opposed black nationalism because he believes it doesn’t unify ordinary people or create realistic agendas for change.
Obama had an aide who advised him on how to be a ‘regular guy’. Among the lessons were to order regular mustard, not Dijon, and not to wear button-down shirts.
Obama started writing a regular column – ‘Springfield Report’ – for the Hyde Park Herald (his local Chicago newspaper) in February 1997.
Obama quickly gained bipartisan support for legislation reforming ethics and healthcare laws.
Some African-Americans resented this intellectual outsider. One favourite line was: ‘You figure out whether you’re white or black yet, Barack, or still searching?’
Barack backed a law increasing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform and promoted increased subsidies for childcare before being re-elected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, defeating Republican Yesse Yehudah in the general election.
In 1999, Congressman Bobby Rush – a former member of the Black Panther party – lost a challenge to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Obama saw this as his chance and decided to run for the Democratic candidacy for Congress.
During the campaign, a pivotal vote on gun control legislation was due in the State Senate. When the vote came on the floor, Barack was in Hawaii visiting his 18-month-old daughter, Malia, who was ill. The gun control bill didn’t pass and Barack came under fire for not attending the vote.
Barack lost the Democratic primary run for the US House of Representatives to Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one. Following this, he experienced the ‘not black enough’ charge from several quarters for the first time in his political career. But there was a positive: while he may not have been a ‘black’ candidate, Barack realised that he was a blend of America, and that this could work in his favour.
Obama speaking on 11 September 2001: ‘Even as I hope for some measure of peace and comfort to the bereaved families, I must also hope that we as a nation draw some measure of wisdom from this tragedy … We will have to make sure, despite our rage, that any US military action takes into account the lives of innocent civilians abroad. We will have to be unwavering in opposing bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbours and friends of Middle Eastern descent. Finally, we will have to devote far more attention to the monumental task of raising the hopes and prospects of embittered children across the globe – children not just in the Middle East, but also in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and within our own shores.’
Obama was one of the very few mainstream Democrats to oppose the Iraq war before it started. Addressing an anti-war rally in Chicago’s Federal Plaza in October 2002, Obama denounced the planned invasion of Iraq, while repeating the line ‘I don’t oppose all wars.’
The Democrats usurped Republican control of the Illinois Senate in 2002. That same year Obama was re-elected to the State Senate. In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee. He sponsored legislation to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they detained. He also sponsored legislation making Illinois the first state to authorise videotaping of homicide interrogations.
Obama formally entered the race for the United States Senate in 2003. During the primaries, his Democratic rival, Blair Hull, took the lead, but after a short while dropped out when domestic-abuse allegations surfaced. Barack hired David Axelrod as his political strategist. Axelrod began filming Obama in public in 2003, footage he would later use to create a five-minute film for the internet for the 16 January 2007 announcement that Obama was running for President. ‘Barack showed flashes of brilliance,’ Axelrod said, ‘but there were times of absolute pure drudgery… his speeches were very theoretical and intellectual and very long.’
During his campaign for the Senate, Barack’s aides thought he should have a driver but he refused: he liked having the time alone to clear his head.
In March 2004, Obama won the primary with 52 per cent of the vote.
In the general election, Barack faced Republican candidate Jack Ryan, but Ryan was forced to withdraw due to a sex scandal reported in the Chicago Tribune. African-American Alan Keyes replaced Jack Ryan, and soon questioned Obama’s Christianity and blackness.
Obama’s 2004 race against Republican Alan Keyes marked the first time in US history that two African-Americans ran as major party nominees for a Senate seat.
During the campaign, the police credited Obama for his active engagement in enacting death-penalty reforms.
In August 2004, John Kerry asked Barack to be his keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention address. ‘There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America,’ said Obama in his speech. ‘There’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and a white America … there’s the United States of America … We are one people …’ The speech went out on primetime television to an estimated 9.1 million viewers. Barack Obama became famous overnight. ‘Obamamania’ was born.
Dreams from My Father was reissued with a new introduction by Obama and the DNC keynote address. It became a huge bestseller. Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison said Obama is ‘a writer in my high esteem’ and that his memoir is ‘quite extraordinary’. The Guardian wrote that Dreams from My Father ‘is easily the most honest, daring, and ambitious volume put out by a major US politician in the last 50 years’, while the New York Times described it as ‘the most evocative, lyrical and candid autobiography written by a future president’.
In November 2004, Obama won the Senate seat, notching up 70 per cent of the vote. He was the fifth African-American Senator in the history of the US, and only the third to have been popularly elected. His step-grandmother, Kezia, attended his inauguration.
The buzz about a presidential candidacy began before Obama had even been sworn into the Senate
