The Audacity of Hope (6 page)

I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point. They don’t always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal, but they recognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility and irresponsibility, between those things that last and those that are fleeting.

They are out there, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.

The Audacity of Hope

Chapter Two

Values

THE FIRST TIME I saw the White House was in 1984. I had just graduated from college and was working as a community organizer out of the Harlem campus of the City College of New York. President Reagan was proposing a round of student aid cuts at the time, and so I worked with a group of student leaders—most of them black, Puerto Rican, or of Eastern European descent, almost all of them the first in their families to attend college—to round up petitions opposing the cuts and then deliver them to the New York congressional delegation.

It was a brief trip, spent mostly navigating the endless corridors of the Rayburn Building, getting polite but cursory audiences with Hill staffers not much older than I was. But at the end of the day, the students and I took the time to walk down to the Mall and the Washington Monument, and then spent a few minutes gazing at the White House. Standing on Pennsylvania Avenue, a few feet away from the Marine guard station at the main entrance, with pedestrians weaving along the sidewalk and traffic whizzing behind us, I marveled not at the White House’s elegant sweep, but rather at the fact that it was so exposed to the hustle and bustle of the city; that we were allowed to stand so close to the gate, and could later circle to the other side of the building to peer at the Rose Garden and the residence beyond. The openness of the White House said something about our confidence as a democracy, I thought. It embodied the notion that our leaders were not so different from us; that they remained subject to laws and our collective consent.

Twenty years later, getting close to the White House wasn’t so simple. Checkpoints, armed guards, vans, mirrors, dogs, and retractable barricades now sealed off a two- block perimeter around the White House. Unauthorized cars no longer traveled Pennsylvania Avenue. On a cold January afternoon, the day before my swearing in to the Senate, Lafayette Park was mostly empty, and as my car was waved through the White House gates and up the driveway, I felt a glancing sadness at what had been lost.

The inside of the White House doesn’t have the luminous quality that you might expect from TV or film; it seems well kept but worn, a big old house that one imagines might be a bit drafty on cold winter nights. Still, as I stood in the foyer and let my eyes wander down the corridors, it was impossible to forget the history that had been made there— John and Bobby Kennedy huddling over the Cuban missile crisis; FDR making last- minute changes to a radio address; Lincoln alone, pacing the halls and shouldering the weight of a nation. (It wasn’t until several months later that I would get to see the Lincoln Bedroom, a modest space with antique furniture, a four-poster bed, an original copy of the Gettysburg Address discreetly displayed under glass—and a big flat-screen TV set atop one of the desks. Who, I wondered, flipped on SportsCenter while spending the night in the Lincoln Bedroom?)

I was greeted immediately by a member of the White House’s legislative staff and led into the Gold Room, where most of the incoming House and Senate members had already gathered. At sixteen hundred hours on the dot, President Bush was announced and walked to the podium, looking vigorous and fit, with that jaunty, determined walk

that suggests he’s on a schedule and wants to keep detours to a minimum. For ten or so minutes he spoke to the room, making a few jokes, calling for the country to come together, before inviting us to the other end of the White House for refreshments and a picture with him and the First Lady.

I happened to be starving at that moment, so while most of the other legislators started lining up for their photographs, I headed for the buffet. As I munched on hors d’oeuvres and engaged in small talk with a handful of House members, I recalled my previous two encounters with the President, the first a brief congratulatory call after the election, the second a small White House breakfast with me and the other incoming senators. Both times I had found the President to be a likable man, shrewd and disciplined but with the same straightforward manner that had helped him win two elections; you could easily imagine him owning the local car dealership down the street, coaching Little League, and grilling in his backyard—the kind of guy who would make for good company so long as the conversation revolved around sports and the kids.

