It began on a frigid, 7-degree morning in Springfield, Illinois, in the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where in 1858 Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous House Divided speech against slavery. Packed into every square foot of the grounds, thousands of the brave and faithful scrunched together to keep warm as they waited for another tall, thin lawyer—this one without a beard—to begin his own march toward history. At just after 10:00 A.M. on February 10, 2007, Barack Obama bopped onto the stage in a black overcoat and scarf, hatless and gloveless, a forty-five-year-old political insurgent on a seemingly impossible journey. Accompanied by his wife, Michelle, and young daughters, Sasha and Malia, he surveyed the crowd, clapped his hands, and honored God for the occasion.
“I know it’s a little chilly, but I’m fired up!”
Launching his campaign for president, Obama said: “I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness—a certain audacity—to this announcement. I know I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.”
Change—coupled with hope—would become Obama’s mantra during an eighteen-month odyssey that took him from that winter morning in Springfield to the Democratic nomination, a feat that defied conventional wisdom and cemented his place in American political lore. He had become what many had only dreamed about and others could never imagine seeing in their lifetimes: the first African American presidential nominee of a major party, one November victory away from the Oval Office.
Beyond the symbolism and emotion of this achievement, in pure political terms Obama’s triumph was astonishing. He rewrote the presidential campaign playbook, using the modern tools of technology to mobilize hundreds of thousands of volunteers across the country, turn out his voters, and shatter fund-raising records. By the summer of 2008, Obama had raised nearly $340 million, more than any presidential candidate ever. Many of the contributions were small amounts from first-time, online donors.
Using the model of social networking sites—he even lured to his team one of Facebook’s founders—Obama empowered supporters in local communities to host house parties, stay in touch with one another, and create their own affiliated campaign groups through My.BarackObama.com. To more aggressively combat rampant Internet rumors and falsehoods about his religion, heritage, and patriotism, Obama constructed a separate Web site, FighttheSmears.com. This would not be a 1.0 kind of campaign. He staffed his field operations with energetic twenty-somethings, many of whom had never been involved in politics at any level. Obama became a new voice for this generation, hip enough to have Jay-Z on his iPod and to inspire a music video by Will.i.am. Kids who didn’t even believe in student government—much less the federal government—led Obama’s rally chants: “Yes We Can! Yes We Can!” And the rallies spilled out into the streets and parks like concerts.
Winning the nomination wasn’t easy. Obama had to defeat the First Couple of the Democratic Party, Hillary and Bill Clinton, who often seemed to run as a tandem. Bill Clinton is the most successful Democrat of the modern era, the only two-term president the party can claim since Franklin D. Roosevelt. As her husband’s partner in the White House and now the junior senator from New York, Hillary Clinton began the 2008 presidential campaign with a formidable organization and fund-raising network, high name recognition, and her own history-making appeal to become America’s first female president. She quickly emerged as the odds-on favorite and candidate of the party establishment. Early polls gave her a twenty-to thirty-point lead over Obama, her closest rival in a crowded field of competitors.
But as in that old children’s fable, Obama was the tortoise whom the hare underestimated. It was as if the political gods had whispered to him: This is your time. A soaring keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention had transformed this unknown state senator into a national sensation. A 2006 bestseller, The Audacity of Hope, catapulted him further into the stratosphere. He became the hottest draw on the Democratic fund-raising circuit—the hottest draw on any circuit. Crowds overflowed wherever he appeared publicly.
Still, it was easy to understand why Obama mentioned a “certain audacity” when announcing his presidential candidacy: He had been a United States senator for just twenty-five months, a state senator prior to that for not even seven years. The rest of his résumé read like this: Chicago community organizer, graduate of Harvard Law School, civil rights attorney, University of Chicago law school instructor, failed congressional candidate, author. All in a twenty-year period. And now this young man wanted to be leader of the free world? Some said he was too green, too cocky. The Clintons thought he was all glib and glitz, more show than substance—but with a bright future. If only he would wait his turn.
Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton laugh during the Democratic debates in Las Vegas, Nevada, January 15, 2008. © Andrew Gombert/epa/Corbis
Former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk remembers talking to Obama during the period in late 2006 when he was mulling a presidential run. Kirk himself was among the party’s bright African American political stars, a former United States Senate nominee who had run one of the nation’s ten largest cities. “I could not give him a compelling reason why he should wait,” Kirk recalled. “The type of appeal he has right now doesn’t come around often. Political capital has to be spent in the marketplace at the right time.”
And then Kirk paused. Barack Obama reminded him of Tiger Woods. “I think there is something really magical about this brother.”
What does magic look like?
The pictures collected in this volume show Obama’s effortlessness, his cool, his contemplative side, his solemn side, his playful side. His disappointment and his joy. We see him onstage, jacketless, in a white dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to just below the elbows (his favorite campaign uniform), exhorting, challenging, trying to lift up and not let down. It’s hard to miss his campaign slogan, always somewhere on somebody’s sign in the background: Change We Can Believe In! The son of a white Kansas mother who traveled widely and a black Kenyan father who deserted him, Obama was raised in part by his white grandparents. He grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia. Not in Gary or Detroit. Not two blocks from the riots. But the “brother” in him is never far from observation—whether in his walk, his dap, his juke to the hoop, or in the familiar way he connects with a small black crowd on a West Philly street corner. A brother, but a brother whose countenance conveys: without limitations. Biracial, citizen of the world. Part of the marvel of photography is that it freezes moments, allowing us to study them, ponder their meaning, return to them for new insights. What was Obama thinking about when Washington Post photographer Jahi Chikwendiu caught him ascending the ramp to his campaign plane on the day of the Pennsylvania primary, a lone silhouetted figure, head slightly bowed, bag slung over his right shoulder, a jet taking flight in the distance? Where would we be without the photographer marching us to images we’d otherwise never notice? Obama alone on his cell phone in some colorless concrete holding room in Omaha. Obama struggling to tuck a cloth napkin inside the collar of his starched shirt, not wanting to risk soiling his campaign uniform as he prepared to take a private meal. At a veterans’ event in San Antonio, Post photographer Linda Davidson zoomed in on Obama’s hands, just his hands, which were clasped as if in prayer. How often do we get to take the measure of a candidate’s hands, to be brought so close we can see veins and wrinkles and knuckles and short, uneven fingernails, close enough to make a judgment about what those hands say? Obama seemed different from the outset, not so much because of his pretty words and the cadence with which he delivered them. That was the critics’ rap on him, right? Just words. No, he seemed different because of the effect he had on others—the miles they were willing to drive to see him, the lines they were willing to stand in to hear him, the jobs they were willing to leave to work for him, the reactions they had when they met him. Take Davidson’s shot of high-school junior Hayley Mitchell, her hands flapping with excitement, her mouth open in an Oh-My-Gosh! shriek upon coming face-to-face with Obama at a Providence rally. It was like she had just met Usher.
Senator Barack Obama, Democratic contender for the presidential nomination, campaigns in Omaha, Nebraska. At the Omaha Civic Center, he speaks first to an overflow crowd of about 500, and then to 10,000 in the big arena. Here, he walks through the basement of the Civic Center en route to the overflow crowd while on his cell phone, February 7, 2008. © David Burnett (Contact Press Images)
When Obama won the Iowa caucuses, January 3, 2008, winning the presidency for him suddenly became real. “If I had lost Iowa,” he would later tell volunteers and staffers, “it would have been over.”
Family victory night in Iowa: Obama with daughter Sasha in one arm; daughter Malia pointing to someone in the crowd; Michelle soaking up the scene as her husband racks up his first win.
