpack walked by. Obama broke into a wide grin and pointed, aHey, look at that.a The b.u.t.ton didnat exactly impress me. Surely Obama had a good number of university students in his corner, considering that he was teaching there and lived just a few blocks away in Hyde Park. As we stepped down a corridor and neared some outside doors, Obama turned and said, aWell, have a good day.a Perplexed, I froze in my tracks. aI thought we were getting coffee?a I asked. aOh, we will,a he said. And he stepped away. This baffled me, but over time I would learn that Obama was a man accustomed to setting his own pace and his own schedulea"and that day, a cup of coffee with the Tribune reporter was not in his plans. He had only learned the night before that I would be there, and he was a man who insisted on being fully prepared for these kinds of encounters.

I found Obama again when he was one of several speakers to a crowd of South Side black veterans. The event was outdoors and Obama was late arriving. He surprised me by driving up to the gathering by himself, with no staff accompaniment. Most politicians, and especially candidates for high office, are chauffeured from place to place with at least one aide at their side. Afterward, as I walked with Obama back to his Jeep Cherokee, he seemed to have only faint interest in setting up that cup of coffee with me. Yet when a black man slowed his car and waved encouragement to him in his Senate race, Obama was quick to point me out: aHey, Iam doing good,a he told the man. aLook, Iave got the Chicago Tribune here with me right now.a I guess I came in handy for show-and-tell, I thought.

OBAMAaS CANDIDACY INTRIGUED ME, BUT NOT NEARLY AS MUCH AS the newest face on the political scene: multimillionaire Blair Hull. His rsum of making hundreds of millions as a securities trader was interesting enough, but as the story went, he had moved into trading after parlaying twenty-five thousand dollars in blackjack winnings from Las Vegas into a successful trading company. Besides that, rumors swirled about those personal issuesa"alcohol abuse and ex-wife problemsa"that had scared David Axelrod away from working for his campaign. Hull had long ago put together a campaign apparatus, and it was so well a.s.sembled that it resembled a minicorporation. Professional-sounding secretaries answered the phone and there were up-to-date magazines in the waiting area. The campaign was housed in a historic-looking building in the bustling Near North neighborhood of downtown Chicago, within walking distance of the aMagnificent Milea of North Michigan Avenue. I counted more than two dozen signs or b.u.t.tons or stickers with the name aHULLa emblazoned on them in the waiting area. Hull entered the race with zero name recognition, and the first order of business was building his name into a brand. He had already been running television commercials across the state. The poll-driven theme was that, as an outsider to Washington not beholden to any special interests, Hull would cut through the muck of the Beltway cesspool to solve the nationas health care crisis. His health care plan, in fact, would ensure that all Americans had medical coverage. The ads were slick and highly professionala"and Hull had an unlimited bank account to flood the airwaves with them.

I had called the Hull campaign to establish contact and meet with his press secretary, a good-humored, b.u.t.toned-down spokesman named Jim OaConnor. I wanted to meet Hull, and OaConnor said that would be afantastic.a But after weeks of chatting, the meeting still had not come together. OaConnor seemed to find one excuse after another for why we could not sit down. I would learn later that Hullas aides had been working for months to prepare the political neophyte for talking with reporters. Finally, in late November, OaConnor, Hull and I had lunch, and Hull seemed amiable enough. I told him that his ads were sharply produced and appeared to be having some effect on an electorate that, at the moment, was barely aware that a Senate contest was under way. But I also took notice of something that a colleague had pointed out: aThose Blair Hull ads are good, but you know, I can never remember what he looks like afterward, even though I have seen that commercial a dozen times.a Indeed, Hull had such an undistinctive facea"none of his characteristics were particularly defininga"that his physical presence could go largely unnoticed and be soon forgotten. Bespectacled, with gray hair, Hull smiled throughout the lunch and appeared to be reciting lines that had been written for him, but I expected this from a first-time candidate for office.

What I did not expect was the call from his office that came about 6 p.m. several days latera"on Monday, December 8. Someone named Jason Erkes said there would be an important announcement from the Hull campaign at any moment. When Erkes called back, he explained that he was a second campaign spokesman and he had information to release: A young woman had been found dead in the garage of Hullas home in Chicagoas tony Gold Coast neighborhood on Sat.u.r.day evening. Hull had not been living in the home and he did not know the womana"she apparently was the close friend of a former young girlfriend of Hullas. The two women had been sharing the home and Hull had moved elsewhere. The police were investigating but did not believe foul play was involved.

