Prologue
IT’S BEEN ALMOST ten years since I first ran for political office. I was thirty-five atthe time, four years out of law school, recently married, and generally impatient withlife. A seat in the Illinois legislature had opened up, and several friends suggested that Irun, thinking that my work as a civil rights lawyer, and contacts from my days as acommunity organizer, would make me a viable candidate. After discussing it with mywife, I entered the race and proceeded to do what every first-time candidate does: Italked to anyone who would listen. I went to block club meetings and church socials,beauty shops and barbershops. If two guys were standing on a corner, I would cross thestreet to hand them campaign literature. And everywhere I went, I’d get some version ofthe same two questions.
　　“Where’d you get that funny name?”
　　And then: “You seem like a nice enough guy. Why do you want to go into somethingdirty and nasty like politics?”
　　I was familiar with the question, a variant on the questions asked of me years earlier,when I’d first arrived in Chicago to work in low-income neighborhoods. It signaled acynicism not simply with politics but with the very notion of a public life, a cynicismthat—at least in the South Side neighborhoods I sought to represent—had beennourished by a generation of broken promises. In response, I would usually smile andnod and say that I understood the skepticism, but that there was—and always hadbeen—another tradition to politics, a tradition that stretched from the days of thecountry’s founding to the glory of the civil rights movement, a tradition based on thesimple idea that we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together isgreater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of thatproposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can getsomething meaningful done.
　　It was a pretty convincing speech, I thought. And although I’m not sure that the peoplewho heard me deliver it were similarly impressed, enough of them appreciated myearnestness and youthful swagger that I made it to the Illinois legislature.
　　SIX YEARS LATER, when I decided to run for the United States Senate, I wasn’t sosure of myself.
　　By all appearances, my choice of careers seemed to have worked out. After two termsduring which I labored in the minority, Democrats had gained control of the statesenate, and I had subsequently passed a slew of bills, from reforms of the Illinois deathpenalty system to an expansion of the state’s health program for kids. I had continued toteach at the University of Chicago Law School, a job I enjoyed, and was frequentlyinvited to speak around town. I had preserved my independence, my good name, andmy marriage, all of which, statistically speaking, had been placed at risk the moment Iset foot in the state capital.
　　But the years had also taken their toll. Some of it was just a function of my gettingolder, I suppose, for if you are paying attention, each successive year will make youmore intimately acquainted with all of your flaws—the blind spots, the recurring habitsof thought that may be genetic or may be environmental, but that will almost certainlyworsen with time, as surely as the hitch in your walk turns to pain in your hip. In me,one of those flaws had proven to be a chronic restlessness; an inability to appreciate, nomatter how well things were going, those blessings that were right there in front of me.
　　It’s a flaw that is endemic to modern life, I think—endemic, too, in the Americancharacter—and one that is nowhere more evident than in the field of politics. Whetherpolitics actually encourages the trait or simply attracts those who possess it is unclear.
　　Someone once said that every man is trying to either live up to his father’s expectationsor make up for his father’s mistakes, and I suppose that may explain my particularmalady as well as anything else.
　　In any event, it was as a consequence of that restlessness that I decided to challenge asitting Democratic incumbent for his congressional seat in the 2000 election cycle. Itwas an ill-considered race, and I lost badly—the sort of drubbing that awakens you tothe fact that life is not obliged to work out as you’d planned. A year and a half later, thescars of that loss sufficiently healed, I had lunch with a media consultant who had beenencouraging me for some time to run for statewide office. As it happened, the lunch wasscheduled for late September 2001.
　　“You realize, don’t you, that the political dynamics have changed,” he said as he pickedat his salad.
　　“What do you mean?” I asked, knowing full well what he meant. We both looked downat the newspaper beside him. There, on the front page, was Osama bin Laden.
　　“Hell of a thing, isn’t it?” he said, shaking his head. “Really bad luck. You can’t changeyour name, of course. Voters are suspicious of that kind of thing. Maybe if you were atthe start of your career, you know, you could use a nickname or something. But now…”
　　His voice trailed off and he shrugged apologetically before signaling the waiter to bringus the check.
　　I suspected he was right, and that realization ate away at me. For the first time in mycareer, I began to experience the envy of seeing younger politicians succeed where I hadfailed, moving into higher offices, getting more things done. The pleasures of politics—the adrenaline of debate, the animal warmth of shaking hands and plunging into acrowd—began to pale against the meaner tasks of the job: the begging for money, thelong drives home after the banquet had run two hours longer than scheduled, the badfood and stale air and clipped phone conversations with a wife who had stuck by me sofar but was pretty fed up with raising our children alone and was beginning to questionmy priorities. Even the legislative work, the policy making that had gotten me to run inthe first place, began to feel too incremental, too removed from the larger battles—overtaxes, security, health care, and jobs—that were being waged on a national stage. Ibegan to harbor doubts about the path I had chosen; I began feeling the way I imaginean actor or athlete must feel when, after years of commitment to a particular dream,after years of waiting tables between auditions or scratching out hits in the minorleagues, he realizes that he’s gone just about as far as talent or fortune will take him.
　　The dream will not happen, and he now faces the choice of accepting this fact like agrownup and moving on to more sensible pursuits, or refusing the truth and ending upbitter, quarrelsome, and slightly pathetic.
　　DENIAL, ANGER, bargaining, despair—I’m not sure I went through all the stagesprescribed by the experts. At some point, though, I arrived at acceptance—of my limits,and, in a way, my mortality. I refocused on my work in the state senate and tooksatisfaction from the reforms and initiatives that my position afforded. I spent more timeat home, and watched my daughters grow, and properly cherished my wife, and thoughtabout my long-term financial obligations. I exercised, and read novels, and came toappreciate how the earth rotated around the sun and the seasons came and went withoutany particular exertions on my part.
　　And it was this acceptance, I think, that allowed me to come up with the thoroughlycockeyed idea of running for the United States Senate. An up-or-out strategy was how Idescribed it to my wife, one last shot to test out my ideas before I settled into a calmer,more stable, and better-paying existence. And she—perhaps more out of pity thanconviction—agreed to this one last race, though she also suggested that given theorderly life she preferred for our family, I shouldn’t necessarily count on her vote.
　　I let her take comfort in the long odds against me. The Republican incumbent, PeterFitzgerald, had spent $19 million of his personal wealth to unseat the previous senator,Carol Moseley Braun. He wasn’t widely popular; in fact he didn’t really seem to enjoypolitics all that much. But he still had unlimited money in his family, as well as agenuine integrity that had earned him grudging respect from the voters.
　　For a time Carol Moseley Braun reappeared, back from an ambassadorship in NewZealand and with thoughts of trying to reclaim her old seat; her possible candidacy putmy own plans on hold. When she decided to run for the presidency instead, everyoneelse started looking at the Senate race. By the time Fitzgerald announced he would notseek reelection, I was staring at six primary opponents, including the sitting statecomptroller; a businessman worth hundreds of millions of dollars; Chicago MayorRichard Daley’s former chief of staff; and a black, female health-care professional whothe smart money assumed would split the black vote and doom whatever slim chancesI’d had in the first place.
　　I didn’t care. Freed from worry by low expectations, my credibility bolstered by severalhelpful endorsements, I threw myself into the race with an energy and joy that I’dthought I had lost. I hired four staffers, all of them smart, in their twenties or earlythirties, and suitably cheap. We found a small office, printed letterhead, installed phonelines and several computers. Four or five hours a day, I called major Democratic donorsand tried to get my calls returned. I held press conferences to which nobody came. Wesigned up for the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade and were assigned the parade’s verylast slot, so my ten volunteers and I found ourselves marching just a few paces ahead ofthe city’s sanitation trucks, waving to the few stragglers who remained on the routewhile workers swept up garbage and peeled green shamrock stickers off the lampposts.
　　Mostly, though, I just traveled, often driving alone, first from ward to ward in Chicago,then from county to county and town to town, eventually up and down the state, pastmiles and miles of cornfields and beanfields and train tracks and silos. It wasn’t anefficient process. Without the machinery of the state’s Democratic Party organization,without any real mailing list or Internet operation, I had to rely on friends oracquaintances to open their houses to whoever might come, or to arrange for my visit totheir church, union hall, bridge group, or Rotary Club. Sometimes, after several hours ofdriving, I would find just two or three people waiting for me around a kitchen table. Iwould have to assure the hosts that the turnout was fine and compliment them on therefreshments they’d prepared. Sometimes I would sit through a church service and thepastor would forget to recognize me, or the head of the union local would let me speakto his members just before announcing that the union had decided to endorse someoneelse.
　　But whether I was meeting with two people or fifty, whether I was in one of the well-shaded, stately homes of the North Shore, a walk-up apartment on the West Side, or afarmhouse outside Bloomington, whether people were friendly, indifferent, oroccasionally hostile, I tried my best to keep my mouth shut and hear what they had tosay. I listened to people talk about their jobs, their businesses, the local school; theiranger at Bush and their anger at Democrats; their dogs, their back pain, their warservice, and the things they remembered from childhood. Some had well-developedtheories to explain the loss of manufacturing jobs or the high cost of health care. Somerecited what they had heard on Rush Limbaugh or NPR. But most of them were toobusy with work or their kids to pay much attention to politics, and they spoke instead ofwhat they saw before them: a plant closed, a promotion, a high heating bill, a parent in anursing home, a child’s first step.
　　No blinding insights emerged from these months of conversation. If anything, whatstruck me was just how modest people’s hopes were, and how much of what theybelieved seemed to hold constant across race, region, religion, and class. Most of themthought that anybody willing to work should be able to find a job that paid a livingwage. They figured that people shouldn’t have to file for bankruptcy because they gotsick. They believed that every child should have a genuinely good education—that itshouldn’t just be a bunch of talk—and that those same children should be able to go tocollege even if their parents weren’t rich. They wanted to be safe, from criminals andfrom terrorists; they wanted clean air, clean water, and time with their kids. And whenthey got old, they wanted to be able to retire with some dignity and respect.
　　That was about it. It wasn’t much. And although they understood that how they did inlife depended mostly on their own efforts—although they didn’t expect government tosolve all their problems, and certainly didn’t like seeing their tax dollars wasted—theyfigured that government should help.
　　I told them that they were right: government couldn’t solve all their problems. But witha slight change in priorities we could make sure every child had a decent shot at life andmeet the challenges we faced as a nation. More often than not, folks would nod inagreement and ask how they could get involved. And by the time I was back on theroad, with a map on the passenger’s seat, on my way to my next stop, I knew once againjust why I’d gone into politics.
　　I felt like working harder than I’d ever worked in my life.
　　THIS BOOK GROWS directly out of those conversations on the campaign trail. Notonly did my encounters with voters confirm the fundamental decency of the Americanpeople, they also reminded me that at the core of the American experience are a set ofideals that continue to stir our collective conscience; a common set of values that bindus together despite our differences; a running thread of hope that makes our improbableexperiment in democracy work. These values and ideals find expression not just in themarble slabs of monuments or in the recitation of history books. They remain alive inthe hearts and minds of most Americans—and can inspire us to pride, duty, andsacrifice.
　　I recognize the risks of talking this way. In an era of globalization and dizzyingtechnological change, cutthroat politics and unremitting culture wars, we don’t evenseem to possess a shared language with which to discuss our ideals, much less the toolsto arrive at some rough consensus about how, as a nation, we might work together tobring those ideals about. Most of us are wise to the ways of admen, pollsters,speechwriters, and pundits. We know how high-flying words can be deployed in theservice of cynical aims, and how the noblest sentiments can be subverted in the name ofpower, expedience, greed, or intolerance. Even the standard high school historytextbook notes the degree to which, from its very inception, the reality of American lifehas strayed from its myths. In such a climate, any assertion of shared ideals or commonvalues might seem hopelessly na.ve, if not downright dangerous—an attempt to glossover serious differences in policy and performance or, worse, a means of muffling thecomplaints of those who feel ill served by our current institutional arrangements.
　　My argument, however, is that we have no choice. You don’t need a poll to know thatthe vast majority of Americans—Republican, Democrat, and independent—are wearyof the dead zone that politics has become, in which narrow interests vie for advantageand ideological minorities seek to impose their own versions of absolute truth. Whetherwe’re from red states or blue states, we feel in our gut the lack of honesty, rigor, andcommon sense in our policy debates, and dislike what appears to be a continuous menuof false or cramped choices. Religious or secular, black, white, or brown, we sense—correctly—that the nation’s most significant challenges are being ignored, and that if wedon’t change course soon, we may be the first generation in a very long time that leavesbehind a weaker and more fractured America than the one we inherited. Perhaps morethan any other time in our recent history, we need a new kind of politics, one that canexcavate and build upon those shared understandings that pull us together as Americans.
　　That’s the topic of this book: how we might begin the process of changing our politicsand our civic life. This isn’t to say that I know exactly how to do it. I don’t. Although Idiscuss in each chapter a number of our most pressing policy challenges, and suggest inbroad strokes the path I believe we should follow, my treatment of the issues is oftenpartial and incomplete. I offer no unifying theory of American government, nor do thesepages provide a manifesto for action, complete with charts and graphs, timetables andten-point plans.
　　Instead what I offer is something more modest: personal reflections on those values andideals that have led me to public life, some thoughts on the ways that our currentpolitical discourse unnecessarily divides us, and my own best assessment—based on myexperience as a senator and lawyer, husband and father, Christian and skeptic—of theways we can ground our politics in the notion of a common good.
　　Let me be more specific about how the book is organized. Chapter One takes stock ofour recent political history and tries to explain some of the sources for today’s bitterpartisanship. In Chapter Two, I discuss those common values that might serve as thefoundation for a new political consensus. Chapter Three explores the Constitution notjust as a source of individual rights, but also as a means of organizing a democraticconversation around our collective future. In Chapter Four, I try to convey some of theinstitutional forces—money, media, interest groups, and the legislative process—thatstifle even the best-intentioned politician. And in the remaining five chapters, I suggesthow we might move beyond our divisions to effectively tackle concrete problems: thegrowing economic insecurity of many American families, the racial and religioustensions within the body politic, and the transnational threats—from terrorism topandemic—that gather beyond our shores.
　　I suspect that some readers may find my presentation of these issues to be insufficientlybalanced. To this accusation, I stand guilty as charged. I am a Democrat, after all; myviews on most topics correspond more closely to the editorial pages of the New YorkTimes than those of the Wall Street Journal. I am angry about policies that consistentlyfavor the wealthy and powerful over average Americans, and insist that government hasan important role in opening up opportunity to all. I believe in evolution, scientificinquiry, and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct orpolitically incorrect, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody’sreligious beliefs—including my own—on nonbelievers. Furthermore, I am a prisoner ofmy own biography: I can’t help but view the American experience through the lens of ablack man of mixed heritage, forever mindful of how generations of people who lookedlike me were subjugated and stigmatized, and the subtle and not so subtle ways that raceand class continue to shape our lives.