Senator Barack Obama wins the Iowa primary and speaks to supporters, January 3, 2008. © Melina Mara/TWP
The pictures from that night show the beaming face of a candidate whose audacity had been rewarded. His campaign’s brain trust, amid the doubts of some fund-raisers, had spent heavily and organized furiously in this tiny state, treating Iowa like it was their Waterloo. It marked the successful beginning of a strategy to amass delegates by winning small-state caucuses, which are essentially organizing competitions. With his wife and daughters sharing the victory stage that night in Des Moines, Obama never stopped smiling. He clutched Sasha with his right arm and waved with his left, as both girls pointed to people in the crowd and Mommy stretched her arms out wide as if to embrace the good feeling.
“You know, they said this day would never come,” Obama began, thanking Iowans. “They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose. But on this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do.”
History has a way of leading us to undiscovered treasure.
Buried in the bowels of the past is the extraordinary story of John Mercer Langston, one of the most accomplished Americans of the nineteenth century, but largely forgotten. He was Barack Obama before Barack Obama. Elected first to local office in Ohio in 1855 and later serving as Virginia’s first black congressman, Langston was one of the early African American political pioneers. Breaking down the walls to elective office, he gave doubtful, hateful white Americans a new view of black leadership. A prominent abolitionist and founder of what would become the Howard University School of Law, Langston was both a close associate and sometime rival of Frederick Douglass. Douglass, of course, was the better known of the two; statesmanlike, popular, accessible. He could have been elected president himself if the times had allowed. But Langston, some argue, might have been the better choice.
Few black men of that period had a broader range of achievement and abilities: A graduate of Oberlin College, Langston had served as educational inspector for the Freedmen’s Bureau, had been the U.S. minister to Haiti, and was perhaps the most sought-after black surrogate of the Republican Party.
What is striking is how much Obama has in common with Langston. Like Obama, Langston was of mixed-race parentage (his father a white slave-owner, his mother an ex-slave and bondswoman). Like Obama, Langston was tall, wiry, light-skinned, an expert in constitutional law, and a gifted orator. Both were drawn to community organizing (Langston went around Ohio organizing schools).
Like Obama, Langston knew how to skillfully maneuver in both the black and white worlds and sought to bridge the racial divide after the Civil War.
“Langston was certainly capable of being president in the nineteenth century,” observed historian William Cheek, coauthor of a two-volume biography of Langston.
But the country wasn’t ready.
History finds ways to reward patience. Many African American politicians had the desire to become president, and the promise. But there was sometimes not the courage to run, the daring to risk one’s safe position.
Jesse Jackson’s decision to run for president in 1984 seemed to many at the time like a brazen act of symbolism and ego. Now it seems profound. Jackson’s 1984 campaign grew out of a series of private meetings among prominent black political and civil rights figures who wondered: Is now the time for an African American to mount a serious bid for the presidency? And if so, who? For years, black elected officials had struggled with these questions. In 1972, New York congresswoman Shirley Chisholm became the first African American of stature to launch a presidential campaign, running under the slogan Unbought and Unbossed. Her candidacy turned into a feminist cause célèbre, and she was awarded a coveted speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention. That in itself was progress, according to several veteran black politicians, who recalled earlier conventions when they were reduced to slipping notes into the trailers of major candidates, hoping to get a meeting.
Fast-forward to 1983. Many black leaders were encouraged by Harold Washington’s election as Chicago’s first black mayor and increasingly worried about the impact on black communities of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Yet, none of the big-name black elected officials—notably Andrew Young, then the Atlanta mayor—would take the plunge and try out for the Oval Office. Some didn’t want to jeopardize their standing with the eventual Democratic nominee. Others offered assorted explanations, all of which amounted to fear or practicality or the bottom line: A black candidate can’t win. That Jackson raised his hand when no one else would was a feat by itself. His is the biggest shoulder Obama stands on. By winning five Democratic primaries and caucuses, Jackson lapped expectations and laid the groundwork for a more robust second campaign. In 1988, Jackson won eleven primaries and caucuses, doubled his total votes to nearly seven million, and finished as runner-up to Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis.