Later, the authorities ruled the woman had died from carbon monoxide that had emanated from a malfunctioning swimming pool heater located inside the garage. The pool was atop the garage. The young woman had stepped into the garage and was felled by the poisonous fumes before she reached her car.

The story was buried in the newspapers and only lasted a day. But four months before the primary, Blair Hullas bizarre, scrambled personal life was already taking center stage in the Senate race.

THE WEEKEND BEFORE THE HULL STORY BROKE, I WROTE A curtain-raising story about the Senate race for the Tribune. The piece called Dan Hynes the front-runner and mentioned Blair Hull, Gery Chico and another candidate who had now entered the race, Cook County treasurer Maria Pappas. She was perhaps the hardest candidate to explain. Pappas was an eccentric who had high name recognition, but she had jumped into the campaign so late that observers wondered if she was really serious or was a stalking horse for another candidate. I had spoken with her on the telephone and the conversation left me more puzzled than anything. She was known for her quirky nature, and in the chat with me, she stressed that she might even hop on a bicycle and go through neighborhoods on two wheels. Then she invited me to bike with her. aUm, itas December and this whole campaign is running through the winter,a I said. aI think Iall take a pa.s.s on the Sunday bike rides.a First there was Blair Hull and the death of a young woman in his home. Now here came this odd woman insisting that I bicycle with her in December in Chicagoa"this race had more characters to it than I had ever antic.i.p.ated.

In the Tribune story, I mentioned that Obama was trying to pull together the key Chicago Democratic voting blocs of North Sh.o.r.e liberals and African Americans. In doing so, I wrote, Obama had campaigned aalmost exclusivelya in the black community, at least so far. I wrote this because I had limited information about Obamaas campaigning, since he had not yet sat down to speak with me. Smith had told me that he was spending every Sunday morning in black churchesa"and I had spent one Sunday observing him in several of them. But once the story appeared, Smith called to say that he had been campaigning in far more settings than the African-American community, and Obama wanted to talk to me in person about my misrepresentation of his campaign. And could I do it that afternoon? she asked.

Obamaas campaign office was located high inside a beautiful white terra-cotta building along South Michigan Avenue across from downtown Chicagoas Grant Park. When I stepped into his private corner office, my eyes were drawn to two things: the roomas clutter and a huge framed poster of heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali. The striking photograph caught the fighter with a clenched right arm and a bloodthirsty, celebratory gaze in his eyes just moments after blasting opponent Sonny Liston to the canvas. The famous Ali image hovered above Obamaas head at his desk. The candidate explained that he recently grabbed it on the spot from a street vendor. Was this a metaphor for his underdog campaign pulverizing the opposition with glee? I asked with a grin. He returned a smile.

I sat in front of Obamaas desk, with Smith taking her place in the chair beside me, and was prepared for Obama to launch into a diatribe about what he believed I had written inaccurately about his campaigning. Instead, Obama said, aWell, go ahead, fire away. Ask whatever you want.a I realized that this was our profile interview, not a dressing-down session. Obama was now obviously ready to speak to the Tribune and had summoned me for that purpose, and somehow the communication wires were crossed again. I hadnat fully prepared for such an extensive discussion, but the candidate was right here in front of me, so away we went. After about a half hour, I had managed to ask only three questions. Once he was fully prepared, Obama could talk endlessly about a subject dear to him: himself. He spoke quietly and slowly, measuring each of his statements. Indeed, his low-key, conversational delivery in a one-on-one interview can be the complete opposite of his stage persona. His rich baritone is very clear in personal settings, but sometimes it is almost hushed. As Obama would do with so many reporters as the months wore on, he impressed me that evening with his mixture of intelligence, eloquence and a committed idealism. He framed his entrance into politics as part of an ongoing quest for social change. He was truly an activist at heart, not a politician, he claimed. I would see each of his life experiences shape the course of his discussiona"the happy-go-lucky prep school teen from Hawaii, the adventurous community organizer with trained listening skills, the Harvard Law School graduate who presided over combative intellectuals on the Law Review, the state lawmaker who had endeavored to remain out of Chicagoas nasty ward politics, the devoted husband and father: I think politics was really an extension or progression from a broader set of goals and concerns. When I was in college, I decided I wanted to be part of bringing about social change in this country, and some of that is based on the values my family gave me. Some of it is based on, I think, my status as an African American in this country. And some of it is informed by my having lived abroad and having family in underdeveloped countries where the contrast between rich and poor is so sharp that it is hard to ignore injustice. But I didnat know in college how that would take shape. And I was actually pretty cynical in college about electoral politics. Thatas when I decided to get involved in community organizing as opposed to signing up with someoneas campaign. I took a lot of inspiration from the civil rights movement and the way the movement brought ordinary people into extraordinary positions of leadership. It struck me that lasting change came from the bottom up and not from the top down. I have been chasing this same goal my entire adult career, and that is creating an America that is fairer, more compa.s.sionate and has greater understanding between its various peoples.

