Barack Obama on Principles & Values Democratic incumbent President; IL Senator (2004-2008)

Sub-sections under Principles & Values:
• Campaign Themes
• Community Organizing
• Family of Origin
• Past Campaigns
• Personal History
• Racism & Race
• Religion
• Scandals
• Voting Record
• Other issues under Principles & Values

Goal of transition to Trump: grace and dignity

That morning, Barack had made a last visit to the Oval Office, leaving a handwritten note for his successor. [The White House's permanent staff] presented us with a parting gift of two United States flags--the one that had flown on the first day of Barack's presidency and the one that had flown on his last day in office, symbolic bookends to our family's experience.

Michelle Obama has no intention of running for office, ever

That isn't to say I don't care deeply about the future of our country. Since Barack left office, I've read news stories that turn my stomach. I sometimes wonder where the bottom might be.

What I won't allow myself to do, though, is to become cynical.

America is defined by innovative spirit: it's in our DNA

Put nation's interests before party

It is our unfinished task to make sure that this government works on behalf of the many, and not just the few; that it encourages free enterprise, rewards individual initiative, and opens the doors of opportunity to every child across this great nation.

The American people don't expect government to solve every problem. They don't expect those of us in this chamber to agree on every issue. But they do expect us to put the nation's interests before party. They do expect us to forge reasonable compromise where we can. For they know that America moves forward only when we do so together; and that the responsibility of improving this union remains the task of us all.

If all Americans get opportunity, we're all better off

OBAMA: The first role of the federal government is to keep the American people safe. That's its most basic function. And as commander-in-chief, that is something that I've worked on and thought about every single day that I've been in the Oval Office. But I also believe that the federal government has the capacity to help open up opportunity and create ladders of opportunity and to create frameworks where the American people can succeed. As Abraham Lincoln understood, there are also some things we do better together. So, in the middle of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln said, let's help to finance the Transcontinental Railroad, let's start land grant colleges, because we want to give these gateways of opportunity for all Americans, because if all Americans are getting opportunity, we're all going to be better off. That doesn't restrict people's freedom. That enhances it. What I've tried to do as president is to apply those same principles.

Letters from Americans: This is who we are fighting for

I can't tell you how many times, whether we were discussing the economy, health care or energy crisis, the president walked to his desk, take out one of the letters and read them to us and say, "This is who we are fighting for.'' Parents working hard to save for their child's education. Middle-class Americans fighting tooth and nail to hold onto their jobs, their homes or their life savings. It is their voices that President Obama brings to the Oval Office. It is their values I saw him fight for everyday.

OpEd: Offered a third way; but hid left-of-center agenda

Hidden beneath his centrist message, however, was a decidedly left-of-center policy agenda-- exactly what the country didn't need. His personality and language gave an impression of moderation, but his ideas and voting record revealed a dogmatic, big-government liberal.

OpEd: Many blacks voted for Obama only because he's black

Compact in past decades: do your job & make it in America

Millions of Americans have spent months looking for work. These men and women grew up with faith in an America where hard work and responsibility paid off. They believed in a country where everyone gets a fair shake and does their fair share--where if you stepped up, did your job, and were loyal to your company, that loyalty would be rewarded with a decen salary and good benefits; maybe a raise once in awhile. If you did the right thing, you could make it in America.

But for decades now, Americans have watched that compact erode. They have seen the deck too often stacked against them. And they know that Washington hasn't always put their interests first.

But we can help. We can make a difference. There are steps we can take right now to improve people's lives.

OpEd: seeks newer New Deals and greater Great Societies

American exceptionalism is same as any other exceptionalism

When President Obama insists that all countries are exceptional, he's saying that none is, last of all the country he leads. That's a shame, because American exceptionalism is something that people in both parties used to believe in.

92% of Tea Partiers: "Obama is moving US toward socialism"

Loyal opposition is not just valuable, but a necessity

I'm a big believer not just in the value of a loyal opposition, but in its necessity. Having differences of opinion, having a real debate about matters of domestic policy and national security--and that's not something that's only good for our country, it's absolutely essential. It's only through the process of disagreement and debate that bad ideas get tossed out and good ideas get refined and made better. And that kind of vigorous back and forth is at the heart of our democracy.

Hard times test us, like we have been tested in the past

Despite setbacks, Americans don't quit; & I don't quit

The spirit that has sustained this nation for more than two centuries lives on in you, its people. We have finished a difficult year. We have come through a difficult decade. But a new year has come. A new decade stretches before us. We don't quit. I don't quit. Let's seize this moment--to start anew, to carry the dream forward, and to strengthen our union once more.

OpEd: Comfortable with differences; downplays separations

What has made Obama different from other major candidates in recent years is his willingness and his comfort with difference, as well as his refusal to concede that divisions must be standard fare in party politics.

Barack Obama embraced the new ethos--his speeches, day after day, centered on what brings American together and downplayed what separates us. He repeated, in varying iterations, that "the choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders. It's not about rich vs. poor, young vs. old; it is not about black vs. white. It's about the past vs. the future."

OpEd: Master of values-laden over outcome-laden language

"We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country. Passions fly on immigration, but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers."

OpEd: Unflappability comes from Methodist grandparents

McCain's jabs drew no self-defeating counterpunches, leaving Obama "calm, cool and collected for the most part." The "Washington Post" judged "John of the Grimaces met Barack the Unflappable and the guy with the arctic cool prevailed." Obama's goal "was to look resolute, but also to be the world's least angry--or more precisely, anger-able--black man."

Never mind that his brown skin made it hard for viewers to trace any of that unflappability to his white grandparents' "straight-backed form of Methodism that valued reason over passion and temperance over both," as he described it in "Dreams from My Father." He had already written eloquently about the folly of a black man resorting to rage.

OpEd: Combines clergy oratory with intellectual eloquence

• illumination, in which the speaker outlines the social, political, and economic condition of blacks (or all Americans)
• advocacy, in which the speaker proposes or outlines a plan to improve those conditions
• instruction, which usually emphasizes the responsibility of individual citizens to enable their own uplift
• hope, which previews what life will be like after conditions are improved
• and conciliation, which describes the widespread peace and harmony that will inevitably result when the other improvements are accomplished.

"Obama Messiah Watch": Keep eye on media gushing hyperbolic

So many gushy profiles and news articles had already appeared that Slate had launched Obama Messiah Watch, "a periodic inquiry into whether Barack Obama is the son of God." The feature would "spotlight gratuitously adoring biographical details. The objective is not to insult Obama, but rather to restore a little rationality to the coverage of his potential candidacy." A year after the feature's debut, the effusive praise had become a deluge of hyperbole.

Ordinary people found the courage to keep the promise alive

Measure progress by observing how ordinary people are doing

Our government must keep the promise of America

Fulfilling America’s promise means individual participation

The American promise is our greatest inheritance

Traditional conservatives value temperance & restraint

As Obama has written, "Not all Republican elected officials subscribe to the tenets of today's movement conservatives. In both the House and the Senate, and in state capitals across the country, there are those who cling to more traditional conservative values of temperance and restraint--men and women who recognize that piling up debt to finance tax cuts for the wealthy is irresponsible, that deficit-reduction can't take place on the backs of the poor, that separation of church and state protects church as well as state, that conservation and conservatism don't have to conflict, and that foreign policy should be based on facts and not in wishful thinking."

Bringing Republicans into a progressive policy consensus that Obama leads has been an Obama trademark ever since he went to Springfield, Illinois, as a young state senator in 1997.

OpEd: Themes of "hope" and "change" has numerous antecedents

We have to demand more from ourselves

Michelle: My husband demands you move out of comfort zone

"In 2008, we are still a nation that is too divided. We live in isolation. We don't know our neighbors, we don't talk. We don't realize that the struggles and challenges of all of us are the same. We look at it as 'them' and 'they' and opposed to 'us.'

"We have lost the understanding that in a democracy, we have a mutual obligation to one another. I am here because Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands that. That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.

"Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come our of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

The Clinton years were undeniably better than the Bush years

A: There’s no doubt that there were good things that happened during those eight years of the Clinton administration. That’s undeniable. Particularly, when looked through the lens of the last eight years with Bush, they look even better. So I don’t want to diminish some of the accomplishments that occurred during those eight years.

Turn the page on the failed politics & policies of the past

Criticizes voter cynicism from decades of disappointment

According to Obama, ”With such cynicism, government doesn’t become a force of good, a means of giving people the opportunity to lead better lives; it just becomes an obstacle for people to get rid of. Too often, this cynicism makes us afraid to say what we believe.“

Post-1960s politics more about moral attitude than issues

Americans dislike partisanship--not solution like Dems think

I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. For it is the predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face. It is what keeps us locked in “either/or” thinking: the notion that we can only have big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate 46 million uninsured or embrace “socialized medicine.”

It is such partisanship that have turned Americans off. What is needed is a broad majority who are re-engaged and who see their own self-interest as inextricably linked to the interest of others.

Enlist the American people in the process of self-government

Guilt is a luxury that not everyone can afford

Equality is an American value that motivates us

Opportunity is who we are: let's restore that promise

Opportunity is who we are. And the defining project of our generation is to restore that promise.

We know where to start: the best measure of opportunity is access to a good job. With the economy picking up speed, companies say they intend to hire more people this year.

I want to build on our strengths; invest in America

Gov. Romney wants to take us back to those policies: a foreign policy that's wrong and reckless; economic policies that won't create jobs, won't reduce our deficit, but will make sure that folks at the very top don't have to play by the same rules that you do.

I've got a different vision for America. I want to build on our strengths. I put forward a plan to make sure that we're bringing manufacturing jobs back to our shores. I want to make sure we've got the best education system in the world and we're retraining for the jobs of tomorrow. I want to control our own energy. I want to reduce our deficit by cutting spending that we don't need, but also by asking the wealthy to do a little bit more so that we can invest in things like research and technology that are the key to a 21st century economy.