More significant, his campaigns opened up the Democratic Party infrastructure to new fieldworkers, campaign strategists, and volunteers who had never participated in electoral politics—much like Obama is doing in 2008, in a different way. It was also Jackson who pushed through a change in party rules that proved crucial to Obama’s success. Because delegates are now awarded proportionally in Democratic primaries and caucuses, instead of the previous winner-take-all system, Obama was able to build a lead that Clinton could never overtake, despite her winning nine of the last fifteen contests.
When Jackson was running in 1984, Obama was a recent Columbia University graduate, still sorting out what he wanted to become. Watching Jackson debate Walter Mondale and Gary Hart on television had inspired him, Obama once told the civil rights leader. Though Jackson endorsed Obama early, he was not asked to campaign for him, a slight that wounded Jackson, whose ego is easily bruised. Later in the campaign, relations between the pioneer and the newcomer took a blow when Jackson was caught unaware on an open television microphone complaining to a fellow guest that Obama had been “talking down” to black people in some of his speeches. “I want to cut his nuts off,” Jackson whispered to the guest. He later apologized to Obama, who graciously accepted it. But the episode was another reminder that Obama is now more in sync with another Jesse Jackson—Big Jesse’s son Junior, the congressman from Chicago who is one of Obama’s national campaign cochairmen.
Getting to this point in history has hardly been relaxing. Just imagining an African American president has taken work.
I am reminded of a conversation I had with Christopher Edley, Jr., in 2000. Edley had worked for candidates and presidents dating back to the Carter administration, and was then teaching at Harvard Law School after a tour in the Clinton White House, including serving as President Clinton’s chief race adviser. Edley has this brilliant way of reducing complex subjects to their essence. I was writing a political column and asked him to speculate on the prospects of a black president by 2020, figuring that twenty years into the new millennium was distant enough to ponder the possibility as an attainable landmark.
“I’m pessimistic about that,” Edley said without hesitation. “I think we will see a woman or Latino before we see an African American.”
Edley’s response wasn’t just a nod to the booming Latino population or a reflection of some psychic instinct that Hillary Clinton, whom he had observed up close, was destined to be a serious threat. No, Edley knew that the upper ranks of elective office were “still very segregated territory,” as he put it, especially the Senate and governors’ mansions, which traditionally produce the most viable presidential candidacies. Even today, Obama is the nation’s only African American in the Senate, and there are only two black governors: Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and David Paterson of New York. And how many Obamas are in the pipeline? Less than 4 percent of the nation’s elected officials are black; and 90 percent of them serve districts where the majority of voters are nonwhite.
When I caught up with Edley at the outset of the 2008 campaign season, I reminded him of his earlier forecast, the fact that he could not even envision a black president at the turn of the century. “Wow,” he said, followed by a long pause. “I hope it’s evidence that I’m a lousy prognosticator, because the evidence now is there is a lot more capacity for hopefulness among the electorate than I had thought.”
Historian Kenneth O’Reilly, author of Nixon’s Piano: Presidents and Racial Politics from Washington to Clinton, says: “The number of people who are still bitter about race, who are still bitter about what happened to the South, who are still bitter about Watts, Newark, and a number of other race riots, are declining because they’re passing away. What’s happening is race as a force in our political structure is nowhere near as powerful as it used to be. It’s still pretty strong, but it might not be strong enough to prevent Obama from winning.”
Obama had to expand the hopefulness that Edley now sees and to nurture it.
He had to beat back silliness: Is Barack Obama black enough? And assuage fears: Won’t someone try to kill him? And boost faith: How can a black man, even a biracial one, get elected president in a country with such an ugly legacy of slavery, segregation, and persistent racism?
“Now, I’ve heard that some folks aren’t sure America is ready for an African American president,” Obama told a black audience in Manning, South Carolina, two months before the primary there. “So let me be clear. I never would have begun this campaign if I weren’t confident I could win. But you see, I am not asking anyone to take a chance on me. I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations.”
And then Obama tried to seal the deal with an explicit racial appeal, rare for him.