I asked Obama something of a reporteras questiona"designed in an impossible fashion to elicit a certain response. At the time, the city was building a grandiose park area, now called Millennium Park, just outside Obamaas window on the other side of South Michigan Avenue. The project was well beyond its target date for completion and far over budgeta"into the hundreds of millions of dollars. I asked him about his relationship with Mayor Daley, and he responded that it was acordial, not close.a So I queried Obama about what he thought of the park, if it wouldnat have been wiser to spend those hundreds of millions on the beleaguered city school system or to spur economic development in the poor neighborhoods of his district. Spending those kinds of public resources on a park largely for tourists and the elitesa"how was that advancing social change? And why hadnat he spoken out on this issue? Obama winced at the question, and I readied myself for a politic answer, perhaps something about how the center city needed to be developed, how Chicago was a tourist metropolis and needed that kind of urban investment. Instead, Obama leaned forward and said, aHow do you really expect me to answer that? If I told you how I really felt, Iad be committing political suicide right here in front of you.a I found his candor refreshing. But it also told me something: Even if he was driven by an activist heart, he was no radical. Rather, he was a polished professional politician who knew that, despite being a community organizer and staunch do-gooder, as a U.S. Senate candidate, he was now working from within the established political order. And when I pressed further for a real answer, he indeed found that politically correct response, saying that the park would advance the cityas national reputation and he understood its importance to overall economic development, but he would also like to see more resources devoted to the problems in the cityas economically depressed neighborhoods.

In the interview, Obama said the three men he most admired were Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.a"amen who were able to bring about extraordinary changes and place themselves in a difficult historical moment and be a moral center.a (Itas worth noting that Obama might fall into that category if he were to win the presidency in a difficult period fraught with a foreign war. As a presidential candidate, he has portrayed himself as a moral leader who wants to change not only policy but the combative nature of politics.) As we spoke, Obama also emphasized various themes that I would hear over the coming months and years in his stump speeches as a Senate candidate, in his town hall meetings as a senator and in his trips across the country in his White House quest. Even though he spent his teen years ridden with feelings of parental abandonmenta"again, he had often deemed himself aan orphanaa"he said that he had been blessed with so much good fortune in his life that it was inc.u.mbent upon him to give something back to society. His devoted mother and grandparents, as well as college professors and adult friends, were aligned to steer him from a path of self-destruction, he said. And too many black teenagers are not that fortunate: When I see young African-American men out there and the struggles that they go through, then I connect with that. I know what that means. I know that, in my book, I mention that I dabbled in drugs or that I was acting tough. I put that in there explicitly because what I wanted to communicate was the degree to which many young men, particularly young African-American men, engage in self-destructive behavior because they donat have a clear sense of direction. But I also wanted to point out that there is way to pull out of that and refocus, and in my case, it was tying myself to something much larger than myself. In my case, that was trying to promote a fair and just society. That is the reason I work on ex-offender legislation. I say to myself that if I had been growing up in low-income neighborhoods in Chicago, there is no reason to think that I wouldnat be in jail today, that I could have easily taken that same wrong turn. That is something that I am very mindful of and it is something that motivates me. Thinking about how you provide hope and opportunity to every kid is my biggest motivator. When I see my five-year-old and my two-year-old, it makes me weep because I see children who are just as smart and just as beautiful as they are, who just donat get a shot. Itas unacceptable in a country as wealthy as ours that children every bit as special as my own children are not getting a decent shot at life.

