The Bridge: The Life And Rise Of Barack Obama Part 18

"There's a hotel, I think it's the Capitol Hilton, in Was.h.i.+ngton. And downstairs, where there are a lot of banquet halls, there's a whole row of all the Presidents," he said. "You walk by the forty-three that have been there and you realize there are only about ten who you have any idea what they did.... I don't know what exactly makes somebody ready to be President. It's not clear that J.F.K. was 'ready' to be President, it's not clear that Harry Truman, when he was elevated, was 'ready.' And yet, somehow, some people respond and some people don't. My instinct is that people who are ready are folks who go into it understanding the gravity of their work, and are able to combine vision and judgment." Vision and judgment: down the line these would be terms of great use to Obama--the first to indicate a sense of intellect and youthful vigor, the second to underline his opposition to the war in Iraq.

What also seemed interesting about Obama that day was his capacity for straight talk on religion, a subject that Democrats had often handled as if it were a hand grenade with the pin out. Rare for a politician, he talked about the role of skepticism in his psychology and spiritual life. His own faith, he said, "admits doubt, and uncertainty, and mystery."

"It's not 'faith' if you are absolutely certain," he said, adding, "Evolution is more grounded in my experience than angels."

Obama's book tour was reminiscent of Colin Powell's experience when, in September, 1995, he was promoting his autobiography, My American Journey; My American Journey; he was constantly peppered with questions about running for the Republican nomination to face Bill Clinton in the general election. Like Obama, Powell was lauded as the political version of Oprah Winfrey--an iconic person of color readily accepted by audiences of all races. "It's a modern phenomenon," says Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "You heard it about Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods before his problems: 'Oh, he's not black. He's he was constantly peppered with questions about running for the Republican nomination to face Bill Clinton in the general election. Like Obama, Powell was lauded as the political version of Oprah Winfrey--an iconic person of color readily accepted by audiences of all races. "It's a modern phenomenon," says Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "You heard it about Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods before his problems: 'Oh, he's not black. He's famous famous.'" For a For a Time Time cover story cover story published in October, 2006, Joe Klein asked Obama about the comparisons. "Figures like Oprah, Tiger, Michael Jordan give people a shortcut to express their better instincts," Obama said. "You can be cynical about this. You can say, It's easy to love Oprah. It's harder to embrace the idea of putting more resources into opportunities for young black men--some of whom aren't so lovable. But I don't feel that way. I think it's healthy, a good instinct. I just don't want it to stop with Oprah. I'd rather say, If you feel good about me, there's a whole lot of young men out there who could be me if given the chance." published in October, 2006, Joe Klein asked Obama about the comparisons. "Figures like Oprah, Tiger, Michael Jordan give people a shortcut to express their better instincts," Obama said. "You can be cynical about this. You can say, It's easy to love Oprah. It's harder to embrace the idea of putting more resources into opportunities for young black men--some of whom aren't so lovable. But I don't feel that way. I think it's healthy, a good instinct. I just don't want it to stop with Oprah. I'd rather say, If you feel good about me, there's a whole lot of young men out there who could be me if given the chance."

Throughout the autumn of 2006, Obama cast around for advice, and even took some old allies by surprise; it seemed they had barely adjusted to his fame beyond the South Side. He called Ivory Mitch.e.l.l, the chairman of the Democratic organization in the Fourth Ward who had helped him win his seat in the State Senate just ten years earlier. "I was in the hospital for a knee replacement, just coming out of anesthesia, and my cell phone is ringing," Mitch.e.l.l recalled. "'Hey, Ivory, this is Barack. I think I want to run for President.' I was seven hours out of surgery and I said, 'Barack, we just sent you to the Senate!'"

In David Axelrod's Chicago office in the River North neighborhood, just after the November, 2006, midterm elections, Obama met with Axelrod, Gibbs, Jarrett, Rouse, Steve Hildebrand, the strategist David Plouffe, Obama's close friend Marty Nesbitt, and his scheduler and aide, Alyssa Mastromonaco. The office walls are covered with framed newspaper pages announcing the victories of Axelrod's many clients. Rouse had prepared a background memo that included questions like "Are you intimidated by the prospect of being leader of the free world?" in the River North neighborhood, just after the November, 2006, midterm elections, Obama met with Axelrod, Gibbs, Jarrett, Rouse, Steve Hildebrand, the strategist David Plouffe, Obama's close friend Marty Nesbitt, and his scheduler and aide, Alyssa Mastromonaco. The office walls are covered with framed newspaper pages announcing the victories of Axelrod's many clients. Rouse had prepared a background memo that included questions like "Are you intimidated by the prospect of being leader of the free world?"

Which made Obama laugh.

"Someone's got to do it," he said. got to do it," he said.

In this and other early meetings that fall, Obama and his staff discussed all the obvious political ramifications. Was it really time? Was Obama prepared for the rigors of non-stop travel and scrutiny, the constant atmosphere of BlackBerry urgency, brushfires from early morning until late at night? Did he want to spend month after month in the first four primary states--Iowa, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Nevada, and South Carolina? Would he ever be able to catch up with Clinton, who was thirty points ahead, in terms of fund-raising and field organizations? Was Obama willing to endure the inhuman effort that a Presidential race demanded when the chance of winning was so remote? "We thought he could win," Plouffe said, "but it was a small small possibility ... Barack had never been through the crucible. He'd never had negative ads run against him. So, the question was, could he deal with the intense scrutiny and the attacks that would come. It was an open question. It was going to be grueling. You'll never be home, it's lonely, you're going to be a huge underdog. You've just come off this book tour where you got all this adulation and pretty soon you're going to be in Iowa talking to twenty people, and none of them are going to be for you." possibility ... Barack had never been through the crucible. He'd never had negative ads run against him. So, the question was, could he deal with the intense scrutiny and the attacks that would come. It was an open question. It was going to be grueling. You'll never be home, it's lonely, you're going to be a huge underdog. You've just come off this book tour where you got all this adulation and pretty soon you're going to be in Iowa talking to twenty people, and none of them are going to be for you."

The Democrats had just achieved a majority and so life in the Senate for Obama might become more satisfying, as it had when the Democrats took the State Senate in Illinois. At home, he talked with his wariest const.i.tuent: Mich.e.l.le Obama. For a long time, Mich.e.l.le had held their family together, taking care of the girls, working at the university, managing what needed doing as a political spouse. A run for the Presidency would mean two years of constant campaigning, of an absent husband and father, a brutal process of public exposure and unpredictable turns. Obama's books were best-sellers. The family was financially secure. Was this life so bad? Did they really want to endure the separations and risks of a Presidential race? As late as Thanksgiving, some members of Obama's inner circle would have put the odds against his running, despite his now public admission that he was thinking it through.