“Imagine a president who was raised, like I was, by a single mom who had to work and go to school and raise her kids and accept food stamps for a while. Imagine a president who could go into Holly Court Apartments here in Manning or Scott’s Branch High School in Summerton and give the young men and women there someone to look up to.”
The impact of Obama’s candidacy on aspirations can’t be overstated. Among the most powerful images of this campaign are the pictures of ordinary people, especially older African Americans, quietly crying. There is such a photo in this book, of a Texas woman in prayerful pose, eyes closed, tears streaming down her face at an Obama rally in Dallas.
Locals listen to Senator Barack Obama speak outside the courthouse in Manning, South Carolina.
Locals listen to U.S. Senator Barack Obama speak outside the courthouse in Manning, South Carolina, November 2, 2007. © Callie Shell/Aurora Photos
Aspirations?
Think about Anthony Simonovich. He had never worked in a campaign before when he walked into Obama headquarters in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He had been downtown looking for work, mall work, any work. He was twenty-seven, had no college degree, and was something of a wanderer. As the product of an interracial union, he related to Obama. He could speak street and speak Shakespeare. He listened to Pink Floyd and Jay-Z. “I actually think biracial people are their own group: ZebraHead Posse.”
Simonovich started out as a volunteer registering voters. Soon he was put in charge of calling voters, urging them to the polls. He was added to the payroll and given a title: phone bank director. He didn’t even own a cell phone. But he had experience as a telemarketer, cared about the environment, and had quirky ideas that the campaign folks loved. And tattoos galore, like “havoc” and “peace” on opposite forearms. When Obama came to Scranton, Simonovich helped the Secret Service secure the area behind the community center where the candidate was to speak. The agents were grateful. Almost overnight, Simonovich had taken on a new identity. A promising romance developed. And the long campaign days? Not a problem. Four hours of sleep a night, every night, only seemed to energize him.
“We’re like a family here,” he said. “Everybody’s last name is Obama.”
By the time the Pennsylvania primary campaign had ended, Simonovich had gained new confidence in his own possibilities.
“I’m motivated,” he said. “It’s exciting to be a part of something this big. I’ll never forget it. I’ll probably get a tattoo to help me remember it.”
Over time, not only had Obama buoyed the confidence of campaign workers, but nearly all those associated with him began to believe he would be the next president. They developed a swagger that many had never seen before on behalf of a black candidate.
During an American Film Institute symposium in Silver Spring, Maryland, the filmmaker Spike Lee cut off a questioner who asked how movies and culture would change if Obama were to be elected president. “There’s no if,” Lee corrected, before continuing. “It changes everything,” he said. “It changes the world. So, it’s going to be Before Barack, B.B., and After Barack, A.B.” So certain was Lee that Obama would defeat Republican senator John McCain of Arizona, he told the audience, “I’m booking my hotel reservation now,” seven months in advance of the inauguration.
Some, however, worry that the expectations being heaped on Obama are too great. Fitzgerald Barnes, the only black supervisor in Louisa County, Virginia, believes. “People’s hopes are so high, and they are putting so much in him, I hope they don’t expect too much—like he’s our savior or something.”
After Obama won Iowa, it got real interesting.
That twenty-four-point polling lead Clinton once held among black voters nationally? Forget about it. If Barack Obama could win amid the cornfields of Iowa, in a state that is 91 percent white, then maybe he could win the whole thing. Black voters started looking at him differently, euphorically. And that shift in mind-set would prove crucial. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign seemed on the brink of self-destruction: bickering, finger-pointing. Obama jumped to a double-digit lead in New Hampshire, site of the next contest, and the media wags started writing Clinton’s obituaries. Prematurely, that is. Had Obama won the New Hampshire primary, it would have been like Buster Douglas dropping Mike Tyson to the canvas in 1990. The aura of invincibility would have been broken for keeps. But Clinton began to show her emotional side, campaigned fiercely, and found her voice, as she put it. By the time the New Hampshire results rolled in, Clinton had become the Comeback Gal. The momentum had shifted.
