Believer: My Forty Years in Politics (17 page)

“You know, I could make a boatload of money doing one of these other guys,” I told Susan. “And, I don’t know, maybe one of them has a better chance. But if I could help elect Barack to the Senate, that would be something I could be proud of for the rest of my life.”

 • • • 

Even after sitting out the Illinois governor’s race, I found 2002 a busy year. With Blagojevich moving on, I got a call from an old friend who saw his own opportunity.

“I’m thinking of running for Rod’s seat,” said Rahm Emanuel, who had left the Clinton administration in 1998 and returned to Chicago to make money as an investment banker. “Do you think I can win?”

It was a fair question. Rahm was not a natural for the seat. Raised in the affluent northern suburbs, he was new to the district, which stretched from the liberal North Side lakefront across the Northwest Side that was still heavily populated with eastern Europeans. He had never run for office before. He was a Jew with an ethnic-sounding name, known for his profanity-laced tirades. In two short years as a corporate dealmaker, he had pocketed millions.

“I know you’ll win,” I said, without hesitation.

“What do you mean ‘you know’?” he asked incredulously. “How do you know?”

“Because you’re not allowed to lose,” I told him. “It’s against your nature. You’re like a heat-seeking missile. You always hit your target.”

For Rahm, failure of any kind was a terrifying prospect. His father, Ben, a physician, was an Israeli immigrant who demanded excellence from his children. Report cards were posted on the refrigerator, where anything less than an A was considered an unpardonable blemish. Dinners at home with Ben, and Rahm’s mom, Marsha, were raucous affairs, in which each of the Emanuel boys competed for attention. Not surprisingly, they all grew up to be super-achievers. Older brother Zeke became an oncologist and world-renowned bioethicist. Younger brother Ari became a Hollywood superagent so colorful and influential that HBO would build a hit show,
Entourage
, around a character based on him. Losing? That was not an option, and Rahm’s allergy to it already was legendary.

After he raised a then-prodigious seventy-one million dollars for Clinton in 1992, Rahm was rewarded with the position of White House political director. Young and brash, he quickly antagonized people all over Washington—including, most damagingly, the First Lady. Hillary wanted Rahm gone, he was told. When he shared this with me, I told him to pack his things. “Come on home, man. It’s over.” Rahm refused. “I work for the president of the United States and until the president of the United States tells me to go, I’m not leaving. I didn’t come here to get fired. I’m not going to let it end this way.”

Rahm wasn’t fired. Instead, he was relieved of his title and relegated to a windowless basement office from which he was assigned to provide assistance on unspecified “special projects.” A few months of this purgatory, the pooh-bahs reasoned, and he would take the hint. Not Rahm. In 1994 he helped orchestrate the White House campaign for a crime bill that included hotly debated gun control measures and he spearheaded passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, over the objections of organized labor and many progressive Democrats. By the second Clinton administration, he was sitting twenty feet from the Oval Office, an indispensable force with the lofty title of senior adviser to the president.

On paper, the congressional race would be no slam dunk. Nancy Kaszak, the former legislator who, in 1996, had waged a pitched battle against Blagojevich, was running again, with strong support from the liberal and women’s communities. Kaszak had a valuable Polish surname and deeper roots in the district. Yet, as predicted, Rahm was relentless, outraising and out-organizing his opponent and rolling out all his assets, including a campaign visit from President Clinton. None of this was a surprise, of course. The question was how my ambitious friend would deal with the everyday people he was bidding to represent. Would he treat them as necessary irritants in his climb to power? Or would he warm to them and the task of serving them?

It was a revelation to watch Rahm grow into the role. He routinely began before dawn at El stations, camped out in supermarkets during the day, and finished late at night, talking to folks in diners, bowling alleys, and fire stations. I don’t know whether Rahm had an impact on the voters just because he showed up everywhere, but they surely had an impact on him. He still had the win-at-all costs mentality, but politics for him had ceased to be a remote-control exercise. He was coming face-to-face with people, listening to their stories and, more important, hearing their stories. Even he was surprised how much those interactions moved him. “I like being out there with people,” he told me.