There had been a moment during the breakfast meeting, though, after the backslapping and the small talk and when all of us were seated, with Vice President Cheney eating his eggs Benedict impassively and Karl Rove at the far end of the table discreetly checking his BlackBerry, that I witnessed a different side of the man. The President had begun to discuss his second-term agenda, mostly a reiteration of his campaign talking points— the importance of staying the course in Iraq and renewing the Patriot Act, the need to reform Social Security and overhaul the tax system, his determination to get an up-or- down vote on his judicial appointees—when suddenly it felt as if somebody in a back room had flipped a switch. The President’s eyes became fixed; his voice took on the agitated, rapid tone of someone neither accustomed to nor welcoming interruption; his easy affability was replaced by an almost messianic certainty. As I watched my mostly Republican Senate colleagues hang on his every word, I was reminded of the dangerous isolation that power can bring, and appreciated the Founders’ wisdom in designing a system to keep power in check.

“Senator?”

I looked up, shaken out of my memory, and saw one of the older black men who made up most of the White House waitstaff standing next to me.

“Want me to take that plate for you?”

I nodded, trying to swallow a mouthful of chicken something-or-others, and noticed that the line to greet the President had evaporated. Wanting to thank my hosts, I headed toward the Blue Room. A young Marine at the door politely indicated that the photograph session was over and that the President needed to get to his next appointment. But before I could turn around to go, the President himself appeared in the doorway and waved me in.

“Obama!” the President said, shaking my hand. “Come here and meet Laura. Laura, you remember Obama. We saw him on TV during election night. Beautiful family. And that wife of yours—that’s one impressive lady.”

“We both got better than we deserve, Mr. President,” I said, shaking the First Lady’s hand and hoping that I’d wiped any crumbs off my face. The President turned to an aide nearby, who squirted a big dollop of hand sanitizer in the President’s hand.

“Want some?” the President asked. “Good stuff. Keeps you from getting colds.”

Not wanting to seem unhygienic, I took a squirt.

“Come over here for a second,” he said, leading me off to one side of the room. “You know,” he said quietly, “I hope you don’t mind me giving you a piece of advice.”

“Not at all, Mr. President.”

He nodded. “You’ve got a bright future,” he said. “Very bright. But I’ve been in this town awhile and, let me tell you, it can be tough. When you get a lot of attention like you’ve been getting, people start gunnin’ for ya. And it won’t necessarily just be coming from my side, you understand. From yours, too. Everybody’ll be waiting for you to slip, know what I mean? So watch yourself.”

“Thanks for the advice, Mr. President.”

“All right. I gotta get going. You know, me and you got something in common.”

“What’s that?”

“We both had to debate Alan Keyes. That guy’s a piece of work, isn’t he?”

I laughed, and as we walked to the door I told him a few stories from the campaign. It wasn’t until he had left the room that I realized I had briefly put my arm over his shoulder as we talked—an unconscious habit of mine, but one that I suspected might have made many of my friends, not to mention the Secret Service agents in the room, more than a little uneasy.

SINCE MY ARRIVAL in the Senate, I’ve been a steady and occasionally fierce critic of Bush Administration policies. I consider the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to be both fiscally irresponsible and morally troubling. I have criticized the Administration for lacking a meaningful health-care agenda, a serious energy policy, or a strategy for making America more competitive. Back in 2002, just before announcing my Senate campaign, I made a speech at one of the first antiwar rallies in Chicago in which I questioned the Administration’s evidence of weapons of mass destruction and suggested that an invasion of Iraq would prove to be a costly error. Nothing in the recent news coming out of Baghdad or the rest of the Middle East has dispelled these views.

So Democratic audiences are often surprised when I tell them that I don’t consider George Bush a bad man, and that I assume he and members of his Administration are trying to do what they think is best for the country.

I say this not because I am seduced by the proximity to power. I see my invitations to the White House for what they are—exercises in common political courtesy—and am mindful of how quickly the long knives can come out when the Administration’s agenda is threatened in any serious way. Moreover, whenever I write a letter to a family who has lost a loved one in Iraq, or read an email from a constituent who has dropped out of college because her student aid has been cut, I’m reminded that the actions of those in power have enormous consequences—a price that they themselves almost never have to pay.