This election about vision of restoring middle class values

But when all is said and done, when you pick up that ballot to vote, you will face the clearest choice of any time in a generation. Over the next few years, big decisions will be made in Washington, on jobs, the economy; taxes and deficits; energy, education; war and peace, decisions that will have a huge impact on our lives and our children's lives for decades to come.

And on every issue, the choice you face won't be just between two candidates or two parties. It will be a choice between two different paths for America. A choice between two fundamentally different visions for the future. Ours is a fight to restore the values that built the largest middle class and the strongest economy the world has ever known.

Fundamental American promise: work hard & build better life

Barack's grandmother started out as a secretary at a community bank, and she moved quickly up the ranks, but like so many women, she hit a glass ceiling. And for years, men no more qualified than she was--men she had actually trained--were promoted up the ladder ahead of her, earning more and more money while Barack's family continued to scrape by.

But she would often tell Barack, "So long as you kids do well, Bar, that's all that really matters." Like so many American families, our families weren't asking for much. They simply believed in that fundamental American promise that, even if you don't start out with much, if you work hard and do what you're supposed to do, then you should be able to build a decent life for yourself and an even better life for your kids and grandkids.

Appointed Clinton & Biden as "team of rivals," like Lincoln

Nevertheless, at the initial press conference Obama appeared considerably more comfortable with Clinton than, 8 years earlier, George W Bush had looked while announcing his appointment of Colin Powell as secretary of state (Powell proceeded to dominate the ensuing press conference). Bush's foreign policy team had been a genuine team of rivals; Obama's team was something less than that. As applied to the Obama cabinet, "team of rivals" was mostly a marketing concept.

Effective citizenship means listening to opposing views

"So what can we do about this? If you're someone who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in a while. If you're a fan of Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website. It may make your blood boil; your mind may not often be changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship."

OpEd: Transformative from individualism to collectivism

It's not just that Obama wants to strengthen political control over our economy and bureaucratic regulation of our businesses. It's not merely that he seeks to socialize medicine. Obama's transformative presidency goes far deeper.

He is seeking to replace individualism with collectivism, & self-determination with community governance. He is seeking to dull the profit motive that now generates commerce, and the democratic impetus that animates our politics, by subjecting them to the deadening hand of bureaucratic control.

And, worst of all, Barack Obama wants to change us He wants us to become dependent on government, to reduce our self-reliance, to curb our ambition, to narcotize ourselves with leisure, and to care more about the strangers we live among than the family for whom you are responsible.

Campaign slogan: "Yes, we can"

We've had lots of plans; but a shortage of hope

The speech he delivered laid out all the themes that would carry him through 2007 and beyond. "I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness in this, a certain audacity to this announcement," Obama proclaimed. "I know that I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change." And: "There are those who don't believe in talking about hope: they say, well, we want specifics, we want details, we want white papers, we want plans. We've had a lot of plans, Democrats. What we've had is a shortage of hope." And: "That is why this campaign can't only be about me. It must be about us. It must be about what we can do together." And: "It's time to turn the page."

We’re more decent & compassionate than last 8 years

¡Sí, se puede! Yes, we can!

But I can’t do this on my own. I need your help. This election could well come down to how many Latinos turn out to vote. And I’m proud that my campaign is working hard to register more Latinos, and bring them into the political process. Because I truly believe that if we work together and fight together and stand together this fall, then you and I--together--will change this county and change this world.

Life experiences taught me how to bring people together

A: What I look at is the trajectory of my life because I was raised by a single mom. My father left when I was two, and I was raised by my mother and my grandparents. There were rocky periods during my youth, when I made mistakes & was off course. And what was most important, in my life, was learning to take responsibility for not only my own actions but how I can bring people together to actually have a impact on the world. Working as a community organizer with ordinary people, bringing them together and organizing them to provide jobs and health care, economic security to people who didn’t have it, then working as a civil rights attorney to fight for those who were being discriminated against on the job. It’s the reason that I have the capacity to bring people together, and why I am determined to make sure that the American people get a government that is worthy of their decency and their generosity.

People understand we must bring the country together

End politics of division; make it about addition

You said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that’s consumed Washington, to end the political strategy that’s been all about division, and instead make it about addition, to build a coalition for change that stretches through red states and blue states. Because that’s how we’ll win in November, and that’s how we’ll finally meet the challenges that we face as a nation.

We’re choosing unity over division and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America.

Hope is the bedrock of this nation

For many months we’ve been teased, even derided, for talking about hope. But we always knew that hope is not blind optimism. It’s not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It’s not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.

Hope is what led me here today, with a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas, and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation, the belief that our destiny will not be written for us but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.

Resounds with American theme of overcoming burden of history

Cultivates comparison to Jack Kennedy

Campaigns assiduously in black churches

Community politics: merges Alinsky & political activism

Obama’s vision of leadership is a merger between political activism and the community organizing. One might call it “community politics.” Community politics differs from community service, in which the more privileged members of society volunteer to help the poorer. As noble as that may be, it doesn’t create the kind of political empowerment sought by Obama. Instead, community politics aims to transform politics using the techniques of community organizing. Obama’s community organizing approach is to communicate with voters, listen to their suggestions, and convince them to buy in to a set of proposals.

Turn the page: invite GOP & independents to join in agenda

A: What I’m talking about is ending the divisive politics that we have in this country. I think it is important for us as Democrats to be clear about what we stand for. But I think we also have to invite Republicans and independents to join us in a progressive agenda for universal health care, to make sure that they are included in conversations about improving our education system and properly funding our public schools. I think turning the page means that we’ve got to get over the special interest-driven politics that we’ve become accustomed to. And most importantly it’s important for us to make sure that we’re telling the truth to the American people about the choices we face.

People have an urgent desire for change in Washington

A: As I travel around the country, people have an urgent desire for change in Washington. We are not going to fix anything unless we change how business is done in Washington. Part of that is bringing people together. But part of it is also overcoming special interests & lobbyists who are writing legislation that’s critical to the American people. And one of the things I bring is a perspective that says: Washington has to change.

A “hopemonger”, having seen the power of hope

When I got to the Illinois State Senate, people said it was too hard to take on the issue of money in politics, our state had too long a history, too many entrenched interests. But I knew then that we had the people of Illinois on our side. I even found a few folks on the other side of the aisle who were willing to listen. And we passed the first major ethics reform legislation in 25 years.

I know that change is possible. I know where hope leads us. The only reason I’m standing here before you is because of hope. I know what’s possible in America. When I talk about hope, it isn’t just the rhetoric of a campaign; it’s been the cause of my life, a cause I will work for and fight for every single day as your president.

Washington can change if we say: Yes we can

When they say that we can’t finally buy the radios [first responders] need to talk to one another in case of an emergency, we say, Yes we can.

When they say that we can’t bring [our troops] home from Iraq so they can do the job they love back home, we say, Yes we can.

Replace partisan bickering with politics of hope

I’ve been in DC long enough to know that it must change

Progressives should recognize common morality with religion

I am not suggesting that every progressive suddenly latch on to religious terminology. I am suggesting that perhaps if we progressives shed some of our own biases, we might recognize the values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to the moral and material direction of our country. We need to take faith seriously not simply to block the religious right but to engage all persons of faith in the larger project of American renewal.

“Audacity of Hope” to change politics to reflect common good

I told them that government couldn’t solve all their problems. But with a slight change in priorities we could make sure every child had a decent shot at life and meet the challenges we faced as a nation.

This book grows directly out of those conversations on the campaign trail. The ideals at the core of the American experience, and the values that bind us together despite our differences, remain alive in the hearts and minds of most Americans. The topic of this book is how we might begin the process of changing our politics and our civic life. I don’t know exactly how to do it. But I offer personal reflections on those values and ideals that have led me to public life, and myown best assessment of the ways we can ground our politics in the notion of a common good.

Seek common ground, not a moral crusade

I’m living my parents’ dreams and the American dream

Greatness based on Declaration of Independence, not military

We are one people all defending the United States of America

Want common-sense solutions, not liberal-conservative labels

OpEd: greatest talent is chairing balanced meetings

Serious was good, but it didn't have a lot to do with the political universe he now inhabited, a place of cable blowhards and bumper-sticker attacks. Obama was more comfortable in the private, less political part of the presidency, chewing over policy. Some advisors said that his greatest talent wasn't giving a speech but chairing a meeting, where he balanced Socratic dialogue with a hardheaded search for rational, if less than ideal, solutions. The best example of these skills came in the 20 hours of meetings he held in the fall of 2009 about Afghanistan and Pakistan. Again and again the president pushed back against tired assumptions before settling on a new policy [resulting in the Afghan surge].

2008 HQ phone greeting: "What can you do for us?"

Every caller who dialed Obama's headquarters in 2008 was greeted with a question: "What can you do for us?"

The Internet has made each of us the center of our own political campaign. We ARE the campaign. The days when the candidate and a small group of professionals ran things--and the rest of us chipped in money, showed up at rallies, and voted--are over. Now each of us must conduct our own campaign within our own circle of acquaintances, until the circle spreads to include thousands of voters. Some of us will use the Internet to do so. Others need not feel disqualified by their technophobia. Just do it by old-fashioned word of mouth and snail mail!

Required email list from every candidate event he attended

Within Obama's operation, "the options" became a code phrase , a reference to three live possibilities: launching a presidential run, bolstering his stature in the Senate with an eye toward the VP slot in 2008, or returning to Illinois to run for governor--with a presidential bid so far remaining at the bottom of the option pile.

The scheme revolved around a simple transaction. Every time he did an event for a candidate, Hopefund would requir the beneficiary to set up a registration system and then turn over the attendees' email address to the PAC.

The was no small thing. As 2006 rolled on, the requests poured in. That added up to a lot of chits, and a lot of email addresses.

Headed "Project Vote!" in Chicago in 1990s

Obama worked in same community as Saul Alinsky

Chicago's South Side was a focal point of the civil rights movement in 1968. The legacy of institutionalized South Side racism drew to Chicago a cadre of liberal community organizers, including Obama, who were committed to using the principles of change first developed in Chicago in the 1930s by Sau Alinsky.

