You could always tell when somebody important was visiting the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board because they’d set out a tray of cookies and little bottles of spring water. These were visible to the newsroom through the boardroom’s glass wall. Hardened political journalist that I am, one day in 2008 I saw the tray and thought, “Ooh, cookies.”
The VIP wouldn’t miss a cookie or two. I slid in and was just loading a couple into a napkin when there was a commotion in the hall. I tried to flee but was blocked by Barack Obama and his entourage coming in.
What to do? I took a seat at the table, so I was there as Obama explained away a deal he had done with fixer Tony Rezko, one of the countless hurdles he had to clear to get from where he was to where he was going.
When I heard that 2,500 members of what has been dubbed “Obamaworld” are meeting in Chicago this weekend to celebrate this past moment of triumph — election night in Grant Park — I didn’t pout, wondering where my invite was. Like my presence at that meeting, the media just happened to be there, already, when he showed up, although we certainly played a key role in Obama’s success.
Somewhere in the boxes of clips and files that have ended up in my basement is a yellow legal pad with “BARACK OBAMA” scrawled across the top. I still remember waiting in that boardroom — I was on the Editorial Board when he ran for U.S. Senate in 2004 — wondering what kind of person that name might belong to.
I’d be more ashamed to admit who I imagined — some lefty professor in a big Afro and a dashiki, tossing a Black power salute and lecturing us on American imperialism — if it didn’t so perfectly encapsulate the entrenched prejudices Obama had to overcome on his journey to the White House.
What was he like then? I felt sorry for him: a husband who really wanted a cigarette but was forbidden to smoke by his wife.
After he was elected to the Senate, my primary interactions were at the tony East Bank Club. It seemed whatever locker I was given would be next to his — I remember closing the door, seeing him there, and saying, “It’s you...” as he began lecturing me on whatever he didn’t like about my column at the moment.
There was much he didn’t like — I had dubbed him “God’s Chosen Vessel” for the way the waters parted before him as he ascended into the empyrean in a blaze of golden light and trumpet fanfares.
The low point was when he phoned from Africa to complain my column had not framed the visit in the triumphal terms he preferred. “I thought you were my friend” he said, when of course, there is no friendship between journalists and politicians. Rather, their relationship is, as one Sun-Times veteran put it, “situational and transactional.”
Not entirely. There was an undeniable element of magic, at least for me. Nov. 4, 2008, Election Day, I went to work planning to go home at 5 p.m. — why linger around for some big rally, particularly when he could lose? “There might be trouble,” I worried, furrowing my white-guy brow.
But my 13-year-old son, with a firmer grip on the future than I, called me. He wanted to go. Could we, huh, Dad? I’m a much better father than I am a political seer and said sure, though we had to cool our heels in the press area, which could not actually see the rally but had to watch on big screens.
I wanted him to actually lay eyes upon Obama as he spoke, and there was one hole in a chain-link fence where a bunch of people had gathered, watching. I ushered him up to it. “Can this boy see him for a moment?” I asked, and a woman turned and announced, “Let the baby through!” I loved that. He peered a moment, and as he pulled back I, too, saw Obama, live, a tiny figure way in the distance, and I thought of that famous photograph of Lincoln speaking at Gettysburg.
Afterward, we walked up Michigan Avenue, where people played drums and danced in the street. I lit a celebratory cigar, and for a moment, it seemed the future of America unfolded before us, the fulfillment of a beautiful dream.