　　But that is not all that I am. I also think my party can be smug, detached, and dogmaticat times. I believe in the free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think nosmall number of government programs don’t work as advertised. I wish the country hadfewer lawyers and more engineers. I think America has more often been a force forgood than for ill in the world; I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere thecourage and competence of our military. I reject a politics that is based solely on racialidentity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or victimhood generally. I think much ofwhat ails the inner city involves a breakdown in culture that will not be cured by moneyalone, and that our values and spiritual life matter at least as much as our GDP.
　　Undoubtedly, some of these views will get me in trouble. I am new enough on thenational political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly differentpolitical stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if notall, of them. Which perhaps indicates a second, more intimate theme to this book—namely, how I, or anybody in public office, can avoid the pitfalls of fame, the hunger toplease, the fear of loss, and thereby retain that kernel of truth, that singular voice withineach of us that reminds us of our deepest commitments.
　　Recently, one of the reporters covering Capitol Hill stopped me on the way to my officeand mentioned that she had enjoyed reading my first book. “I wonder,” she said, “if youcan be that interesting in the next one you write.” By which she meant, I wonder if youcan be honest now that you are a U.S. senator.
　　I wonder, too, sometimes. I hope writing this book helps me answer the question.
Chapter 1 Republicans and Democrats
ON MOST DAYS, I enter the Capitol through the basement. A small subway traincarries me from the Hart Building, where my office is located, through an undergroundtunnel lined with the flags and seals of the fifty states. The train creaks to a halt and Imake my way, past bustling staffers, maintenance crews, and the occasional tour group,to the bank of old elevators that takes me to the second floor. Stepping off, I weavearound the swarm of press that normally gathers there, say hello to the Capitol Police,and enter, through a stately set of double doors, onto the floor of the U.S. Senate.
　　The Senate chamber is not the most beautiful space in the Capitol, but it is imposingnonetheless. The dun-colored walls are set off by panels of blue damask and columns offinely veined marble. Overhead, the ceiling forms a creamy white oval, with anAmerican eagle etched in its center. Above the visitors’ gallery, the busts of the nation’sfirst twenty vice presidents sit in solemn repose.
　　And in gentle steps, one hundred mahogany desks rise from the well of the Senate infour horseshoe-shaped rows. Some of these desks date back to 1819, and atop each deskis a tidy receptacle for inkwells and quills. Open the drawer of any desk, and you willfind within the names of the senators who once used it—Taft and Long, Stennis andKennedy—scratched or penned in the senator’s own hand. Sometimes, standing there inthe chamber, I can imagine Paul Douglas or Hubert Humphrey at one of these desks,urging yet again the adoption of civil rights legislation; or Joe McCarthy, a few desksover, thumbing through lists, preparing to name names; or LBJ prowling the aisles,grabbing lapels and gathering votes. Sometimes I will wander over to the desk whereDaniel Webster once sat and imagine him rising before the packed gallery and hiscolleagues, his eyes blazing as he thunderously defends the Union against the forces ofsecession.
　　But these moments fade quickly. Except for the few minutes that it takes to vote, mycolleagues and I don’t spend much time on the Senate floor. Most of the decisions—about what bills to call and when to call them, about how amendments will be handledand how uncooperative senators will be made to cooperate—have been worked out wellin advance by the majority leader, the relevant committee chairman, their staffs, and(depending on the degree of controversy involved and the magnanimity of theRepublican handling the bill) their Democratic counterparts. By the time we reach thefloor and the clerk starts calling the roll, each of the senators will have determined—inconsultation with his or her staff, caucus leader, preferred lobbyists, interest groups,constituent mail, and ideological leanings—just how to position himself on the issue.
　　It makes for an efficient process, which is much appreciated by the members, who arejuggling twelve- or thirteen-hour schedules and want to get back to their offices to meetconstituents or return phone calls, to a nearby hotel to cultivate donors, or to thetelevision studio for a live interview. If you stick around, though, you may see one lonesenator standing at his desk after the others have left, seeking recognition to deliver astatement on the floor. It may be an explanation of a bill he’s introducing, or it may be abroader commentary on some unmet national challenge. The speaker’s voice may flarewith passion; his arguments—about cuts to programs for the poor, or obstructionism onjudicial appointments, or the need for energy independence—may be soundlyconstructed. But the speaker will be addressing a near-empty chamber: just thepresiding officer, a few staffers, the Senate reporter, and C-SPAN’s unblinking eye. Thespeaker will finish. A blue-uniformed page will silently gather the statement for theofficial record. Another senator may enter as the first one departs, and she will stand ather desk, seek recognition, and deliver her statement, repeating the ritual.
　　In the world’s greatest deliberative body, no one is listening.
　　I REMEMBER January 4, 2005—the day that I and a third of the Senate were sworn inas members of the 109th Congress—as a beautiful blur. The sun was bright, the airunseasonably warm. From Illinois, Hawaii, London, and Kenya, my family and friendscrowded into the Senate visitors’ gallery to cheer as my new colleagues and I stoodbeside the marble dais and raised our right hands to take the oath of office. In the OldSenate Chamber, I joined my wife, Michelle, and our two daughters for a reenactmentof the ceremony and picture-taking with Vice President Cheney (true to form, then six-year-old Malia demurely shook the vice president’s hand, while then three-year-oldSasha decided instead to slap palms with the man before twirling around to wave for thecameras). Afterward, I watched the girls skip down the east Capitol steps, their pink andred dresses lifting gently in the air, the Supreme Court’s white columns a majesticbackdrop for their games. Michelle and I took their hands, and together the four of uswalked to the Library of Congress, where we met a few hundred well-wishers who hadtraveled in for the day, and spent the next several hours in a steady stream ofhandshakes, hugs, photographs, and autographs.
　　A day of smiles and thanks, of decorum and pageantry—that’s how it must have seemedto the Capitol’s visitors. But if all of Washington was on its best behavior that day,collectively pausing to affirm the continuity of our democracy, there remained a certainstatic in the air, an awareness that the mood would not last. After the family and friendswent home, after the receptions ended and the sun slid behind winter’s gray shroud,what would linger over the city was the certainty of a single, seemingly inalterable fact:
　　The country was divided, and so Washington was divided, more divided politically thanat any time since before World War II.
　　Both the presidential election and various statistical measures appeared to bear out theconventional wisdom. Across the spectrum of issues, Americans disagreed: on Iraq,taxes, abortion, guns, the Ten Commandments, gay marriage, immigration, trade,education policy, environmental regulation, the size of government, and the role of thecourts. Not only did we disagree, but we disagreed vehemently, with partisans on eachside of the divide unrestrained in the vitriol they hurled at opponents. We disagreed onthe scope of our disagreements, the nature of our disagreements, and the reasons for ourdisagreements. Everything was contestable, whether it was the cause of climate changeor the fact of climate change, the size of the deficit or the culprits to blame for thedeficit.
　　For me, none of this was entirely surprising. From a distance, I had followed theescalating ferocity of Washington’s political battles: Iran-Contra and Ollie North, theBork nomination and Willie Horton, Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, the Clintonelection and the Gingrich Revolution, Whitewater and the Starr investigation, thegovernment shutdown and impeachment, dangling chads and Bush v. Gore. With therest of the public, I had watched campaign culture metastasize throughout the bodypolitic, as an entire industry of insult—both perpetual and somehow profitable—emerged to dominate cable television, talk radio, and the New York Times best-sellerlist.
　　And for eight years in the Illinois legislature, I had gotten some taste of how the gamehad come to be played. By the time I arrived in Springfield in 1997, the Illinois Senate’sRepublican majority had adopted the same rules that Speaker Gingrich was then usingto maintain absolute control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Without the capacityto get even the most modest amendment debated, much less passed, Democrats wouldshout and holler and fulminate, and then stand by helplessly as Republicans passedlarge corporate tax breaks, stuck it to labor, or slashed social services. Over time, animplacable anger spread through the Democratic Caucus, and my colleagues wouldcarefully record every slight and abuse meted out by the GOP. Six years later,Democrats took control, and Republicans fared no better. Some of the older veteranswould wistfully recall the days when Republicans and Democrats met at night fordinner, hashing out a compromise over steaks and cigars. But even among these oldbulls, such fond memories rapidly dimmed the first time the other side’s politicaloperatives selected them as targets, flooding their districts with mail accusing them ofmalfeasance, corruption, incompetence, and moral turpitude.
　　I don’t claim to have been a passive bystander in all this. I understood politics as a full-contact sport, and minded neither the sharp elbows nor the occasional blind-side hit. Butoccupying as I did an ironclad Democratic district, I was spared the worst of Republicaninvective. Occasionally, I would partner up with even my most conservative colleaguesto work on a piece of legislation, and over a poker game or a beer we might concludethat we had more in common than we publicly cared to admit. Which perhaps explainswhy, throughout my years in Springfield, I had clung to the notion that politics could bedifferent, and that the voters wanted something different; that they were tired ofdistortion, name-calling, and sound-bite solutions to complicated problems; that if Icould reach those voters directly, frame the issues as I felt them, explain the choices inas truthful a fashion as I knew how, then the people’s instincts for fair play and commonsense would bring them around. If enough of us took that risk, I thought, not only thecountry’s politics but the country’s policies would change for the better.
　　It was with that mind-set that I had entered the 2004 U.S. Senate race. For the durationof the campaign I did my best to say what I thought, keep it clean, and focus onsubstance. When I won the Democratic primary and then the general election, both bysizable margins, it was tempting to believe that I had proven my point.
　　There was just one problem: My campaign had gone so well that it looked like a fluke.
　　Political observers would note that in a field of seven Democratic primary candidates,not one of us ran a negative TV ad. The wealthiest candidate of all—a former traderworth at least $300 million—spent $28 million, mostly on a barrage of positive ads,only to flame out in the final weeks due to an unflattering divorce file that the press gotunsealed. My Republican opponent, a handsome and wealthy former Goldman Sachspartner turned inner-city teacher, started attacking my record almost from the start, butbefore his campaign could get off the ground, he was felled by a divorce scandal of hisown. For the better part of a month, I traveled Illinois without drawing fire, before beingselected to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention—seventeen minutes of unfiltered, uninterrupted airtime on national television. Andfinally the Illinois Republican Party inexplicably chose as my opponent formerpresidential candidate Alan Keyes, a man who had never lived in Illinois and whoproved so fierce and unyielding in his positions that even conservative Republicanswere scared of him.
　　Later, some reporters would declare me the luckiest politician in the entire fifty states.
　　Privately, some of my staff bristled at this assessment, feeling that it discounted ourhard work and the appeal of our message. Still, there was no point in denying my almostspooky good fortune. I was an outlier, a freak; to political insiders, my victory provednothing.
　　No wonder then that upon my arrival in Washington that January, I felt like the rookiewho shows up after the game, his uniform spotless, eager to play, even as his mud-splattered teammates tend to their wounds. While I had been busy with interviews andphoto shoots, full of high-minded ideas about the need for less partisanship andacrimony, Democrats had been beaten across the board—the presidency, Senate seats,House seats. My new Democratic colleagues could not have been more welcomingtoward me; one of our few bright spots, they would call my victory. In the corridors,though, or during a lull in the action on the floor, they’d pull me aside and remind me ofwhat typical Senate campaigns had come to look like.
　　They told me about their fallen leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, who had seenmillions of dollars’ worth of negative ads rain down on his head—full-page newspaperads and television spots informing his neighbors day after day that he supported baby-killing and men in wedding gowns, a few even suggesting that he’d treated his first wifebadly, despite the fact that she had traveled to South Dakota to help him get reelected.
　　They recalled Max Cleland, the former Georgia incumbent, a triple-amputee warveteran who had lost his seat in the previous cycle after being accused of insufficientpatriotism, of aiding and abetting Osama bin Laden.
　　And then there was the small matter of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: the shockingefficiency with which a few well-placed ads and the chants of conservative media couldtransform a decorated Vietnam war hero into a weak-kneed appeaser.
　　No doubt there were Republicans who felt similarly abused. And perhaps the newspapereditorials that appeared that first week of session were right; perhaps it was time to putthe election behind us, for both parties to store away their animosities and ammunitionand, for a year or two at least, get down to governing the country. Maybe that wouldhave been possible had the elections not been so close, or had the war in Iraq not beenstill raging, or had the advocacy groups, pundits, and all manner of media not stood togain by stirring the pot. Maybe peace would have broken out with a different kind ofWhite House, one less committed to waging a perpetual campaign—a White House thatwould see a 51-48 victory as a call to humility and compromise rather than anirrefutable mandate.
　　But whatever conditions might have been required for such a détente, they did not existin 2005. There would be no concessions, no gestures of goodwill. Two days after theelection, President Bush appeared before cameras and declared that he had politicalcapital to spare and he intended to use it. That same day, conservative activist GroverNorquist, unconstrained by the decorum of public office, observed, in connection withthe Democrats’ situation, that “any farmer will tell you that certain animals run aroundand are unpleasant, but when they’ve been fixed, then they are happy and sedate.” Twodays after my swearing in, Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones, out of Cleveland,stood up in the House of Representatives to challenge the certification of Ohio electors,citing the litany of voting irregularities that had taken place in the state on Election Day.
　　Rank-and-file Republicans scowled (“Sore losers,” I could hear a few mutter), butSpeaker Hastert and Majority Leader DeLay gazed stone-faced from the heights of thedais, placid in the knowledge that they had both the votes and the gavel. SenatorBarbara Boxer of California agreed to sign the challenge, and when we returned to theSenate chamber, I found myself casting my first vote, along with seventy-three of theseventy-four others voting that day, to install George W. Bush for a second term aspresident of the United States.
　　I would get my first big batch of phone calls and negative mail after this vote. I calledback some of my disgruntled Democratic supporters, assuring them that yes, I wasfamiliar with the problems in Ohio, and yes, I thought an investigation was in order, butyes, I still believed George Bush had won the election, and no, as far as I could tell Ididn’t think I had either sold out or been co-opted after a mere two days on the job. Thatsame week, I happened to run into retiring Senator Zell Miller, the lean, sharp-eyedGeorgia Democrat and NRA board member who had gone sour on the DemocraticParty, endorsed George Bush, and delivered the blistering keynote address at theRepublican National Convention—a no-holds-barred rant against the perfidy of JohnKerry and his supposed weakness on national security. Ours was a brief exchange, filledwith unspoken irony—the elderly Southerner on his way out, the young blackNortherner on his way in, the contrast that the press had noted in our respectiveconvention speeches. Senator Miller was very gracious and wished me luck with mynew job. Later, I would happen upon an excerpt from his book, A Deficit of Decency, inwhich he called my speech at the convention one of the best he’d ever heard, beforenoting—with what I imagined to be a sly smile—that it may not have been the mosteffective speech in terms of helping to win an election.
　　In other words: My guy had lost. Zell Miller’s guy had won. That was the hard, coldpolitical reality. Everything else was just sentiment.