Alinsky defined community organization tactics for several generations of America leftists, going back to his early efforts to organize Chicago's Back of the Yards meatpacking neighborhood in the 1930s. Alinsky died in 1972, more than a decade before Obama moved to Chicago to learn his methods. Alinsky's goal was to set in motion a peaceful revolution, using the ballot box, not bombs or bullets, to wrench power from the hands of capitalist elites and business leaders currently in charge.

OpEd: Obama implements Alinsky's ideas of radical change

"Change," for Alinsky, invoked radical socialism and meant the redistribution of wealth Obama means the same, but by hiding the reference he avoids having to be explicit about the radical goal behind the theme.

Alinsky advocated creating change through a set of carefully calculated power-politics tactics, where the end always justified the means. Make no mistake about it: "change" was always Alinsky's code word for creating a socialist revolution, even if the methodology meant radicals would cut their hair, put on business suits, and run for political office.

Used community organizer skills as State Senator

"Oh, no," Obama said, "I'm going to use the same skills as a community organizer." He was stepping onto the political stage with even larger ambitions to organize communities.

In a 1995 interview, Obama said, "What if a politician were to see his job as that of an organizer, as part teacher and part advocate, one who educates voters about the real choices before them? As an elected public official, for instance, I could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer."

When Obama says his experience "taught me a lot about listening to people as opposed to coming in with a premeditated agenda," he is reciting pure Alinsky dogma. Listening, in the Alinsky lexicon, is just a tactic. Obama listens because he has been taught the only way to intensify discontent is to use the language of the community itself.

Organizer's method: from issue to action to power

His goal was to find issues around which to mobilize: paths to power. In this Obama followed precepts laid down by the early Chicago activist Saul Alinsky. "Power comes in two forms--money and people. You haven't got any money, but you do have people," he had advised would-be reformers.

The formula for Obama was less prosaic. "Once I found an issue enough people careed about, I could take them into action. With enough actions, I could start to build power," he wrote.

There was a glimmer here of larger hopes. "The only answer is to build up local power bases that can merge into a national power movement that will ultimately realize your goals," Alinsky averred.

1980s: Registered 150,000 voters in Chicago "Project Vote"

Moved to Illinois as community organizer, for $13,000 a year

My work took me to some of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods. I joined with pastors and lay-people to deal with communities that had been ravaged by plant closings. I saw that the problems people faced weren’t simply local in nature--that the decision to close a steel mill was made by distant executives; or that the lack of textbooks and computers in schools could be traced to the skewed priorities of politicians a thousand miles away.

It was in these neighborhoods that I received the best education I ever had, and where I learned the true meaning of my Christian faith.

Poverty of political organizers was proof of their integrity

Maternal grandfather fought in WWII

OpEd: Black father abandoned him, yet identifies with him

In 2002, Berry engaged in wild race-baiting to win her Oscar and then ate up most of the awards show with an interminable acceptance speech claiming that her award was "so much bigger than me." People who say "it's bigger than me" always mean it's just about them. During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly said the exact same thing: "This election is bigger than me." Would they be able to pawn off their personal victories as transformative events for the nation if they were not claiming to be doing it for the blacks?

Father had wife in Africa when he met and married Ann Dunham

Obama carefully omits the underside of the story, that when his father headed off at age 23 to Hawaii, he was abandoning an African girl named Kezia, whom he had married at age 18. Nor does Obama mention that Kezia was then pregnant wit his father's first child.

The London Daily Mail reports that Obama Senior persuaded Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, a "naive 18-year-old white girl, to marry him, without disclosing to her that he had left behind in Africa a wife he had not divorced."

Father left family for Harvard education

Instead Obama provides the true explanation some hundred pages later: "The New School agreed to pay for everything--enough to pay for all three of us," his mother tells her son. Obama's mother explains why his father abandoned them to go to Harvard: "Harvard just agreed to pay tuition. But Barack [Senior] was such a stubborn bastard, he had to go to Harvard. 'How can I refuse the best education?' That's all he could think about, proving that he was the best."

Father's upbringing was Muslim, although never religious

[In an interview with Barack's uncle, Sayid Obama], Sayid affirmed that he and his brother were both born into a religious Islamic family and were raise as Muslims. "I did not see my brother practice Islam," Sayid recalled, "especially after he came back from his studies in the US; I did not consider him to be very religious." While Kenya is approximately 85% Christian, a Muslim minority dates back to 1730. Listening to Sayid, there is no doubt Obama Senior was a Muslim by birth and upbringing, even if his devotion as a Muslim remained in doubt. The facts are that the Obama family in Africa is a Muslim family of the predominantly Christian Luo tribe.

Father had 3 or 4 wives; Barack has at least 5 half-siblings

Barack's uncle Sayid Obama was not even sure how many wives his brother had: 3 or 4, maybe more. There were at least three: the 18-year-old wife, Kezia, whom Obama Sr abandoned when he left Kenya to study in Hawaii; Ann Dunham, Obama Jr's mother, whom Obama Sr abandoned when he left Hawaii to study at Harvard; and Ruth Nidesand, the woman from Harvard who followed Obama Sr back to Kenya and married him there.

The number of children Obama Sr had is equally uncertain. Sayid Obama paused to think when asked how many. "About six," he concluded, although he could not say for sure.

Many attribute mother's marriages to being anthropologist

An enthusiastic belief in the 1950s and 1960s that the study of natives could help unlock questions of "natural right" probably explains why even Obama saw his mother in terms of "New Frontier" liberalism. Obama recalls "she was a lonely witness for secular humanism."

Stanley Ann passed away in 1995 from ovarian cancer at the age of 52, the year Obama's autobiography was published. So we cannot ask her what her motivation was to marry Barack Senior and Lolo Soetoro. Did her motivation derive from some intellectual commitment to the third world, or an ideological commitment to ameliorate poverty in foreign countries less economically advanced? Was she rebelling against her parents, or the Christian religion, or the Kansas culture into which she was born? Perhaps her simple answer would have been that she loved both men.

Lived with grandparents in Hawaii over mother in Indonesia

By returning to Indonesia alone and abandoning a son who refused to go back to Indonesia, Stanley Ann went "native," as many commentators harshly suggested. Obama rationalized it was best for him to be alone, so he could finally sort out his search for identity as an African-American.

Would be first president to have extended family abroad

What personal ties to the White House will come from Kenya? Are all members of the family equally satisfied and finally resolved that they have inherited what they deserve from Obama Senior?

If Obama wins the presidency in 2008. Kenyan prime minister Raila Odinga will correctly perceive that for the first time ever a fellow Luo tribesman is running the United States of America.

OpEd: Obama invented the dreams in "Dreams from my Father"

But Obama's pain still controls his personality. Like Dr. Strangelove's arm that can't help rising, Obama's sense of exclusion and fantasy still overarch his personality. He authored a book "Dreams From My Father," when in reality he got no dreams from his father. Obama created his father's "dreams" in his own fantasy world. The fantasies associated with the "missing parent" are among the most powerful, and occasionally the most devastating, in human experience.

Obama returns in his speeches and in his writings to a sense of loss, alienation, detachment. He is a skillful promoter, and he manages to overcome his mask. First, Obama did not receive dreams "from" his father. Rather, he dreamed about his father, and created a fictional world.

Greatest mistake: absence from mother when she died

Obama's mother was diagnosed with ovarian and uterine cancer the same year. She died in Hawaii on Nov. 7, aged 52. Her son, immersed in his campaign, was thousands of miles away. He terms this absence the greatest mistake of his life. Stricken, he traveled to Hawaii to help scatter her ashes in the Pacific. "She was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known," he wrote in 2004: "what is best in me I owe to her."

Father's family from the Luo tribe of Kenya

Senator Obama's father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., was born in 1936 near Lake Victoria, to Onyango's second wife Akumu. A pair of American teachers befriended Obama, Sr. and helped him apply to US universities. In 1959 he secured admission, after many rejections, to the University of Hawaii to study economics: the institution's first African student.

Related to both Vice Pres. Cheney and Pres. Truman

Dunham was a Baptist from the "other side of the railroad tracks." It later emerged that he was also a seventh cousin, once removed, of Vice-President Dick Cheney and also a seventh cousin, twice removed, of President Harry S. Truman. Payne's family did not approve of the liaison, and the pair married in secret a few weeks before Madelyn graduated from high school. She told her parents after she received her diploma.

Mother described as "the original feminist" at 1960 college

On 2 February 1961 the pair slipped away to Maui and were married. The wedding--Obama, "black as pitch," Ann, "white as milk"--would have been illegal in 22 states. Ann dropped out of college. On 4 August Barack Hussein Obama Jr. was born at the Kapi-olani Medical Center in Honolulu.

In his 20s, searched for his identity, absent both parents

His mother moved to Indonesia in 1975 to do field work for her PhD dissertation. Obama, about to begin high school chose to remain in Hawaii. He moved back in with his grandparents.

"I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America, and beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant," Obama wrote. He looked for answers in books. He read the works of great black American intellectuals: James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and W.E.B. DuBois. But each of these men wound up disappointed and withdrawn. Only Malcolm X's autobiography, his repeated acts of self-creation, Obama said, offered something different. But even that would not provide the answers Obama was seeking. He found himself "utterly alone."

Father was first African exchange student at U. Hawaii

Obama’s father was the son of Hussein Onyango Obama, a prominent farmer in Kenya’s Luo tribe. As a boy, Barack Sr. herded goats on the family farm near a poor village called Kolego near Kenya’s Lake Victoria. He stood out academically in a local school established by the British colonizers and won a scholarship & then a sponsorship for study at the University of Hawaii.

But when he came to America, his father left a pregnant wife and child back in Kenya. When he returne to Africa, he took another American woman with him, eventually marrying her and having two additional children. An atheist with an analytical mind, he worked for a petroleum company, and for a time he was a chief economist for the Kenyan government.

Traces ancestry to Jefferson Davis, President of Confederacy

Ann Dunham was the Kansas-born daughter of a furniture store manager who harbored a bohemian streak. Ann’s mother traced a branch of her family lineage to a famous ancestor-- Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America.