The public adulation was extraordinary. One afternoon Abner Mikva waited for Obama at a famous German restaurant in the Loop called the Berghoff, which was just around the corner from Obama's Chicago office. "He was just a few minutes late but he pulled up in his black S.U.V. He hadn't walked, and I teased him about it," Mikva recalled. "Barack said, 'If I had walked, I would have been an hour hour late.' As it was he couldn't even eat. So many people came to the table just wanting to shake his hand. He said, 'It's getting more and more like this all the time.'" late.' As it was he couldn't even eat. So many people came to the table just wanting to shake his hand. He said, 'It's getting more and more like this all the time.'"

Mikva's friend Newton Minow had had similar experiences of Obama-mania. Throughout the summer he had been wary of Obama's running so soon for the Presidency--until he turned on C-SPAN and watched Obama's speech in Indianola. "I said, by G.o.d, he is Jack Kennedy all over again." On October 26th, Minow published an op-ed article in the Tribune Tribune headlined "Why Obama Should Run for President." headlined "Why Obama Should Run for President."

Obama read the article and asked to meet with Minow and Mikva. The three men a.s.sembled at Minow's office downtown. Obama began by telling them that Mich.e.l.le was extremely reluctant; they were both concerned that he would be away from his daughters for nearly two years if he ran.

"Between Abner and me, we have six daughters, and they've all turned out pretty well," Minow replied. "Mine are all lawyers, Ab's are a rabbi, a judge, a lawyer, and we learned that a father's biggest role was when they are teenagers."

Barack wrote down a few notes and said that he wanted to mention that to Mich.e.l.le.

"Then Abner was tough on him on security," Minow said. "We told him that there was a strong likelihood that someone would take a shot at him. And he said, 'You sound like Mich.e.l.le.' He didn't seem rattled by it, though. He seemed less concerned than we were."

Obama talked about his chances and said that, if he lost, at least he would learn a lot about the country and have a good shot at the Vice-Presidency.

Back in Was.h.i.+ngton, Obama's confidant in the Senate, Richard Durbin, argued that greater seniority in the Senate could prove a liability. The two modern senators who went directly to the Presidency, Warren Harding and John Kennedy, had done so after short careers in the Senate. John Kerry had spent a lot of his time in debate in 2004 defending the many controversial votes he inevitably racked up over two decades on Capitol Hill. "I said to him, 'Do you really think "I said to him, 'Do you really think sticking around the Senate for four more years and casting a thousand more votes will make you more qualified for President?'" Durbin recalled. sticking around the Senate for four more years and casting a thousand more votes will make you more qualified for President?'" Durbin recalled. Tom Daschle, who gave up a chance Tom Daschle, who gave up a chance to run for President and then lost his seat in the Senate, had become another of Obama's mentors, and at a long meal, Daschle told him that his lack of experience was an a.s.set, not a drawback. "I argued that windows of opportunity for running for the Presidency close quickly," Daschle recalled. "He shouldn't a.s.sume, if he pa.s.ses up this window, that there will be another." The longer he stayed in Was.h.i.+ngton, Daschle told Obama, the harder it would be to present himself as a candidate of change. Walter Mondale, Bob Dole, and Kerry were just a few of the senators who, as Presidential candidates, suffered from an image of inst.i.tutional calcification; their experience was, for many voters, offset by years of stentorian debate and stultifying compromise. Even the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, privately told Obama that he should at least consider running. Reid, as a Democratic Party leader, could obviously not show his hand, but he, too, was worried about Hillary Clinton's negatives. to run for President and then lost his seat in the Senate, had become another of Obama's mentors, and at a long meal, Daschle told him that his lack of experience was an a.s.set, not a drawback. "I argued that windows of opportunity for running for the Presidency close quickly," Daschle recalled. "He shouldn't a.s.sume, if he pa.s.ses up this window, that there will be another." The longer he stayed in Was.h.i.+ngton, Daschle told Obama, the harder it would be to present himself as a candidate of change. Walter Mondale, Bob Dole, and Kerry were just a few of the senators who, as Presidential candidates, suffered from an image of inst.i.tutional calcification; their experience was, for many voters, offset by years of stentorian debate and stultifying compromise. Even the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, privately told Obama that he should at least consider running. Reid, as a Democratic Party leader, could obviously not show his hand, but he, too, was worried about Hillary Clinton's negatives.

There were, however, admirers of Obama's who worried that, like a college athlete who jumps into the professional ranks before graduation, he could do himself irreparable damage. Harry Belafonte, who had been deeply engaged in the civil-rights movement while he was on the rise in show business, was in contact with Obama and he worried about him. "Because I do see in him "Because I do see in him something so terribly precious and I see in him such a remarkable potential, I would rather think of him as a work in progress," Belafonte said. "We are p.r.o.ne to push people beyond their time. We are so eager to devour our young. I think Senator Obama is a force, and I think he needs to see a lot about this nation and he needs to go to a lot of places. We've seen so many others who have come to high places and have failed so miserably. I think he could be our exception to the rule." something so terribly precious and I see in him such a remarkable potential, I would rather think of him as a work in progress," Belafonte said. "We are p.r.o.ne to push people beyond their time. We are so eager to devour our young. I think Senator Obama is a force, and I think he needs to see a lot about this nation and he needs to go to a lot of places. We've seen so many others who have come to high places and have failed so miserably. I think he could be our exception to the rule."

In November of 2006, at the offices of a Was.h.i.+ngton law firm, Obama held one of a series of secret brainstorming sessions about his chances. His friends and advisers asked if he could overcome the charge of inexperience. Could he challenge the Clinton machine? After the meeting had gone on for a while, Broderick Johnson, a prominent Was.h.i.+ngton lawyer and lobbyist, asked, "What about race?"

Obama replied, "I believe America is ready," and little more was said on the subject. Obama could not run a campaign like Jesse Jackson's, which had relied heavily on a black base; instead, he would aim at a notionally limitless coalition organized around a center-left politics.

At around the same time, Obama had a telephone conversation with one of his African-American fundraisers. The fundraiser told Obama that he wasn't sure it was the right time, that Obama was vulnerable on the question of experience, that he had never run a state office or a large business. Obama answered that if experience necessarily led to good judgment then Donald Rumsfeld and d.i.c.k Cheney would be supreme. "But look where that got us," he said.

The two men talked some more--about the Clintons, about the Republicans, and, most of all, about the barriers that Obama would face. Finally, the fundraiser said, "It's funny you call. I've taken my own plebiscite and there is an interesting divide."