　　MY WIFE WILL tell you that by nature I’m not somebody who gets real worked upabout things. When I see Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity baying across the televisionscreen, I find it hard to take them seriously; I assume that they must be saying what theydo primarily to boost book sales or ratings, although I do wonder who would spend theirprecious evenings with such sourpusses. When Democrats rush up to me at events andinsist that we live in the worst of political times, that a creeping fascism is closing itsgrip around our throats, I may mention the internment of Japanese Americans underFDR, the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams, or a hundred years of lynchingunder several dozen administrations as having been possibly worse, and suggest we alltake a deep breath. When people at dinner parties ask me how I can possibly operate inthe current political environment, with all the negative campaigning and personalattacks, I may mention Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or some guy in aChinese or Egyptian prison somewhere. In truth, being called names is not such a baddeal.
　　Still, I am not immune to distress. And like most Americans, I find it hard to shake thefeeling these days that our democracy has gone seriously awry.
　　It’s not simply that a gap exists between our professed ideals as a nation and the realitywe witness every day. In one form or another, that gap has existed since America’sbirth. Wars have been fought, laws passed, systems reformed, unions organized, andprotests staged to bring promise and practice into closer alignment.
　　No, what’s troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and thesmallness of our politics—the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial,our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a workingconsensus to tackle any big problem.
　　We know that global competition—not to mention any genuine commitment to thevalues of equal opportunity and upward mobility—requires us to revamp oureducational system from top to bottom, replenish our teaching corps, buckle down onmath and science instruction, and rescue inner-city kids from illiteracy. And yet ourdebate on education seems stuck between those who want to dismantle the public schoolsystem and those who would defend an indefensible status quo, between those who saymoney makes no difference in education and those who want more money without anydemonstration that it will be put to good use.
　　We know that our health-care system is broken: wildly expensive, terribly inefficient,and poorly adapted to an economy no longer built on lifetime employment, a systemthat exposes hardworking Americans to chronic insecurity and possible destitution. Butyear after year, ideology and political gamesmanship result in inaction, except for 2003,when we got a prescription drug bill that somehow managed to combine the worstaspects of the public and private sectors—price gouging and bureaucratic confusion,gaps in coverage and an eye-popping bill for taxpayers.
　　We know that the battle against international terrorism is at once an armed struggle anda contest of ideas, that our long-term security depends on both a judicious projection ofmilitary power and increased cooperation with other nations, and that addressing theproblems of global poverty and failed states is vital to our nation’s interests rather thanjust a matter of charity. But follow most of our foreign policy debates, and you mightbelieve that we have only two choices—belligerence or isolationism.
　　We think of faith as a source of comfort and understanding but find our expressions offaith sowing division; we believe ourselves to be a tolerant people even as racial,religious, and cultural tensions roil the landscape. And instead of resolving thesetensions or mediating these conflicts, our politics fans them, exploits them, and drivesus further apart.
　　Privately, those of us in government will acknowledge this gap between the politics wehave and the politics we need. Certainly Democrats aren’t happy with the currentsituation, since for the moment at least they are on the losing side, dominated byRepublicans who, thanks to winner-take-all elections, control every branch ofgovernment and feel no need to compromise. Thoughtful Republicans shouldn’t be toosanguine, though, for if the Democrats have had trouble winning, it appears that theRepublicans—having won elections on the basis of pledges that often defy reality (taxcuts without service cuts, privatization of Social Security with no change in benefits,war without sacrifice)—cannot govern.
　　And yet publicly it’s difficult to find much soul-searching or introspection on either sideof the divide, or even the slightest admission of responsibility for the gridlock. What wehear instead, not only in campaigns but on editorial pages, on bookstands, or in theever-expanding blog universe, are deflections of criticism and assignments of blame.
　　Depending on your tastes, our condition is the natural result of radical conservatism orperverse liberalism, Tom DeLay or Nancy Pelosi, big oil or greedy trial lawyers,religious zealots or gay activists, Fox News or the New York Times. How well thesestories are told, the subtlety of the arguments and the quality of the evidence, will varyby author, and I won’t deny my preference for the story the Democrats tell, nor mybelief that the arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact. Indistilled form, though, the explanations of both the right and the left have becomemirror images of each other. They are stories of conspiracy, of America being hijackedby an evil cabal. Like all good conspiracy theories, both tales contain just enough truthto satisfy those predisposed to believe in them, without admitting any contradictionsthat might shake up those assumptions. Their purpose is not to persuade the other sidebut to keep their bases agitated and assured of the rightness of their respective causes—and lure just enough new adherents to beat the other side into submission.
　　Of course, there is another story to be told, by the millions of Americans who are goingabout their business every day. They are on the job or looking for work, startingbusinesses, helping their kids with their homework, and struggling with high gas bills,insufficient health insurance, and a pension that some bankruptcy court somewhere hasrendered unenforceable. They are by turns hopeful and frightened about the future.
　　Their lives are full of contradictions and ambiguities. And because politics seems tospeak so little to what they are going through—because they understand that politicstoday is a business and not a mission, and what passes for debate is little more thanspectacle—they turn inward, away from the noise and rage and endless chatter.
　　A government that truly represents these Americans—that truly serves theseAmericans—will require a different kind of politics. That politics will need to reflectour lives as they are actually lived. It won’t be prepackaged, ready to pull off the shelf.
　　It will have to be constructed from the best of our traditions and will have to account forthe darker aspects of our past. We will need to understand just how we got to this place,this land of warring factions and tribal hatreds. And we will need to remind ourselves,despite all our differences, just how much we share: common hopes, common dreams, abond that will not break.
　　ONE OF THE first things I noticed upon my arrival in Washington was the relativecordiality among the Senate’s older members: the unfailing courtesy that governedevery interaction between John Warner and Robert Byrd, or the genuine bond offriendship between Republican Ted Stevens and Democrat Daniel Inouye. It iscommonly said that these men represent the last of a dying breed, men who not onlylove the Senate but who embody a less sharply partisan brand of politics. And in fact itis one of the few things that conservative and liberal commentators agree on, this idea ofa time before the fall, a golden age in Washington when, regardless of which party wasin power, civility reigned and government worked.
　　At a reception one evening, I started a conversation with an old Washington hand whohad served in and around the Capitol for close to fifty years. I asked him what hethought accounted for the difference in atmosphere between then and now.
　　“It’s generational,” he told me without hesitation. “Back then, almost everybody withany power in Washington had served in World War II. We might’ve fought like cats anddogs on issues. A lot of us came from different backgrounds, different neighborhoods,different political philosophies. But with the war, we all had something in common.
　　That shared experience developed a certain trust and respect. It helped to work throughour differences and get things done.”
　　As I listened to the old man reminisce, about Dwight Eisenhower and Sam Rayburn,Dean Acheson and Everett Dirksen, it was hard not to get swept up in the hazy portraithe painted, of a time before twenty-four-hour news cycles and nonstop fund-raising, atime of serious men doing serious work. I had to remind myself that his fondness forthis bygone era involved a certain selective memory: He had airbrushed out of thepicture the images of the Southern Caucus denouncing proposed civil rights legislationfrom the floor of the Senate; the insidious power of McCarthyism; the numbing povertythat Bobby Kennedy would help highlight before his death; the absence of women andminorities in the halls of power.
　　I realized, too, that a set of unique circumstances had underwritten the stability of thegoverning consensus of which he had been a part: not just the shared experiences of thewar, but also the near unanimity forged by the Cold War and the Soviet threat, andperhaps more important, the unrivaled dominance of the American economy during thefifties and sixties, as Europe and Japan dug themselves out of the postwar rubble.
　　Still, there’s no denying that American politics in the post-World War II years was farless ideological—and the meaning of party affiliation far more amorphous—than it istoday. The Democratic coalition that controlled Congress through most of those yearswas an amalgam of Northern liberals like Hubert Humphrey, conservative SouthernDemocrats like James Eastland, and whatever loyalists the big-city machines cared toelevate. What held this coalition together was the economic populism of the NewDeal—a vision of fair wages and benefits, patronage and public works, and an ever-rising standard of living. Beyond that, the party cultivated a certain live-and-let-livephilosophy: a philosophy anchored in acquiescence toward or active promotion of racialoppression in the South; a philosophy that depended on a broader culture in whichsocial norms—the nature of sexuality, say, or the role of women—were largelyunquestioned; a culture that did not yet possess the vocabulary to force discomfort,much less political dispute, around such issues.
　　Throughout the fifties and early sixties, the GOP, too, tolerated all sorts of philosophicalfissures—between the Western libertarianism of Barry Goldwater and the Easternpaternalism of Nelson Rockefeller; between those who recalled the Republicanism ofAbraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, with its embrace of federal activism, and thosewho followed the conservatism of Edmund Burke, with its preference of tradition tosocial experimentation. Accommodating these regional and temperamental differences,on civil rights, federal regulation, or even taxes, was neither neat nor tidy. But as withthe Democrats, it was mainly economic interests that bound the GOP together, aphilosophy of free markets and fiscal restraint that could appeal to all its constituentparts, from the Main Street storekeeper to the country-club corporate manager.
　　(Republicans may have also embraced a more fervid brand of anticommunism in thefifties, but as John F. Kennedy helped to prove, Democrats were more than willing tocall and raise the GOP on that score whenever an election rolled around.)It was the sixties that upended these political alignments, for reasons and in ways thathave been well chronicled. First the civil rights movement arrived, a movement thateven in its early, halcyon days fundamentally challenged the existing social structureand forced Americans to choose sides. Ultimately Lyndon Johnson chose the right sideof this battle, but as a son of the South, he understood better than most the cost involvedwith that choice: upon signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he would tell aide BillMoyers that with the stroke of a pen he had just delivered the South to the GOP for theforeseeable future.
　　Then came the student protests against the Vietnam War and the suggestion thatAmerica was not always right, our actions not always justified—that a new generationwould not pay any price or bear any burden that its elders might dictate.
　　And then, with the walls of the status quo breached, every form of “outsider” camestreaming through the gates: feminists, Latinos, hippies, Panthers, welfare moms, gays,all asserting their rights, all insisting on recognition, all demanding a seat at the tableand a piece of the pie.
　　It would take several years for the logic of these movements to play itself out. Nixon’sSouthern strategy, his challenge to court-ordered busing and appeal to the silentmajority, paid immediate electoral dividends. But his governing philosophy nevercongealed into a firm ideology—it was Nixon, after all, who initiated the first federalaffirmative action programs and signed the creation of the Environmental ProtectionAgency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration into law. Jimmy Carterwould prove it possible to combine support for civil rights with a more traditionallyconservative Democratic message; and despite defections from their ranks, mostSouthern Democratic congressmen who chose to stay in the party would retain theirseats on the strength of incumbency, helping Democrats maintain control of at least theHouse of Representatives.
　　But the country’s tectonic plates had shifted. Politics was no longer simply apocketbook issue but a moral issue as well, subject to moral imperatives and moralabsolutes. And politics was decidedly personal, insinuating itself into everyinteraction—whether between black and white, men and women—and implicating itselfin every assertion or rejection of authority.
　　Accordingly, liberalism and conservatism were now defined in the popular imaginationless by class than by attitude—the position you took toward the traditional culture andcounterculture. What mattered was not just how you felt about the right to strike orcorporate taxation, but also how you felt about sex, drugs, and rock and roll, the LatinMass or the Western canon. For white ethnic voters in the North, and whites generallyin the South, this new liberalism made little sense. The violence in the streets and theexcuses for such violence in intellectual circles, blacks moving next door and white kidsbused across town, the burning of flags and spitting on vets, all of it seemed to insultand diminish, if not assault, those things—family, faith, flag, neighborhood, and, forsome at least, white privilege—that they held most dear. And when, in the midst of thistopsy-turvy time, in the wake of assassinations and cities burning and Vietnam’s bitterdefeat, economic expansion gave way to gas lines and inflation and plant closings, andthe best Jimmy Carter could suggest was turning down the thermostat, even as a bunchof Iranian radicals added insult to OPEC’s injury—a big chunk of the New Dealcoalition began looking for another political home.
　　I’VE ALWAYS FELT a curious relationship to the sixties. In a sense, I’m a pureproduct of that era: As the child of a mixed marriage, my life would have beenimpossible, my opportunities entirely foreclosed, without the social upheavals that werethen taking place. But I was too young at the time to fully grasp the nature of thosechanges, too removed—living as I did in Hawaii and Indonesia—to see the fallout onAmerica’s psyche. Much of what I absorbed from the sixties was filtered through mymother, who to the end of her life would proudly proclaim herself an unreconstructedliberal. The civil rights movement, in particular, inspired her reverence; whenever theopportunity presented itself, she would drill into me the values that she saw there:
　　tolerance, equality, standing up for the disadvantaged.
　　In many ways, though, my mother’s understanding of the sixties was limited, both bydistance (she had left the mainland of the United States in 1960) and by her incorrigible,sweet-natured romanticism. Intellectually she might have tried to understand BlackPower or SDS or those women friends of hers who had stopped shaving their legs, butthe anger, the oppositional spirit, just wasn’t in her. Emotionally her liberalism wouldalways remain of a decidedly pre-1967 vintage, her heart a time capsule filled withimages of the space program, the Peace Corps and Freedom Rides, Mahalia Jackson andJoan Baez.
　　It was only as I got older, then, during the seventies, that I came to appreciate the degreeto which—for those who had experienced more directly some of the sixties’ seminalevents—things must have seemed to be spinning out of control. Partly I understood thisthrough the grumblings of my maternal grandparents, longtime Democrats who wouldadmit that they’d voted for Nixon in 1968, an act of betrayal that my mother never letthem live down. Mainly my understanding of the sixties came as a result of my owninvestigations, as my adolescent rebellion sought justification in the political andcultural changes that by then had already begun to ebb. In my teens, I became fascinatedwith the Dionysian, up-for-grabs quality of the era, and through books, film, and music,I soaked in a vision of the sixties very different from the one my mother talked about:
　　images of Huey Newton, the ’68 Democratic National Convention, the Saigon airlift,and the Stones at Altamont. If I had no immediate reasons to pursue revolution, Idecided nevertheless that in style and attitude I, too, could be a rebel, unconstrained bythe received wisdom of the over-thirty crowd.
　　Eventually, my rejection of authority spilled into self-indulgence and self-destructiveness, and by the time I enrolled in college, I’d begun to see how anychallenge to convention harbored within it the possibility of its own excesses and itsown orthodoxy. I started to reexamine my assumptions, and recalled the values mymother and grandparents had taught me. In this slow, fitful process of sorting out what Ibelieved, I began silently registering the point in dorm-room conversations when mycollege friends and I stopped thinking and slipped into cant: the point at which thedenunciations of capitalism or American imperialism came too easily, and the freedomfrom the constraints of monogamy or religion was proclaimed without fullyunderstanding the value of such constraints, and the role of victim was too readilyembraced as a means of shedding responsibility, or asserting entitlement, or claimingmoral superiority over those not so victimized.
