The great black hope: what's riding on Barack Obama?

Washington Monthly, Nov, 2004 by Benjamin Wallace-Wells

That Wilder was no fluke became evident in the mid-1990s, as speculation intensified that Gen. Colin Powell--who had approval ratings of 80 percent, and who had been courted by both parties--might run for president. Powell had a careful manner, and had won a war. But, most importantly, Powell's political independence was practically virginal. When he did finally join the Republicans, it was on an independent's terms; he retained positions that cut against conservative orthodoxy, supporting affirmative action, abortion rights, increased federal funding for after-school programs and more.

Following in Powell's footsteps was Rep. Harold Ford Jr., (D-Tenn.). At 26, Ford had taken over the inner-city Memphis scat of his father, an old-fashioned populist of the civil-rights generations. Harold Jr. went out of his way to distance himself from his father's politics, running in a very liberal district as a conservative, "Blue Dog" Democrat--with an eye, pundits said, oil statewide or even national office. He was talented, too. After he had delivered a widely praised keynote speech at the Democratic Convention in 2000, pundits and political insiders praised him as a rising political star. Ford ran against Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the party's ordained candidate, for House Minority Leader in 2002, arguing that his centrist would better serve the caucus in the post 9/11 era. He was crushed in the leadership vote, with veteran congressmen scoffing to newspapers about this 31-year-old kid who could presume to lead them.

Plumbers and grandmothers

Like Wilder, Powell, and Ford, Obama has crafted a way of signaling his political independence: He tells people what they don't want to hear. At fundraisers on Chicago's lavish North Side, he tells his wealthy supporters that he'll hike their taxes. At union halls, he tells the workers that the drain of jobs to India and China is inevitable, and that there's nothing he can do to prevent it. To inner-city, he says that parents need to turn off their televisions and teach their kids some discipline.

In early October, I watched Obama give a speech and take questions at a forum in downtown Chicago, in a black church with stained glass windows of Jesus saving whites. The audience was a Chicago out of an early Saul Bellow novel: old Polish men with huge hearing aids, union-looking guys with thick, bristling mustaches, conservative bankers who asked pointed questions about Israel, black aunts bused in church vans from the West Side.

Before his audience, Obama told a fortyish man worrying about taxes that government will have to do more to help the middle-class, not less, and that limiting taxes shouldn't be his narrow political priority. He told a white-haired woman peace activist who criticizes Israel that the Palestinians are in the wrong, and then when this appears to encourage a pro-Israel man, tells that guy that the Israelis are far from perfect, too. Obama was measured throughout; he tends to come off as an expert and wonk, an earnest, hopeful policy nerd. A group of older black women asked, humbly, for vague assurances that he would redirect federal housing policy to emphasize low-rise, rather than high-rise, projects most housing advocates think low-rise buildings would be easier to police and maintain, and encourage more neighborly interactions. The grandmas were throwing him a softball, hoping only for a signal that he was open to their concerns, that he would side with the experts. Obama was having none of it. "Low rise isn't going to solve all your problems," Obama said sternly. "I've worked in the projects, and, let me tell you, low rise has problems of its own." The particular lady who had asked the question looked rebuked, and there was a surprised wince in the church: Did he really just say that to a bunch of trapped-in-the-projects grandmas?