That night in New Hampshire, it was hard for Obama to mask his dejection. He tried, as he talked about the long march ahead, about how he always knew “our climb would be steep.” But you could tell he thought he had her, and had let her slip away.
Now, it was on to South Carolina. This was the first test of black voter allegiance because of the outsize influence African Americans traditionally wield in the Democratic primary there. Both Obama and Clinton had spent considerable time organizing the state, which at times looked as if it were hosting a national black family reunion. Notables of every distinction made their way to South Carolina, from megastar Oprah to the clownish Chris Tucker, from mayors to congressmen, from black Harvard Law School alums to Delta sorority sisters. South Carolina was a war. It was where Bill Clinton first got in serious trouble with African Americans, many of whom thought he was too disparaging of Obama in his zeal to get his wife elected. This was a strange new experience for Bill, whom Toni Morrison had once labeled, to her regret, “the first black president.” During a South Carolina brawl of a debate, cosponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, Obama decided to have some fun when asked if he believed Morrison was right. “Well,” Obama began, he’d first have to “investigate Bill’s dancing abilities” before he could accurately assess whether the former president “was a brother.”
Barack and Michelle Obama embrace at a rally after he was narrowly defeated in the New Hampshire primary. The loss was a tremendous disappointment for Obama, who not only had a sizable lead in New Hampshire but had control of the race coming out of the Iowa caucuses. Michelle was a mainstay during big moments in the campaign, comforting him when necessary and firing him up when necessary.
Barack and Michelle Obama embrace at a rally after he was narrowly defeated in the New Hampshire primary, January 8, 2008. © Scout Tufankjian/Polaris
Not only did Obama wallop Clinton by a two-to-one margin, he won 78 percent of the black vote, according to exit polls. From that point on, the black vote was all but out of reach for Clinton. That night, many of the Obama staff celebrated at Ruth’s Chris Steak House in downtown Columbia, the state capital. I ran into Obama pollster Cornell Belcher holding forth in a big booth, swigging Veuve Clicquot from the bottle. I teased him: “When are you gonna upgrade to Cristal?” “When the nomination is won,” he replied. “Then we’ll uncork the Cristal.”
There would be no Cristal anytime soon. The Democratic primary race turned into a long, surreal slog, unlike any competition party regulars had ever witnessed. John Edwards, the Democrats’ promising 2004 vice-presidential nominee, was the last major contender to drop out, after a poor showing in South Carolina. Under the Clinton camp’s calculation, the race was supposed to be over on Super Tuesday, February 5, when twenty-two states held primaries and caucuses. Clinton had anticipated delivering her knockout then. But that didn’t happen. She won the big states (California, New York, New Jersey). But Obama won more states (thirteen to her nine), and more delegates. During a stretch after Super Tuesday, Obama reeled off ten straight victories, and it looked like he had the thing wrapped up. It would take Clinton a month to reappear as a winner, but she came back with big triumphs in Ohio and then Pennsylvania. Obama just couldn’t close the deal. As they battled on, attention turned to the all-powerful, Oz-like superdelegates, those nearly eight hundred party leaders and elected officials who were not bound by primary results and could pick the candidate of their choice. They loomed as the final deciders in this close skirmish in which neither candidate could seem to tally enough delegates to lock down the nomination. Gradually, then speedily, the supers started moving Obama’s way.
While the meticulous counting of delegates was unfolding, the country often seemed to be in a debate with itself. Was it ready to elect a woman or a black man? Was sexism a bigger impediment than racism? Obama, at times, struggled with how to handle race. No episode was more torturous for him than the saga of the Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., his Chicago pastor who was a father figure to him and had baptized his daughters. Video snippets of controversial Wright sermons (“God damn America”), widely available on YouTube, had forced Obama first to gently distance himself from Wright, then to give a major address on race, and finally to sever all ties with the minister and leave Trinity United Church of Christ altogether. It pained Obama to do it.