Obama cut him off and said, "Yeah, yeah, I know. The white folks want me to run. And the black folks think I'm going to get killed."

That was it, exactly. The donor, who was older than Obama, had keen memories of the a.s.sa.s.sinations of Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King. When King was shot in Memphis, Obama was six years old and living in Indonesia. The older man felt that there was an emotional and temporal divide. "If you are brought up in that experience and heard the things you've heard, then the idea of a black guy running for President was a little scary," he admitted later. As both a candidate and then as President, Obama would make jokes about "getting shot" in order to put friends and visitors at ease; he and Mich.e.l.le had made their peace with this new reality and were determined not to feel its weight.

Finally, Obama concluded that while he was not yet committed to running, it wasn't worthwhile to be consumed in speculation about the readiness, or not, of the American people for a black President. "If they're not ready now," he said more than once, "they won't be ready in my lifetime."

Mike Strautmanis, who had first met the Obamas when he was a paralegal at Sidley Austin, where Mich.e.l.le was working, had become chief counsel in the Senate. Even though he was younger than many of the black political advisers and fundraisers talking to Obama and expressing their anxieties, he, too, felt angry at times with the white liberals for pus.h.i.+ng so hard. "They weren't seeing the United States and remembering its history clearly enough for what it was," he said. In his most pessimistic moments, Strautmanis believed that "once again their ideals would lead to something terrible, and it was my friend who was going to pay the price."

And yet it calmed him to watch Obama sort through his options. "I remember a meeting in November, 2006," he recalled. "I'd heard from Pete Rouse how Barack and Mich.e.l.le were going through this process, the questions they were asking. I realized that Barack had been thinking about this for a very long time. He'd been thinking about the political moment we're in for at least ten years. He was testing, seeing how all the pieces fit together. Would the pieces be there? The money? The ability to create a national political organization and a loyal team? And the pieces meant nothing unless you understood the political moment and how to meet it. He had a very sophisticated view of that. He'd been making a detailed, layered a.n.a.lysis of national politics for a long time."

Obama's view, Valerie Jarrett said, was that "he would not lose because he's black, and, therefore, let's not dwell on the fact that he's black. Because if you dwell on it, and you make race an issue within the campaign, then it will become an issue." Jarrett, who was personally closer to the Obamas than anyone in his political circle, said that once they had been a.s.sured of the professionalism of the Secret Service, their anxieties eased. "I can't let that paralyze me," Obama said.

"There were so many opportunities for him to be afraid along this path and to turn back," Jarrett recalled. "You know, when you were talking about the brothers saying, don't run because you might lose? They weren't worried about him. They were worried about themselves. They didn't want to be embarra.s.sed."

Around Thanksgiving of 2006, John Rogers and others in Obama's circle went to see "Bobby," a film written and directed by Emilio Estevez. The film was set in the Amba.s.sador Hotel in Los Angeles, where Robert Kennedy and many of his supporters were staying at the time of the 1968 California Democratic primary. These were what turned out to be the last hours of Kennedy's life. What moved Rogers and his friends was not the b.l.o.o.d.y climax of the film, but, rather, the way that the film's many ordinary characters--a retired doorman, a soldier, a beautician, a black kitchen worker, two Mexican busboys, the campaign donors, and the long-haired volunteers--were swept up in the promise of Kennedy's campaign, the way that they represented a multi-ethnic coalition. The film suggested, once more, R.F.K.'s campaign in 1968 as a model of idealism. In the wake of emotional events like the Africa trip and his meetings with crowds of people during his cross-country book tour, Obama and his circle were arriving at the conclusion that he could run and, if things broke the right way, win the Presidency.

"We were talking about this sense of pa.s.sion and energy and love for Bobby and he was experiencing it in his life," Rogers recalled. "It's a rare thing to generate that kind of pa.s.sion. You could just tell that it clearly affected him, what he was experiencing on the road. People were pus.h.i.+ng him. I had had the sense he was going to push it off for the next time but when I met with him that November, December in the office here, you could sense that he was pretty well there. He was taking it really seriously and he was going to go to Hawaii and think about it. But reading body language, I had the strong feeling that he was going to move at warp speed."

Rogers, who had played basketball with Mich.e.l.le's brother, Craig, at Princeton, had been a big supporter of Bill Bradley's political career. He told Obama that one of Bradley's problems was that he had waited too long to make his run; that, by the time he did, his moment had pa.s.sed. Rogers also described watching Hillary Clinton, who had been in Chicago to speak at the Economic Club downtown. It was a dull spectacle that gave him hope. "There wasn't a chuckle or smile in the hour," he said. "It was drab, facts and figures and numbers and policy points. And I thought Hillary wouldn't capture the imagination of the American people."

On November 28, 2006, David Axelrod wrote Obama a tough-minded memorandum to force the issue. The memo a.s.serted that Obama, because of his youth and non-partisan image, was the ideal antidote to the Bush Presidency: "You are uniquely suited for these times. No one among the potential candidates within our party is as well positioned to rekindle our lost idealism as Americans and pick up the mantle of change. No one better represents a new generation of leaders.h.i.+p, more focused on practical solutions to today's challenges than old dogmas of the left and right. That is why your Convention speech resonated so beautifully. And it remains the touchstone for our campaign moving forward." Hillary Clinton's strategy, he said, will be "to suggest that she has the beef, while we offer only sizzle." She would, however, have a difficult task "escaping the well-formulated perception of her among swing voters as a left-wing ideologue." Axelrod did not discount John Edwards. He had worked for Edwards in his 2004 Presidential campaign--an experience that ended unhappily when, among other factors, Edwards's wife, Elizabeth, lost faith in him and helped to push him off the team. Edwards was ahead in Iowa, but, Axelrod said, that was because he was a "relentless campaigner and debater."

Echoing the advice of Durbin and Daschle, Axelrod counseled against waiting for a moment when Obama was more seasoned: "You will never be hotter than you are right now." A longer voting record could hang "from your neck like the anchor from the Lusitania." and Daschle, Axelrod counseled against waiting for a moment when Obama was more seasoned: "You will never be hotter than you are right now." A longer voting record could hang "from your neck like the anchor from the Lusitania."

There was no getting around the difficulties. "This is more than an unpleasant inconvenience. It goes to your willingness and ability to put up with something you have never experienced on a sustained basis: criticism. At the risk of triggering the very reaction that concerns me, I don't know if you are Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson when it comes to taking a punch. You care far too much [about] what is written and said about you. You don't relish combat when it becomes personal and nasty. When the largely irrelevant Alan Keyes attacked you, you flinched."