Obamaas notion of attaching oneself to a larger ideal is a persistent theme in his public rhetoric. Through the first months of his presidential campaign, he would challenge audiences of all political stripes, educations and financial levels to work on behalf of a greater good and not to spend their lives strictly in pursuit of material possessions. This fell right in line with his motheras posta"World War II brand of liberalism and humanism. His message could be preachy, especially coming from a Harvard Law graduate who eventually would become a millionaire presidential candidate, but even conservatives would be hard-pressed to argue against the premise of helping those less fortunate. Throughout our first encounter, Obama also exuded a certain authenticity and great ease with himself, the polar opposite of, say, Blair Hull, who could seem uncomfortable just saying ah.e.l.lo.a IN SUMMER AND FALL 2003, DAVID AXELROD HAD BEGUN TO PULL together facets of Obamaas rsum to sell to his Washington media contacts and Illinois-based reporters. He managed to get some pieces in Washington-based political journals that touted Obama as a potential star in the making. These were helpful not only to build up his candidate in the media but to present to potential fund-raising contacts to show Obamaas viability as a strong contender in the race. This helped Obama raise three million dollars overall and still have two million on hand heading into the final months of the campaign. This was nothing compared with Hullas tens of millions, but it would be enough to run a two-to three-week television campaign and present Obama as a serious candidate to influential political insiders.

Also in the fall of 2003, as most professional campaigns would do, Obamaas advisers hosted a series of focus groups to determine their candidateas strengths and weaknesses. Focus groups are a far cry from scientific experiments, but they can open eyes to what voters might be thinking. In these groups, a cross section of people were a.s.sembled to review television footage of the candidates. Obamaas consultants watched from the next room, munching on junk food and swilling canned diet soda. The sessions revealed that Obamaas self-confidence as a political candidate and as the purveyor of a desirous message was not misplaced. There was even an epiphany or two among Obamaas campaign team.

The aides learned that various parts of Obamaas unique rsum appealed to different demographic groups. In explaining Obamaas experience to a white voter, all they had to do was mention afirst black president of the Harvard Law Reviewa and the voter suddenly had an image drawna"a positive portrait of a black man. aIt worked on two levels,a Axelrod said. aThere were those who thought that breaking barriers is very important. And for others, the Harvard Law Review was a major credential in itself.a With black voters, however, it was not Harvard Law that evoked positive responses but Obamaas community-organizing experience and the legislation he had successfully sponsored, such as the racial profiling law and the expansion of health care coverage to poor children.

But Obamaas campaign tacticians also learned that he would probably play fabulously on television. Indeed, their candidate had an amazing telegenic quality. Jim Cauley, the campaign manager, had not necessarily swallowed Axelrodas predictions of Obamaas potential star power. Perhaps it was because Axelrod had to be sold on it himself by Bettylu Saltzman. But as these two and others would learn, Obama could be viewed very differently by women than by men. And when it came to suburban white women, he could be viewed in amagicala terms, to quote Saltzman. Obama not only had good looks, but his charm with women apparently emanated through the television screen. His face had a certain honesty and handsome warmth that was not offending, much like his personality. In addition, many strong women had shaped Obamaas character, from his mother and his grandmother as a child, to his sister and his wife as an adult.

aMy moment was a focus group,a Cauley recalled in his Kentucky tw.a.n.g. aThe moderator was talking to [liberal, North Sh.o.r.e] women voters, thirty-five to fifty-five and fifty-five plus. He asked the older group, aWho do each of these guys remind you of?a For Dan Hynes, a woman said, aDan Quayle.a For Hull, she said, aEmbalmed.a And she looked at Barack, and the lady said, aSidney Poitier.a At that moment, I was like, as.h.i.t, this is real!aa

CHAPTER.

15.

Hull on Wheels.

Donat you think it would be cool to be a senator?

a"BLAIR HULL, DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR THE SENATE.

The Senate contest of 2004 taught Dan Hynes how difficult it can be to be anointed front-runner in a high-profile political race. When something does not go your way, your spot at the top and the strength of your candidacy are instantly questioned. And few things went Hynesas way in this campaign.