The irony was that Wright’s body of work, and his service, was in the prophetic tradition of many other black preachers—including some we’ve heard of.
Harsh words for one’s country, one’s government? The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., once called the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence” in the world. He also spoke of the “cultural homicide” committed against blacks in America, how their worth was devalued while white superiority was promoted. And yet he had faith in humanity, loved his country, pushed to make it better.
On the day Obama gave his carefully calibrated speech on race in Philadelphia, one of his finest moments of the campaign, Ted Shaw, a Columbia University law professor and the former head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, marveled at the candidate’s dexterity in traversing what he called a racial tightrope.
“Senator Obama will continue to have to walk this fine line—not to be engulfed by this issue of race and on the other hand not deny his experience and identity as an African American man,” Shaw said. “It shows the continued saliency of race in this country and how devilishly tricky it is for someone in his position who is trying to lead our nation and garner the support of everyone. I thank God I don’t have that challenge.”
On June 3, after a flood of superdelegate endorsements and a victory in the Montana primary, Obama mounted a stage in St. Paul, Minnesota, and finally claimed his prize: “Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.” It wouldn’t become official until late August at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. But days later, Hillary Clinton acknowledged the inevitable and endorsed Obama.
Free now to begin his general-election campaign against McCain, Obama quickly tangled with his Senate colleague over the economy and national security. He took a trip to the Mideast and Europe, drawing two hundred thousand in Berlin and reaffirming his status as America’s No. 1 rock-star politician—which McCain found hard to stomach. What to do? He ran an ad mocking Obama’s celebrity persona, likening him to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears—a move that puzzled even Republicans. And race? It didn’t take long for that smoldering topic to be reintroduced—this time by the McCain campaign, which accused Obama of “playing the race card.” You know, that squishy, catchall phrase that is a 1990s throwback to the O. J. Simpson trial. It is the cousin of “political correctness,” another charged, goofy phrase that has wormed itself into the American lexicon as the easy way to dismiss grievances without actually examining them.
What exactly is a race card? It’s whatever the hurler of the charge says it is, but always something sinister. “Race card” is one of those wordplays guaranteed to generate media noise. In Obama’s case, it was his predicting the future based on the past—that the Republican argument against his candidacy (and his problem was that he called out McCain by name) would be to make voters afraid of him. They would talk about his “funny name,” Obama told an audience in Missouri, say he’s not patriotic, claim he was too risky. “You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know.”
Simple translation, and no surprise: He’s not a white man.
There was a telling moment in the campaign shortly after Obama wrapped up the nomination. He had gathered many of his volunteers and staff at Chicago headquarters to thank them—and to remind them of all they had been through together. He mentioned the mistakes he had made, and the skepticism and cynicism they all had confronted about his candidacy. There was a “good heart to this campaign,” he continued. After noting the single mothers struggling without health care, the towns that are dying because of chronic job loss, the people he encountered who are concerned about global warming, Darfur, and education, Obama lowered the boom: “We don’t have an option now.”
Moments like these hardly ever come around, Obama told his troops. The whole country was depending on them. He reminded them of that first victory in Iowa. If we hadn’t won there, he said, another Democrat would have emerged and we’d all be out on the trail now campaigning and volunteering for some other candidate. “But because we won, we now have no choice. We have to win.”
He was pumping them up—to make history, beat McCain, “change the world.” As the applause grew, Obama decided that was enough. He had made the case. It was time to exit. Get some rest, he told the troops, but come back fired up.
“I love you guys,” he said. “Let’s go win the election.”
About the Author
Kevin Merida is an associate editor at the Washington Post. He has covered or supervised the coverage of six presidential campaigns, including the 2008 contest. In 2000, he was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists. He is the author of the critically acclaimed and prizewinning Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas. He lives in Maryland.
Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) participates in a church service before giving a speech about fatherhood at the Apostolic Church of God, June 15, 2008. © David Banks/Getty Images