It was a shrewd memo, one written not only by a cunning political consultant attuned to the political moment but also by a friend who had the capacity to provoke Obama, purposively, preventatively. He made sure to finish on a note of idealistic purpose. "All of this," Axelrod wrote, "may be worth enduring for the chance to change the world."

Not long afterward, Obama was speaking with the Reverend Alvin Love, from the Lilydale First Baptist Church, on the South Side, an old friend from his organizing days. The two men were talking about Obama's decision when, finally, Love said, "You know, my father always said you have to strike when the iron is hot."

Obama laughed. "The iron can't get any hotter," he said.

Finally, Rogers and Jarrett, as well as wealthy allies like Penny Pritzker, thought that his growing appeal could be leveraged to raise enough money to make him a serious candidate. Pritzker, who had first met the Obamas in the mid-nineties when Craig Robinson coached her child in a summer Y.M.C.A. basketball league, became Obama's national finance chairman; her brother Jay did the same for Hillary Clinton. "I knew Barack would be able to raise the money," Rogers said. "He was always very disciplined about making his calls and building the relations.h.i.+ps. Barack was the Michael Jordan of the political world. Jordan came into the N.B.A. as a gifted player, but he worked at getting better. Barack had all the skills but he also worked at getting better and better. He knew how to organize a team."

In mid-December, Obama told his inner circle that he had moved "past the fifty-fifty mark," but he wanted to spend the holidays in Hawaii with his family and think it through to the end. The day before he left, he even told David Plouffe that he was "ninety per cent certain that I am running" and would give the "final green light" when he got back. Plouffe's concern was that the normalcy and fun of the trip with his family would awaken Obama to the many pleasures of private life that he would be giving up. told his inner circle that he had moved "past the fifty-fifty mark," but he wanted to spend the holidays in Hawaii with his family and think it through to the end. The day before he left, he even told David Plouffe that he was "ninety per cent certain that I am running" and would give the "final green light" when he got back. Plouffe's concern was that the normalcy and fun of the trip with his family would awaken Obama to the many pleasures of private life that he would be giving up.

Obama's sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, had been teasing Obama about running for President for years. At Christmas in 2005, she bought some "Obama '08" T-s.h.i.+rts from one of the draft movements and put them under the Christmas tree. Obama had just laughed and rolled his eyes. By Christmas of 2006, she said, "It felt less funny. It felt like people had been waiting for him." In Hawaii, as their daughters played in the sand, the Obamas talked through their last concerns--security, the loss of privacy, the effect on Malia and Sasha.

When Obama came home after the New Year, he said, "Well, I've decided to do it, but I want to go home just this one last weekend to make sure I don't have buyer's remorse." He did not. He was sure. after the New Year, he said, "Well, I've decided to do it, but I want to go home just this one last weekend to make sure I don't have buyer's remorse." He did not. He was sure. Late at night, on January 6th Late at night, on January 6th, Obama called Plouffe and said, "It's a go. You can start hiring some core people quietly but swear them to secrecy."

On January 21, 2007, Obama attended the National Football Conference champions.h.i.+p game between the Chicago Bears and the New Orleans Saints, at Soldier Field, in Chicago. Invited to the suite of Linda Johnson Rice, the chairman and C.E.O. of Ebony Ebony, Obama mingled with other guests, including Marc Morial, the president of the National Urban League and the former mayor of New Orleans. Obama admitted that he was moving toward a run for President--by then it was an open secret; on January 16th, two years after his swearing-in at the Senate, he had filed the necessary papers for an exploratory committee--and, when Morial asked him what his plan was, Obama said that he had to win the caucus in Iowa, an almost entirely white state.

"If I do that," he said, "I'm credible."

Chapter Thirteen.

The Sleeping Giant "Race isn't rocket science," one of Barack Obama's friends and law professors, Christopher Edley, used to say. "It's one of Barack Obama's friends and law professors, Christopher Edley, used to say. "It's harder." harder." In Obama's campaign for the Presidency, the most persistent of all American problems was a matter of intricate complexity from the first day. In Obama's campaign for the Presidency, the most persistent of all American problems was a matter of intricate complexity from the first day.

February 10, 2007, was announcement day, in Springfield: what most people remember of that sunny, frigid afternoon is the young candidate in his dark overcoat speaking before the backdrop of the Old State Capitol where Lincoln began his 1858 Senate campaign, a crowd of thousands in the cold, shuffling tightly to keep warm, puffs of vapor rising as they cheered. Admitting to a "certain audacity" in his candidacy, Obama placed himself at the head of a "new generation" during a period of crisis, foreign, domestic, and environmental. He implicitly compared the national mission to that faced by the greatest leaders the country has known: The genius of our founders is that they designed a system of government that can be changed. And we should take heart, because we've changed this country before. In the face of tyranny, a band of patriots brought an Empire to its knees. In the face of secession, we unified a nation and set the captives free. In the face of Depression, we put people back to work and lifted millions out of poverty. We welcomed immigrants to our sh.o.r.es, we opened railroads to the West, we landed a man on the moon, and we heard a King's call to let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. is that they designed a system of government that can be changed. And we should take heart, because we've changed this country before. In the face of tyranny, a band of patriots brought an Empire to its knees. In the face of secession, we unified a nation and set the captives free. In the face of Depression, we put people back to work and lifted millions out of poverty. We welcomed immigrants to our sh.o.r.es, we opened railroads to the West, we landed a man on the moon, and we heard a King's call to let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

It was a typically eloquent performance, but what was hidden, what was left unsaid, was the anxiety of race--not "a King's" call but the continuing enigma of race. Obama was the first African-American running for the Presidency with any chance of winning, and it would have been naive to think that race would fail to insinuate itself into the campaign somewhere along the line. What remains of our story is not the 2008 campaign in its every aspect but rather the story of race in the campaign--a story that was immediately evident on day one.

In planning his announcement speech, Obama had originally wanted Jeremiah Wright, his longtime friend and pastor, to deliver the invocation. A couple of days before A couple of days before the event, however, Obama's aides learned about a forthcoming article in the event, however, Obama's aides learned about a forthcoming article in Rolling Stone Rolling Stone called "Destiny's Child," in which Wright was described as "a sprawling, profane bear of a preacher," given to "Afrocentric Bible readings." The article, written by a respected young journalist, Benjamin Wallace-Wells, was extremely positive, yet it quoted Wright saying, "Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run! ... We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS.... We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in G.o.d.... We conducted radiation experiments on our own people.... We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means! ... And. And. called "Destiny's Child," in which Wright was described as "a sprawling, profane bear of a preacher," given to "Afrocentric Bible readings." The article, written by a respected young journalist, Benjamin Wallace-Wells, was extremely positive, yet it quoted Wright saying, "Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run! ... We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS.... We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in G.o.d.... We conducted radiation experiments on our own people.... We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means! ... And. And. And! And! GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS s.h.i.+T!" GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS s.h.i.+T!"