The Dunhams moved to the islands in 1960. The two began dating and after a brief courtship, wed--an act that in 1960 was a crime in most states. Newly admitted to the Union, however, Hawaii was young and relatively tolerant, and the family history includes no accounts of Obama’s parents suffering abuse on the streets of Honolulu.

His father later earned his PhD from Harvard, but separated from Ann. He returned, alone, to Kenya, where he became an economist in the administration of the new nation.

Greeted as hero on visit to ancestral Kenya

Obama and his family flew to Kisumu where 1000s lined the route, many climbing trees for a better view of the motorcade carrying the American that the local Luo tribespeople loudly claimed as their own.

In Kogelo, the tiny village where Obama’s father and grandfather are buried side by side and where the octogenarian Luo he calls “Granny” still lives, crowds chanted his name, a tribal singer sang his praises, and children sang songs they had composed in his honor.

“Even though I had grown up on the other side of the world, I felt the spirit among the people who told me that I belonged.”

Father died in car crash before Barack got to know him

The way she told the story, he saw the depth of her enduring love for his father. Even though he had left her with a baby to raise, she loved him. “She saw my father as everyone hopes at least one other person might see them.“

Any hope of that appeared to end just a few months later when he received a telephone call from Nairobi. His father had been killed in a car crash. He was 46. His son did not shed a tear.

[Years later, when visiting Kenya], Obama stood before his father’s unmarked grave. He felt he knew and understood and forgave his father for the first time. His father had not succumbed to despair. He had had the audacity to hope. And for the first time, his son wept for him.

Full name: Barack Hussein Obama; family calls him “Barry”

Con: let’s face it, having a name that rhymes with “Iraq” is not a plus.

Pro: “Barack” is a cool name. Parents all over the US spend hours and days searching for distinctive names for their little princes. “Barack” is a less annoying than “LaTreyell.”

Con: The guy shares a name with Saddam Hussein. This is not helpful. Inspired by his Muslim grandfather.

Pro: This should help him with Arab-American voters.

Con: “Obama” is a weird name.

Pro: “Obama” is a cool Kenyan name..

Pro: His family calls him “Barry.” “Barry” sounds reassuringly normal. “Barry” sounds like he is “one of us”: it sounds like he belongs to America, not Kenya

2008: supported by both Hollywood and Wall Street

It had built, strong and steady, since Iowa. But coming out of Cooper Union, he was a man touched by the gods--the toast of both coasts, the media, the intelligentsia, Hollywood, Washington, and even Wall Street, which still knew how to invest with targeted might when a growth stock hit its stride. He'd been tested on race, and temperament, and had passed brilliantly with his stunning speech. Race issue: check. He'd pulled together a bipartisan economic team and leapt ahead of the pack on dealing with the country's growing financial shakiness. Policy prescience: check.

OpEd: Big Business gave more to Obama than McCain

Goldman Sachs was the source of more campaign contributions in 2008 than any other company. It also provided Obama with four times as much money as it did McCain--$997, 095 to $230,095. Microsoft employees were even more one-sided, giving Obama more than ten times more money than McCain.

But the Obama campaign pitched the idea, and the mainstream media swallowed it, that small donors were Obama's bread and butter, freeing him "from the tug of big-money corporations and special interests," as the Associated Press put it.

The AP should have checked the numbers.

2006: Started from scratch compared with Hillary & McCain

Part of Obama's appeal was understandable. To an American public always open to change, especially in difficult times, everything about him promised a sharp break from the past. His personal story was intriguing, and somewhat familiar, thanks to his best-selling memoir "Dreams from My Father", written years earlier.

1999 Congressional loss: "I got my rear end handed to me"

Whatever moved Obama to run, it was not a pleasant experience for the younger man. From the outset Rush's approval rating was more than 70%. Then, not long into the campaign, Rush's son, Huey Rich, was tragically shot on his way home from a grocery store. The young man hung between life and death for four days. The outpouring of sympathy galvanized support for Rush.

Even President Clinton entered the fray and supported Rush, breaking his own policy of not endorsing candidates in primaries. Rush won 60% to 30%--and Obama was forced to admit that "[I got] my rear end handed to me."

Borrowed "Yes, we can" slogan from Cesar Chavez 1960s UFW

1996: job of state senator is organizer, teacher, & advocate

5th African-American ever elected to US Senate

June 2008: YouTube hit, "I Got a Crush on Obama"

Campaigning on change from the bottom up that King stood for

A: I don’t think Dr. King would endorse any of us. What he would call upon the American people to do is to hold us accountable, and this goes to the core differences in this campaign Change does not happen from the top down. It happens from the bottom up. Dr. King understood that. It was those women who were willing to walk instead of ride the bus, union workers who are willing to take on violence and intimidation to get the right to organize. It was women who decided, “I’m as smart as my husband. I’d better get the right to vote.” arguing, mobilizing, agitating, and ultimately forcing elected officials to be accountable, that’s the key. That has been a hallmark of my career, transparency and accountability, getting the American people involved. That’s how we’re going to bring about change. That’s why I want to be president of the US, to respect the power of the American people to bring about change.

1990: Elected Law Review president with conservative support

The top job held little appeal for Obama. In 1990 the Review’s staff of about 75 students was riven by intense partisan feuding--large factions of liberals and small bands of conservatives. Obama was one of 19 editors who ran for presidency--after the last conservative was voted out of the competition, that faction threw its support behind Obama, tilting the election in his favor, and bestowing on him the honor of being the first African American to hold the presidency. Obama used some of his appointment power to place conservatives in key editorial positions.

Senate 2004 campaign theme: “Yes we can”

• Yes, a politician with the ideals and track record of Obama could make a difference and change lives for the better.
• Yes, a black man could win a US Senate seat.
• Yes, “we”--meaning all people--could make a difference too.

“Now they say we can’t change Washington?” Obama asked in an earnest voice while stepping forward to fill the camera frame. “I’m Barack Obama and I am running for the US Senate to say, ‘Yes, we can.’ ”

Other commercials used the same “Yes, we can” mantra to appeal to different constituencies. Pollsters have consistently found that urban voters lean toward candidates who are change agents.

Lost Congressional primary in 1999 to Bobby Rush

Met Michele when both worked as interns at law firm

Obama had already created a stir at the firm. He'd just finished his first year of law school, and normally we had only hired 2nd-year students for summer positions. But rumor had it he was exceptional. One of his professors at Harvard--the daughter of a managing partner--claimed he was the most gifted law student she'd ever encountered. Some of the secretaries who'd seen the guy come in for his interview were saying that on top of this apparent brilliance he was also cute. [When he arrived], he was quiet and deferential, listening attentively.

As Barack's adviser, I was meant to act as a social conduit more than anything. My assignment was to make sure he was happy in the job, that he had someone to come to if he needed advice, and that he felt connected to the larger team.

Being president doesn't change you--it reveals who you are

You see, I've gotten to see up close and personal what being president really looks like. And I've seen how the issues that come across a President's desk are always the hard ones--the problems where no amount of data or numbers will get you to the right answer--the judgment calls where the stakes are so high, and there is no margin for error.

And as President, you can get all kinds of advice from all kinds of people. But at the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as President, all you have to guide you are your values, and your vision, and the life experiences that make you who you are.

OpEd: Pal Bill Ayres was a bomb-throwing terrorist

Nor as Obama and his adoring media claimed, were Ayers and his wife, fellow Weatherman Bernadine Dohrn, just people who happened to live in his neighborhood: They were there at the inception of Obama's political career, hosting a fundraiser for Obama at their home back in 1995. Obama served with Ayers on the board of the radical Woods Fund, long after Ayers's 2001 wish that he had set more bombs

Developed style & attitude based on exposure to pop culture

"If I had no immediate reasons to pursue revolution, I decided nevertheless that in style and attitude I, too, could be a rebel, unconstrained by the received wisdom of the over-thirty crowd," he writes. He sounds as if he could have easily fit in with the youthful multitudes bustin' a move.

1970s: Teen basketball player & fan of Julius "Dr. J" Erving

Basketball, as much as anything, helped challenge conventional notions of black masculinity in particular. Obama said, "Growing up in Hawaii without a father, without a large Africa American population, here is a place where being black was not a disadvantage. Here is a sport in which we were dominant. All those things contributed to the idea that there was something special about it." Back then, a poster of Julius "Dr. J." Erving, soaring in for a dunk, graced Obama's bedroom wall.

Favorite movie: “The Godfather”, for respect & family

A: Obama: Oh, I think it would have to be “The Godfather.” One and Two. Three not so much. That saga--I love that movie.

Q: Do you have a favorite scene?

A: I think my favorite has to be, the opening scene of the first “Godfather” where, where the caretaker comes in and, you know, Marlon Brando is sitting there and he’s saying “you disrespected me.” You know “and now you want a favor.” It sets the tone for the whole movie.

Q: And all hell breaks lose, right?

A: Yeah, right. I mean there’s this combination of old world gentility and ritual, with this savagery underneath. It’s all about family. So it’s a great movie. “Lawrence of Arabia.” Great film. One of my favorites--and then “Casablanca.” Who doesn’t like “Casablanca?”

Q: I asked for one!

A: I’m a movie guy. I can rattle off a bunch of movies. But that “Casablanca,” you know.

Visited Africa 3 times; 1986, then 1992 & 2006 with Michelle

"Obama has been in Africa three times," his uncle Sayid insisted. "The first time was in 1986. Then he came again in 1992, when he was collecting material for his autobiography. Then the last time was 2006, when he visited Kenya as a US senator."

In his autobiography, Obama does not disclose clearly the date of the trip to Kenya he discusses, nor does he make clear that he took two separate trips before the autobiography. Rather, we are presented with what evidently is a composite of experiences from both trips, without any way of knowing which related experiences came when.

"The trip in 2006 was the second time Obama came with his wife," Sayid further specified. "He first came with her in 1992, when they were getting ready to get married. Then he visited with her as his wife in 2006." Nowhere in the autobiography does Obama disclose that his wife-to-be accompanied him to Africa on the 1992 trip.

