Obama's unprecedented voice
No president knew the literature and religion of America better—not even Lincoln.
On the day of the 2004 Illinois primary I was watching the polls at a precinct on the north side of Chicago. Barack Obama’s Senate campaign posted me there, where my opposite number was a precinct worker with the alderman’s organization. We got along well, handing out competing palm cards at our legally required distance from the polling place. Eventually he asked me who I was doing a favor for by working a cold March election day, and he was genuinely flabbergasted when I said I was there because I believed in the candidate. Like the late Abner Mikva, I was the nobody that nobody sent.
Nobody needed me, either—Obama carried that precinct by a healthy margin, along with the ward, the city, and a stunning share of the state. That corner of the north side was home to the governor, the comptroller, and the attorney general, all bidding fair to become national figures. But the one who emerged was the guy from the south side, the skinny kid with the funny name.
I saw him at the victory party that night, entering the packed ballroom from a side door. The messianic touch was at odds with the eloquent but halting figure I’d seen at volunteer events, the man clearly too smart for the state senate yet hard to picture as a lion of national politics. His speech was pin-perfect and exhilarating. “John Kerry should get this guy to give the keynote speech,” I told my friend and fellow volunteer. Four months later, he did. Four years after that Obama was elected president, and as of today he is an ex-president.