Wallace-Wells's use of neo-Tom Wolfe punctuation to render the propulsive style of Wright's preaching was not much of an exaggeration. In writing about Wright's importance in Obama's life, Wallace-Wells concluded, "This is as openly radical a background as any significant American political figure has ever emerged from, as much Malcolm X as Martin Luther King, Jr." Wallace-Wells pointed out that Wright was hardly an "incidental" figure in Obama's life, that Obama himself had described how he "affirmed" his faith in Wright's church and often used his pastor as a "sounding board."

The obvious worry was that voters would a.s.sume that Wright's politics and outrage were a mirror of Obama's "true" positions and feelings. Would the campaign have to begin with countless, and perhaps futile, explanations of the role and style of the black church? Would the most promising black candidate for President in American history be derailed by the sermons of Jeremiah Wright? Obama's aides, particularly David Axelrod, were sufficiently alarmed to think that putting Wright up onstage with the candidate on the day of his announcement could kill the candidacy at the moment of its launch. "This is a f.u.c.king disaster "This is a f.u.c.king disaster," he said to Plouffe and Gibbs. "If Wright goes up on that stage, that's the story. Our announcement will be an asterisk. The Clinton campaign will insure it."

Axelrod, Gibbs, and Plouffe called Obama and appealed to him to talk to Wright. Obama, reluctantly, agreed.

On February 9th, Wright was at Amherst College, in Ma.s.sachusetts, to attend an interfaith celebration of the life and work of Dr. King. Wright was looking forward to the evening; there was to be a dinner for the Jewish Sabbath and an interfaith service at which he would preach. Early that afternoon, Wright says, he got a call from Obama telling him, "I'm just warning you, because tomorrow, before you say your prayer, we don't want you to say anything that's going to upset anybody in Iowa, because we're leaving there to go to Iowa. Don't want to upset those Iowa farmers. Talk about my experience as a community organizer. I bring different factors to the table. Got it?" A couple of hours later, David Axelrod called Wright and repeated the message: please avoid anything controversial, stick to the script.

Wright thought that was the end of it, but at about four-thirty Obama called again. This time he told Wright, "Rolling Stone has got ahold of one of your sermons, and, you know, you can kind of go over the top at times." He said to Wright that his sermons were sometimes "kind of rough." As Obama spoke, Wright was trying to figure out what was going on. Then Obama made things plain: "So it's the feeling of our people that perhaps you'd better not be out in the spotlight, because they will make you the focus, and not my announcement. Now, Mich.e.l.le and I still want you to have prayer with us. Can you still come and have prayer, before we go up?" has got ahold of one of your sermons, and, you know, you can kind of go over the top at times." He said to Wright that his sermons were sometimes "kind of rough." As Obama spoke, Wright was trying to figure out what was going on. Then Obama made things plain: "So it's the feeling of our people that perhaps you'd better not be out in the spotlight, because they will make you the focus, and not my announcement. Now, Mich.e.l.le and I still want you to have prayer with us. Can you still come and have prayer, before we go up?"

Wright agreed to stand down from giving the public invocation and to come to Springfield anyway to be with the Obamas. Wright is a prideful man. From almost nothing he had built a church and, over time, attracted thousands of paris.h.i.+oners. This was to be a year of reckoning and triumph; he was, at the age of sixty-six, planning to retire. But now the most famous member of his flock was putting distance between them for reasons he could not yet fathom. Wright says that he wasn't angry--not yet, anyway. He would do whatever Obama asked. Obama had said that he still wanted to represent Trinity at the announcement and asked Wright whether he would object to his calling on the Reverend Otis Moss III, the young minister who was going to replace Wright, to give the invocation.

"We want you to pray with us privately," Obama said, "but can he do the part?"

"Certainly," Wright said. "I'm going to give you his private number, so you can reach him."

According to Wright, he gave Obama the number and hung up, still trying to figure out what sermon Rolling Stone Rolling Stone had quoted. had quoted.

Wright immediately called Reverend Moss, and told him, "I just want you to know, I gave away your private number." He explained why and said Obama would call him soon.

Moss replied that, in fact, one of Obama's top aides had already called and made the request.

"They're trying to drive a wedge between us is what I feel," Moss said. "I'm not going to do that."

Wright was now starting to get angry. "Well, I don't know why he would call," he told Moss. "I hadn't given my permission yet."

Moss said that he barely knew Obama and would rather not give the invocation if it was going to cause a problem with Wright. "I don't feel comfortable with that," he said.

By this time, Wright was agitated. He called two of his four grown daughters, Janet Moore and Jeri Wright, and his wife, Ramah, and said, "Don't look for me on television tomorrow. I'm not doing the invocation."

That night in Amherst, after the Sabbath dinner, Wright delivered a thirty-five-minute sermon at Johnson Chapel that began with the first verses of the Book of Joshua. Wright never mentioned Obama directly and seemed unfazed by what had happened earlier. He described how in the text the Israelites, after forty years of wandering in the desert and the death of Moses, were "standing on the precipice of change" and new leaders.h.i.+p. The generation that had been wandering in the desert, he said, had no direct memory of slavery or the battles that came after. They had become divided and forgetful of their history. In a way that was familiar to his paris.h.i.+oners in Chicago, Wright glided in and out of the Biblical text, tying it to the contemporary scene. He said that Dr. King, the great Moses figure, was not the plaster saint of popular memory but, rather, a rebellious minister who opposed "the maniacal menage a trois" of militarism, capitalism, and racism. He lambasted the U.S. government for lying about the war in Iraq and a population that insisted on living in "fantasyland"--"on the corner of Fiction Avenue and Wishful Thinking Boulevard." At the pulpit, Wright betrayed no distress, saying, "I enjoyed the Shabbat shalom dinner with no hot sauce." His sermon was spirited and fluent, a variation on one that he had given many times before. In his performance, there was not a hint of bad feeling.

After the service, Wright drove to Boston, where he slept for three hours. He took an early flight to Chicago and then flew on to Springfield for the announcement speech. At the Old State Capitol, he was led to a holding area with the Secret Service, Richard Durbin, and the Obama family. Wright embraced Mich.e.l.le Obama and led the family in prayer. When they were finished, Obama went up to the stage and announced his candidacy. During the speech, Wright stood near Mich.e.l.le.