In no other country is my story even possible

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional of candidates. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts; that out of many, we are truly one.

“Dreams From My Father” is an archetypal search

In literature, search-for-the-father stories always begin in the normal childhood illusion that the father will always do two things: provide for our basic needs, and interpret for us the frightening world. And then come the inevitable existential shock that strips away all illusion. We get an epiphany: we are alone, and our manhood pr womanhood requires that we stand alone and learn to interpret the world for ourselves.

Archetypal themes, if only metaphorically, point to eternal truths. Obama’s book “Dreams From My Father” chronicles his search for his father [who was mostly absent]. He necessarily becomes an obsession in ways that real and present fathers never do.

Obama REPRESENTS something; doesn’t have to DO anything

What gave Obama the idea that he could run for president? Was it that he had evolved a compelling vision for the nation grounded in deeply held personal convictions? Or was it that he had simply become aware of his power to enthrall whites?

Obama is not a conviction politician. His supporters do not look to him to do something; they loo to him to be something, to represent something.

Obama emerged into a political culture that needed him more as an icon than as a man. But this easy appeal has also been his downfall. It is a seduction away from character and conviction.

The challenge is to achieve visibility an individual, to become an individual rather than a cipher. Unless we get to know who he is--what beliefs he would risk his life for--he could become a cautionary tale, an iconic figure who neglected to become himself.

Won Grammy for recording “Dreams from My Father”

As an image-building tool, “Dreams from My Father” has been remarkably effective. But it is too unorthodox to serve as a press release. Not only are there damning references to coke sniffing and dope smoking, but the book also offers a detailed account of his gnawing ambivalence as a young man growing up in a double bind.

When he embarks for Kenya to meet his African family he sees himself as “a Westerner not entirely at home in the West, an African on his way to a land full of strangers... I felt as if I were living out someone else’s romance.”

First major politician of the post-Baby Boom generation

Obama suggested he may have “a particular ability to bring the country together around a pragmatic, commonsense agenda for change that probably has a generational element to it as well. America is ready for new challenges. This is our time. A new generation is prepared to lead.“ He promised a new kind of politics instead of the ”24-hour, slash-and-burn, negative-ad bickering, small-minded politics that doesn’t move us forward.“

As the first major politician of the post-baby boomer era, Obama appeals to Gen-Xers who have lived in the shadow of baby boomers and have faced the accusation that those who grew up in the 1970s & early 1980s were self-centered and indifferent to social causes

Most decisive moment: transition from high school to college

A: A decisive moment in my life was the transition from high school to college, because I had gone through a difficult time, not knowing my father, and was, at times, an angry young man. And partly because of the values my mother had instilled in me, those were reawakened in college. And it made me serious about, not just what I could do for myself, but what I could do for other people. It’s what led me to become a community organizer. It’s what led me to go into public service. And ultimately, it’s what led me to this stage.

High school jock--played football as defensive lineman

As a high school freshman, he played defensive line on the football team and was described as a strong lineman, “a real people mover.”

Even with his mother gone, [his grandmother] Madelyn said, Barry was essentially a well-behaved teen who spent most of his time involved in sports. “He was a jock,” she said.

Goal as youth: Leave the world a better place

Obama, without argument, is imbued with an abiding sense of social and economic justice. He is an earnest, thoughtful, occasionally naive man who has a strong sense of moral purpose, a trait driven into him by his ardently progressive mother.

But Obama is far more complex than just a crusading dreamer aiming to “give voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless,” in his own oft-spoken words. He is an exceptionally gifted politician who, throughout his life, has been able to make people o

Planned on presidency since well before 2004 Convention

In just a couple of years, he rose from obscure state lawmaker to national celebrity pursued by paparazzi on his family vacation. He struggled through a self-described “painful year” of just 3 or 4 hours of sleep per night in order to write a best-selling book that would assure his family’s financial security & nurture his burgeoning political career. He would be discussed endlessly in the mainstream and alternative media as potentially the first African American to hold the Oval Office. He became a prideful and iconic symbol for millions of black Americans; and he would secure his role as a major national voice for Democrats.

Dreams from My Father originally about Harvard Law Review

This wasn’t the book Obama originally sold to his publisher. He had pitched them a work about his experience as the first African-American president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. After all, at the time, Obama was a modest 33 years old, and his Law Review presidency was his only claim to any modicum of fame.

When Obama began writing, an autobiographical memoir poured forth. Upon its release in 1995, the book sold a few thousand copies, generated mostly positive reviews, and then it faded into obscurity.

That changed dramatically when Obama shot to national fame in 2004. The publisher quickly ran off several new printings, promoted it vigorously, and the book landed on the best-seller lists, giving Obama the first shot of financial wealth in his life.

Favorite authors: E. L. Doctorow & Shakespeare

When I asked Obama to name his favorite author, he cited E. L. Doctorow, the critically acclaimed novelist and outspoken political liberal. The next day, during a phone conversation on a different matter, he made it a point to say that he wanted to change his answer--to William Shakespeare.

Some politicians are infamous for casually mentioning high-minded work that is currently on their nightstand in order to give the impression of being a deep thinker. It is difficult to imagine most politicians digesting Shakespeare before extinguishing the bedroom light. Yet Obama’s erudite nature and his own ambitious writings made that answer seem quite plausible.

To understand Obama, understand Hawaii’s cultural mix

Hawaii’s has grown considerably since Obama’s youth, but the essence of the islands’ mix of various Asian, Polynesian and Western cultures has persevered. Meeting Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, and grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, in Hawaii, opened my eyes to Obama’s formative years. The atmosphere of [Obama’s school] campus gave me a sense of the unflappable Hawaiian nature at Obama’s core.

The night of his Senate primary victory, for example, reporters marveled curiously at Obama’s exceptionally cool exterior as others around him exhibited jubilation. One of Obama’s greatest talents is that, even in the midst of chaos, he has the ability to project serenity. Hawaii, if not fully responsible, most certainly contributed heavily to this trait.

Met Michelle Robinson at law firm; married in 1990

She thought it would be improper to date an employee she was assigned to train. In addition, they were the only two African Americans at the law firm. “I thought, ‘Now how would that look?’ ” Michelle said. “Here we are, the only two black people here, and we are dating. I’m thinking that looks pretty tacky.”

Michelle tried to set up Obama with a friend, but he showed no interest in anyone but her. Eventually, she relented and agreed to a date. When Obama married Michelle in 1990, he also married into her budding network among Chicago’s community of successful white-collar African Americans.

A reformed smoker but occasionally burns one

Personal story is basis of political desire to unite

First black president of the Harvard Law Review

When Obama was 2, his father left the family, returning to Kenya, where he eventually became a senior economist in the Ministry of Finance. Obama graduated from Columbia University in New York, and received his law degree from Harvard Law School. He became the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

He worked as a community organizer in New York and Chicago on job-training programs and other projects, and as a civil rights lawyer. He is now a senior instructor in constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School.

OpEd: Jackson & Sharpton were articulate black predecessors

"Articulate" and "clean"? A black man? Was Biden being condescending? Or sarcastic? Or just plain insensitive? Biden tried to explain: "What I was attempting to be, and not very artfully, is complimentary. The word that got me in trouble is using 'clean.' I should have said 'fresh'; he's got new ideas."

Later Biden again said he deeply regretted any offense about the "articulate" and "clean" comments and had so told Obama, who was less than gracious in response. "I didn't take Sen. Biden's comments personally," he said, "but obviously they were historically inaccurate. African American presidential candidates like Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, and Al Sharpton gave a voice to many important issues through their campaigns, and no one would call them inarticulate."

OpEd: Elections of underclass occurred in many countries

The rhetoric may have some justification if we keep to the West, but elsewhere matters are different. Consider the world's largest democracy, India. The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, which is notorious for horrifying treatment of women, is not only a woman but a Dalit ("untouchable"), at the lowest rung of India's caste system.

And Consider Haiti: In Haiti's first democratic election in 1990, grassroots movements were organized in the slums and hills, and though without resources, elected their own candidate, the populist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The results astonished observers who expected an easy victory for the candidate of the elite. True, this victory for democracy was soon overturned by a military coup, but the victory itself was a far more "extraordinary example of democracy" than the miracle of 2008.

New Yorker cover: Islamic garb & fist-bumping Michelle

The New Yorker's editor appeared baffled by the protests. "It's clearly a joke," he said, "A parody of these crazy fears and rumors and scare tactics about Obama's past and ideology."

Obama's campaign staff was happy to fill in. "The New Yorker may think that their cover is a satirical lampoon. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

The user comments following articles about the controversy spelled out the potential for distortion in stark terms.

Am I somehow responsible for fate of entire black race?

The question, motivated by compassion, spoke to the enormous burden that the historic candidacy had imposed More than any other black candidate's quest for the presidency, Obama's had acquired a symbolism and intensity of feeling that cut across disparate categories of African American life. The photo and its bold caption recalled a scene in Obama's memoir in which a friend had questioned his values. He slumped on a sofa and lit a cigarette. He was depressed and angry about the way his friend had torn into him as if, he recalled, "I was somehow responsible for the fate of the entire black race."

No contradiction as black voice & constituent representative

21 years earlier, an essay in "Ebony" predicted, "Black politics is likely to be transformed in the way Blacks formulate and articulate their goals. The dynamics of presidential politics--and increasingly politics at other levels as well--will require Blacks to forgo race-specific articulation of policy objectives in favor of broader objectives that encompass Black goals."

Obama, as he himself suggested, is at the center of such a transformation. But its roots are various and have been growing for some time.

OpEd: March 2008 "race speech" reminder of ongoing struggle

It is a tradition of speaking truth to power. It is a tradition of serving as the nation's conscience, of baring truths with unrestrained candor, as John Lewis did at the March on Washington in 1963. Obama, too, has issued painful, timely reminders. His March 18, 2008, Philadelphia address (aka the "race" speech) in response to the controversy stemming from Rev. Jeremiah Wright's remarks, for example, pulled no punches. Instead of merely assuaging white fears, he outlined a stark future made desolate by shallow jingoism and bait-and-switch political maneuverings. "We have a choice in this country," he argued. "We can tackle race only as a spectacle, or in the wake of tragedy, or as fodder for the nightly news. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And nothing will change."

