How Chicago Shaped Obama

New Yorker:

One day in 1995, Barack Obama went to see his alderman, an influential politician named Toni Preckwinkle, on Chicago's South Side, where politics had been upended by scandal. Mel Reynolds, a local congressman, was facing charges of sexual assault of a sixteen-year-old campaign volunteer. (He eventually resigned his seat.) The looming vacancy set off a fury of ambition and hustle; several politicians, including a state senator named Alice Palmer, an education expert of modest political skills, prepared to enter the congressional race. Palmer represented Hyde Park--Obama's neighborhood, a racially integrated, liberal sanctuary--and, if she ran for Congress, she would need a replacement in Springfield, the state capital. Obama at the time was a thirty-three-year-old lawyer, university lecturer, and aspiring office-seeker, and the Palmer seat was what he had in mind when he visited Alderman Preckwinkle.

"Barack came to me and said, 'If Alice decides she wants to run, I want to run for her State Senate seat,' " Preckwinkle told me. We were in her district office, above a bank on a street of check-cashing shops and vacant lots north of Hyde Park. Preckwinkle soon became an Obama loyalist, and she stuck with him in a State Senate campaign that strained or ruptured many friendships but was ultimately successful. Four years later, in 2000, she backed Obama in a doomed congressional campaign against a local icon, the former Black Panther Bobby Rush. And in 2004 Preckwinkle supported Obama during his improbable, successful run for the United States Senate. So it was startling to learn that Toni Preckwinkle had become disenchanted with Barack Obama.

Read the whole story: New Yorker

Comments

[realtalk]

This is tame normal political stuff.

[MariaHopeful]

I for one am happy that he is a fighter. I am also happy that he is not afraid to go physical if the situation requires it.

[LAR1969]

Kinda makes me wish he'd have a face-off with Cheney. Or Lieberman.

[joeyp404]

Sounds a bit similar to McCain's anger issues too. I guess these guys are evenly matched.

[lawchic]

I thought the article was a good read, but it just seemed like more of an analysis of articles that have been written this whole year. 1) Obama is a very ambitious, skilled politician; 2) People were troubled by his ambition and wanted him to wait his turn in several areas; 3) He struggled with being "Black" enough amongst Black voters, ala 2008; 4) He compromised on positions when he felt he had to and worked inside institutions to get results; and 5) he is nobody's punk.

None of this is surprising if you have been paying attention. But it will be more fodder for his critics/op­ponents/or for people who have not been paying attention.

[Countdown09]

I remember a time when many people said (HRC top of the list) that O wasn't a skilled nor tough enough to take on the republican machine. And I also remember many times O making mention that his Chicago political experiences would serve him well in their regard. The Clinton's under estimated O to their demise and the republicans so far seem to be following suite LOL.

Recently it seems some of his supporters are shocked to find out that O is politician, I don't understand why they would have thought this. How exactly do you think he managed to get to this point in his "political career" if he wasn't a good politician. It's not easy to put faith in politicians, we tend to only dwell on the bad ones, there are many who are honest hard working servants to this country. O is a remarkable politician but he is no less in my opinion, a good decent man with morals and integrity who truly believes he can do what is right and best for this country.

[potsdam]

This New Yorker article puts meat on the bone. In these times, this country could certainly use a politician who made his bones in Chicago. I'm both voting for his election and praying for his success.

[alieninvader]

Potsdam, NY? I was born there.

[alieninvader]

Isn't it amazing that the Obama smears have been focused on how good he is. He's good at politics. He's good at advancing his life. He's well educated. He makes a lot of money. He's successful. He's...gas­p...elitis­t. When did Americans start penalizing people for achieving the American dream, which has always involved ruthlessness?

[JaneaneTheAcerbicGoblin]

He's a black Democrat that's achieved the American Dream, and the GOP/MSM don't like it one bit.

[drolleen]

The New Yorker is great!

Hey, are any of us surprised? Obama is a politician. In Chicago term he is as clean as they come, but he is just as brutal. So he will not be a pushover. GOOD!

His rise to the top in the most viciously chauvinistic Afro-American center was against high odds. He managed to survive and thrive in the most anti-outsiders corner of the country - and help LEGAL immigrants. He was no pushover in any step of the way.

Counter that with the mega-turnaround of the "maverick" McCain that was given princedom upon his return from captivity, and was good at getting maverick legislation that DIDN'T PASS for 20 years.

[alieninvader]

Oh my god, a presidential candidate with political savvy and ambition! The shock of it all!

