My little politics blog

I'm just saying that, if you're not running for president, dealing with the national press is not something that people really look forward to. For me, it's great.

I, uh, what I, what I found partly because of the length of the campaign is that you have to constantly renew yourself, and what you're saying and what you're doing and I think that that is a challenge. Because there's such a premium on the next thing?-make the next appearance, getting out there and maintaining momentum.

So I actually think that after the 11 victories that we had right before Ohio and Texas, part of what happened was that what I was saying started getting stale because we didn't have time to step out of it, and is what I'm saying true, am I connecting, getting at the heart of things or am I just performing? And I think it cost us a little bit, in addition to the flubs those last three days, but I think that, you know, to some extent I think after Iowa, working so hard you're passionate about it, going after it, you're connecting with people and you're just right there and then you win, and then there's just this tendency to sort of just keep on doing the same things.

But the truth is this process is dynamic and you just can't keep on doing the same thing. I assume that the presidency is the same way and you have to constantly keep on growing, grow in it, and just because what you've been doing has been working doesn't mean that what your doing is right for the state and, uh, so I've got to constantly push myself and step back and this stuff?-is what I'm saying here really real or am I just going through the motions. Am I listening to people who are telling me about losing their jobs, connecting with them, and try to figure out how to help make their lives better.

And sometimes I've been good at it and sometimes I haven't been good at it, but I think that's the test of leadership and I think that the voters, for all the flood of information that's coming at them, I think they sense when you're, when you're real and when you're true and when you're not and that's something.

Earlier today, the Clinton campaign demanded that Barack Obama release all the documents pertaining to the purchase of his home in 2005 on a piece of land adjacent to land owned by Tony Rezko.

The Obama campaign's response: We already have!

Says Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor, "It's the height of hypocrisy for Senator Clinton to demand the release of documents that are already on our campaign website while she steadfastly refuses to release her full tax returns and earmark requests from her time in the Senate, as well as her White House records and Clinton library donors. Democrats across the country should be very concerned about Senator Clinton's refusal to offer a full and complete accounting of what could be lurking in this financial information and what that would mean for our party when we run against Senator McCain in November."

This was a pretty amazing conversation, not only because of Obama's mastery of the legal details, but also because many prominent Democratic leaders had already blasted the Bush initiative as blatantly illegal. He did not want to take a public position until he had listened to, and explored, what might be said on the other side.

This is the Barack Obama I have known for nearly 15 years -- a careful and evenhanded analyst of law and policy, unusually attentive to multiple points of view.

[...]

Those of us who have long known Obama are impressed and not a little amazed by his rhetorical skills. Who could have expected that our colleague, a teacher of law, is able to inspire large crowds?

The Obama we know is no rhetorician; he shines not because he can move people, but because of his problem-solving abilities, creativity and attention to detail.

In recent weeks, his speaking talents, and the cultlike atmosphere that occasionally surrounds him, have led people to wonder whether there is substance behind the plea for "change" -- whether the soaring phrases might disguise emptiness and vagueness. But nothing could be further from the truth. He is most comfortable in the domain of policy and detail.

Barack Obama's church is under scrutiny. But what's it really like on the inside?

...

Wright built Trinity into a huge church, with 8,500 people coming to worship on Sundays. Earlier this month, after a yearlong transition, Wright handed his pulpit over to the young and charismatic pastor Otis Moss III. In his heyday, Wright was a forceful presence, calling for divestment from South Africa as early as 1983. By keeping the problem of racism alive with provocative sermons, Wright encouraged his flock to "speak truth to power" and to always identify, like Jesus, with the marginalized of society. In the context of Trinity's South Side neighborhood, where about 20 percent of residents are on welfare and the same number are unemployed, the church and its messenger were rarely controversial.

...

Wright declined to be interviewed, but on a recent Sunday morning between services, Moss spoke to NEWSWEEK. Trinity has been mischaracterized by the press, he says: the church is "very much in the traditional vein of the African-American church. Caring for seniors, loving our young people, and the focus on Christ and the cross is central to this church."