　　All of which may explain why, as disturbed as I might have been by Ronald Reagan’selection in 1980, as unconvinced as I might have been by his John Wayne, FatherKnows Best pose, his policy by anecdote, and his gratuitous assaults on the poor, Iunderstood his appeal. It was the same appeal that the military bases back in Hawaii hadalways held for me as a young boy, with their tidy streets and well-oiled machinery, thecrisp uniforms and crisper salutes. It was related to the pleasure I still get from watchinga well-played baseball game, or my wife gets from watching reruns of The Dick VanDyke Show. Reagan spoke to America’s longing for order, our need to believe that weare not simply subject to blind, impersonal forces but that we can shape our individualand collective destinies, so long as we rediscover the traditional virtues of hard work,patriotism, personal responsibility, optimism, and faith.
　　That Reagan’s message found such a receptive audience spoke not only to his skills as acommunicator; it also spoke to the failures of liberal government, during a period ofeconomic stagnation, to give middle-class voters any sense that it was fighting for them.
　　For the fact was that government at every level had become too cavalier about spendingtaxpayer money. Too often, bureaucracies were oblivious to the cost of their mandates.
　　A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties andresponsibilities. Reagan may have exaggerated the sins of the welfare state, andcertainly liberals were right to complain that his domestic policies tilted heavily towardeconomic elites, with corporate raiders making tidy profits throughout the eighties whileunions were busted and the income for the average working stiff flatlined.
　　Nevertheless, by promising to side with those who worked hard, obeyed the law, caredfor their families, and loved their country, Reagan offered Americans a sense of acommon purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster. And the more his criticscarped, the more those critics played into the role he’d written for them—a band of out-of-touch, tax-and-spend, blame-America-first, politically correct elites.
　　WHAT I FIND remarkable is not that the political formula developed by Reaganworked at the time, but just how durable the narrative that he helped promote hasproven to be. Despite a forty-year remove, the tumult of the sixties and the subsequentbacklash continues to drive our political discourse. Partly it underscores how deeply feltthe conflicts of the sixties must have been for the men and women who came of age atthat time, and the degree to which the arguments of the era were understood not simplyas political disputes but as individual choices that defined personal identity and moralstanding.
　　I suppose it also highlights the fact that the flash-point issues of the sixties were neverfully resolved. The fury of the counterculture may have dissipated into consumerism,lifestyle choices, and musical preferences rather than political commitments, but theproblems of race, war, poverty, and relations between the sexes did not go away.
　　And maybe it just has to do with the sheer size of the Baby Boom generation, ademographic force that exerts the same gravitational pull in politics that it exerts oneverything else, from the market for Viagra to the number of cup holders automakersput in their cars.
　　Whatever the explanation, after Reagan the lines between Republican and Democrat,liberal and conservative, would be drawn in more sharply ideological terms. This wastrue, of course, for the hot-button issues of affirmative action, crime, welfare, abortion,and school prayer, all of which were extensions of earlier battles. But it was also nowtrue for every other issue, large or small, domestic or foreign, all of which were reducedto a menu of either-or, for-or-against, sound-bite-ready choices. No longer waseconomic policy a matter of weighing trade-offs between competing goals ofproductivity and distributional justice, of growing the pie and slicing the pie. You werefor either tax cuts or tax hikes, small government or big government. No longer wasenvironmental policy a matter of balancing sound stewardship of our natural resourceswith the demands of a modern economy; you either supported unchecked development,drilling, strip-mining, and the like, or you supported stifling bureaucracy and red tapethat choked off growth. In politics, if not in policy, simplicity was a virtue.
　　Sometimes I suspect that even the Republican leaders who immediately followedReagan weren’t entirely comfortable with the direction politics had taken. In the mouthsof men like George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole, the polarizing rhetoric and the politics ofresentment always seemed forced, a way of peeling off voters from the Democratic baseand not necessarily a recipe for governing.
　　But for a younger generation of conservative operatives who would soon rise to power,for Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove and Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, the fieryrhetoric was more than a matter of campaign strategy. They were true believers whomeant what they said, whether it was “No new taxes” or “We are a Christian nation.” Infact, with their rigid doctrines, slash-and-burn style, and exaggerated sense of havingbeen aggrieved, this new conservative leadership was eerily reminiscent of some of theNew Left’s leaders during the sixties. As with their left-wing counterparts, this newvanguard of the right viewed politics as a contest not just between competing policyvisions, but between good and evil. Activists in both parties began developing litmustests, checklists of orthodoxy, leaving a Democrat who questioned abortion increasinglylonely, any Republican who championed gun control effectively marooned. In thisManichean struggle, compromise came to look like weakness, to be punished or purged.
　　You were with us or against us. You had to choose sides.
　　It was Bill Clinton’s singular contribution that he tried to transcend this ideologicaldeadlock, recognizing not only that what had come to be meant by the labels of“conservative” and “liberal” played to Republican advantage, but that the categorieswere inadequate to address the problems we faced. At times during his first campaign,his gestures toward disaffected Reagan Democrats could seem clumsy and transparent(what ever happened to Sister Souljah?) or frighteningly coldhearted (allowing theexecution of a mentally retarded death row inmate to go forward on the eve of animportant primary). In the first two years of his presidency, he would be forced toabandon some core elements of his platform—universal health care, aggressiveinvestment in education and training—that might have more decisively reversed thelong-term trends that were undermining the position of working families in the neweconomy.
　　Still, he instinctively understood the falseness of the choices being presented to theAmerican people. He saw that government spending and regulation could, if properlydesigned, serve as vital ingredients and not inhibitors to economic growth, and howmarkets and fiscal discipline could help promote social justice. He recognized that notonly societal responsibility but personal responsibility was needed to combat poverty. Inhis platform—if not always in his day-to-day politics—Clinton’s Third Way wentbeyond splitting the difference. It tapped into the pragmatic, nonideological attitude ofthe majority of Americans.
　　Indeed, by the end of his presidency, Clinton’s policies—recognizably progressive ifmodest in their goals—enjoyed broad public support. Politically, he had wrung out ofthe Democratic Party some of the excesses that had kept it from winning elections. Thathe failed, despite a booming economy, to translate popular policies into anythingresembling a governing coalition said something about the demographic difficultiesDemocrats were facing (in particular, the shift in population growth to an increasinglysolid Republican South) and the structural advantages the Republicans enjoyed in theSenate, where the votes of two Republican senators from Wyoming, population493,782, equaled the votes of two Democratic senators from California, population33,871,648.
　　But that failure also testified to the skill with which Gingrich, Rove, Norquist, and thelike were able to consolidate and institutionalize the conservative movement. Theytapped the unlimited resources of corporate sponsors and wealthy donors to create anetwork of think tanks and media outlets. They brought state-of-the-art technology tothe task of mobilizing their base, and centralized power in the House of Representativesin order to enhance party discipline.
　　And they understood the threat Clinton posed to their vision of a long-term conservativemajority, which helps explain the vehemence with which they went after him. It alsoexplains why they invested so much time attacking Clinton’s morality, for if Clinton’spolicies were hardly radical, his biography (the draft letter saga, the marijuana puffing,the Ivy League intellectualism, the professional wife who didn’t bake cookies, and mostof all the sex) proved perfect grist for the conservative base. With enough repetition, alooseness with the facts, and the ultimately undeniable evidence of the President’s ownpersonal lapses, Clinton could be made to embody the very traits of sixties liberalismthat had helped spur the conservative movement in the first place. Clinton may havefought that movement to a draw, but the movement would come out stronger for it—andin George W. Bush’s first term, that movement would take over the United Statesgovernment.
　　THIS TELLING OF the story is too neat, I know. It ignores critical strands in thehistorical narrative—how the decline of manufacturing and Reagan’s firing of the airtraffic controllers critically wounded America’s labor movement; the way that thecreation of majority-minority congressional districts in the South simultaneouslyensured more black representatives and reduced Democratic seats in that region; thelack of cooperation that Clinton received from congressional Democrats, who hadgrown fat and complacent and didn’t realize the fight they were in. It also doesn’tcapture the degree to which advances in political gerrymandering polarized theCongress, or how efficiently money and negative television ads have poisoned theatmosphere.
　　Still, when I think about what that old Washington hand told me that night, when Iponder the work of a George Kennan or a George Marshall, when I read the speeches ofa Bobby Kennedy or an Everett Dirksen, I can’t help feeling that the politics of todaysuffers from a case of arrested development. For these men, the issues America facedwere never abstract and hence never simple. War might be hell and still the right thingto do. Economies could collapse despite the best-laid plans. People could work hard alltheir lives and still lose everything.
　　For the generation of leaders who followed, raised in relative comfort, differentexperiences yielded a different attitude toward politics. In the back-and-forth betweenClinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004, I sometimes felt as if Iwere watching the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation—a tale rooted in oldgrudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago—playedout on the national stage. The victories that the sixties generation brought about—theadmission of minorities and women into full citizenship, the strengthening of individualliberties and the healthy willingness to question authority—have made America a farbetter place for all its citizens. But what has been lost in the process, and has yet to bereplaced, are those shared assumptions—that quality of trust and fellow feeling—thatbring us together as Americans.
　　So where does that leave us? Theoretically the Republican Party might have producedits own Clinton, a center-right leader who built on Clinton’s fiscal conservatism whilemoving more aggressively to revamp a creaky federal bureaucracy and experiment withmarket- or faith-based solutions to social policy. And in fact such a leader may stillemerge. Not all Republican elected officials subscribe to the tenets of today’smovement conservatives. In both the House and the Senate, and in state capitals acrossthe country, there are those who cling to more traditional conservative virtues oftemperance and restraint—men and women who recognize that piling up debt to financetax cuts for the wealthy is irresponsible, that deficit reduction can’t take place on thebacks of the poor, that the separation of church and state protects the church as well asthe state, that conservation and conservatism don’t have to conflict, and that foreignpolicy should be based on facts and not wishful thinking.
　　But these Republicans are not the ones who have driven the debate over the past sixyears. Instead of the “compassionate conservatism” that George Bush promised in his2000 campaign, what has characterized the ideological core of today’s GOP isabsolutism, not conservatism. There is the absolutism of the free market, an ideology ofno taxes, no regulation, no safety net—indeed, no government beyond what’s requiredto protect private property and provide for the national defense.
　　There’s the religious absolutism of the Christian right, a movement that gained tractionon the undeniably difficult issue of abortion, but which soon flowered into somethingmuch broader; a movement that insists not only that Christianity is America’s dominantfaith, but that a particular, fundamentalist brand of that faith should drive public policy,overriding any alternative source of understanding, whether the writings of liberaltheologians, the findings of the National Academy of Sciences, or the words of ThomasJefferson.
　　And there is the absolute belief in the authority of majority will, or at least those whoclaim power in the name of the majority—a disdain for those institutional checks (thecourts, the Constitution, the press, the Geneva Conventions, the rules of the Senate, orthe traditions governing redistricting) that might slow our inexorable march toward theNew Jerusalem.
　　Of course, there are those within the Democratic Party who tend toward similarzealotry. But those who do have never come close to possessing the power of a Rove ora DeLay, the power to take over the party, fill it with loyalists, and enshrine some oftheir more radical ideas into law. The prevalence of regional, ethnic, and economicdifferences within the party, the electoral map and the structure of the Senate, the needto raise money from economic elites to finance elections—all these things tend toprevent those Democrats in office from straying too far from the center. In fact, I knowvery few elected Democrats who neatly fit the liberal caricature; the last I checked, JohnKerry believes in maintaining the superiority of the U.S. military, Hillary Clintonbelieves in the virtues of capitalism, and just about every member of the CongressionalBlack Caucus believes Jesus Christ died for his or her sins.
　　Instead, we Democrats are just, well, confused. There are those who still champion theold-time religion, defending every New Deal and Great Society program fromRepublican encroachment, achieving ratings of 100 percent from the liberal interestgroups. But these efforts seem exhausted, a constant game of defense, bereft of theenergy and new ideas needed to address the changing circumstances of globalization ora stubbornly isolated inner city. Others pursue a more “centrist” approach, figuring thatso long as they split the difference with the conservative leadership, they must be actingreasonably—and failing to notice that with each passing year they are giving up moreand more ground. Individually, Democratic legislators and candidates propose a host ofsensible if incremental ideas, on energy and education, health care and homelandsecurity, hoping that it all adds up to something resembling a governing philosophy.
　　Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to awar that is ill conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to thosewho proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles totackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance withsecularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with alarger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. Welose the courts and wait for a White House scandal.
　　And increasingly we feel the need to match the Republican right in stridency andhardball tactics. The accepted wisdom that drives many advocacy groups andDemocratic activists these days goes something like this: The Republican Party hasbeen able to consistently win elections not by expanding its base but by vilifyingDemocrats, driving wedges into the electorate, energizing its right wing, anddisciplining those who stray from the party line. If the Democrats ever want to get backinto power, then they will have to take up the same approach.
　　I understand the frustration of these activists. The ability of Republicans to repeatedlywin on the basis of polarizing campaigns is indeed impressive. I recognize the dangersof subtlety and nuance in the face of the conservative movement’s passionate intensity.
　　And in my mind, at least, there are a host of Bush Administration policies that justifyrighteous indignation.
　　Ultimately, though, I believe any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharplypartisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we’re in. I am convincedthat whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose.
　　Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it’s precisely the pursuit ofideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our currentpolitical debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face asa country. It’s what keeps us locked in “either/or” thinking: the notion that we can haveonly big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerateforty-six million without health insurance or embrace “socialized medicine.”
　　It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off ofpolitics. This is not a problem for the right; a polarized electorate—or one that easilydismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate—worksperfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government. After all,a cynical electorate is a self-centered electorate.
　　But for those of us who believe that government has a role to play in promotingopportunity and prosperity for all Americans, a polarized electorate isn’t good enough.
　　Eking out a bare Democratic majority isn’t good enough. What’s needed is a broadmajority of Americans—Democrats, Republicans, and independents of goodwill—whoare reengaged in the project of national renewal, and who see their own self-interest asinextricably linked to the interests of others.
　　I’m under no illusion that the task of building such a working majority will be easy. Butit’s what we must do, precisely because the task of solving America’s problems will behard. It will require tough choices, and it will require sacrifice. Unless political leadersare open to new ideas and not just new packaging, we won’t change enough hearts andminds to initiate a serious energy policy or tame the deficit. We won’t have the popularsupport to craft a foreign policy that meets the challenges of globalization or terrorismwithout resorting to isolationism or eroding civil liberties. We won’t have a mandate tooverhaul America’s broken health-care system. And we won’t have the broad politicalsupport or the effective strategies needed to lift large numbers of our fellow citizens outof poverty.
