Wednesday, Nov. 05, 2008

An improbable journey

CHICAGO — It was just before midnight last November when Barack Obama stepped on stage in a darkened auditorium in Iowa, trailing in the polls, taking on one of the biggest names in Democratic politics — and facing a make-or-break moment.

As the last candidate to speak, Obama, considered by some as too cool and cerebral, turned up the heat with a passionate appeal. He condemned the same “old Washington textbook campaigns,” chided fellow Democrats — and even took an indirect swipe at then-front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“I am not in this race to fulfill some long-held ambitions or because I believe it’s somehow owed to me,” he declared. “I never expected to be here. I always knew this journey was improbable. I’ve never been on a journey that wasn’t.”

The crowd of thousands stood and cheered. He was on his way.

In the year since, Obama — a freshman U.S. senator from Illlinois — has vanquished a Democratic powerhouse, shattered all fundraising records, swatted away criticism of his experience level, and made history by becoming the first black nominee of a major party.

It was an unusual, 22-month journey — but Barack Obama’s story has been unconventional from the start.

His biography is unlike that of any other presidential candidate.

“He has this unusual combination of life experiences that don’t fit in any stereotype,” said Valerie Jarrett, his close friend and adviser. “He has something in common with everyone.”

His Kansas-born mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and Kenya-born father, Barack Obama Sr., met at the University of Hawaii. His father departed two years later to study at Harvard. He returned only once, when his son was 10.

There was an exotic childhood in Indonesia, homeland of his stepfather. Then, after his mother’s second marriage broke up, he returned to Hawaii.

As a teen, Obama was smart and well-read but not particularly driven or ambitious, said his half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng. “He was a young man concerned with ... hanging out with his buddies, playing basketball, body surfing and eating in excess.”

When his mother’s work as an anthropologist took her back to Indonesia, Obama — then known as Barry — stayed behind for high school. He lived with his maternal grandparents, the Dunhams.

He played golf and poker, sang in the choir, wrote for the literary journal, and listened to the music of Earth Wind & Fire. He played on the basketball team, and his hero was Julius Erving.

For Obama — a biracial kid struggling with his identity — basketball was a refuge.

“At least on the basketball court I could find a community of sorts, with an inner life all its own,” he later wrote. “It was there that I would make my closest white friends, on turf where blackness couldn’t be a disadvantage.”

His half-sister said he is “a gregarious guy and he loves people,” but also is “a lone traveler” accustomed to solving his own problems.

After high school, Obama entered Occidental College in Los Angeles, where he started using his birth name and took his first plunge into politics, speaking at an anti-apartheid rally. He sought broader horizons by moving across the country to attend Columbia University in New York.

Obama graduated with a political science degree and held a few jobs in New York. It was there he received a call from an aunt notifying him his father had been killed in an auto accident. The news eventually led Obama on a journey to Kenya and a tearful visit to his father’s grave.

Later, he moved to Chicago. He stepped into a low-paying job with a formidable mission: motivating poor people to participate in the political system and to speak up about their needs.

Obama — who calls his organizing work “the best education I ever had” — gradually became skilled at helping people work together and build alliances, said Gerald Kellman, who hired him.

Obama joined the Trinity United Church of Christ and became friends with its pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose incendiary comments about race and America would later raise questions about Obama’s judgment. (Obama no longer attends the church.)

Obama remained close to his family. He escorted Maya, who is nine years younger, on college tours and consoled her when their mother died of ovarian cancer at age 53.

Obama took a giant leap from the gritty South Side to the heady atmosphere of Harvard Law School, a training ground for America’s elite. He made history as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

He later married another Harvard law graduate, Michelle Robinson, whom he met at a summer job at a Chicago law firm. They have two daughters, Malia, now 10, and Sasha, 7.

After law school, Obama again chose a grass-roots job in Chicago, running a voter registration drive. He also began carefully mapping out a path that positioned him for public office.

He joined a small, politically connected boutique law firm that did civil rights litigation. He and Michelle lived in Hyde Park, the racially mixed neighborhood around the University of Chicago.

He formed some associations that have dogged him during the campaign, with 1960s radical William Ayers and convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko.

But he also made some crucial, positive connections, as he lectured at the University of Chicago Law School and waited for the right political opportunity to come along.

“If you don’t like the guy, he’s a calculating politician,” says Don Rose, a veteran political strategist. “If you do, he’s a smart, methodical worker ... His greatest capability is he never makes the same mistake twice.”

Elected to the state Senate in 1996, Obama generally was liberal but also was known to reach across party lines.

Obama mounted a failing campaign for the U.S. House in 2000, facing some questions from pundits and black politicians about whether he was “black enough” for the district.

But two years later, Obama emerged as a rising star in the Democratic Party when he won a crowded primary for a U.S. Senate seat. Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry tapped him for the keynote speech at the 2004 convention.

In 17 eloquent minutes, Obama jumped from obscure state lawmaker to a force in national politics. That fall, prospering from some lucky breaks, he won his U.S. Senate seat in a landslide.

Almost immediately, talk began of a presidential run.