...

As a leader, Wright defied convention at every turn. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune last year, he recalled a time during the 1970s when the UCC decided to ordain gay and lesbian clergy. At its annual meeting, sensitive to the historic discomfort some blacks have with homosexuality, gay leaders reached out to black pastors. At that session, Wright heard the testimony of a gay Christian and, he said, he had a conversion experience on gay rights. He started one of the first AIDS ministries on the South Side and a singles group for Trinity gays and lesbians?-a subject that still rankles some of the more conservative Trinity members, says Dwight Hopkins, a theology professor at the University of Chicago and a church member.

...

In the African-American church tradition, pastors rely frequently on the stories of the Old Testament?-stories of liberation and struggle?-to reach their people. "The Audacity to Hope," the Wright sermon that so inspired Obama, is a discussion of the Biblical character Hannah, who, though she was barren, prayed for a child. Wright uses Hannah as a metaphor for the black people who pray for deliverance even though it seems unattainable.

Friends of the church like to speculate about what, exactly, drew Obama in. Hopkins thinks it's the erudition of the preachers. "Historically, African-American churches have had a strong anti-intellectual bent. There's a saying, 'Too much learning blocks the burning.' Trinity has the learning and the burning." But Melissa Harris-Lacewell thinks it's something else, a connection to the black experience that Obama lacked as a child. "I really see Trinity for Barack as being part of his continuing adult choice to be a black man," says Harris-Lacewell, who attended Trinity for a time and is now a professor at Princeton.

...

Trinity members point out that Obama is not the first presidential candidate to have an alliance with a controversial minister, nor is he the first to have a connection, however tenuous, to Farrakhan. In 1996, while running for re-election, Bill Clinton sent out a mass mailing to friends and prospective donors?-including one to the Nation of Islam. In it, he invited Claudette Muhammad, who at the time was chief of protocol, to be on his steering committee. "It is my way of saying thank you for your past friendship and it is my way of asking you to join me in this new campaign," he wrote. Muhammad reprinted the letter in a memoir; a spokesman for Clinton declined to comment.

A member of Trinity since she was a teenager, Speller, of the Chicago Theological Seminary, is anguished over the scrutiny her church is facing. When asked whether there's a double standard at her church about hate talk?-is hate talk OK when directed at some groups, but not at others??-she pauses. The context here is Farrakhan, but in light of Wright's video clips, her answer fits: "Is there an assumption that because of the hate talk, nothing good can come from him? And if there is that assumption, is it a fair assumption?" Fair or not, it's one Barack Obama is going to have to contend with.

Obama should have had Friday's discussion 16 months ago. Asked why he didn't, he spoke of learning, uncomfortably, what it's like to live in a fishbowl. That made him perhaps too eager to protect personal information -- too eager to "control the narrative."

Tribune: I ask because again, the overriding question about all this and the one that you've been trying to address since the very beginning, but the one that's still lingering, is whether or not you and Tony coordinated the purchase of the home.

Obama: And I guess what I'm saying is, if we've got confirmation from the seller that the two transactions weren't related, that we in fact paid the best price, or gave them the best offer for the home, then why the thought that I coordinated would be relevant? Look, the overarching suspicion that has been raised by a number of reporters in this room is that there was some sort of subsidy of my house. If that is in fact not the case, then that should allay whatever concerns you have. Unless there is something that I'm missing.

Tribune: No sir, we have never communicated with the sellers and your transmissions of their e-mails to us is the first we've ever had of them.

Obama: I recognize that, and I should probably make mention of this: Part of the . . . difficulty that we've had on some of these responses has to do with the fact that the sellers are very private people and were not interested in being drawn into a media circus.

And just to give you some indication of what might prompt their concerns: One reporter got a hold of their 11-year-old daughter's cell phone and asked for them; one reporter showed up at their house at 9:30 at night; another somehow got through security at John Hopkins and started asking questions of the woman doctor who was on rounds there. And so, not surprisingly then, this was not something that they were eager to get involved with.