It is to say that after all the trappings of office—the titles, the staff, the security details—are stripped away, I find the President and those who surround him to be pretty much like everybody else, possessed of the same mix of virtues and vices, insecurities and long-buried injuries, as the rest of us. No matter how wrongheaded I might consider their policies to be—and no matter how much I might insist that they be held accountable for the results of such policies—I still find it possible, in talking to these men and women, to understand their motives, and to recognize in them values I share.

This is not an easy posture to maintain in Washington. The stakes involved in Washington policy debates are often so high—whether we send our young men and women to war; whether we allow stem cell research to go forward—that even small differences in perspective are magnified. The demands of party loyalty, the imperative of campaigns, and the amplification of conflict by the media all contribute to an atmosphere of suspicion. Moreover, most people who serve in Washington have been trained either as lawyers or as political operatives—professions that tend to place a premium on winning arguments rather than solving problems. I can see how, after a certain amount of time in the capital, it becomes tempting to assume that those who disagree with you have fundamentally different values—indeed, that they are motivated by bad faith, and perhaps are bad people.

Outside of Washington, though, America feels less deeply divided. Illinois, for example, is no longer considered a bellwether state. For more than a decade now, it’s become more and more Democratic, partly because of increased urbanization, partly because the social conservatism of today’s GOP doesn’t wear well in the Land of Lincoln. But Illinois remains a microcosm of the country, a rough stew of North and South, East and West, urban and rural, black, white, and everything in between. Chicago may possess all the big-city sophistication of L.A. or New York, but geographically and culturally, the southern end of Illinois is closer to Little Rock or Louisville, and large swaths of the state are considered, in modern political parlance, a deep shade of red.

I first traveled through southern Illinois in 1997. It was the summer after my first term in the Illinois legislature, and Michelle and I were not yet parents. With session adjourned, no law school classes to teach, and Michelle busy with work of her own, I convinced my legislative aide, Dan Shomon, to toss a map and some golf clubs in the car and tool around the state for a week. Dan had been both a UPI reporter and a field coordinator for several downstate campaigns, so he knew the territory pretty well. But as the date of our departure approached, it became apparent that he wasn’t quite sure how I would be received in the counties we were planning to visit. Four times he reminded me how to pack—just khakis and polo shirts, he said; no fancy linen trousers or silk shirts. I assured him that I didn’t own any linens or silks. On the drive down, we

stopped at a TGI Friday’s and I ordered a cheeseburger. When the waitress brought the food I asked her if she had any Dijon mustard. Dan shook his head.

“He doesn’t want Dijon,” he insisted, waving the waitress off. “Here”—he shoved a yellow bottle of French’s mustard in my direction—“here’s some mustard right here.”

The waitress looked confused. “We got Dijon if you want it,” she said to me.

I smiled. “That would be great, thanks.” As the waitress walked away, I leaned over to Dan and whispered that I didn’t think there were any photographers around.

And so we traveled, stopping once a day to play a round of golf in the sweltering heat, driving past miles of cornfields and thick forests of ash trees and oak trees and shimmering lakes lined with stumps and reeds, through big towns like Carbondale and Mount Vernon, replete with strip malls and Wal-Marts, and tiny towns like Sparta and Pinckneyville, many of them with brick courthouses at the center of town, their main streets barely hanging on with every other store closed, the occasional roadside vendors selling fresh peaches or corn, or in the case of one couple I saw, “Good Deals on Guns and Swords.”

We stopped in a coffee shop to eat pie and swap jokes with the mayor of Chester. We posed in front of the fifteen-foot-tall statue of Superman at the center of Metropolis. We heard about all the young people who were moving to the big cities because manufacturing and coal-mining jobs were disappearing. We learned about the local high school football teams’ prospects for the coming season, and the vast distances veterans had to drive in order to reach the closest VA facility. We met women who had been missionaries in Kenya and greeted me in Swahili, and farmers who tracked the financial pages of the Wall Street Journal before setting out on their tractors. Several times a day, I pointed out to Dan the number of men we met sporting white linen slacks or silk Hawaiian shirts. In the small dining room of a Democratic party official in Du Quoin, I asked the local state’s attorney about crime trends in his largely rural, almost uniformly white county, expecting him to mention joy-riding sprees or folks hunting out of season.