　　I made this same argument in a letter I sent to the left-leaning blog Daily Kos inSeptember 2005, after a number of advocacy groups and activists had attacked some ofmy Democratic colleagues for voting to confirm Chief Justice John Roberts. My staffwas a little nervous about the idea; since I had voted against Roberts’s confirmation,they saw no reason for me to agitate such a vocal part of the Democratic base. But I hadcome to appreciate the give-and-take that the blogs afforded, and in the days followingthe posting of my letter, in true democratic fashion, more than six hundred peopleposted their comments. Some agreed with me. Others thought that I was being tooidealistic—that the kind of politics I was suggesting could not work in the face of theRepublican PR machine. A sizable contingent thought that I had been “sent” byWashington elites to quell dissent in the ranks, and/or had been in Washington too longand was losing touch with the American people, and/or was—as one blogger later putit—simply an “idiot.”
　　Maybe the critics are right. Maybe there’s no escaping our great political divide, anendless clash of armies, and any attempts to alter the rules of engagement are futile. Ormaybe the trivialization of politics has reached a point of no return, so that most peoplesee it as just one more diversion, a sport, with politicians our paunch-bellied gladiatorsand those who bother to pay attention just fans on the sidelines: We paint our faces redor blue and cheer our side and boo their side, and if it takes a late hit or cheap shot tobeat the other team, so be it, for winning is all that matters.
　　But I don’t think so. They are out there, I think to myself, those ordinary citizens whohave grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles, but who have found away—in their own lives, at least—to make peace with their neighbors, and themselves.
　　I imagine the white Southerner who growing up heard his dad talk about niggers thisand niggers that but who has struck up a friendship with the black guys at the office andis trying to teach his own son different, who thinks discrimination is wrong but doesn’tsee why the son of a black doctor should get admitted into law school ahead of his ownson. Or the former Black Panther who decided to go into real estate, bought a fewbuildings in the neighborhood, and is just as tired of the drug dealers in front of thosebuildings as he is of the bankers who won’t give him a loan to expand his business.
　　There’s the middle-aged feminist who still mourns her abortion, and the Christianwoman who paid for her teenager’s abortion, and the millions of waitresses and tempsecretaries and nurse’s assistants and Wal-Mart associates who hold their breath everysingle month in the hope that they’ll have enough money to support the children thatthey did bring into the world.
　　I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism andrealism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit thepossibility that the other side might sometimes have a point. They don’t alwaysunderstand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal, but theyrecognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility andirresponsibility, between those things that last and those that are fleeting.
　　They are out there, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.
Chapter 2 Values
THE FIRST TIME I saw the White House was in 1984. I had just graduated fromcollege and was working as a community organizer out of the Harlem campus of theCity College of New York. President Reagan was proposing a round of student aid cutsat 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 theirfamilies to attend college—to round up petitions opposing the cuts and then deliverthem to the New York congressional delegation.
　　It was a brief trip, spent mostly navigating the endless corridors of the RayburnBuilding, getting polite but cursory audiences with Hill staffers not much older than Iwas. But at the end of the day, the students and I took the time to walk down to the Malland the Washington Monument, and then spent a few minutes gazing at the WhiteHouse. Standing on Pennsylvania Avenue, a few feet away from the Marine guardstation at the main entrance, with pedestrians weaving along the sidewalk and trafficwhizzing behind us, I marveled not at the White House’s elegant sweep, but rather atthe fact that it was so exposed to the hustle and bustle of the city; that we were allowedto stand so close to the gate, and could later circle to the other side of the building topeer at the Rose Garden and the residence beyond. The openness of the White Housesaid something about our confidence as a democracy, I thought. It embodied the notionthat our leaders were not so different from us; that they remained subject to laws andour 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 traveledPennsylvania Avenue. On a cold January afternoon, the day before my swearing in tothe Senate, Lafayette Park was mostly empty, and as my car was waved through theWhite 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 expectfrom TV or film; it seems well kept but worn, a big old house that one imagines mightbe a bit drafty on cold winter nights. Still, as I stood in the foyer and let my eyes wanderdown 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 theweight of a nation. (It wasn’t until several months later that I would get to see theLincoln Bedroom, a modest space with antique furniture, a four-poster bed, an originalcopy of the Gettysburg Address discreetly displayed under glass—and a big flat-screenTV set atop one of the desks. Who, I wondered, flipped on SportsCenter while spendingthe night in the Lincoln Bedroom?)I was greeted immediately by a member of the White House’s legislative staff and ledinto the Gold Room, where most of the incoming House and Senate members hadalready gathered. At sixteen hundred hours on the dot, President Bush was announcedand walked to the podium, looking vigorous and fit, with that jaunty, determined walkthat suggests he’s on a schedule and wants to keep detours to a minimum. For ten or sominutes he spoke to the room, making a few jokes, calling for the country to cometogether, before inviting us to the other end of the White House for refreshments and apicture with him and the First Lady.
　　I happened to be starving at that moment, so while most of the other legislators startedlining up for their photographs, I headed for the buffet. As I munched on hors d’oeuvresand engaged in small talk with a handful of House members, I recalled my previous twoencounters with the President, the first a brief congratulatory call after the election, thesecond a small White House breakfast with me and the other incoming senators. Bothtimes I had found the President to be a likable man, shrewd and disciplined but with thesame straightforward manner that had helped him win two elections; you could easilyimagine 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 solong as the conversation revolved around sports and the kids.
　　There had been a moment during the breakfast meeting, though, after the backslappingand the small talk and when all of us were seated, with Vice President Cheney eating hiseggs Benedict impassively and Karl Rove at the far end of the table discreetly checkinghis BlackBerry, that I witnessed a different side of the man. The President had begun todiscuss 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 toreform 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 backroom had flipped a switch. The President’s eyes became fixed; his voice took on theagitated, rapid tone of someone neither accustomed to nor welcoming interruption; hiseasy affability was replaced by an almost messianic certainty. As I watched my mostlyRepublican Senate colleagues hang on his every word, I was reminded of the dangerousisolation that power can bring, and appreciated the Founders’ wisdom in designing asystem to keep power in check.
　　“Senator?”
　　I looked up, shaken out of my memory, and saw one of the older black men who madeup 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 thatthe line to greet the President had evaporated. Wanting to thank my hosts, I headedtoward the Blue Room. A young Marine at the door politely indicated that thephotograph session was over and that the President needed to get to his nextappointment. But before I could turn around to go, the President himself appeared in thedoorway and waved me in.
　　“Obama!” the President said, shaking my hand. “Come here and meet Laura. Laura, youremember Obama. We saw him on TV during election night. Beautiful family. And thatwife of yours—that’s one impressive lady.”
　　“We both got better than we deserve, Mr. President,” I said, shaking the First Lady’shand and hoping that I’d wiped any crumbs off my face. The President turned to an aidenearby, 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. “Youknow,” 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 thistown awhile and, let me tell you, it can be tough. When you get a lot of attention likeyou’ve been getting, people start gunnin’ for ya. And it won’t necessarily just becoming from my side, you understand. From yours, too. Everybody’ll be waiting foryou 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. Itwasn’t until he had left the room that I realized I had briefly put my arm over hisshoulder as we talked—an unconscious habit of mine, but one that I suspected mighthave 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 criticof Bush Administration policies. I consider the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to be bothfiscally irresponsible and morally troubling. I have criticized the Administration forlacking a meaningful health-care agenda, a serious energy policy, or a strategy formaking America more competitive. Back in 2002, just before announcing my Senatecampaign, I made a speech at one of the first antiwar rallies in Chicago in which Iquestioned the Administration’s evidence of weapons of mass destruction and suggestedthat an invasion of Iraq would prove to be a costly error. Nothing in the recent newscoming 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 considerGeorge Bush a bad man, and that I assume he and members of his Administration aretrying 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 tothe White House for what they are—exercises in common political courtesy—and ammindful of how quickly the long knives can come out when the Administration’s agendais threatened in any serious way. Moreover, whenever I write a letter to a family whohas lost a loved one in Iraq, or read an email from a constituent who has dropped out ofcollege because her student aid has been cut, I’m reminded that the actions of those inpower have enormous consequences—a price that they themselves almost never have topay.
　　It is to say that after all the trappings of office—the titles, the staff, the securitydetails—are stripped away, I find the President and those who surround him to be prettymuch like everybody else, possessed of the same mix of virtues and vices, insecuritiesand long-buried injuries, as the rest of us. No matter how wrongheaded I might considertheir policies to be—and no matter how much I might insist that they be heldaccountable for the results of such policies—I still find it possible, in talking to thesemen 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 inWashington policy debates are often so high—whether we send our young men andwomen to war; whether we allow stem cell research to go forward—that even smalldifferences in perspective are magnified. The demands of party loyalty, the imperativeof campaigns, and the amplification of conflict by the media all contribute to anatmosphere of suspicion. Moreover, most people who serve in Washington have beentrained either as lawyers or as political operatives—professions that tend to place apremium on winning arguments rather than solving problems. I can see how, after acertain amount of time in the capital, it becomes tempting to assume that those whodisagree with you have fundamentally different values—indeed, that they are motivatedby bad faith, and perhaps are bad people.
　　Outside of Washington, though, America feels less deeply divided. Illinois, forexample, is no longer considered a bellwether state. For more than a decade now, it’sbecome more and more Democratic, partly because of increased urbanization, partlybecause the social conservatism of today’s GOP doesn’t wear well in the Land ofLincoln. But Illinois remains a microcosm of the country, a rough stew of North andSouth, 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, butgeographically and culturally, the southern end of Illinois is closer to Little Rock orLouisville, and large swaths of the state are considered, in modern political parlance, adeep shade of red.
　　I first traveled through southern Illinois in 1997. It was the summer after my first termin the Illinois legislature, and Michelle and I were not yet parents. With sessionadjourned, no law school classes to teach, and Michelle busy with work of her own, Iconvinced my legislative aide, Dan Shomon, to toss a map and some golf clubs in thecar and tool around the state for a week. Dan had been both a UPI reporter and a fieldcoordinator for several downstate campaigns, so he knew the territory pretty well. Butas the date of our departure approached, it became apparent that he wasn’t quite surehow I would be received in the counties we were planning to visit. Four times hereminded me how to pack—just khakis and polo shirts, he said; no fancy linen trousersor silk shirts. I assured him that I didn’t own any linens or silks. On the drive down, westopped at a TGI Friday’s and I ordered a cheeseburger. When the waitress brought thefood 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 ayellow 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 toDan 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 andshimmering lakes lined with stumps and reeds, through big towns like Carbondale andMount Vernon, replete with strip malls and Wal-Marts, and tiny towns like Sparta andPinckneyville, many of them with brick courthouses at the center of town, their mainstreets barely hanging on with every other store closed, the occasional roadside vendorsselling fresh peaches or corn, or in the case of one couple I saw, “Good Deals on Gunsand Swords.”
　　We stopped in a coffee shop to eat pie and swap jokes with the mayor of Chester. Weposed in front of the fifteen-foot-tall statue of Superman at the center of Metropolis. Weheard about all the young people who were moving to the big cities becausemanufacturing and coal-mining jobs were disappearing. We learned about the local highschool football teams’ prospects for the coming season, and the vast distances veteranshad to drive in order to reach the closest VA facility. We met women who had beenmissionaries in Kenya and greeted me in Swahili, and farmers who tracked the financialpages 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 silkHawaiian shirts. In the small dining room of a Democratic party official in Du Quoin, Iasked the local state’s attorney about crime trends in his largely rural, almost uniformlywhite county, expecting him to mention joy-riding sprees or folks hunting out of season.
　　“The Gangster Disciples,” he said, munching on a carrot. “We’ve got an all-whitebranch down here—kids without jobs, selling dope and speed.”
　　By the end of the week, I was sorry to leave. Not simply because I had made so manynew friends, but because in the faces of all the men and women I’d met I had recognizedpieces of myself. In them I saw my grandfather’s openness, my grandmother’s matter-of-factness, my mother’s kindness. The fried chicken, the potato salad, the grape halvesin the Jell-O mold—all of it felt familiar.
　　It’s that sense of familiarity that strikes me wherever I travel across Illinois. I feel itwhen I’m sitting down at a diner on Chicago’s West Side. I feel it as I watch Latinomen play soccer while their families cheer them on in a park in Pilsen. I feel it when I’mattending an Indian wedding in one of Chicago’s northern suburbs.
　　Not so far beneath the surface, I think, we are becoming more, not less, alike.
　　I don’t mean to exaggerate here, to suggest that the pollsters are wrong and that ourdifferences—racial, religious, regional, or economic—are somehow trivial. In Illinois,as is true everywhere, abortion vexes. In certain parts of the state, the mention of guncontrol constitutes sacrilege. Attitudes about everything from the income tax to sex onTV diverge wildly from place to place.
　　It is to insist that across Illinois, and across America, a constant cross-pollination isoccurring, a not entirely orderly but generally peaceful collision among people andcultures. Identities are scrambling, and then cohering in new ways. Beliefs keep slippingthrough the noose of predictability. Facile expectations and simple explanations arebeing constantly upended. Spend time actually talking to Americans, and you discoverthat most evangelicals are more tolerant than the media would have us believe, mostsecularists more spiritual. Most rich people want the poor to succeed, and most of thepoor are both more self-critical and hold higher aspirations than the popular cultureallows. Most Republican strongholds are 40 percent Democrat, and vice versa. Thepolitical labels of liberal and conservative rarely track people’s personal attributes.
　　All of which raises the question: What are the core values that we, as Americans, holdin common? That’s not how we usually frame the issue, of course; our political culturefixates on where our values clash. In the immediate aftermath of the 2004 election, forexample, a major national exit poll was published in which voters ranked “moralvalues” as having determined how they cast their ballot. Commentators fastened on thedata to argue that the most controversial social issues in the election—particularly gaymarriage—had swung a number of states. Conservatives heralded the numbers,convinced that they proved the Christian right’s growing power.
　　When these polls were later analyzed, it turned out that the pundits and prognosticatorshad overstated their case a bit. In fact, voters had considered national security as theelection’s most important issue, and although large numbers of voters did consider“moral values” an important factor in the way they voted, the meaning of the term wasso vague as to include everything from abortion to corporate malfeasance. Immediately,some Democrats could be heard breathing a sigh of relief, as if a diminution in the“values factor” served the liberal cause; as if a discussion of values was a dangerous,unnecessary distraction from those material concerns that characterized the DemocraticParty platform.
　　I think Democrats are wrong to run away from a debate about values, as wrong as thoseconservatives who see values only as a wedge to pry loose working-class voters fromthe Democratic base. It is the language of values that people use to map their world. It iswhat can inspire them to take action, and move them beyond their isolation. Thepostelection polls may have been poorly composed, but the broader question of sharedvalues—the standards and principles that the majority of Americans deem important intheir lives, and in the life of the country—should be the heart of our politics, thecornerstone of any meaningful debate about budgets and projects, regulations andpolicies.