March 2008 speech on race began with "We, the people"

Obama's talk of validation and fulfillment echoed the sentiments of Martin Luther King Jr., whose oratory Obama's resembles in tone and intellectual flavor more than in any other aspects. "In the absence of Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson Jr. has noted, "the void was filled by Stokely Carmichael, James Bevel and Jesse Jackson. With all respect to my father, 40 years later, this is the first time we have gotten back to a very thoughtful and careful approach to language."

Speaks about racial anxiety from personal experience

Deconstruct those two sentences. Yes, there is plenty of ugliness in America's racial history; blacks & whites alike have legitimate anxieties about race; redemption is always possible. This is a narrative that speaks to American life as it is lived. It conveys genuine empathy. It is intuitive Obama. No pollster or speechwriter could have composed that passage.

1995: Participated in Million Man March

Apocryphal story: race awareness began with skin-bleach ad

The only problem is that Life reported no such issue ever existed. Obama suggested it might have been Ebony. Ebony's archivists could find no such article, either.

Skin-lightening chemicals had been marketed to African-Americans for decades. Obama didn't have to get the idea from an article in Life. The story of Life magazine is apocryphal at best. At any rate, the memory of the event/nonevent is so firmly planted in Obama's mind that it seems to have become an emotional truth for him, as equally powerful psychologically as a real experience.

Taking a black candidate for granted is measure of progress

A: Well, Michelle had a conversation with Malia, who’s our 9-year-old. Michelle said, “You know, Daddy’s about to be nominated for the presidency, and he’ll be the first African American ever to have that happen.” And Malia said, “Well, that doesn’t surprise me. I’ve read these histories about how blacks were discriminated against with slavery and Jim Crow,“ and she sort of ticked it off. But you could tell that there wasn’t that emotional impact on her because she has grown up in this environment where she can take it for granted. And the fact that they’re taking it for granted is a measure of progress in our country. It says something really good about America. It’s a testament to this country’s urge to live up to its ideals, as imperfectly as that is sometimes.

Epiphany at age 21 settled his racial identity

As his father had done at a similar age, Obama, perhaps aware that the chips were down, now threw himself into his studies. At this point, he decided to try to become a community organizer, to help bring about change in black communities through grassroots efforts.

We’ve never really worked through complexities of race

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through--a part of our union that we have not yet made perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care or education or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Intertwined search for father and racial identity

The father and black identity are virtually interchangeable as objects of Obama’s personal search. The young Obama experienced both his father and his racial identity as absences, while most people enjoy these same things as birthrights.

When Barack Obama is called a “Halfrican,” the point is not simply that he comes from a mixed-race background; it is also that he is a kind of phony, a pretender to blackness. For racially mixed blacks, the search for “authentic” blackness is also a search for personal credibility and legitimacy. Our era of intense identity politics means that such people live under a permanent accusation of inauthenticity.

Rooted in African-American community but also more than that

He was “rooted,” he said, in the African- American community, but he was also “more than that.” This is the formulation of a man with a complex identity trying to make himself more recognizable to a society not used to pondering his like. Yet, this is also a formulation that reduces Obama’s identity to a banality. What could “rooted” or “more than that” mean? For that matter, what could “African-American community” really mean? A culture? A politics?

To become recognizable, he processes himself through the same dumb racial math-- he is one thing plus something else--that has been the source of his vulnerability. He collaborates with the racial conventions that made him an odd man out. Yet a great part of Obama’s appeal in broader America can be chalked up to his complex identity.

In college, rejected multiracialism for black identity

Joyce opposes blackness out of the same determination to claim an identity that drives Obama to embrace blackness. Obama is determined to distance himself from her & his own mainstream American past. Joyce represents a remarkable new option in American life. Joyce says that whites are “willing to treat me like a person.” Blacks are “the ones who are telling me I can’t be who I am.”

Joyce is Obama’s troublesome doppelganger as he grinds through the self-betrayals that help him belong to blackness. What you want, she murmurs--the chance to be yourself, self-acceptance--is not with blackness; it is in the same mainstream you came from.

Fans see Obama as opportunity to vote for redemption

Obama is bound to the antiresponsibility political left because his fate depends on his ability to offer innocence to whites--this despite the fact that he clearly seems to accept the importance of individual responsibility in social reform. Yet he offers no thinking on how to build incentives to responsibility into actual social policy.

Veiled racism in dismissing Obama as “unqualified”

One pundit wrote: “There is nothing he can do to address his major shortcoming: the absence on his resume of the kind of major achievement that qualifies a person for the White House.” Of course, Obama has many achievements, and it is hard to find a major achievement of most senators running for president.

Obama’s experiences challenge the conventional wisdom of the establishment. Obama is a different kind of outsider. He is an outsider accustomed to working with legislators from the other party, and an outsider committed to pragmatic solutions.

Catching a cab, no one questions he’s “authentically black”

A: You know, when I’m catching a cab in Manhattan--in the past, I think I’ve given my credentials. But let me go to the broader issue here. And that is that race permeates our society. It is still a critical problem. But I do believe in the core decency of the American people, and I think they want to get beyond some of our racial divisions. Unfortunately, we’ve had a White House that hasn’t invested in the kinds of steps that have to be done to overcome the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow in this country. And as president, my commitment on issues like education, my commitment on issues like health care is to close the disparities and the gaps, because that’s what’s really going to solve the race problem in this country.

America’s race and class problems are intertwined

There is some hope of eventual reconciliation between races

Racism wasn’t merely the cruelty involved, but arrogance too

Suspected by opponents of being Muslim, Communist, & Nazi

The freewheeling anti-Obama paranoia expressed at the Tea Party rallies has been widely reported. Obama is perceived by many Tea Partiers as a foreigner, an invader pretending to be an American, a 5th columnist. Obama's past as a community organizer is taken as evidence that he works on behalf of the undeserving poor and wishes to mobilize government resources on their behalf. His academic achievements and social ties put him in league with the country's intellectual elite, whose disdain feels very real to many Americans, and whose cosmopolitan leanings seem unpatriotic.

OpEd: installed secularism as America's state religion

The Obama inauguration symbolized the dilution and decline of a once-muscular Christianity that had guided American public life for two centuries. Obama's White House enlisted in a long and successful campaign to expel Christianity from the public square, diminish its presence in our public life, and reduce its role to that of just another religion. Cultural power in America long ago passed to an anti-Christian elite that rules the academy, Hollywood, and the arts. Secularism is now America's state religion and the people sense it.

OpEd: Wrote glowingly of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's first sermon

And yet in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote admiringly of the 1st sermon he heard the Reverend Wright give, in which the pastor blamed "white folks' greed" for "a world in need." Obama said of this talk, "I felt the tears running down my cheek." Indeed, he was so moved by the "white folks' greed" sermon, he joined the church immediately and even used the name of Wright's sermon, "The Audacity of Hope," as the title of his 2nd book.

First American president not raised in a Christian home

Religious Left calls Obama "called" and "anointed"

Rush is not alone in this. Increasingly, words such as called, chosen, and anointed are being used of Obama. Though these terms have long belonged to the native language of the Religious Right, they are now becoming the comfortable expressions of an awakened Religious Left, of a faith-based Progressive movement. Moreover, they are framing the image of Barack Obama in the minds of millions of Americans.

Perhaps this is what comes from a need to paint politicians in messianic terms. Perhaps this is what comes, in part, from a people believing themselves a chosen nation.

Grandmother raised as strict Methodist, but saw hypocrisy

These hypocrisies were not lost on Madelyn Payne. She would tell her grandson often of the "sanctimonious preachers" she had known and of the respectable church ladies with absurd hats who whispered hurtful secrets and treated those they deemed beneath them with cruelty. What injustice, she would insist, that men who sat on church boards should utter "racial epithets" and cheat the men who worked for them. Barack regularly heard such bitter sentiments in his grandparents' home, sentiments that profoundly shaped his early religious worldview.

Mother raised in Unitarian Church with secular values

The Unitarian Affirmation of Faith does serve to hint at what the Dunhams accepted as true: "the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the leadership of Jesus, salvation by character, and the progress of mankind onward and upward forever." However, they were likely skeptics--Barack says that Madelyn espoused a "flinty rationalism"--regarding the divinity of Jesus, whom they would have accepted as one good moral teacher among many but certainly not a god.

Mother declared herself an atheist during high school

During after-school gab sessions in the coffee shops of Seattle, her friends began to realize how fully Ann had thought through her beliefs. "She touted herself as an atheist, and it was something she'd read about and could argue," remembers Dunham's best friend in high school. "She was always challenging and arguing and comparing. She was already thinking about things that the rest of us hadn't." Another friend explains, "[Ann was] a fellow traveler.... We were liberals before we knew what liberals were."

Obama's Trinity Church is based on black-liberation theology

Wright was insisting that the inflammatory remarks in his sermons at Trinity United Church of Christ derived from years of teaching that had coalesced into a comprehensive theology known as "black-liberation theology." In other words, Wright was arguing that as off-the-wall as statements from his sermons might sound when taken out of context, those statements were consistent with the teachings of prominent black-liberation theologians.

Black-liberation theology is an inherently radical theology that owes its origins to radical black political thinkers, including Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X.

Deciding to be baptized in Trinity United, Obama had to comprehend he was joining a church whose principles were based on the black-liberation theology Rev. Wright professes.

Moved to & attended church in neighborhood he was organizing

In explaining his success in organizing Chicago's Back of the Yards, Alinsky said, "the first thing I always do, is to move into the community as an observer, to talk to people and listen and learn their grievances and their attitudes." After being hired, Obama followed Alinsky's rules by moving into the Hyde Park-Kenwood area he had been assigned to organize.