They are the ones, though, that did originally indicate to us when they first read the reports that this is just not accurate, and after some prodding, then we were able to get them to at least respond to a set of points that my lawyer laid out, my campaign lawyer laid out, so that they could confirm this. And again, this is subject to confirmation.

Tribune: I appreciate that, and I'm also . . our contact with them has been entirely respectful of their privacy.

Obama: No, this was not in any way suggesting that you guys hadn't been respectful. I'm just saying that, if you're not running for president, dealing with the national press is not something that people really look forward to. For me, it's great.

This is a minor point, but...

In the editorial after the big meeting with Obama, the Chi Trib says,

Chicago Tribune wrote:

Obama should have had Friday's discussion 16 months ago. Asked why he didn't, he spoke of learning, uncomfortably, what it's like to live in a fishbowl. That made him perhaps too eager to protect personal information -- too eager to "control the narrative."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/chi-0316edit1mar16,0,745313.story

That's not what I got out of the exchange.

Obama: You know, look, I'll be honest with you. I sort of had, felt like we?-I'm not saying we were right, but we're part of what happened?-was we had a fairly extensive and thorough press conference around this issue. I talked to your reporters, Sun-Times reporters, gave them a lot of information. I talked to the Washington Post, appeared on all the Sunday shows.

And the fact is my answers really haven't changed much, and so, so to that extent I think a part of the reason we didn't have this conversation was, the feeling was maybe we had the conversation. What had changed was not so much my answers but that it looked like now I was really a viable presidential candidate and Tony Rezko had been indicted.

So that it was the circumstances of the individuals had changed instead of the story. So having said that, as I said before, part of our difficulty was that the sellers were very reticent to come forward, and so I think, clearly disputing the implications or the appearances and other stuff, other than simply telling things that had gone on, and it wasn't clear that we had no new information to provide.

You know, [Tribune editor] Anne Marie [Lipinski] asked what it is that I've learned. Learning the relationship with the press in a national campaign is a challenge. I mean, I mean, I will say this, that there's no experience similar to this in terms of living in the fish bowl. And there are times where very legitimate and fair questions are raised about my inconsistencies, contradictions or foibles.

There are times where, you know, folks are just picking at you, you know, because they need some copy. And so what it can induce is a mentality of let's be very protective of information for interviews and access so we can control the narrative a little more. That's something we have to be careful of, not just as a candidate but presumably even more so as a president because what you want to do is balance, not responding to every reporter out there, maintaining a sense of openness and accessibility and a willingness to engage the criticisms that are made. And that's something that we're still learning as a team.

Sozobe! You're back! (but you probably already knew that )

Man, they've been stinking it up over on your 'Obama 08' thread. Hopefully out of deference to you, they'll ease up on the muckracking now that you're back...


or, not...

Read this story posted earlier by pstalmer on a different page:

Favorite campaign story so far: On an NPR talk show a couple of days ago, a nursing-home chaplain called to report her political conversation with an elderly white gentleman. He asked, "Who's that n----- that's running?"

The chaplain said on the air, "Well, we're chaplains; we're not supposed to correct our people." So she said to the man, "That's Barack Obama, the black man who's running for president."

"Right," said the old guy. "That's who I'm voting for."

Statement Regarding Barack Obama

The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as "Senior Lecturer."

From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School's Senior Lecturers have high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined.

Briefly -- I was way, WAY out of the loop for about a week and had conversations with relatives that had me spooked about Obama's chances. One (F) leans Hillary but was considering Obama; one (M) leans McCain but was also considering Obama. Both 60-ish. Both were spouting all this stuff about Obama and Wright and Farrakhan and blah blah blah that had me really worried. (The good news -- my cousin the Obama supporter and I took the opportunity to disabuse these relatives of several false notions. Plus, I talked about the "sniper fire in Bosnia" thing and they didn't quite believe me and then like the next day it was big news everywhere... finally.)

Anyway, I was relieved that when I came up for air (and internet access) things didn't actually seem so bad. Way better than I feared, and some room for optimism.