　　“WE HOLD THESE truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that theyare endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
　　Those simple words are our starting point as Americans; they describe not only thefoundation of our government but the substance of our common creed. Not everyAmerican may be able to recite them; few, if asked, could trace the genesis of theDeclaration of Independence to its roots in eighteenth-century liberal and republicanthought. But the essential idea behind the Declaration—that we are born into this worldfree, all of us; that each of us arrives with a bundle of rights that can’t be taken away byany person or any state without just cause; that through our own agency we can, andmust, make of our lives what we will—is one that every American understands. Itorients us, sets our course, each and every day.
　　Indeed, the value of individual freedom is so deeply ingrained in us that we tend to takeit for granted. It is easy to forget that at the time of our nation’s founding this idea wasentirely radical in its implications, as radical as Martin Luther’s posting on the churchdoor. It is an idea that some portion of the world still rejects—and for which an evenlarger portion of humanity finds scant evidence in their daily lives.
　　In fact, much of my appreciation of our Bill of Rights comes from having spent part ofmy childhood in Indonesia and from still having family in Kenya, countries whereindividual rights are almost entirely subject to the self-restraint of army generals or thewhims of corrupt bureaucrats. I remember the first time I took Michelle to Kenya,shortly before we were married. As an African American, Michelle was bursting withexcitement about the idea of visiting the continent of her ancestors, and we had awonderful time, visiting my grandmother up-country, wandering through the streets ofNairobi, camping in the Serengeti, fishing off the island of Lamu.
　　But during our travels Michelle also heard—as I had heard during my first trip toAfrica—the terrible sense on the part of most Kenyans that their fates were not theirown. My cousins told her how difficult it was to find a job or start their own businesseswithout paying bribes. Activists told us about being jailed for expressing theiropposition to government policies. Even within my own family, Michelle saw howsuffocating the demands of family ties and tribal loyalties could be, with distant cousinsconstantly asking for favors, uncles and aunts showing up unannounced. On the flightback to Chicago, Michelle admitted she was looking forward to getting home. “I neverrealized just how American I was,” she said. She hadn’t realized just how free shewas—or how much she cherished that freedom.
　　At its most elemental level, we understand our liberty in a negative sense. As a generalrule we believe in the right to be left alone, and are suspicious of those—whether BigBrother or nosy neighbors—who want to meddle in our business. But we understandour liberty in a more positive sense as well, in the idea of opportunity and the subsidiaryvalues that help realize opportunity—all those homespun virtues that Benjamin Franklinfirst popularized in Poor Richard’s Almanack and that have continued to inspire ourallegiance through successive generations. The values of self-reliance and self-improvement and risk-taking. The values of drive, discipline, temperance, and hardwork. The values of thrift and personal responsibility.
　　These values are rooted in a basic optimism about life and a faith in free will—aconfidence that through pluck and sweat and smarts, each of us can rise above thecircumstances of our birth. But these values also express a broader confidence that solong as individual men and women are free to pursue their own interests, society as awhole will prosper. Our system of self-government and our free-market economydepend on the majority of individual Americans adhering to these values. Thelegitimacy of our government and our economy depend on the degree to which thesevalues are rewarded, which is why the values of equal opportunity andnondiscrimination complement rather than impinge on our liberty.
　　If we Americans are individualistic at heart, if we instinctively chafe against a past oftribal allegiances, traditions, customs, and castes, it would be a mistake to assume thatthis is all we are. Our individualism has always been bound by a set of communalvalues, the glue upon which every healthy society depends. We value the imperatives offamily and the cross-generational obligations that family implies. We value community,the neighborliness that expresses itself through raising the barn or coaching the soccerteam. We value patriotism and the obligations of citizenship, a sense of duty andsacrifice on behalf of our nation. We value a faith in something bigger than ourselves,whether that something expresses itself in formal religion or ethical precepts. And wevalue the constellation of behaviors that express our mutual regard for one another:
　　honesty, fairness, humility, kindness, courtesy, and compassion.
　　In every society (and in every individual), these twin strands—the individualistic andthe communal, autonomy and solidarity—are in tension, and it has been one of theblessings of America that the circumstances of our nation’s birth allowed us to negotiatethese tensions better than most. We did not have to go through any of the violentupheavals that Europe was forced to endure as it shed its feudal past. Our passage froman agricultural to an industrial society was eased by the sheer size of the continent, vasttracts of land and abundant resources that allowed new immigrants to continuallyremake themselves.
　　But we cannot avoid these tensions entirely. At times our values collide because in thehands of men each one is subject to distortion and excess. Self-reliance andindependence can transform into selfishness and license, ambition into greed and afrantic desire to succeed at any cost. More than once in our history we’ve seenpatriotism slide into jingoism, xenophobia, the stifling of dissent; we’ve seen faithcalcify into self-righteousness, closed-mindedness, and cruelty toward others. Even theimpulse toward charity can drift into a stifling paternalism, an unwillingness toacknowledge the ability of others to do for themselves.
　　When this happens—when liberty is cited in the defense of a company’s decision todump toxins in our rivers, or when our collective interest in building an upscale newmall is used to justify the destruction of somebody’s home—we depend on the strengthof countervailing values to temper our judgment and hold such excesses in check.
　　Sometimes finding the right balance is relatively easy. We all agree, for instance, thatsociety has a right to constrain individual freedom when it threatens to do harm toothers. The First Amendment doesn’t give you the right to yell “fire” in a crowdedtheater; your right to practice your religion does not encompass human sacrifice.
　　Likewise, we all agree that there must be limits to the state’s power to control ourbehavior, even if it’s for our own good. Not many Americans would feel comfortablewith the government monitoring what we eat, no matter how many deaths and howmuch of our medical spending may be due to rising rates of obesity.
　　More often, though, finding the right balance between our competing values is difficult.
　　Tensions arise not because we have steered a wrong course, but simply because we livein a complex and contradictory world. I firmly believe, for example, that since 9/11, wehave played fast and loose with constitutional principles in the fight against terrorism.
　　But I acknowledge that even the wisest president and most prudent Congress wouldstruggle to balance the critical demands of our collective security against the equallycompelling need to uphold civil liberties. I believe our economic policies pay too littleattention to the displacement of manufacturing workers and the destruction ofmanufacturing towns. But I cannot wish away the sometimes competing demands ofeconomic security and competitiveness.
　　Unfortunately, too often in our national debates we don’t even get to the point where weweigh these difficult choices. Instead, we either exaggerate the degree to which policieswe don’t like impinge on our most sacred values, or play dumb when our own preferredpolicies conflict with important countervailing values. Conservatives, for instance, tendto bristle when it comes to government interference in the marketplace or their right tobear arms. Yet many of these same conservatives show little to no concern when itcomes to government wiretapping without a warrant or government attempts to controlpeople’s sexual practices. Conversely, it’s easy to get most liberals riled up aboutgovernment encroachments on freedom of the press or a woman’s reproductivefreedoms. But if you have a conversation with these same liberals about the potentialcosts of regulation to a small-business owner, you will often draw a blank stare.
　　In a country as diverse as ours, there will always be passionate arguments about how wedraw the line when it comes to government action. That is how our democracy works.
　　But our democracy might work a bit better if we recognized that all of us possess valuesthat are worthy of respect: if liberals at least acknowledged that the recreational hunterfeels the same way about his gun as they feel about their library books, and ifconservatives recognized that most women feel as protective of their right toreproductive freedom as evangelicals do of their right to worship.
　　The results of such an exercise can sometimes be surprising. The year that Democratsregained the majority in the Illinois state senate, I sponsored a bill to require thevideotaping of interrogations and confessions in capital cases. While the evidence tellsme that the death penalty does little to deter crime, I believe there are some crimes—mass murder, the rape and murder of a child—so heinous, so beyond the pale, that thecommunity is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out theultimate punishment. On the other hand, the way capital cases were tried in Illinois atthe time was so rife with error, questionable police tactics, racial bias, and shoddylawyering that thirteen death row inmates had been exonerated and a Republicangovernor had decided to institute a moratorium on all executions.
　　Despite what appeared to be a death penalty system ripe for reform, few people gave mybill much chance of passing. The state prosecutors and police organizations wereadamantly opposed, believing that videotaping would be expensive and cumbersome,and would hamstring their ability to close cases. Some who favored abolishing the deathpenalty feared that any efforts at reform would detract from their larger cause. Myfellow legislators were skittish about appearing in any way to be soft on crime. And thenewly elected Democratic governor had announced his opposition to videotaping ofinterrogations during the course of his campaign.
　　It would have been typical of today’s politics for each side to draw a line in the sand:
　　for death penalty opponents to harp on racism and police misconduct and for lawenforcement to suggest that my bill coddled criminals. Instead, over the course ofseveral weeks, we convened sometimes daily meetings between prosecutors, publicdefenders, police organizations, and death penalty opponents, keeping our negotiationsas much as possible out of the press.
　　Instead of focusing on the serious disagreements around the table, I talked about thecommon value that I believed everyone shared, regardless of how each of us might feelabout the death penalty: that is, the basic principle that no innocent person should endup on death row, and that no person guilty of a capital offense should go free. Whenpolice representatives presented concrete problems with the bill’s design that wouldhave impeded their investigations, we modified the bill. When police representativesoffered to videotape only confessions, we held firm, pointing out that the whole purposeof the bill was to give the public confidence that confessions were obtained free ofcoercion. At the end of the process, the bill had the support of all the parties involved. Itpassed unanimously in the Illinois Senate and was signed into law.
　　Of course, this approach to policy making doesn’t always work. Sometimes, politiciansand interest groups welcome conflict in pursuit of a broader ideological goal. Mostantiabortion activists, for example, have openly discouraged legislative allies from evenpursuing those compromise measures that would have significantly reduced theincidence of the procedure popularly known as partial-birth abortion, because the imagethe procedure evokes in the mind of the public has helped them win converts to theirposition.
　　And sometimes our ideological predispositions are just so fixed that we have troubleseeing the obvious. Once, while still in the Illinois Senate, I listened to a Republicancolleague work himself into a lather over a proposed plan to provide school breakfaststo preschoolers. Such a plan, he insisted, would crush their spirit of self-reliance. I hadto point out that not too many five-year-olds I knew were self-reliant, but children whospent their formative years too hungry to learn could very well end up being charges ofthe state.
　　Despite my best efforts, the bill still went down in defeat; Illinois preschoolers weretemporarily saved from the debilitating effects of cereal and milk (a version of the billwould later pass). But my fellow legislator’s speech helps underscore one of thedifferences between ideology and values: Values are faithfully applied to the factsbefore us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question.
　　MUCH OF THE confusion surrounding the values debate arises out of a misperceptionon the part of both politicians and the public that politics and government areequivalent. To say that a value is important is not to say that it should be subject toregulation or that it merits a new agency. Conversely, just because a value should not orcannot be legislated doesn’t mean it isn’t a proper topic for public discussion.
　　I value good manners, for example. Every time I meet a kid who speaks clearly andlooks me in the eye, who says “yes, sir” and “thank you” and “please” and “excuse me,”
　　I feel more hopeful about the country. I don’t think I am alone in this. I can’t legislategood manners. But I can encourage good manners whenever I’m addressing a group ofyoung people.
　　The same goes for competence. Nothing brightens my day more than dealing withsomebody, anybody, who takes pride in their work or goes the extra mile—anaccountant, a plumber, a three-star general, the person on the other end of the phonewho actually seems to want to solve your problem. My encounters with suchcompetence seem more sporadic lately; I seem to spend more time looking forsomebody in the store to help me or waiting for the deliveryman to show. Other peoplemust notice this; it makes us all cranky, and those of us in government, no less than inbusiness, ignore such perceptions at their own peril. (I am convinced—although I haveno statistical evidence to back it up—that antitax, antigovernment, antiunion sentimentsgrow anytime people find themselves standing in line at a government office with onlyone window open and three or four workers chatting among themselves in full view.)Progressives in particular seem confused on this point, which is why we so often get ourclocks cleaned in elections. I recently gave a speech at the Kaiser Family Foundationafter they released a study showing that the amount of sex on television has doubled inrecent years. Now I enjoy HBO as much as the next guy, and I generally don’t carewhat adults watch in the privacy of their homes. In the case of children, I think it’sprimarily the duty of parents to monitor what they are watching on television, and in myspeech I even suggested that everyone would benefit if parents—heaven forbid—simplyturned off the TV and tried to strike up a conversation with their kids.
　　Having said all that, I indicated that I wasn’t too happy with ads for erectile-dysfunctiondrugs popping up every fifteen minutes whenever I watched a football game with mydaughters in the room. I offered the further observation that a popular show targeted atteens, in which young people with no visible means of support spend several monthsgetting drunk and jumping naked into hot tubs with strangers, was not “the real world.”
　　I ended by suggesting that the broadcast and cable industries should adopt betterstandards and technology to help parents control what streamed into their homes.
　　You would have thought I was Cotton Mather. In response to my speech, onenewspaper editorial intoned that the government had no business regulating protectedspeech, despite the fact that I hadn’t called for regulation. Reporters suggested that Iwas cynically tacking to the center in preparation for a national race. More than a fewsupporters wrote our office, complaining that they had voted for me to beat back theBush agenda, not to act as the town scold.
　　And yet every parent I know, liberal or conservative, complains about the coarsening ofthe culture, the promotion of easy materialism and instant gratification, the severing ofsexuality from intimacy. They may not want government censorship, but they wantthose concerns recognized, their experiences validated. When, for fear of appearingcensorious, progressive political leaders can’t even acknowledge the problem, thoseparents start listening to those leaders who will—leaders who may be less sensitive toconstitutional constraints.
　　Of course, conservatives have their own blind spots when it comes to addressingproblems in the culture. Take executive pay. In 1980, the average CEO made forty-twotimes what an average hourly worker took home. By 2005, the ratio was 262 to 1.
　　Conservative outlets like the Wall Street Journal editorial page try to justify outlandishsalaries and stock options as necessary to attract top talent, and suggest that theeconomy actually performs better when America’s corporate leaders are fat and happy.
　　But the explosion in CEO pay has had little to do with improved performance. In fact,some of the country’s most highly compensated CEOs over the past decade havepresided over huge drops in earnings, losses in shareholder value, massive layoffs, andthe underfunding of their workers’ pension funds.
　　What accounts for the change in CEO pay is not any market imperative. It’s cultural. Ata time when average workers are experiencing little or no income growth, many ofAmerica’s CEOs have lost any sense of shame about grabbing whatever their pliant,handpicked corporate boards will allow. Americans understand the damage such anethic of greed has on our collective lives; in a recent survey, they ranked corruption ingovernment and business, and greed and materialism, as two of the three most importantmoral challenges facing the nation (“raising kids with the right values” ranked first).
　　Conservatives may be right when they argue that the government should not try todetermine executive pay packages. But conservatives should at least be willing to speakout against unseemly behavior in corporate boardrooms with the same moral force, thesame sense of outrage, that they direct against dirty rap lyrics.