With his powerful fatheras longtime ties to organized labor, a key Democratic Party const.i.tuency, Hynes was expected to lock up labor support far and wide. In fact, he had won the endors.e.m.e.nt of nearly every trade union in the state, groups representing seven hundred thousand workers overall. But Hynes was the state comptroller, whose only real responsibility was cutting payments for the stateas bills. Throughout 2003, Barack Obama had been working in the legislature on behalf of various labor groups. And thanks to his tight friendship with senate president Emil Jones Jr., he was successful at pushing pieces of legislation that benefited labor interests. Jones had also given Obama the chairmanship of the senateas Health Committee, which gave him a close working relationship with the Service Employees International Union. The SEIU had more than one hundred thousand members in Illinois, representing tens of thousands of nursing and other medical workers. So when Obama plucked the SEIUas endors.e.m.e.nt away from Hynes, it was a major coup. The SEIU was a younger, more racially diverse union than the mostly white trade unions. In the 1990s, the SEIU began building an effective gra.s.sroots political mechanism, running phone banks and ama.s.sing armies of volunteers to work on behalf of endorsed political candidates. On a cold, dreary Sat.u.r.day morning in December 2003, Obama addressed the annual state convention of enthusiastic SEIU members at Chicagoas McCormick Place convention center. He donned a purple SEIU jacket and spoke pa.s.sionately about the union movement in America. Impressively, thousands had turned out early that morning to hear Obama preach about how he could win the Senate race. But, of course, he needed their help, he told them. aI canat do this alone,a he said.

aBarack has taken the lead on issues of significant importance to our members,a said Tom Balanoff, the SEIU president, in explaining the Obama endors.e.m.e.nt. aHeas also been out there for us when we have been in trouble, during strikes and things like that.a In Springfield, Obama indeed had carried SEIUas water. He was instrumental in expanding child-care benefits for workers and had been an ardent proponent of universal health care coverage. He was also a leader on the so-called hospital report card act, which, among other things, required hospitals to post staffing levels and mortality rates on the Internet. After the SEIUas blessing, endors.e.m.e.nts followed from the Chicago teachersa union and the American Federation of State, County and Munic.i.p.al Employees. This shifted some momentum toward Obama and away from Hynes.

Hynes struck back with the hard-fought endors.e.m.e.nt of the labor umbrella group, the AFL-CIO, as well as with John Stroger, the African-American president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. But in the end, the Stroger endors.e.m.e.nt was an empty gesture. Stroger even conceded that he was endorsing Hynes strictly as a favor to Hynesas father, Thomas, Strogeras longtime political friend. Hynesas aides contended that this showed Obamaas weakness among black voters. But when I scanned the room during the Hynes event, it was clear from the lack of enthusiasm in their physical reactions that the two dozen blacks in attendance had come more because they were part of Strogeras large political operation than because of any good feelings toward Hynes. I surmised that at least half of these blacks would ultimately vote for Obama if he were in contention on election day. Indeed, history shows that if there is a viable black candidate on the ballot, African Americans will overwhelmingly support that person in the privacy of the voting booth, no matter how many verbal endors.e.m.e.nts the white candidates in the race have sewn up in the black community.

Hynes had other problems too. For one, like the various Democratic presidential candidates, Hynes supported giving President Bush the authority to invade Iraq. In the first debate in the race, Obama sought to exploit what he believed was an Achillesa heel for a Democrat in a primary contest. He pressured Hynes about his support of the impending war in Iraq and tweaked him for having no legislative experience when Hynes seemed to waver on that support. aThe legislature is full of tough calls,a Obama said in a lecturing tone. aItas not like an administrative job; it requires tough calls.a Hynes was also dogged by questions from the panel about a story I had written in the Tribune about Hynesas questionable bundling of campaign contributions from a donor who did business with his office. The donor had his employees give thousands of dollars to Hynesas campaign fund and then reimbursed the workers from the company pot, something that federal elections officials ultimately found was illegal.

With all this controversy swirling around Hynes, I looked around for him when the radio debate was concluded, but he had ducked out of the postdebate Q&A with reporters. Itas never a good sign when a candidate for public office feels compelled to run from the press.

By December 2003, opinion polling showed that a great number of Illinois Democrats had no idea whom they would vote for in the contest, with aundecideda being the overwhelming favorite. Among voters with a preference, Hynes was leading, with about 20 percent of respondents saying they would cast a ballot for him. Blair Hull was coming up on Hynesas heels on the strength of his ma.s.sive television campaign. Gery Chico had raised a lot of cash and had spent almost as much as he had collected, but he was languishing in the single digits and looking more like an also-ran. Maria Pappas, who had been in politics for years and possessed high name recognition in Chicago, polled in the double digits, but had no discernible campaign operation. The still obscure Obama was around 10 percent, but he had two bases that he was working diligently, and Axelrod was singing his praises to people of influence.