By the time Wright got back to Chicago, word had begun to spread of how he had been asked to step aside. Jeri Wright told Al Sharpton. Otis Moss III told his father, one of the best-known civil-rights-era ministers. Bad feelings started to brew on all sides. A few days later, Obama spoke with Wright and his daughter Jeri.

"Do you know what it's like to feel that you've been put down by your own church?" he said.

"Do you you know what it feels like to have your friend calling Pastor Moss before you got the number from Daddy?" Jeri Wright replied. Jeri also told Obama that his aide had "disrespected" her father. know what it feels like to have your friend calling Pastor Moss before you got the number from Daddy?" Jeri Wright replied. Jeri also told Obama that his aide had "disrespected" her father.

Obama said that he had meant no disrespect and didn't know that the aide had called Moss before clearing it with the Reverend Wright.

"I know you didn't," Jeri Wright said, according to her father. "But you've got people around you who are doing stuff you don't know about. And, as a matter of fact, you never even heard the sermon that's being printed."

Jeremiah Wright finally determined that the sermon quoted in Rolling Stone Rolling Stone had been delivered fourteen years earlier in Was.h.i.+ngton when the Reverend Bernard Richardson was installed as dean of the chapel at Howard University. Wright says that at that event he wanted to challenge Richardson to lead a prophetic, rather than a priestly, ministry at Howard, "like it was when I was there in '68." He challenged Richardson to be more like the righteous prophet Amos and less like Amaziah, "the priest of the government," more like Dr. King than like Billy Graham. In the full text of Wright's 1993 Howard sermon, he starts out by saying that he wants to "paraphrase" a talk by Tony Campolo, a well-known white pastor who is opposed to same-s.e.x marriage and abortion but generally left-wing. Campolo, who ministered to Bill Clinton in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, is known for his ability to shake his listeners out of a comfortable piety. In one sermon he says, "I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, thirty-thousand kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a s.h.i.+t. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said 's.h.i.+t' than the fact that thirty-thousand kids died last night." Wright had been reading the text of a fiery sermon that Campolo had given to a gathering of white Southern Baptists in which he delineated the continuing inequities and tragedies in so many African-American lives. At the end of the litany, Campolo expressed his outrage at white America. Wright recalled, "And then he says at the end, and we continue to wors.h.i.+p in our sanctuaries every week, completely oblivious of these facts. 'And G.o.d has got to be sick of this s.h.i.+t.'" had been delivered fourteen years earlier in Was.h.i.+ngton when the Reverend Bernard Richardson was installed as dean of the chapel at Howard University. Wright says that at that event he wanted to challenge Richardson to lead a prophetic, rather than a priestly, ministry at Howard, "like it was when I was there in '68." He challenged Richardson to be more like the righteous prophet Amos and less like Amaziah, "the priest of the government," more like Dr. King than like Billy Graham. In the full text of Wright's 1993 Howard sermon, he starts out by saying that he wants to "paraphrase" a talk by Tony Campolo, a well-known white pastor who is opposed to same-s.e.x marriage and abortion but generally left-wing. Campolo, who ministered to Bill Clinton in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, is known for his ability to shake his listeners out of a comfortable piety. In one sermon he says, "I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, thirty-thousand kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a s.h.i.+t. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said 's.h.i.+t' than the fact that thirty-thousand kids died last night." Wright had been reading the text of a fiery sermon that Campolo had given to a gathering of white Southern Baptists in which he delineated the continuing inequities and tragedies in so many African-American lives. At the end of the litany, Campolo expressed his outrage at white America. Wright recalled, "And then he says at the end, and we continue to wors.h.i.+p in our sanctuaries every week, completely oblivious of these facts. 'And G.o.d has got to be sick of this s.h.i.+t.'"

Wright's sermon at Howard was a kind of extended quotation of Campolo. That fact was not included in the Rolling Stone Rolling Stone article. And yet the reporter had accurately captured the spirit of Wright's sermon. The full excerpt has Wright angrily reeling off a list of ten outrages, ranging from the undeniable (early U.S. support of apartheid, inequities in the health-care system) to the arguable and the absurd. Wright said in that sermon that the U.S. had practiced "unquestioning" support of Zionism and had accused anyone who supported Palestinian rights of anti-Semitism. Most disturbingly, he repeated the familiar conspiracy theory that the U.S. government had "created" the AIDS virus. article. And yet the reporter had accurately captured the spirit of Wright's sermon. The full excerpt has Wright angrily reeling off a list of ten outrages, ranging from the undeniable (early U.S. support of apartheid, inequities in the health-care system) to the arguable and the absurd. Wright said in that sermon that the U.S. had practiced "unquestioning" support of Zionism and had accused anyone who supported Palestinian rights of anti-Semitism. Most disturbingly, he repeated the familiar conspiracy theory that the U.S. government had "created" the AIDS virus.

And so, on the day of Obama's announcement, poisonous seeds had been planted; the Rolling Stone Rolling Stone article, one would have guessed, would surely inspire a footrace among media outlets and opposition researchers to comb through all of Wright's sermons of the past thirty-five years. The incident also planted a seed of resentment in Wright, an accomplished, sometimes arrogant man who had always seen himself as a trusted mentor to Barack Obama, but who now, in the year of his retirement, would be judged by people and a range of media that, for the most part, were unlettered in the history, complexity, and rhetorical styles of the black church. article, one would have guessed, would surely inspire a footrace among media outlets and opposition researchers to comb through all of Wright's sermons of the past thirty-five years. The incident also planted a seed of resentment in Wright, an accomplished, sometimes arrogant man who had always seen himself as a trusted mentor to Barack Obama, but who now, in the year of his retirement, would be judged by people and a range of media that, for the most part, were unlettered in the history, complexity, and rhetorical styles of the black church.

The Wright incident was not the only racial controversy being played out on the day of Obama's announcement. Tavis Smiley, one of the most influential African-Americans in television and radio, was angry with Obama because he had scheduled his announcement for that day in Springfield rather than attending Smiley's annual State of the Black Union conference, in Hampton, Virginia, and, perhaps even making the historic news there. was not the only racial controversy being played out on the day of Obama's announcement. Tavis Smiley, one of the most influential African-Americans in television and radio, was angry with Obama because he had scheduled his announcement for that day in Springfield rather than attending Smiley's annual State of the Black Union conference, in Hampton, Virginia, and, perhaps even making the historic news there.