[sustainable]

yeah, you can't tell me that Hillary didn't see that coming. At the Dem convention he blew everyone else out of the water - what a speaker!

[SCG2]

Comfirms to me, that for all the talk centerism about Obama, there is a departure in vision from the DLC ilk.

[blog4um]

If we are smart, we all make decision that will impact our future--our choice of colleges, career paths, friends, employment, where we live.

This is no different.

[Deaninphilly]

You're right the only difference is normal people don't throw those "friends" to the curb when we're done with them. Do we?

[kay]

Oh, Dean, Dean, Dean.

Were you asleep during the 1990's? What about the 1980's?

From what lofty height are you speaking? The Clintons rise to power? The Bush's?

It was all candy and flowers? Are you KIDDING with this?

HRC's Senate race? Where she knee-capped the House member to keep her off the ballot?

Incidentally, if I were "Deaninphilly" I don't know that I'd be slamming Chicago for corruption.

[rds77]

So what do u call what McCain did to his longtime friend....

[Wildcatdiva]

They wanted to portray him as a punk b now they want to portray him as a cut throat b...haha..­.oh btw he told you long ago he's the cut throat guy you don't wanna mess with. Works for me.

[southafrica4obama]

Not good-- a storyline

[kay]

It's the "ruthless/­ambitious" storyline. It's traditional in US politics.

First they're inspirational, then it turns out they're ruthlessly ambitious. It's not mutually exclusive, though.

The "big" ones are always both things, at the same time, in my lifetime, anyway.

We don't have a real nuanced media. One....the­me....at..­...a....ti­me.

[shades3]

Since when has anyone without ruthless ambition aspired to leadership?
That quality is absolutely necessary in order to run for management, or the Presidency, and succeed.
Who would want a leader who is not ruthlessly ambitious?
Ruthlessness is not a negative quality when it comes to leadership.
You want a leader who is totally focussed on doing not what's best for themselves and their financial supporters, but what is best for the country.
George W Bush is not ruthless enough, or smart enough to cut loose those who pushed him into decisions which have made the United States a pariah globally.

[loper2008]

Wow! This writer really tried his best to make Barack Obama look bad, all based on rumor and innuendo. So I did a google search on his name and he wrote a praise piece on John McCain's, "Straight Talk Experess" back in February. He's a Republican masquerading as a political journalist.

The whole point of this article seems to be: Barack Obama has had a secret plan to run for president. Hello all presidents have wanted to be president most of their lives. John McCain wanted to be president when he was still in the military.

I like how Republicans and PUMAs always try to turn his successes into a reason not to vote for him. Oh no, Obama is friends will all different types of people, he has enthusiastic supporters, and knows how to raise money. Something is seriously wrong with him!!!!

Can't they come up with anything better?

[kay]

I've been a Democrat a long time. The posts here about O's 'ambition" are exactly the slurs WJC survived when he was running the first time.

Weirdly, though, here they're coming from supporters of HRC.

Go read what was written about WJC in the early 1990's. Identical.

[jspivey]

"I've been a Democrat a long time. The posts here about O's 'ambition" are exactly the slurs WJC survived when he was running the first time."

It's not what people are posting. It's what the New Yorker article actually says.

As for Clinton, as a two-term Governor, he accomplished things in the Arkansas state house that he could point to as a presidential candidate.

As far as solid accomplisments are concerned, Obama really doesn't have anything to point to at all

[closetodemfection]

Kay, what really do you know about O?

How about O possibly joining Bohemian Grove? How does that reflect his ambitions?

http://tinyurl.com/6f4aon

The BC steered clear of that insanity.

[ThunderclapNewman]

Linking to a total nutbar like Alex Jones only shows how desperate you are to smear O'Bama in any way you can.

You really have no moral scruples, do you?

[Rotwang]

Could be worse. He could be from Arkansas.

[kay]

I always thought it was snobbery, the sneering tone conservatives adopted about WJC's "ambition".

Like he should have know his "place.

I think that kind of ambition is as "American as apple pie". It amused me that conservatives thought it was a slur.

[JaneaneTheAcerbicGoblin]

As much as I dislike Bill's GOP-lite policies, he is the Horatio Alger story. He's that kind of person who conservatives talk about all the time, the poor boy who picked himself up by the bootstraps and did good.

The Republicans, honestly, don't like people like that at all. They like if you're born into money. If you aren't, you're a whiner.

David Broder once said the White House was not Clinton's place. Many thought that was a crack against Clinton's origins. I think it was.