So the burgeoning story was Hull. His steady movement in the polls from nowhere to just behind Hynes greatly concerned Hynes, as well as the other candidates. Most campaign strategists were aiming to get their candidate to 30 percent. With so many contenders, this thinking went, the first candidate to reach 30 would be hard to stop. It was increasingly looking as if only three candidates had a shot at getting to this point: Hynes, Hull and Obama.

But Hullas rapid ascent had put Hynes and his staff into a mild panic. The problem for Hynes: Hull was grabbing voters downstate and in other rural corners of Illinois, where life was slower and his television advertising was seeping into the public consciousness. In Chicago, his ads were more likely to get lost amid the urban frenzy. But Hullas name and message were gaining notice in these small towns even though he had never set foot in them. These were voters that Hynes was counting on. Obama would draw blacks in and around Chicago, lakefront liberals and perhaps college students. But if Hynes was to win, he needed rural voters on his side. Believing he had to blunt Hullas early movement, Hynes dropped several hundred thousand dollars in television commercials in downstate markets in late 2003, months before the March primary election. Unfortunately, with voters still not engaged in the race, the brief ad campaign by Hynes had little penetration; in fact, it served only to take a chunk of money from his campaign fund that he would need down the stretch.

I turned my attention to Hull. I had heard from Tribune political writer Rick Pearson, among others, that Hullas sketchy past deserved looking into at some depth. Hull had the oddest of political rsums, although it was becoming more commonplace for the excessively wealthy to enter electoral politics using their personal fortunes to bankroll a campaign. A federal campaign law, called the aMillionairesa Amendment,a had been enacted to try to even the playing field for less well-heeled candidates in races with candidates of extreme personal wealth. The amendment allowed other candidates to surpa.s.s federal donation limits when raising money for such races. In the Illinois contest, this was quite advantageous to Obama, who relied heavily on wealthy lakefront donors like the Pritzkers. It seemed that every member of the Pritzker clan had given the new maximum of twelve thousand dollars to Obama. Hynes, meanwhile, was funded by labor unions and political action committees, which could not spread out their maximum contributions among friends and relatives.

Hull, who possessed a scarily keen mathematical mind, had been a professional blackjack gambler who turned his winnings into Wall Street success. At the urging of his partners, he had sold his securities firm for more than half a billion dollars and then, looking for a new professional interest, turned to Illinois politics. But what intrigued me was not his past but his current campaign. When I tracked him on the campaign trail for a few days, I was stunned by the extreme artificiality of both the candidate and his message. I had lunched with a longtime political source in the city who told me that, like Axelrod, he had interviewed with Hull but declined a job offer. Just as one line from Hull had frightened off Axelrod, this source offered a similar story. When he had asked Hull why he was seeking office, Hull responded: aDonat you think it would be cool to be a senator?a The source was stunned: aHow do you work for a guy whose sole purpose for running seems to be that it would be a cool job?a Moreover, in briefings with his many aides, Hull even expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of a representative democracy. aFor goodness sake, donat say that in public,a he was warned. aYou are running for the U.S. Senate, after all.a I didnat find much more depth on the campaign trail. Hull had tapped his vast finances to construct one of the most sophisticated political operations anywhere in the country that campaign season. His staff and payroll were larger than those of any Democratic presidential contenders, and he had hired some of the most savvy consultants in the business at top-dollar wages. But this was also part of his undoing. His aides joked that they were working on the aNoahas Arka of campaigns because there were two of each of them: two pollsters, two communications directors, two campaign chairmen. This could often mean far too many conflicting voices around the strategy table. His campaign manager earned twenty thousand dollars a month and his policy director fifteen thousand a month. He had as many as twenty-eight consultants on the payroll in the last three months of 2003. He tooled around Chicago in a huge recreational vehicle that had cost the campaign forty thousand dollars. At a joint appearance of the candidates in suburban DuPage County, I was following Obama for the day when he spotted the RV with its huge red-white-and-blue lettering on the side: hull for senate. aGee, whatas that?a Obama asked with a sense of wonderment. aThatas Hull on Wheels,a I explained, using the Hull campaignas moniker for the vehicle. aHow do I compete with that?a he asked rhetorically.

Itas true th

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