Why did he decide to join Rev. Wright's controversial Trinity Church? Obama openly admits, in terms Alinsky would easily have understood, "I was drawn to the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change." Obama was made to understand that he could not ignore the African-American church if were to succeed as a community organizer.

OpEd: Obama was born a Muslim, and is now a Christian

When Obama was taken to Jakarta as a child, he initially attended a Roman Catholic school where someone registered his religion as Muslim.

Later, Barack moved to a state school in Jakarta, where he was again identified as a Muslim. He was given Islamic instruction. There was no evidence that Obama ever attended a school whose primary focus was religious, that is a madrasa.

The Bottom Line: Obama Was a Muslim, and Is a Christian: We do not know what baptismal record, if any, exist for Barack Obama. Obama now says he is a Christian, and therefore he is a Christian, although the date of his conversion and level of his commitment to Christian principles remains somewhat uncertain.

GovWatch: never a Muslim, but school listed him as Muslim

The ad is based on a seemingly solid fact, that Obama was “enrolled as a Muslim” in a Catholic school in Indonesia in 1967, when Obama was six years old. The ad misses out key facts: Obama was required to participate in the school’s Catholic rituals and pray four times a day. Teachers said that he was probably registered as a Muslim because this was the religion of his then-Indonesian step-father. More importantly, the same school ledger that listed Obama as “Muslim” also listed Obama as an Indonesian; gave an inaccurate name for his previous school; and made no mention of his mother. The campaign concludes that Obama “is not, and was never, a Muslim.” [We agree].

In hard times, people take refuge in traditions, God & guns

OBAMA: I think there’s no doubt that I can see how people were offended. It’s not the first time that I’ve made a statement that was mangled up. It’s not going to be the last. But let me be very clear about what I meant: People are going through very difficult times right now. When people feel like Washington’s not listening to them, then politically they end up focusing on those things that are constant, like religion. They end up feeling “This is a place where I can find some refuge. This is something that I can count on.” They end up being much more concerned about votes around things like guns, where traditions have been passed on.

I am a person of faith; and I reach out to people of faith

OBAMA: Hillary has been saying I’m elitist, out of touch, condescending. Let me be absolutely clear. It would be pretty hard for me to be condescending towards people of faith, since I’m a person of faith and have done more than most other campaigns in reaching out specifically to people of faith, and have written about how Democrats make an error when they don’t show up and speak directly to people’s faith. The same is true with respect to gun owners. I have large numbers of sportsmen and gun owners in my home state, and they have supported me precisely because I have listened to them.

Religion is foundational; not clinging nor elitist

A: Scripture talks about clinging to what’s good. My words may have been clumsy, but [I meant] religion is a foundation when other things aren’t going well. That’s true in my own life, through trials and tribulations.

Q: Hillary Clinton says you’re being elitist.

A: My entire trajectory, not just during this campaign, but long before, has been to talk about how Democrats need to get in church, reach out to evangelicals, link faith with the work that we do. The notion that somehow I am standing above that when that essentially describes much of what I’ve been doing over the last 20 years doesn’t make much sense.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright helped bring me to Christianity

A: Well, I actually wrote about this in my second book “Audacity of Hope.” I had worked as an organizer on the South Side. The community was in difficult straits. I had been raised in a spiritual but nonreligious home. But as I’m doing this organizing, I started visiting some churches. Trinity United Church of Christ was one. I visited that church and found the ministries that they were doing on HIV/AIDS, and on prison ministries, and Rev. Wright’s sermons spoke directly to the social gospel, the need to act and not just to sit in the pews. I found that very attractive and ended up joining the church. Now, there’s been this notion that he was my spiritual adviser. You know, he’s been just my pastor--there are areas where we’ve disagreed. [But the recent uproar has been] both a distortion of who he is and what the church has been about.

Exposure to Islam taught me that Muslims can partner with us

A: Well, I lived in Indonesia for 4-1/2 years when I was a child. The first school I went to in Indonesia was a Catholic school I then attended a public school, but the majority of the country was Muslim. And the brand of Islam that was being practiced in Indonesia at the time was a very tolerant Islam. The country itself was explicitly secular in its constitution. So what it taught me, and what it still teaches me, as I think about foreign policy now, is that Islam can be compatible with the modern world. It can be a partner with the Christian & Jewish & Hindu & Buddhist faiths in trying to create a better world. And so I am always suspicious of attempts to paint Islam with a broad brush because the overwhelming majority of the people of the Islamic faith are people of good will, as opposed to the overheated political rhetoric of assuming a clash of civilizations

Kenyan grandfather converted to Christianity & then to Islam

Senator Obama's father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., was born in 1936, also near Lake Victoria, to Onyango's 2nd wife Akumu.

A pair of American teachers befriended Obama Sr. and helped him apply to US universities. In 1959 he secured admission, after many rejections, to the University of Hawaii to study economics: the institution's first African student.

Obama Sr. wore religion lightly. "Although my father had been raised a Muslim, by the time he met my mother he was a confirmed atheist, thinking religion to be so much superstition," his son wrote.

Barack's UCC church motto: Unabashedly Black & Christian

Wright, a former marine, built the church from 87 members in 1972 to over 8,500 by the 1980s. The congregatio included people of all races and more than a few celebrities, including television host Oprah Winfrey.

The Reverend, as Obama described him, was acutely aware of the challenges faced by African-Americans. The church he built, however, preached inclusion--and there Obama saw power. "By widening its doors to allow all who would enter, Trinity assured its members that their fates remained inseparably bound. It was a powerful program, more sustaining than my own brand of organizing," he concluded.

Father was raised Muslim but became an atheist

Registered as Muslim at Catholic & secular Indonesian school

Obama transferred to SDN Menteng 1, an elite secular public elementary school that served primarily middle- and upper-class children. He was the only foreigner.

For administrative purposes, Obama was registered as a Muslim at this school, as at the Catholic institution, because that was the religion of his stepfather. He learned about Islam for two hours each week. His mother did not belong to any denomination. His stepfather enjoyed alcohol and was not devout. Obama has never been a practicing Muslim.

I am a proud Christian who believes deeply in Jesus Christ

Despite attack email, pledges Allegiance & uses Bible

A: First of all, let’s make clear what the facts are. I am a Christian. I have been sworn in with a Bible. I pledge allegiance and lead the Pledge of Allegiance sometimes in the US Senate, when I’m presiding. But you know, in the Internet age, there are going to be lies that are spread all over the place. Fortunately the American people are smarter than folks give them credit for. My job is to tell the truth, to be straight with the American people about my vision for where the country needs to go. If I’m doing that effectively, then I place my trust in the American people that they will sort out the lies from the truth and they will make a good decision.

Attends church with press, to dispel rumors that he’s Muslim

His attendance at the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Mason City, Iowa, with the news media in tow, was as much an observation of faith as it was a rejoinder to baseless e-mailed rumors that he is a Muslim and poses a threat to the security of the US. Obama did not address the rumors, but described how he joined Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago two decades ago while working as a community organizer. “I realized that Scripture and the words of God fit into the values I was raised in,” he told the congregation.

Obama regularly attends church, but seldom with reporters watching. He is known to invoke religious references in his speeches and has said he has a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ. He often has said that religion has a place in public life and that faith and politics are not exclusively the domain of conservatives.

Grandfather converted from Christianity to Islam

"What your grandfather respected was strength. Discipline," Barack quoted the widow as telling him. "This is also why he rejected the Christian religion, I think. For a brief time, he converted, and even changed his name to Johnson. But he could not understand such ideas as mercy toward your enemies, or that this man Jesus could wash away a man's sins. To your grandfather, this was foolish sentiment, something to comfort women. And so he converted to Islam--he thought its practices conformed more closely to his beliefs."

Joined church that emphasized a “Black Value System”

Obama is vulnerable to these identity pressures because he needs to “be black.” Obama joined the Trinity United Church of Christ, a South Side black church with a “Black Value System,” focused on “Black freedom,“ the ”black community,“ & the ”black family.“ That he would join a church this steeped in blackness, with so many other churches available, only underscores his determination to be transparently black.

How can Obama sit every week in a church preaching blackness & not object that he was raised quite well, thank you, by three white Midwesterners? Obama is the kind of man who can close down the best part of himself to belong to this black church and, more broadly, to the black identity.

Uses prayer to take stock of his moral compass

Obama’s secular upbringing has shaped his approach to religion today: “My faith is complicated by the fact that I didn’t grow up in a particular religious tradition. When you come at it as an adult, your brain mediates a lot, and you ask a lot of questions.”

When Obama prays, he says, he is engaged in an “ongoing conversation with God.” But this conversation is not a delusional belief that a supernatural being is talking directly to him. Instead, Obama uses God as a way to check his own ego. He uses prayer to “take stock” of himself and maintain his “moral compass.” He has a conversation with God in order to ask himself, “Am I doing this because it’s advantageous to me politically or because I think it’s the right thing to do.”

Reach out to faith community;faith has role in public square

A: Yes, there are some inconsistencies and hypocrisy of people who mix religion and politics sometimes. I have said it’s important for Democrats to reach out to the faith community, and the reason is because 90% of Americans believe in God. It’s a source of values. It’s a source of their moral compass. And I know it’s a source of strength for me and my family. I think it’s important for us not to presume that faith has no part in the public square. Look at Martin Luther King, the abolitionists, the suffragettes. We have a long history of reform movements being grounded in that sense often religiously expressed that we have to extend beyond ourselves and our individual immediate self-interests to think about something larger.

Active in the Trinity faith community

Obama’s faith shapes his values, as it does for millions of Americans. As he said in a recent speech on faith and politics:

Our values should express themselves not just through our churches or synagogues, temples or mosques; they should express themselves through our government. Because whether it’s poverty or racism, the uninsured or the unemployed, war or peace, the challenges we face today are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect ten-point plan. They are moral problems, rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness--in the imperfections of man. And so long as we’re not doing everything in our personal and collective power to solve them, we know the conscience of our nation cannot rest.

