

Downtown Chicago



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If you did not read this, then do so. A definite, must read, all seven chapters.



How He Did It



Barack Obama had a gift, and he knew it. He had a way of making very smart, very accomplished people feel virtuous just by wanting to help Barack Obama. It had happened at Harvard Law School in the mid-1980s, at a time when the school was embroiled in fights over political correctness. He had won one of the truly plum prizes of overachievement at Harvard: he had been voted president of the law review, the first African-American ever so honored. Though his politics were conventionally (if not stridently) liberal, even the conservatives voted for him. Obama was a good listener, attentive and empathetic, and his powerful mind could turn disjointed screeds into reasoned consensus, but his appeal lay in something deeper. He was a black man who had moved beyond racial politics and narrowly defined interest groups. He seemed indifferent to, if not scornful of, the politics of identity and grievance. He showed no sense of entitlement or resentment. Obama had a way of transcending ambition, though he himself was ambitious as hell. In the grasping race for status and achievement—a competition that can seem like blood lust at a place like Harvard—Obama could make hypersuccessful meritocrats pause and remember a time (part mythical perhaps, but still beckoning) when service to others was more important than serving oneself.



Gregory Craig, a lawyer in Washington, D.C., was one of those Americans who wanted to believe again. Craig was not exactly an ordinary citizen—he had served and worked with the powerful all his life, as an aide to Sen. Edward Kennedy in the 1980s, as chief of policy planning at the State Department in the Clinton administration and as a lawyer hired to represent President Clinton at his impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate in 1999. He had seen the imperfections of the mighty, up close and personal, and by and large accepted human frailty. But, like a lot of Americans, he was tired of partisan bickering and yearned for someone who could rise above politics as usual. A 63-year-old baby boomer, Craig wanted to recapture the youthful idealism that he had experienced as a student at Harvard in the 1960s and later at Yale Law School, where his friends included Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham. In the late fall of 2003, he was invited to hear a young state senator from Illinois who was running for the U.S. Senate. Craig was immediately taken with Barack Obama. "He spoke 20 to 30 minutes, and I found him to be funny, smart and very knowledgeable for a state senator," Craig recalled. Craig was so visibly impressed that his host that evening, the longtime Washington mover and shaker Vernon Jordan, teased him, saying, "Greg has just fallen in love." continue

Barack and Illinois Veterans Affairs Director, Tammy Duckworth on Veteran's DayLondon's Evening Standard••Ok, I am back on line, somewhat.There are many of us out there who have been on the O-Train since 2007, and many more since 2006.I have been posting "This Week With Barack Obama" since July, 2007. Hey, that is aSo, I think it is JUST DUE that I took some time off to savior a very sweet win.Many of us have been hopping around from different states since the Iowa Caucuses, working the peeps, and getting our peeps out to the polls, caucuses, performing the campaign's what knots.Many of us have been orchestrating, participating in voter's registration drives since 2007. And it wasthat made the difference in the primaries and November 4th.So, if I am a bit lazy, lackadaisical, sipping my 'tini's while pouring through my Obama memory lane, be patient with me.It is not every day that a masterful, sincere, real politician is elected through the most adversarial odds and comes out the winner.All of us need to follow the lead of the Obamas and just chill, savor and be jubilant.In the end, this moment is temporary because Barack's got a lot of shit on his plate and the rubes are lining up to jockey their position, to get a piece of the pie, just want a meet.And us? We are watching because we expect big, bold things from the Obama Administration, this country needs just that right now.Barack, 'ya heard????Hope so.••••Cross-posted @ Daily Kos ••