Cornel West, one of the leading black intellectuals at the event and Smiley's close friend and mentor, had great respect for Wright--"I would take a bullet for Jeremiah Wright"--and warned against jumping too soon on the Obama bandwagon. West, a professor of philosophy and religion at Princeton, was born in Tulsa and grew up in Sacramento. A religious Christian and a democratic socialist, he lectures in a style that melds the cla.s.sroom and the black church. Beyond his academic work, he is a self-described scholar-bluesman, who is on the road with a frequency that challenges B. B. King. When Smiley called on West to speak, West took aim. "Look, Obama is a very decent "Look, Obama is a very decent, brilliant, charismatic brother," he said. "There's no doubt about that. The problem is, is that he's got folk who are talking to him who warrant our distrust. Precisely because we know that him going to Springfield the same day Brother Tavis has set this up for a whole year--we already know then that him coming out there is not fundamentally about us. It's about somebody else. He's got large numbers of white brothers and sisters who have fears and anxieties. He's got to speak to them in such a way that he holds us at arm's length enough to say he loves us, but doesn't get too close to scare them. So he's walking this tightrope, you see what I mean?"

"I want to know, how deep is your love for the people?" West continued. "What kind of courage have you manifested and the stances that you have and what are you willing to sacrifice for? That's the fundamental question. I don't care what color you are. You can't take black people for granted just 'cause you're black."

Another speaker, Lerone Bennett, Jr., a historian and, for many years, the executive editor of Ebony Ebony, criticized Obama for announcing his candidacy in Springfield--a platform bound to draw favorable parallels with Lincoln. Bennett's view of Lincoln was almost completely negative, and he drew attention to Lincoln's written and spoken comments on the supposed inferiority of the black man, his support for recolonizing blacks, and his unsentimental att.i.tude toward the slavery issue. Bennett's one-sided view of Lincoln is hardly the consensus view among historians, even on the left--he ignores the political pressures on Lincoln and his contradictory statements about slavery--but he drew applause from an audience that was frustrated with Obama.

Smiley, for his part, told the crowd that Obama had called him on the eve of the conference and said he was sorry that he couldn't come. But the crowd mainly seemed unimpressed, as did Smiley himself.

The one intellectual on the stage in Hampton who defended Obama was Charles Ogletree, who had taught both Barack and Mich.e.l.le at Harvard Law School. He said he could vouch for Obama's intelligence and good intentions and reminded the crowd that Obama had sponsored a racial-profiling law in the Illinois state legislature and had opposed the war in Iraq well before the invasion. "He's young, he's inexperienced "He's young, he's inexperienced, and the one thing we know from the Scripture is that we fall down, but we get up," Ogletree said. "He might have fallen down today, but we have to be there, with love and appreciation, and say, 'Barack, get up, clean yourself up, we are here for you if you understand who you are.'"

"I was the only one who spoke in defense of him," Ogletree recalled later. "Afterward, Cornel came over to me and said, 'Tree, I didn't know he was your boy! I need to meet him!'"

All these statements won applause in Hampton, but inside the Obama campaign and beyond, they seemed strangely parochial, grandiose, and self-defeating. Even Ogletree, Obama's defender, appeared to condescend to Obama by suggesting that the candidate had "fallen down" by making his announcement a national affair. Obama was so upset by the incident that he talked with his aides about gathering several dozen African-American intellectuals and celebrities to talk about racial issues. His aides were more cautious, saying that such a meeting would attract a lot of press and put race too far forward for a campaign that was determined to be universal in its appeal. Instead, the campaign formed an informal--and not terribly meaningful--advisory council on race that included Cornel West and Charles Ogletree. This was a deft, Johnsonian move whose purpose was to keep as many voices inside the tent as possible. As in the 2004 Senate race, Obama was starting from way behind, even among African-Americans, but Axelrod and Plouffe were counting on his quickly capturing the vast majority of black primary voters in order to narrow the gap between him and Hillary Clinton.

The most persuasive instrument that Obama had for calming the situation was his own voice. At Ogletree's urging, he made a series of telephone calls to West, Smiley, Al Sharpton, and others, and, patiently listening to their concerns, tried to convince them that they were united but had very different, if equally important, roles to play. He told them that they were free to press their ideas and agendas, but he was running for President. Once in office, he could accomplish a great deal. First, though, he had to win. Obama was respectful, telling them that they were speaking out in the tradition of protest, the prophetic tradition, but that as a politician he could not always afford the same liberties.

The situation with Tavis Smiley and Cornel West was especially delicate. Smiley had a large black audience but also a lot of crossover appeal. Smiley, born in Gulfport, Mississippi, grew up in extremely modest circ.u.mstances, and, as a young man, he interned for Tom Bradley, the first black mayor of Los Angeles. Beginning in 1996, Smiley had been a commentator on Tom Joyner's popular radio show, and, four years later, he organized the first State of the Black Union meetings. In 2006, he published a best-selling book of political essays, The Covenant with Black America The Covenant with Black America, that featured a kind of action plan to better the lives of African-Americans. Smiley, like West, was concerned that Obama was too much of a centrist or, as they put it, "neoliberal." If he was going to get widespread black support, they insisted, he had to show far greater interest in transformational political change. Smiley says that he "reveled" in Obama's potential as a black President, "but I didn't want him to sell his soul, surrender his soul, or lose his soul in the process of getting there." The question, Smiley says, was, "Are you going to be a truth-teller or a power-grabber? ... If Obama won't lead the country in a conversation about race matters, who will? If you have that conversation only when he's forced to and have a media that is complicit, a media that makes it seem like we live in a post-racial America and with a conservative media that says we should stop all the grievances, well, this is kind of like Alice in Wonderland."

Obama's conversations with Smiley and West were not always smooth, but they were successful. West recalled, "First thing he said was, 'Well, Brother West, you're much more progressive on these things than I am. We're not going to agree on everything.' I said, 'Of course! My only thing is--you be true to yourself, I'll be true to myself.' That's all I ask. Then he went in and talked about what King meant, what that legacy meant, how he'd been shaped by it, and so forth. And it was a genuine opening. That's why I could discern a certain decency. I said, 'Brother, I will be a critical supporter. I'll be a Socratic Socratic supporter.'" supporter.'"

Some African-Americans, even friends in the academy, criticized West and Smiley for being presumptuous, high-minded, ignorant of mainstream political realities, and potentially damaging to Obama's campaign. But, with time, the two sides came to understand one another. West agreed to campaign for Obama across the country, and Smiley was a supportive, if critical, voice for Obama on television. Later that year, at a fundraiser at the Apollo Theater, Cornel West introduced Obama with unbridled enthusiasm and Obama returned the flattery, calling West, who had made his life difficult, "a genius" and "an oracle."