During the race, I would hear from Rahm a half-dozen times a day. The conversations would almost always begin the same way: “What do you hear? What do you think?” Reassuring Rahm at all hours of the day and night was part of the service. So when the phone rang at 7:00 a.m. on February 18, a few weeks before his primary, Susan wasn’t terribly surprised by the voice on the other end of the line. Yet this day was different. It was the day we were to take Lauren to live at Misericordia. We knew it would be good for Lauren, and she was eager for the move. She would have an active life and friendships there that we simply couldn’t have provided at home. Misericordia was a short car ride away, but after twenty years in which she was our constant charge and companion, it was a heart-wrenching day.

I was out running a last-minute chore when Rahm called, but he sensed the heaviness in Susan’s voice and asked her what was wrong. Later that day, he called my home again. “Sorry, Rahm, you keep missing him,” Susan said. “Try the office.” “I didn’t call for David,” he said. “I called for you. I just wanted to see how you were doing.” That call, coming amid the frenzy of his own campaign, told me a lot about him. It was a kind and unexpected gesture that we would never forget.

Rahm’s humanity—a phrase thought by some in Washington to be an oxymoron—was apparent also in an interview we filmed for the campaign during which he reflected on the children’s health care law he had helped pass during the Clinton administration. Speaking as the parent of three small children, Rahm’s eyes filled with tears when he talked about what the new law had meant to millions of children and families. We turned that interview into an ad. In another, a world-weary Chicago police sergeant named Les Smulevitz spoke approvingly of Rahm’s work on Clinton’s crime bill, and closed with a twist: “And I’d tell you that even if I weren’t his uncle.” The surprising fact that Rahm’s uncle Les was a cop on the Northwest Side of Chicago was no small matter in a district that was home to thousands of police officers and firefighters.

In the end, the “heat-seeking missile” hit its target. Rahm won the primary by a comfortable margin, and went on to a landslide in the general election.

My central focus that year was Tom Vilsack’s reelection campaign in Iowa.

Vilsack had been a fine governor. He had followed through on his commitments to expand early childhood education and to strengthen the state’s community colleges. He had expanded health care for children and promoted the production of wind energy and biofuels, which meant jobs for Iowans and new opportunities for Iowa farmers. Yet like every governor elected in 1998, when the economy was booming, Vilsack was facing a serious challenge now that the country was mired in recession. So, five months before the election, Vilsack trailed the most likely Republican nominee, Doug Gross (former chief of staff to longtime governor Terry Branstad), by nine points in our polls. Gross had hired Mike Murphy, an incisive and creative Republican media consultant with whom I had tangled before, and lost. It was going to be a war.

I knew we couldn’t play defense or simply tout Vilsack’s accomplishments when far fewer than 50 percent of voters approved of his performance in our own polling. We had to shine a bright light on the alternative, and Gross was an inviting target. Since leaving government, he had become a leading lawyer-lobbyist in Des Moines. Among his clients were the widely reviled corporate hog confinements that were springing up, polluting local communities and putting family hog farmers out of business. Even before the Republican primary in June, we were hammering Gross with testimonials from Iowans who had been victimized by the hog confinements and Gross’s heavy-handed advocacy for them. By August, we had begun to seize control of the race, but when I visited Vilsack at the governor’s mansion to prep him for a film shoot, he seemed not to have gotten that news.

“You don’t have to sugarcoat it,” said the governor, who was given to bouts of gloominess, and was more apt to believe erroneous public polling that showed him behind than his own. “I’ve already told Christie and the boys that we’re probably going to lose.”

“Lose?” I said in disbelief. “Tom, we’re kicking this guy’s ass. We’re not going to lose!”

On Election Day, Vilsack beat Gross by eight points. Of the eleven new Democratic governors elected in 1998, only Vilsack and California’s Gray Davis survived—and Davis lost a recall vote the following year.

As the Iowa votes were being cast, I got an e-mail of surrender from my counterpart Murphy, who had become both a fierce competitor and a close friend. “Well, old buddy, it looks like you’re going to win the Iowa Cup this year,” read Murphy’s gracious note. “It turns out that hog shit sticks to my guy like Velcro.”

