DENVER, Aug 28, 2008
Obama: The Journey Of A Confident Man
Politico: Lots Of People In Obama's Life Predicted His Success Story
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Photo Essay Barack Obama A look at the life and meteoric rise of the president-elect.
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“That is how Obama’s father led his life,” Mendell wrote in his book, “and even in times of self-doubt, Obama has hearkened back to that wisdom.”
After graduating from Columbia University, Obama moved to Chicago to become a community organizer on the South Side, a job that could humble even the most confident individuals. But Obama saw success, said Gerald Kellman, who hired him.
Obama's three years as a community organizer is “very much at the root of who Barack has become,” Kellman said. “He was tested so severely and he did well.”
Obama went onto Harvard Law School, where he became the first African-American president of the law review, emerging from a crowded field as the candidate who could bridge liberal and conservative factions. The achievement earned so much national attention that some students made light of the media invasion in a memo titled, “The Barack Obama Story, a Made for TV Movi, Starring Blair Underwood as Barack Obama,” according to a March 1990 article in the Los Angeles Times.
“He is a superstar,” Kellman said of Obama’s Harvard experience. “He realized people began to respond to him in a powerful way.”
As he moved up in Illinois politics, Obama was reminded frequently of his potential. Tall, handsome and smart, Obama heard from colleagues and friends that he didn’t belong in the Illinois legislature, that could be the governor - maybe even president of the United States.
“He had this ability, immediately, you sit there and say, ‘This guy, there is something special about him,'” said Illinois Sen. Terry Link, another member of the poker group. “No matter who met him or how you met him, you walked away with that impression. This guy is going places. I think he will be president of the United States. Did I think he would become more than what he was at the time? Yeah, he had this unique ability to make people feel comfortable around themselves, and feel part of the process.”
Twelve years ago, Cass Sunstein, a former colleague at the University of Chicago law school, introduced his daughter to Obama this way: “If all goes well, maybe he will be president of the United States.”
He analyzed issues in a way that “wasn’t impaired by ideological blinders or simple frameworks,” Sunstein explained. “I also thought he likes people, and people liked him. I thought early on, this was someone who could unify the country across political lines. There was something about his lack of dogmatism, and his problem-solving ability and the ability to connect with him."
By the late 1990s, members of the Saguaro Seminar were calling him “governor.” Obama was a first-term state senator contemplating - and openly discussing - his ambitions for higher office.
He joined the working group led by Robert Putnam, author of “Bowling Alone,” with three dozen other political leaders, clergy, philanthropists and Ivy League professors. They met several times a year, for three years, to discuss ways to rebuild “social capital” and civic life.
“So we were in the midst of one of our intensive discussions about civic engagement,” said Martha Minow, a Harvard University law professor who taught Obama. “And after one of these ranging discussions, across the political sectors, he did this tour de force summary. We just said, ‘When are you running for president?’ It became a joke. We started to nickname him ‘governor.’”
After delivering a celebrated speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Obama began to believe he could stand on that stage as the nominee, a four-year journey that culminates tonight in Denver.
Ever since that day, which turned him into an overnight celebrity, Obama has constantly walked the line between confident and cocky.
He can show humility, asking God in a note he pressed into the Western Wall in Jerusalem to “help me guard against pride,” or invoking his wife in stump speeches as someone who reminds him often that he is not a perfect man.
He can appear self-deprecating and genuinely uneasy about the trappings of his entourage and his following, joking to reporters that he has daydreamed about escaping the presidential campaign bubble. When he goes out to dinner in Chicago with his family, he looks loathe to engage the dozens of people who gather to see him outside restaurants and other public places.
But the flashes of Obama-as-upstart seem to be the enduring ones, fueling a narrative now central to GOP attacks.
Deflecting criticism in February during the primary that he was all rhetoric, no substance: “It's true I give a good speech. What can I do? Nothing wrong with that.”
(After his 2004 convention speech, according to endell, he said, "I'm LeBron, baby. I can play on this level. I got some game.")
An Obama visit Sunday to a Lutheran church in Wisconsin drew attention because the sermon focused on humility and the pastor warned that one should not become “cocky.”
Known early in the campaign for her deprecating humor, describing her husband as “stinky and snore-y” in the morning, Michelle Obama just as often portrays her husband as almost otherworldly in his gifts.
The country needed Barack Obama, she said, who she would rather have at home in Chicago, but “who I am willing to sacrifice because we have this window of opportunity.”
Locked in a fierce primary election battle in April, Michelle Obama paced a stage at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and promised her husband would "be one of the most dynamic leaders we have seen in a long time” - and Democrats know it.
“The thing I want to remind you is that everybody in this party knows that,” she said. “You know why I say that? Because, see, before he was running, right after that wonderful speech at the convention, everybody wanted a piece of hope. It wasn’t naive then. Barack spent the entire fall traveling around, campaigning and raising money for every single Democratic race.
“Every single person,” she said, “wanted him on stage with them, for a little piece of hope. There wasn’t anything naive about it. The problem came when Barack said, ‘I am standing back here, but maybe I can run this.'"
By Carrie Budoff Brown
Copyright 2008 POLITICO
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