　　Of course, there are limits to the power of the bully pulpit. Sometimes only the law canfully vindicate our values, particularly when the rights and opportunities of thepowerless in our society are at stake. Certainly this has been true in our efforts to endracial discrimination; as important as moral exhortation was in changing hearts andminds of white Americans during the civil rights era, what ultimately broke the back ofJim Crow and ushered in a new era of race relations were the Supreme Court casesculminating in Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and theVoting Rights Act of 1965. As these laws were being debated, there were those whoargued that government should not interject itself into civil society, that no law couldforce white people to associate with blacks. Upon hearing these arguments, Dr. Kingreplied, “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep himfrom lynching me and I think that is pretty important, also.”
　　Sometimes we need both cultural transformation and government action—a change invalues and a change in policy—to promote the kind of society we want. The state of ourinner-city schools is a case in point. All the money in the world won’t boost studentachievement if parents make no effort to instill in their children the values of hard workand delayed gratification. But when we as a society pretend that poor children willfulfill their potential in dilapidated, unsafe schools with outdated equipment andteachers who aren’t trained in the subjects they teach, we are perpetrating a lie on thesechildren, and on ourselves. We are betraying our values.
　　That is one of the things that makes me a Democrat, I suppose—this idea that ourcommunal values, our sense of mutual responsibility and social solidarity, shouldexpress themselves not just in the church or the mosque or the synagogue; not just onthe blocks where we live, in the places where we work, or within our own families; butalso through our government. Like many conservatives, I believe in the power of cultureto determine both individual success and social cohesion, and I believe we ignorecultural factors at our peril. But I also believe that our government can play a role inshaping that culture for the better—or for the worse.
　　I OFTEN WONDER what makes it so difficult for politicians to talk about values inways that don’t appear calculated or phony. Partly, I think, it’s because those of us inpublic life have become so scripted, and the gestures that candidates use to signify theirvalues have become so standardized (a stop at a black church, the hunting trip, the visitto a NASCAR track, the reading in the kindergarten classroom) that it becomes harderand harder for the public to distinguish between honest sentiment and politicalstagecraft.
　　Then there’s the fact that the practice of modern politics itself seems to be value-free.
　　Politics (and political commentary) not only allows but often rewards behavior that wewould normally think of as scandalous: fabricating stories, distorting the obviousmeaning of what other people say, insulting or generally questioning their motives,poking through their personal affairs in search of damaging information.
　　During my general election campaign for the U.S. Senate, for example, my Republicanopponent assigned a young man to track all my public appearances with a handheldcamera. This has become fairly routine operating procedure in many campaigns, butwhether because the young man was overzealous or whether he had been instructed totry to provoke me, his tracking came to resemble stalking. From morning to night, hefollowed me everywhere, usually from a distance of no more than five or ten feet. Hewould film me riding down elevators. He would film me coming out of the restroom.
　　He would film me on my cell phone, talking to my wife and children.
　　At first, I tried reasoning with him. I stopped to ask him his name, told him that Iunderstood he had a job to do, and suggested that he keep enough of a distance to allowme to have a conversation without him listening in. In the face of my entreaties, heremained largely mute, other than to say his name was Justin. I suggested that he callhis boss and find out whether this was in fact what the campaign intended for him to do.
　　He told me that I was free to call myself and gave me the number. After two or threedays of this, I decided I’d had enough. With Justin fast on my heels, I strolled into thepress office of the state capitol building and asked some of the reporters who werehaving lunch to gather round.
　　“Hey, guys,” I said, “I want to introduce you to Justin. Justin here’s been assigned bythe Ryan campaign to stalk me wherever I go.”
　　As I explained the situation, Justin stood there, continuing to film. The reporters turnedto him and started peppering him with questions.
　　“You follow him into the bathroom?”
　　“Are you this close to him all the time?”
　　Soon several news crews arrived with their cameras to film Justin filming me. Like aprisoner of war, Justin kept repeating his name, his rank, and the telephone number ofhis candidate’s campaign headquarters. By six o’clock, the story of Justin was on mostlocal broadcasts. The story ended up blanketing the state for a week—cartoons,editorials, and sports radio chatter. After several days of defiance, my opponentsuccumbed to the pressure, asked Justin to back up a few feet, and issued an apology.
　　Still, the damage to his campaign was done. People might not have understood ourcontrasting views on Medicare or Middle East diplomacy. But they knew that myopponent’s campaign had violated a value—civil behavior—that they consideredimportant.
　　The gap between what we deem appropriate behavior in everyday life and what it takesto win a campaign is just one of the ways in which a politician’s values are tested. Infew other professions are you required, each and every day, to weigh so manycompeting claims—between different sets of constituents, between the interests of yourstate and the interests of the nation, between party loyalty and your own sense ofindependence, between the value of service and obligations to your family. There is aconstant danger, in the cacophony of voices, that a politician loses his moral bearingsand finds himself entirely steered by the winds of public opinion.
　　Perhaps this explains why we long for that most elusive quality in our leaders—thequality of authenticity, of being who you say you are, of possessing a truthfulness thatgoes beyond words. My friend the late U.S. senator Paul Simon had that quality. Formost of his career, he baffled the pundits by garnering support from people whodisagreed, sometimes vigorously, with his liberal politics. It helped that he looked sotrustworthy, like a small-town doctor, with his glasses and bow tie and basset-houndface. But people also sensed that he lived out his values: that he was honest, and that hestood up for what he believed in, and perhaps most of all that he cared about them andwhat they were going through.
　　That last aspect of Paul’s character—a sense of empathy—is one that I find myselfappreciating more and more as I get older. It is at the heart of my moral code, and it ishow I understand the Golden Rule—not simply as a call to sympathy or charity, but assomething more demanding, a call to stand in somebody else’s shoes and see throughtheir eyes.
　　Like most of my values, I learned about empathy from my mother. She disdained anykind of cruelty or thoughtlessness or abuse of power, whether it expressed itself in theform of racial prejudice or bullying in the schoolyard or workers being underpaid.
　　Whenever she saw even a hint of such behavior in me she would look me square in theeyes and ask, “How do you think that would make you feel?”
　　But it was in my relationship with my grandfather that I think I first internalized the fullmeaning of empathy. Because my mother’s work took her overseas, I often lived withmy grandparents during my high school years, and without a father present in the house,my grandfather bore the brunt of much of my adolescent rebellion. He himself was notalways easy to get along with; he was at once warmhearted and quick to anger, and inpart because his career had not been particularly successful, his feelings could also beeasily bruised. By the time I was sixteen we were arguing all the time, usually about mefailing to abide by what I considered to be an endless series of petty and arbitraryrules—filling up the gas tank whenever I borrowed his car, say, or making sure that Irinsed out the milk carton before I put it in the garbage.
　　With a certain talent for rhetoric, as well as an absolute certainty about the merits of myown views, I found that I could generally win these arguments, in the narrow sense ofleaving my grandfather flustered, angry, and sounding unreasonable. But at some point,perhaps in my senior year, such victories started to feel less satisfying. I started thinkingabout the struggles and disappointments he had seen in his life. I started to appreciatehis need to feel respected in his own home. I realized that abiding by his rules wouldcost me little, but to him it would mean a lot. I recognized that sometimes he really didhave a point, and that in insisting on getting my own way all the time, without regard tohis feelings or needs, I was in some way diminishing myself.
　　There’s nothing extraordinary about such an awakening, of course; in one form oranother it is what we all must go through if we are to grow up. And yet I find myselfreturning again and again to my mother’s simple principle—“How would that make youfeel?”—as a guidepost for my politics.
　　It’s not a question we ask ourselves enough, I think; as a country, we seem to besuffering from an empathy deficit. We wouldn’t tolerate schools that don’t teach, thatare chronically underfunded and understaffed and underinspired, if we thought that thechildren in them were like our children. It’s hard to imagine the CEO of a companygiving himself a multimillion-dollar bonus while cutting health-care coverage for hisworkers if he thought they were in some sense his equals. And it’s safe to assume thatthose in power would think longer and harder about launching a war if they envisionedtheir own sons and daughters in harm’s way.
　　I believe a stronger sense of empathy would tilt the balance of our current politics infavor of those people who are struggling in this society. After all, if they are like us,then their struggles are our own. If we fail to help, we diminish ourselves.
　　But that does not mean that those who are struggling—or those of us who claim tospeak for those who are struggling—are thereby freed from trying to understand theperspectives of those who are better off. Black leaders need to appreciate the legitimatefears that may cause some whites to resist affirmative action. Union representativescan’t afford not to understand the competitive pressures their employers may be under. Iam obligated to try to see the world through George Bush’s eyes, no matter how much Imay disagree with him. That’s what empathy does—it calls us all to task, theconservative and the liberal, the powerful and the powerless, the oppressed and theoppressor. We are all shaken out of our complacency. We are all forced beyond ourlimited vision.
　　No one is exempt from the call to find common ground.
　　Of course, in the end a sense of mutual understanding isn’t enough. After all, talk ischeap; like any value, empathy must be acted upon. When I was a community organizerback in the eighties, I would often challenge neighborhood leaders by asking themwhere they put their time, energy, and money. Those are the true tests of what we value,I’d tell them, regardless of what we like to tell ourselves. If we aren’t willing to pay aprice for our values, if we aren’t willing to make some sacrifices in order to realizethem, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all.
　　By these standards at least, it sometimes appears that Americans today value nothing somuch as being rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. We say we value thelegacy we leave the next generation and then saddle that generation with mountains ofdebt. We say we believe in equal opportunity but then stand idle while millions ofAmerican children languish in poverty. We insist that we value family, but thenstructure our economy and organize our lives so as to ensure that our families get lessand less of our time.
　　And yet a part of us knows better. We hang on to our values, even if they seem at timestarnished and worn; even if, as a nation and in our own lives, we have betrayed themmore often than we care to remember. What else is there to guide us? Those values areour inheritance, what makes us who we are as a people. And although we recognize thatthey are subject to challenge, can be poked and prodded and debunked and turned insideout by intellectuals and cultural critics, they have proven to be both surprisingly durableand surprisingly constant across classes, and races, and faiths, and generations. We canmake claims on their behalf, so long as we understand that our values must be testedagainst fact and experience, so long as we recall that they demand deeds and not justwords.
　　To do otherwise would be to relinquish our best selves.
Chapter 3 Our Constitution
THERE’S A SAYING that senators frequently use when asked to describe their firstyear on Capitol Hill: “It’s like drinking from a fire hose.”
　　The description is apt, for during my first few months in the Senate everything seemedto come at me at once. I had to hire staff and set up offices in Washington and Illinois. Ihad to negotiate committee assignments and get up to speed on the issues pendingbefore the committees. There was the backlog of ten thousand constituent letters thathad accumulated since Election Day, and the three hundred speaking invitations thatwere arriving every week. In half-hour blocks, I was shuttled from the Senate floor tocommittee rooms to hotel lobbies to radio stations, entirely dependent on an assortmentof recently hired staffers in their twenties and thirties to keep me on schedule, hand methe right briefing book, remind me whom I was meeting with, or steer me to the nearestrestroom.
　　Then, at night, there was the adjustment of living alone. Michelle and I had decided tokeep the family in Chicago, in part because we liked the idea of raising the girls outsidethe hothouse environment of Washington, but also because the arrangement gaveMichelle a circle of support—from her mother, brother, other family, and friends—thatcould help her manage the prolonged absences my job would require. So for the threenights a week that I spent in Washington, I rented a small one-bedroom apartment nearGeorgetown Law School, in a high-rise between Capitol Hill and downtown.
　　At first, I tried to embrace my newfound solitude, forcing myself to remember thepleasures of bachelorhood—gathering take-out menus from every restaurant in theneighborhood, watching basketball or reading late into the night, hitting the gym for amidnight workout, leaving dishes in the sink and not making my bed. But it was no use;after thirteen years of marriage, I found myself to be fully domesticated, soft andhelpless. My first morning in Washington, I realized I’d forgotten to buy a showercurtain and had to scrunch up against the shower wall in order to avoid flooding thebathroom floor. The next night, watching the game and having a beer, I fell asleep athalftime, and woke up on the couch two hours later with a bad crick in my neck. Take-out food didn’t taste so good anymore; the silence irked me. I found myself callinghome repeatedly, just to listen to my daughters’ voices, aching for the warmth of theirhugs and the sweet smell of their skin.
　　“Hey, sweetie!”
　　“Hey, Daddy.”
　　“What’s happening?”
　　“Since you called before?”
　　“Yeah.”
　　“Nothing. You wanna talk to Mommy?”
　　There were a handful of senators who also had young families, and whenever we metwe would compare notes on the pros and cons of moving to Washington, as well as thedifficulty in protecting family time from overzealous staff. But most of my newcolleagues were considerably older—the average age was sixty—and so as I made therounds to their offices, their advice usually related to the business of the Senate. Theyexplained to me the advantages of various committee assignments and thetemperaments of various committee chairmen. They offered suggestions on how toorganize staff, whom to talk to for extra office space, and how to manage constituentrequests. Most of the advice I found useful; occasionally it was contradictory. Butamong Democrats at least, my meetings would end with one consistentrecommendation: As soon as possible, they said, I should schedule a meeting withSenator Byrd—not only as a matter of senatorial courtesy, but also because SenatorByrd’s senior position on the Appropriations Committee and general stature in theSenate gave him considerable clout.
　　At eighty-seven years old, Senator Robert C. Byrd was not simply the dean of theSenate; he had come to be seen as the very embodiment of the Senate, a living,breathing fragment of history. Raised by his aunt and uncle in the hardscrabble coal-mining towns of West Virginia, he possessed a native talent that allowed him to recitelong passages of poetry from memory and play the fiddle with impressive skill. Unableto afford college tuition, he worked as a meat cutter, a produce salesman, and a welderon battleships during World War II. When he returned to West Virginia after the war, hewon a seat in the state legislature, and he was elected to Congress in 1952.
　　In 1958, he made the jump to the Senate, and during the course of forty-seven years hehad held just about every office available—including six years as majority leader andsix years as minority leader. All the while he maintained the populist impulse that ledhim to focus on delivering tangible benefits to the men and women back home: blacklung benefits and union protections for miners; roads and buildings and electrificationprojects for desperately poor communities. In ten years of night courses while serving inCongress he had earned his law degree, and his grasp of Senate rules was legendary.
　　Eventually, he had written a four-volume history of the Senate that reflected not justscholarship and discipline but also an unsurpassed love of the institution that had shapedhis life’s work. Indeed, it was said that Senator Byrd’s passion for the Senate wasexceeded only by the tenderness he felt toward his ailing wife of sixty-eight years (whohas since passed away)—and perhaps by his reverence for the Constitution, a pocket-sized copy of which he carried with him wherever he went and often pulled out to wavein the midst of debate.