Even for an experienced national politician, the process of learning how to run for President, how to balance advice and all the contrary voices bombarding you, isn't easy. And Obama was not experienced. Soon after announcing his candidacy, he read Doris Kearns Goodwin's book on Lincoln, Team of Rivals Team of Rivals. The book sold swiftly late in the campaign, because Obama said that he had admired it and because of what it suggested about Lincoln's way of a.s.sembling an effectively contentious cabinet, but, now, in the spring of 2007, Obama was still far behind Clinton in the polls. He called Goodwin and said, brightly, "We have to talk." They discussed, above all, the temperamental qualities that Obama admired in Lincoln: his ability to endure defeat and acknowledge error, his capacity to manage his emotions in the heat of the moment, to resist showing anger or dressing down a subordinate in public.

A couple of months after the call, the writer and her husband, Richard Goodwin, who worked in both the Kennedy and the Johnson White House, visited Obama at his Senate office. "The most interesting thing he said was 'I have no desire to be one of those Presidents who are just on the list, you see their pictures lined up on the wall,'" Goodwin recalled. "He said, 'I really want to be a President who makes a difference.' There was the sense that he wanted to be big. He didn't want to be Millard Fillmore or Franklin Pierce."

Goodwin had started out a supporter of Hillary Clinton's; she was steadily won over not merely by Obama's attentions but by his temperament and the way his campaign echoed, for her, the popular spirit and hope of the civil-rights movement. Richard Goodwin helped to write Johnson's pivotal speech after b.l.o.o.d.y Sunday, in Selma, on the Voting Rights Act.

Nevertheless, Goodwin said that Obama would have been foolish to make too strong a biographical comparison with Lincoln. "Obama, despite being black in a white world and negotiating the complications of race, never had to feel what Lincoln did. Lincoln was dirt poor and could never go to college. He had all of twelve months of schooling in his life," she said. "Lincoln's father kept pulling him out of school to work the farm, and, when he was in debt, he made his boy work on other farms. Lincoln studied the law on his own at night. Then, there were the deaths. He loses his mother at nine, his sister, and so many more. Death stalked him. Lincoln was drawn to poetry about people who could not realize their talents. Obama would never have had to worry like that. The tragic sense doesn't seem to be there."

Obama and his circle of advisers hoped to carry out their Presidential campaign with only infrequent references to race. He occasionally spoke out on policy issues like incarceration rates and affirmative action but, unlike Jesse Jackson, whose campaigns were rooted in a sense of racial ident.i.ty, the Obama team was not eager to put ethnicity at the center of the campaign. As he was making his first trips to Iowa, Obama thought about giving a major address on race. He was advised against it. "He would talk about a race speech in planning meetings and people would go, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get to that,'" Obama's chief speechwriter, Jonathan Favreau, recalled. "They didn't say it was a bad idea, exactly, but it was like, 'Yeah, we'll get to that,' and then forget about it. It got pushed off. I think there was some angst. It's politics. We were a very different campaign but on any campaign there is a traditional pull away from anything risky. He's a black candidate with a real shot--why have him take the risk?" hoped to carry out their Presidential campaign with only infrequent references to race. He occasionally spoke out on policy issues like incarceration rates and affirmative action but, unlike Jesse Jackson, whose campaigns were rooted in a sense of racial ident.i.ty, the Obama team was not eager to put ethnicity at the center of the campaign. As he was making his first trips to Iowa, Obama thought about giving a major address on race. He was advised against it. "He would talk about a race speech in planning meetings and people would go, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get to that,'" Obama's chief speechwriter, Jonathan Favreau, recalled. "They didn't say it was a bad idea, exactly, but it was like, 'Yeah, we'll get to that,' and then forget about it. It got pushed off. I think there was some angst. It's politics. We were a very different campaign but on any campaign there is a traditional pull away from anything risky. He's a black candidate with a real shot--why have him take the risk?"

"He was itching to give it," Valerie Jarrett said. "But I think that the consensus around him was, don't wake up a sleeping giant. We've never had a politician who could have that conversation with the American people in a way that didn't polarize."

Don Rose, the Chicago political strategist who was close to David Axelrod, said that the Obama campaign set out trying to deal with race the way his client Jane Byrne dealt with gender in her campaign for mayor, in 1979. "We never once said anything about her being a woman," Rose said. "I had her dress as plainly as possible. She had bad hair, which had been dyed and dried over a lifetime, and she sometimes had it fixed twice a day. We had her wear a dowdy wig to look as plain as possible. We discouraged feminist organizations from endorsing her. I didn't want the issue of her being a woman to come up in the least. We knew that women who would identify with her, the gender-centric vote, would come our way without anyone raising it. You don't have to highlight what's already obvious."

It was not by accident that Jackson, Sharpton, and other potentially polarizing figures were seen so rarely on platforms with Obama during the campaign. "The rule was: no radioactive blacks," Rose said. "Harold Ford, fine. Jesse Jackson, Jr., fine. But Jesse, Sr., and Al Sharpton, better not." Rose noted that Obama referred to race in his stump speeches infrequently. "When Barack was using that line about how he didn't look like all the other Presidents on American currency, his numbers went down," Rose said. "He got whacked and the campaign noticed. You don't raise it, that's the axiom, and you let it work. The less said, the better."

The Obama campaign took polls on figures like Sharpton and could see that their presence on the campaign trail would be counterproductive. In Iowa, for example, Sharpton had a sixty-per-cent negative rating, and so when he declared that he was coming to the state to campaign in the final days of the caucus race, possibly to endorse Obama, they got the message to him, asking him, politely, to please not bother. on figures like Sharpton and could see that their presence on the campaign trail would be counterproductive. In Iowa, for example, Sharpton had a sixty-per-cent negative rating, and so when he declared that he was coming to the state to campaign in the final days of the caucus race, possibly to endorse Obama, they got the message to him, asking him, politely, to please not bother.

The near absence of Jackson and Sharpton on the campaign was so conspicuous that "Sat.u.r.day Night Live" lampooned it. In a short animated film, a savvy Obama meets with Jackson for "secret strategy sessions," but only in a broom closet. Obama dispatches Jackson to faraway, imaginary African countries--Lower Zambuta and Bophuthatswana--for "important" missions. He sends Sharpton on a similarly absurd mission, and, when Sharpton returns, he asks gravely, "Al ... how was East Paraguay?" and Sharpton on the campaign was so conspicuous that "Sat.u.r.day Night Live" lampooned it. In a short animated film, a savvy Obama meets with Jackson for "secret strategy sessions," but only in a broom closet. Obama dispatches Jackson to faraway, imaginary African countries--Lower Zambuta and Bophuthatswana--for "important" missions. He sends Sharpton on a similarly absurd mission, and, when Sharpton returns, he asks gravely, "Al ... how was East Paraguay?"