The Obama Reader
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I’ve got a few myself, and my favorite is from early in his 2004 Senate campaign. Obama was still an underdog, if not an afterthought, in the months before the Democratic primary—among his six opponents were the son of a party power broker and a billionaire. I was working for the Chicago Reporter, a monthly that focuses on racial issues, and had no problem getting his staff to set up a sit-down. But when a colleague and I showed up at the appointed time—around 5 PM one weekday—the candidate strode out of his office with an annoyed look. It quickly became clear that no one had told him we were coming. “This is really not a good time, guys,” he said. “This is a time I need to be making phone calls. I need to be fund-raising.”
All it took was a few basic questions about why he was running and why he thought he could win and Obama was off to wonky wonderland, outlining policy ideas, citing election data, and arguing about political history for the next hour and a half. He took visible pleasure in thinking through the questions. Even if he was quite confident that he had the right answers to most of them, he wanted to get our take, and on the points where we more or less told him we thought he was full of shit, he more or less refused to deny that politics involves careful strategizing. Which I still think was an honest a way of avoiding a stand.
