"There is a tradition of politics that says we are all connected," he said. "If there is a child on the South Side who cannot read, it makes a difference in my life, even if it's not my child. If there's an Arab-American family who's being rounded up by John Ashcroft without benefit of due process, that threatens my civil liberties. Black folks, white folks, gay, straight, Asian -- the reason we can share this space is that we have a mutual regard. That's what this country's about: e pluribus unum. Out of many, one."
That was the mission statement of 21st-century Obama. As a black candidate, he'd been too inhibited, too embarrassed, to force out phrases like "our community." Finally, he was comfortable in his own skin, now that he'd accepted that the skin was half-white. Obama wasn't born to be a voice of black empowerment, like Rush or Jesse Jackson. It's not just a racial thing. It's generational, too. Confrontational '60s-style politics are not his bag. But as a multicultural politician, trying to find the unified theory of ethnic politics, he was rolling like Tiger Woods at the Masters. The aloofness was gone as well. Very intently, he laid out his plan for a federal Children's Health Insurance Program.
"I think it'd be a good opportunity to lay the groundwork toward expanding health care to all the uninsured," he said.
Obama was no longer selling himself. Now, he had a legislative goal and a strategy for making it happen. Or maybe, because he knew I was one of his skeptics, he was selling me on the idea that he wasn't selling himself. In the words of an old police reporter, Obama makes grease look gritty. Just as he was looking two moves ahead, politically, I'm sure he was two moves ahead of my expectations. It was working. I was impressed that he finally believed in something. He was a big-government liberal, no weaseling about it.
"How would you have voted on the Iraq war resolution?" I asked.
"I would have voted no." And then, with a simplicity that his old self might have thought simple-minded, he said, "I'm not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars."
Then I asked him about his race against Bobby Rush.
"I got a good spanking," he said, evenly. "I think that was youthful impatience on my part. I knew I was going to lose on Election Day. I was standing outside a polling place, and old ladies kept coming up to me and saying, 'You seem like a nice young man, but Bobby hasn't done anything wrong.'"
Later, when I called his office for follow-up questions, Obama jumped on the line and drilled me with more details of his healthcare plan. He also repeated his "E Pluribus Unum" speech, tweaking a few words. He was proud of that one.
A few weeks after that, I heard him speak at a North Side organic restaurant known for its liberal politics. The Heartland Café had welcomed Harold Washington during his run for mayor, and now it welcomed this new South Side phenom. Obama climbed up on the bandstand and filled that dining room with the same energy he'd project across the Fleet Center: "If there is a child on the South Side who cannot read ... If there is an Arab-American family who's being rounded up by John Ashcroft!" I was startled. The pedantic lecturer had been retired. Now, Obama was a fight announcer, a preacher and a motivational speaker, all on the same platform. Full of conviction, he drove his words into our ears like a carpenter pounding nails. The white folks loved him because he was liberal. The black folks loved him because, as one said to me, "We need someone who can reach beyond the race. He can go to Washington and talk their language."
That wasn't the Obama I'd known. But it was the Obama America came to know. I was sold. I voted for him twice that year. That July, the Democrats made him the keynote speaker at their convention. It was partly a defensive move against a rumored candidacy by ex-Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka. Obama delivered a maiden speech to rival that of Hubert Humphrey in 1948, or William Jennings Bryan in 1896.
Terry Link believes that losing that congressional race liberated Obama to be the real Obama -- the bright young charmer Link had met as a fellow freshman in Springfield.
"When he ran for the Senate, he was so comfortable," Link says. "It's like speaking from your heart, against speaking from notes. I thought, 'This is the one I knew. It's Barack again.'" Trotter saw a different dynamic: "He grew up around whites, so he's very comfortable in those venues. That was obvious when he went over to [the South Side Irish enclave of] Beverly. His comfort zone was in those circles. That is who he is. This is the face of his grandparents."
So what do you make of a campaigner whose persona changed so drastically in four years? That he's finally learned to be himself, or that he's putting on an act? He's doing both. All great politicians are also great performers. Obama has been called the Democrats' Ronald Reagan because he has the personality to sell the public on programs it might reject on their merits. (In Reagan's case, it was supply-side economics. In Obama's, it would be national healthcare.) They're alike in another way. Reagan was a washed-up thesp, doing Vegas and General Electric ads, until he was cast as governor of California, then president. Obama has also grown into the character he was born to play: the great uniter who can bring together old and young, black and white, Democrat and Republican. So far, he's playing it brilliantly. Even his comic timing has improved -- he's got his new audiences laughing at the same old Alabama/Yo Mama joke. And Bobby Rush has backed him for president.
Some of us, though, are still trying to figure out how he got to be Elvis, Lord Byron and Bobby Kennedy, all in the same dark suit.
"Charisma is in the eye of the beholder," says Donne Trotter. Much as he admires Obama, he's not going to drink The Juice over a community organizer from his old neighborhood. "I can't define him as being this charismatic guy. He's no Svengali or Jim Jones. Certainly, he has learned, though. He's a very fast learner."
This story has been corrected since it was originally posted.
About the writer
Edward McClelland is the author of "The Third Coast," a Great Lakes travelogue to be published by Chicago Review Press. His writing has also appeared in Stop Smiling, Utne , and Lost.
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