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chicagotribune.com >> Editorials
CAMPAIGN 2004: TRIBUNE ENDORSEMENTS
Obama for the U.S. Senate
Published October 24, 2004
In his autobiography, Barack Obama recounts one of his first lessons in Chicago politics, received while getting a haircut in Hyde Park, just days after arriving here to become a community organizer.
"People weren't just proud of Harold," the barber told Obama about the night Harold Washington was elected as Chicago's first black mayor. "They were proud of themselves."
Nearly two decades later, that's how many in the black community, the white community, the suburban community, the Downstate community and even many in the Republican community are talking about Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful Barack Obama.
They see not only an African-American politician with great promise. They see a rare example of someone who is able to rise above ethnic and racial divides and political partisanship and find the best in people, find common ground and solve problems. They are proud that such a person hails from Illinois.
So are we. The Tribune today offers a heartfelt endorsement for Barack Obama in the race for the U.S. Senate.
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Since taking his first step into elective politics in 1996, when he joined the General Assembly, Obama has provided a refreshing antidote to a political culture that boils with insincerity, dogma, division and ethical corner-cutting.
He has done so with the tongue of a statesman and the touch of a commoner. He inspires those who agree with him, and earns respect from those who don't. Obama is a regular at a weekly poker club of state Senate colleagues, among them a southern Illinois conservative, a Lake County Democrat and a northwest suburban Republican. Not exactly the home team.
Obama has made a point in his career to focus on what he shares with others, rather than on what sets him apart. That ethic has served him well as a community activist, a state senator and a law lecturer at the University of Chicago.
His most significant accomplishments in the legislature have come by working closely with Republicans and Democrats. The state's welfare reform law and Earned Income Tax Credit to help the working poor came about largely by his efforts. He has passed laws to track racial profiling by law enforcement, prohibit public officials from accepting lobbyists' gifts, expand health insurance coverage for children of the working poor and their families, and help consumers choose quality hospitals.
Chief among his legislative feats was his shrewd negotiation of a controversial measure to require that all police departments in Illinois electronically record interrogations and confessions in murder cases. That bill, designed to safeguard against false and coerced confessions, was a skunk for any lawmaker who didn't want to look like a cream puff on crime. And yet Obama took it on in 2003 and ferried proposed legislation for months among a half dozen interest groups before finally cutting a deal, making Illinois the first state to legislate electronic taping. Other states are beginning to follow suit.
Obama has made a career of converting doubters into believers. There were the women of the Altgeld Gardens public housing project who, two decades ago, didn't believe the fresh-faced community organizer who came calling could help them get their apartments inspected for asbestos contamination. There were the South and West Side ministers who told Obama when they first met him that they didn't need any "high-talking college-educated brothers like yourself" to help them solve community problems.
People have been won over by Obama's sincerity and persistence. "He conveys a sense of calm assurance," said Martha Minow, one of Obama's professors at Harvard Law School, where he was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. "There's an integrity that just shines through, a sense of looking above the small and petty differences."
When Obama gets up to speak on the floor of the General Assembly, "the place quiets down," said Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan, who served in the Senate with him. People listen, partly because of his eloquence, and partly because opponents know they are about to hear the best argument the other side has to offer. "And often because he's right," Madigan said.
Sometimes he's wrong. We have disagreements with him, and expect we'll have some more when he's in the Senate. He has more faith in big-government solutions and less faith in free markets than we do.
But attempts to portray Obama as a dogmatic, predictable liberal fall flat, and for good reason. He has been a leading advocate in Illinois of charter schools. He opposes same-sex marriage. He has long advocated work requirements and time limits for welfare assistance.
It has been tremendously encouraging in this campaign to hear him speak of the need to change the intensely partisan tone of political rhetoric in this country, to say, as he did at the Democratic National Convention: "There's not a liberal America and a conservative America, there is the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America, there is the United States of America."
Obama is no latecomer to the themes struck in his brilliant keynote speech at the convention, which rocketed him into the national stratosphere.
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Some unusual circumstances have played on this race. A leading Democratic primary candidate imploded after divorce record disclosures. The Republican primary winner, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race after embarrassing disclosures from his own divorce files. The leaderless Republicans flailed for weeks before choosing a replacement. And then they chose the bombastic, ultra-conservative Alan Keyes of Maryland, who instantly alienated great swaths of the state with his shrill rhetoric. It is hard now to call this a contest.
If Jack Ryan had remained in the race, though, the outcome of the election and the Tribune's choice would have been the same.
Obama's election to the Senate is a foregone conclusion. The self-described skinny guy with a funny name who says he survived college with two towels in the bathroom and three plates in the kitchen is already being talked about as a candidate one day for president.
That underscores the unique pressures he will face in the Senate, where he likely will be the only African-American. He hasn't left the Illinois Senate, yet he's already in great demand around the country from Democrats who want to be linked to his star.
The expectation here is that Obama won't succumb to the pressures or get caught up in the celebrity. The expectation is that he will be an effective senator because he will listen to Illinoisans, and to the voice that has gotten him this far--his own.
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
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