Carries Bible on campaign trail, & refers to it weekly

But in speaking to a reporter, it seemed that he referred to his Bible [less often]. “It’s a great book and contains a lot of wisdom,” he said simply. He said he was drawn to Christianity because its main tenet of altruism and selflessness coincided with his own philosophies. His Christianity would be well received among blacks and some rural whites.

Embrace Christ as an ally

Source of his book title “Audacity of Hope” was a sermon

Raised secular, but with working knowledge of world religion

This spirit of hers guided me on the path I would ultimately take. It was in search of confirmation of her values that I studied political philosophy.

Baptized as an adult in the Trinity United Church of Christ

It was because of these newfound understandings-that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or otherwise retreat from the world-that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be ba

Religious concerns ok, if translated into universal values

Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square. To say that men and women should not inject their personal morality into public policy debates is a practical absurdity; our law is by definition a codification of morality, mush of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

What our pluralistic democracy does demand is that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. Those opposed to abortion cannot simply invoke God’s will--they have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths.

There’s a call to evangelize in politics

I’m a big believer in the separation of church and state

Spent time in both Muslim and Catholic schools

Neighbor Bill Ayres admits 1970s violent radicalism

The radical 1960s SDS Weatherman bomber Bill Ayers had criminal charges dismisse because of prosecutorial misconduct. Today, Ayers likes to present himself as the "Distinguished Professor of Education" at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Still, in his 2001 book Fugitive Days, Ayers openly admits the role he played as a radical revolutionary leader. Ayers bombed the U.S. Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972 as part of his revolutionary antiwar activities.

The problem is Obama maintained the relationship with Ayers over many years because it was politically useful to Obama, especially as he first ran for political office from the impoverished, largely African-American South Side of Chicago.

OpEd: Distances himself from 1970s radical Bill Ayres

That presidential candidate Obama has to sever ties with so many key people in his past should alone raise questions about the character for the serious voter.

Tony Rezko: large contributor & active member of campaigns

Rezko gave Obama his first political contribution, $2000 on July 13, 1995, when he learned Obama was going to run for Illinois state legislature. For a year Obama minimized his relationship with Rezko, telling reporters he only had dinner or lunch with Rezko once or twice a year. But when Chicago Sun-Times reporters finally confronted Obama in March 2008 for an extended interview in the newspaper offices, the senator changed his tune. "I've known him for 17 years," Obama finally admitted. "There were stretches of time where I would see hi once or twice a year. But, as I said, when he was involved in the campaign finance committees, then he was an active member." By saying Rezko was an "active member" of his campaigns, Obama acknowledged he relied upon Rezko to help him raise funds.

Tony Rezko helped Obama buy home in prestigious neighborhood

Rezko came up with a solution. His wife, Rita, bought the vacant lot at full price, permitting Obama and Michelle to negotiate buying the house for $1.65 million, a discount of $300,000 from the asking price. Rezko's wife closed on the vacant lot the same day the Obamas closed on the house. She paid $625,000 for the lot, the full asking price.

"Both actions would be clear violations of Senate ethics rules barring the granting or askin of favors," wrote the Wall Street Journal. The Boston Globe reported that Obama had asked for Rezko's advice in negotiating the deal--after all, Rezko was experienced with real estate--and Obama toured the house with Rezko before making an offer.

Segments of Wright sermons were "caricatures of the church"

Obama implied that he was being treated unfairly in that the segments of sermons played in the media were "caricatures of the church," complaining that anyone would "accept those caricatures despite my insistence that's not what the church is about." He also persisted in distancing himself from Wright, "Some of the statements the [Wright] made were indefensible and deeply offensive."

Clearly, Obama hoped that by leaving the church, he woul end the controversy. At a minimum, he wanted to be able to wash his hands of any subsequent incidents. Yet, by not denouncing Wright and Trinity Church itself, Obama remains open to continuing criticism as further incidents develop.

Photographed without hand over heart during national anthem

Obama explained, "I was taught by my grandfather that you put your hand over your heart during the pledge, but during the Star Spangled Banner you sing!" Obama and his supporters may think it is not important to wear a flag lapel pin or to hold his right hand over his heart while the national anthem is played, but try explaining that to veterans.

I revere the American flag; I don’t refuse to wear flag pins

A: I revere the American flag, and I would not be running for president if I did not revere this country. There’s no other country in which my story is even possible; somebody who was born to a teenage mom, raised by a single mother and grandparents from small towns in Kansas; who was able to get an education and rise to the point where I can run for the highest office in the land. I could not help but love this country for all that it’s given me. I did wear a flag pin yesertday when a veteran handed it to me, on behalf of disabled veterans. I have never said that I don’t wear flag pins or refuse to wear flag pins. This is the kind of manufactured issue that our politics has become obsessed with and distracts us from figuring out how we get our troops out of Iraq and how we make our economy better for the American people.

FactCheck: Yes, refused to wear a flag pin, last year

Actually, in Oct. 2007, he said, “I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest. Instead, I’m gonna try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism.” In another interview, Obama said, “The truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security.“

Conservative critics have attacked Obama repeatedly for these remarks and his lack of a flag pin. Recently, Obama accepted a lapel pin given to him a disabled Vietnam veteran. ”It means a lot coming from you,“ Obama said.

Mar. 2008: Campaign uproar over Rev. Wright's anti-US sermon

The uproar that resulted dominated campaign coverage for days and might have derailed Obama's campaign because it cut to core issues of race, national identity and politics.

FactCheck: Took Rezko’s donations, but never represented him

According to an investigation last year, Antoin Rezko was involved in developing at least 30 low-income housing buildings. A number of the buildings fell into disrepair, collecting housing code violations, and Rezko was sued on many occasions. Obama was associated with a law firm that represented the community groups working with Rezko on several deals. There’s no evidence that Obama spent much time on them, and he never represented Rezko directly. So it was wrong for Clinton to say he was “representing Rezko.”

Obama has known Rezko, however, for many years, and Rezko has been a major contributor and campaign fundraiser for him since Obama’s first campaign for the Illinois state Senate.

Gave away all Rezko “boneheaded” donations to charity

Obama has given all the Rezko money currently in his larder to charity, and he has called the land deal [he made with Rezko for Obama’s personal home] “boneheaded,” putting it down to anxieties about purchasing a first home (though his family had previously lived in a Hyde Park condo). No one has alleged that Obama did anything illegal, but his slip-sliding response to questions about Rezko suggests that, should he succeed, he will not drive every pig from the trough.

FactCheck: Ranked most liberal in Senate, based on 99 votes

Obama’s answer could mislead voters. Although we agree that rankings and labels sometimes don’t have much substance behind them, Obama cited just one of 99 Senate votes selected by National Journal’s reporters and editors for the study. The nonpartisan public policy magazine’s analysis was done according to a rigorous process the publication has been using since 1981. Most of the votes chosen had to do with the minimum wage, renewable energy, health insurance for children, immigration, embryonic stem cell research, and other issues on which it’s not too surprising to see a divide between liberals and conservatives. Clinton ranked 16th most liberal in the Senate

Voted with Democratic Party 96.0% of 251 votes.

Biggest mistake was intruding in Terri Schiavo case

A: Well, my wife may have a longer list. But professionally the biggest mistake that I made was when I first arrived in the Senate. There was a debate about Terri Schiavo, and a lot of us, including me, allowed Congress to intrude where it shouldn’t have. I should have fought more for making sure that families make those decisions and not bureaucrats and politicians.

Voted NO on confirming Samuel Alito as Supreme Court Justice.

Voted NO on confirming John Roberts for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Member of Congressional Black Caucus.

On January 2, 1969, [three newly elected and six previously elected] African-American Members of Congress met as the Democratic Select Committee. On February 2, 1971 the group agreed to be known as the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).

The goals of the CBC are to positively influence the course of events pertinent to African-Americans and others of similar experience and situation, and to achieve greater equity for persons of African descent in the design and content of domestic and international programs and services. The Caucus has not only been at the forefont of issues affecting African-Americans, but has garnered international acclaim for advancing agendas aimed at protecting human rights and civil rights for all people. Today, the Congressional Black Caucus stands 38 members strong.

Upon her election as Chair of the CBC for the 107th Congress, Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson expounded: “Whether the issue is popular or unpopular, simple or complex, the CBC has fought for thirty years to protect the fundamentals of democracy. The Caucus is committed to ensuring that the standard of living for minorities in America does not retrogress, but instead rises to meet the expectations of both our ancestors and our children. The Congressional Black Caucus is probably the closest group of legislators on the Hill. We work together almost incessantly, we are friends and, more importantly, a family of freedom fighters. Our diversity makes us stronger, and the expertise of all of our members has helped us be effective beyond our numbers.”

Reject Bush's Florida electors due to election fraud.

There is overwhelming evidence of official misconduct, deliberate fraud and an attempt to suppress voter turnout by unlawful means that were used to produce George W. Bush’s false victory. The preponderance of the available evidence points to Vice President Al Gore as the actual winner of the most votes in Florida and he should have been awarded the state’s electoral votes.

Vice President Al Gore may have conceded his judicial contest, but that is irrelevant. There is not provision for the concession of candidates in the Constitution. There is, however, a process set out in law for Congress to consider challenges to electoral votes. The Congress, on behalf of all Americans, is the final judge of how much election fraud to accept.

The hearings held by the NAACP clearly showed that there were massive violations of the Voting Rights Act, and that tens of thousands of Floridians were denied due process when they were removed from the voter rolls without notice. Still others were intimidated by police checkpoints set up near polling places. In Miami-Dade and Broward, investigations by independent news organizations have found hundreds of ineligible persons who were allowed to vote. There clearly were significant inequities in assigning what turned out to be non-working voting machines to precincts that were heavily African-American in Miami-Dade. We would not tolerate any of these errors if they took place in some other country. Is our duty to our own country any less?

Millions of Americans have already expressed their public outrage at the myriad injustices which occurred in the making of George W. Bush’s mistaken victory. But public outrage is not enough. The laws of this country provide for the objection which we herein make on behalf of freedom, justice and democracy. We, Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, therefore wholeheartedly object to the acceptance of the presidential electors from Florida.