 • • • 

As I oversaw Iowa and our other 2002 races, I kept a close eye on the emerging 2004 U.S. Senate race in Illinois. It was still an uphill struggle for Obama, but I could see a path to a primary victory if he forged the same black-liberal coalition that had propelled Carol Moseley Braun to the Senate in 1992. There was one major obstacle: Carol Moseley Braun.

After a brief stint as ambassador to New Zealand and a failed attempt at nut farming in Georgia, Moseley Braun had returned to Chicago to explore the possibility of seeking her old seat. While she lacked the support to win a general election, Moseley Braun still retained the loyalty of elements of her old coalition. If she were to run, Obama’s path would be blocked, and he knew it.

A primary poll Obama had commissioned in the spring made this abundantly clear. In it, Moseley Braun led a crowded field with 31 percent of the vote, fueled by overwhelming support among African Americans. Obama was at a mere 6 percent, just outside the poll’s margin of error. (Obama’s pollster, Paul Harstad, had also probed whether Obama might have better luck campaigning under his childhood nickname of Barry, the theory being that one exotic name was enough of a challenge. While the poll bore this out, Obama laughed it off. “That’s fine, but my name’s Barack,” he said.) The bottom line was clear, and Obama, having been schooled by Bobby Rush so recently, knew it. He was not about to take on another well-known icon of the black community. “The ball’s pretty much in Carol’s court,” he said. “If she runs, I don’t really have a shot.”

I began offering Barack advice informally that fall as he positioned himself for a campaign that might not materialize. One of the first issues on which he sought my counsel would turn out to be pivotal to the Senate race and Obama’s future—though neither of us realized it at the time. The U.S. Senate was about to consider the authorization of military action in Iraq. Days before the vote, Bettylu Saltzman invited Barack to speak at a small antiwar rally in front of a federal building in downtown Chicago. The question was, should he accept? Most of the other potential Democratic candidates were either silent or supporting President Bush’s war resolution, which was polling well in the feverish, post-9/11 climate. Obama’s inclination was to weigh in on the other side. He was convinced the war would be a mistake, yet he still wanted my read on the politics of an antiwar stance.

Pete Giangreco, a Chicago-based direct mail consultant and longtime collaborator of mine, was also on the call. Pete, one of the lead strategists for Blagojevich, knew the state well, and was no shrinking violet. Built like a bulldog, he had a personality to match. On this, however, he was nervous. “This Iraq thing is pretty popular,” Giangreco said. “You’ll fire up the Left, but long term, it’s risky.”

I argued that the long term didn’t mean much if Obama didn’t win the Democratic primary. “The folks we need to win this primary, the folks who would support you—they’re going to strongly oppose this war,” I said.

Barack took in the discussion, and made his decision. “Well, I don’t believe this war is a good idea, and I’m very comfortable saying so,” he said. “The folks who invited me are good friends and supporters we’re going to be counting on. I think I should go.”

The next day, Susan and my younger son, Ethan, now in high school, attended the rally with a few thousand others. I didn’t show up, nor did I send a crew to tape it. Years later I would kick myself for that decision. “Boy, Barack made a great speech,” Susan reported that evening. “I think he did really well.”

Looking back, Obama had delivered one of the most cogent arguments offered anywhere against the resolution the Senate would overwhelmingly pass nine days later. Arguing that war sometimes was necessary and unavoidable, Obama told the crowd that the looming invasion of Iraq did not pass the test.

“I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences,” he told the crowd. “I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda.

“I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”

It was one of my early insights into the capabilities of this relatively green but promising candidate. Viewing the rally as more of a throwaway than a seminal event, I did not even ask to see his remarks beforehand. Overnight, he had produced a brilliantly reasoned, elegantly stated critique of the war strategy, and had delivered it with power and conviction. His declaration that he was not opposed to all wars, just “dumb” wars, was both genuine and shrewd. It reflected his thinking, but also prevented opponents, then and in the future, from disqualifying him as a knee-jerk pacifist.