　　I had already left a message with Senator Byrd’s office requesting a meeting when Ifirst had an opportunity to see him in person. It was the day of our swearing in, and wehad been in the Old Senate Chamber, a dark, ornate place dominated by a large,gargoyle-like eagle that stretched out over the presiding officer’s chair from an awningof dark, bloodred velvet. The somber setting matched the occasion, as the DemocraticCaucus was meeting to organize itself after the difficult election and the loss of itsleader. After the new leadership team was installed, Minority Leader Harry Reid askedSenator Byrd if he would say a few words. Slowly, the senior senator rose from his seat,a slender man with a still-thick snowy mane, watery blue eyes, and a sharp, prominentnose. For a moment he stood in silence, steadying himself with his cane, his head turnedupward, eyes fixed on the ceiling. Then he began to speak, in somber, measured tones, ahint of the Appalachians like a knotty grain of wood beneath polished veneer.
　　I don’t recall the specifics of his speech, but I remember the broad themes, cascadingout from the well of the Old Senate Chamber in a rising, Shakespearean rhythm—theclockwork design of the Constitution and the Senate as the essence of that charter’spromise; the dangerous encroachment, year after year, of the Executive Branch on theSenate’s precious independence; the need for every senator to reread our foundingdocuments, so that we might remain steadfast and faithful and true to the meaning of theRepublic. As he spoke, his voice grew more forceful; his forefinger stabbed the air; thedark room seemed to close in on him, until he seemed almost a specter, the spirit ofSenates past, his almost fifty years in these chambers reaching back to touch theprevious fifty years, and the fifty years before that, and the fifty years before that; backto the time when Jefferson, Adams, and Madison roamed through the halls of theCapitol, and the city itself was still wilderness and farmland and swamp.
　　Back to a time when neither I nor those who looked like me could have sat within thesewalls.
　　Listening to Senator Byrd speak, I felt with full force all the essential contradictions ofme in this new place, with its marble busts, its arcane traditions, its memories and itsghosts. I pondered the fact that, according to his own autobiography, Senator Byrd hadreceived his first taste of leadership in his early twenties, as a member of the RaleighCounty Ku Klux Klan, an association that he had long disavowed, an error heattributed—no doubt correctly—to the time and place in which he’d been raised, butwhich continued to surface as an issue throughout his career. I thought about how hehad joined other giants of the Senate, like J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and RichardRussell of Georgia, in Southern resistance to civil rights legislation. I wondered if thiswould matter to the liberals who now lionized Senator Byrd for his principledopposition to the Iraq War resolution—the MoveOn.org crowd, the heirs of the politicalcounterculture the senator had spent much of his career disdaining.
　　I wondered if it should matter. Senator Byrd’s life—like most of ours—has been thestruggle of warring impulses, a twining of darkness and light. And in that sense Irealized that he really was a proper emblem for the Senate, whose rules and designreflect the grand compromise of America’s founding: the bargain between Northernstates and Southern states, the Senate’s role as a guardian against the passions of themoment, a defender of minority rights and state sovereignty, but also a tool to protectthe wealthy from the rabble, and assure slaveholders of noninterference with theirpeculiar institution. Stamped into the very fiber of the Senate, within its genetic code,was the same contest between power and principle that characterized America as awhole, a lasting expression of that great debate among a few brilliant, flawed men thathad concluded with the creation of a form of government unique in its genius—yetblind to the whip and the chain.
　　The speech ended; fellow senators clapped and congratulated Senator Byrd for hismagnificent oratory. I went over to introduce myself and he grasped my hand warmly,saying how much he looked forward to sitting down for a visit. Walking back to myoffice, I decided I would unpack my old constitutional law books that night and rereadthe document itself. For Senator Byrd was right: To understand what was happening inWashington in 2005, to understand my new job and to understand Senator Byrd, Ineeded to circle back to the start, to America’s earliest debates and founding documents,to trace how they had played out over time, and make judgments in light of subsequenthistory.
　　IF YOU ASK my eight-year-old what I do for a living, she might say I make laws. Andyet one of the surprising things about Washington is the amount of time spent arguingnot about what the law should be, but rather what the law is. The simplest statute—arequirement, say, that companies provide bathroom breaks to their hourly workers—canbecome the subject of wildly different interpretations, depending on whom you aretalking to: the congressman who sponsored the provision, the staffer who drafted it, thedepartment head whose job it is to enforce it, the lawyer whose client finds itinconvenient, or the judge who may be called upon to apply it.
　　Some of this is by design, a result of the complex machinery of checks and balances.
　　The diffusion of power between the branches, as well as between federal and stategovernments, means that no law is ever final, no battle truly finished; there is always theopportunity to strengthen or weaken what appears to be done, to water down aregulation or block its implementation, to contract an agency’s power with a cut in itsbudget, or to seize control of an issue where a vacuum has been left.
　　Partly it’s the nature of the law itself. Much of the time, the law is settled and plain. Butlife turns up new problems, and lawyers, officials, and citizens debate the meaning ofterms that seemed clear years or even months before. For in the end laws are just wordson a page—words that are sometimes malleable, opaque, as dependent on context andtrust as they are in a story or poem or promise to someone, words whose meanings aresubject to erosion, sometimes collapsing in the blink of an eye.
　　The legal controversies that were stirring Washington in 2005 went beyond the standardproblems of legal interpretation, however. Instead, they involved the question ofwhether those in power were bound by any rules of law at all.
　　When it came to questions of national security in the post-9/11 era, for example, theWhite House stood fast against any suggestion that it was answerable to Congress or thecourts. During the hearings to confirm Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state,arguments flared over everything from the scope of Congress’s resolution authorizingthe war in Iraq to the willingness of executive branch members to testify under oath.
　　During the debate surrounding the confirmation of Alberto Gonzalez, I reviewed memosdrafted in the attorney general’s office suggesting that techniques like sleep deprivationor repeated suffocation did not constitute torture so long as they did not cause “severepain” of the sort “accompanying organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or evendeath”; transcripts that suggested the Geneva Conventions did not apply to “enemycombatants” captured in a war in Afghanistan; opinions that the Fourth Amendment didnot apply to U.S. citizens labeled “enemy combatants” and captured on U.S. soil.
　　This attitude was by no means confined to the White House. I remember headingtoward the Senate floor one day in early March and being stopped briefly by a dark-haired young man. He led me over to his parents, and explained that they had traveledfrom Florida in a last-ditch effort to save a young woman—Terri Schiavo—who hadfallen into a deep coma, and whose husband was now planning to remove her from lifesupport. It was a heartbreaking story, but I told them there was little precedent forCongress intervening in such cases—not realizing at the time that Tom DeLay and BillFrist made their own precedent.
　　The scope of presidential power during wartime. The ethics surrounding end-of-lifedecisions. These weren’t easy issues; as much as I disagreed with Republican policies, Ibelieved they were worthy of serious debate. No, what troubled me was the process—orlack of process—by which the White House and its congressional allies disposed ofopposing views; the sense that the rules of governing no longer applied, and that therewere no fixed meanings or standards to which we could appeal. It was as if those inpower had decided that habeas corpus and separation of powers were niceties that onlygot in the way, that they complicated what was obvious (the need to stop terrorists) orimpeded what was right (the sanctity of life) and could therefore be disregarded, or atleast bent to strong wills.
　　The irony, of course, was that such disregard of the rules and the manipulation oflanguage to achieve a particular outcome were precisely what conservatives had longaccused liberals of doing. It was one of the rationales behind Newt Gingrich’s Contractwith America—the notion that the Democratic barons who then controlled the House ofRepresentatives consistently abused the legislative process for their own gain. It was thebasis for the impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton, the scorn heaped on the sadphrase “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” It was the basis ofconservative broadsides against liberal academics, those high priests of politicalcorrectness, it was argued, who refused to acknowledge any eternal truths or hierarchiesof knowledge and indoctrinated America’s youth with dangerous moral relativism.
　　And it was at the very heart of the conservative assault on the federal courts.
　　Gaining control of the courts generally and the Supreme Court in particular had becomethe holy grail for a generation of conservative activists—and not just, they insisted,because they viewed the courts as the last bastion of pro-abortion, pro-affirmative-action, pro-homosexual, pro-criminal, pro-regulation, anti-religious liberal elitism.
　　According to these activists, liberal judges had placed themselves above the law, basingtheir opinions not on the Constitution but on their own whims and desired results,finding rights to abortion or sodomy that did not exist in the text, subverting thedemocratic process and perverting the Founding Fathers’ original intent. To return thecourts to their proper role required the appointment of “strict constructionists” to thefederal bench, men and women who understood the difference between interpreting andmaking law, men and women who would stick to the original meaning of the Founders’
　　words. Men and women who would follow the rules.
　　Those on the left saw the situation quite differently. With conservative Republicansmaking gains in the congressional and presidential elections, many liberals viewed thecourts as the only thing standing in the way of a radical effort to roll back civil rights,women’s rights, civil liberties, environmental regulation, church/state separation, andthe entire legacy of the New Deal. During the Bork nomination, advocacy groups andDemocratic leaders organized their opposition with a sophistication that had never beenseen for a judicial confirmation. When the nomination was defeated, conservativesrealized that they would have to build their own grassroots army.
　　Since then, each side had claimed incremental advances (Scalia and Thomas forconservatives, Ginsburg and Breyer for liberals) and setbacks (for conservatives, thewidely perceived drift toward the center by O’Connor, Kennedy, and especially Souter;for liberals, the packing of lower federal courts with Reagan and Bush I appointees).
　　Democrats complained loudly when Republicans used control of the JudiciaryCommittee to block sixty-one of Clinton’s appointments to appellate and district courts,and for the brief time that they held the majority, the Democrats tried the same tacticson George W. Bush’s nominees.
　　But when the Democrats lost their Senate majority in 2002, they had only one arrow leftin their quiver, a strategy that could be summed up in one word, the battle cry aroundwhich the Democratic faithful now rallied:
　　Filibuster!
　　The Constitution makes no mention of the filibuster; it is a Senate rule, one that datesback to the very first Congress. The basic idea is simple: Because all Senate business isconducted by unanimous consent, any senator can bring proceedings to a halt byexercising his right to unlimited debate and refusing to move on to the next order ofbusiness. In other words, he can talk. For as long as he wants. He can talk about thesubstance of a pending bill, or about the motion to call the pending bill. He can chooseto read the entire seven-hundred-page defense authorization bill, line by line, into therecord, or relate aspects of the bill to the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the flight ofthe hummingbird, or the Atlanta phone book. So long as he or like-minded colleaguesare willing to stay on the floor and talk, everything else has to wait—which gives eachsenator an enormous amount of leverage, and a determined minority effective vetopower over any piece of legislation.
　　The only way to break a filibuster is for three-fifths of the Senate to invoke somethingcalled cloture—that is, the cessation of debate. Effectively this means that every actionpending before the Senate—every bill, resolution, or nomination—needs the support ofsixty senators rather than a simple majority. A series of complex rules has evolved,allowing both filibusters and cloture votes to proceed without fanfare: Just the threat ofa filibuster will often be enough to get the majority leader’s attention, and a cloture votewill then be organized without anybody having to spend their evenings sleeping inarmchairs and cots. But throughout the Senate’s modern history, the filibuster hasremained a preciously guarded prerogative, one of the distinguishing features, it issaid—along with six-year terms and the allocation of two senators to each state,regardless of population—that separates the Senate from the House and serves as afirewall against the dangers of majority overreach.
　　There is another, grimmer history to the filibuster, though, one that carries specialrelevance for me. For almost a century, the filibuster was the South’s weapon of choicein its efforts to protect Jim Crow from federal interference, the legal blockade thateffectively gutted the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Decade after decade,courtly, erudite men like Senator Richard B. Russell of Georgia (after whom the mostelegant suite of Senate offices is named) used the filibuster to choke off any and everypiece of civil rights legislation before the Senate, whether voting rights bills, or fairemployment bills, or anti-lynching bills. With words, with rules, with procedures andprecedents—with law—Southern senators had succeeded in perpetuating blacksubjugation in ways that mere violence never could. The filibuster hadn’t just stoppedbills. For many blacks in the South, the filibuster had snuffed out hope.
　　Democrats used the filibuster sparingly in George Bush’s first term: Of the President’stwo-hundred-plus judicial nominees, only ten were prevented from getting to the floorfor an up-or-down vote. Still, all ten were nominees to appellate courts, the courts thatcounted; all ten were standard-bearers for the conservative cause; and if Democratsmaintained their filibuster on these ten fine jurists, conservatives argued, there would benothing to prevent them from having their way with future Supreme Court nominees.
　　So it came to pass that President Bush—emboldened by a bigger Republican majority inthe Senate and his self-proclaimed mandate—decided in the first few weeks of hissecond term to renominate seven previously filibustered judges. As a poke in the eye tothe Democrats, it produced the desired response. Democratic Leader Harry Reid calledit “a big wet kiss to the far right” and renewed the threat of a filibuster. Advocacygroups on the left and the right rushed to their posts and sent out all-points alerts,dispatching emails and direct mail that implored donors to fund the air wars to come.
　　Republicans, sensing that this was the time to go in for the kill, announced that ifDemocrats continued in their obstructionist ways, they would have no choice but toinvoke the dreaded “nuclear option,” a novel procedural maneuver that would involvethe Senate’s presiding officer (perhaps Vice President Cheney himself) ignoring theopinion of the Senate parliamentarian, breaking two hundred years of Senate precedent,and deciding, with a simple bang of the gavel, that the use of filibusters was no longerpermissible under the Senate rules—at least when it came to judicial nominations.
　　To me, the threat to eliminate the filibuster on judicial nominations was just one moreexample of Republicans changing the rules in the middle of the game. Moreover, a goodargument could be made that a vote on judicial nominations was precisely the situationwhere the filibuster’s supermajority requirement made sense: Because federal judgesreceive lifetime appointments and often serve through the terms of multiple presidents,it behooves a president—and benefits our democracy—to find moderate nominees whocan garner some measure of bipartisan support. Few of the Bush nominees in questionfell into the “moderate” category; rather, they showed a pattern of hostility toward civilrights, privacy, and checks on executive power that put them to the right of even mostRepublican judges (one particularly troubling nominee had derisively called SocialSecurity and other New Deal programs “the triumph of our own socialist revolution”).
　　Still, I remember muffling a laugh the first time I heard the term “nuclear option.” Itseemed to perfectly capture the loss of perspective that had come to characterize judicialconfirmations, part of the spin-fest that permitted groups on the left to run ads featuringscenes of Jimmy Stewart’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington without any mention thatStrom Thurmond and Jim Eastland had played Mr. Smith in real life; the shamelessmythologizing that allowed Southern Republicans to rise on the Senate floor andsomberly intone about the impropriety of filibusters, without even a peep ofacknowledgment that it was the politicians from their states—their direct politicalforebears—who had perfected the art for a malicious cause.
　　Not many of my fellow Democrats appreciated the irony. As the judicial confirmationprocess began heating up, I had a conversation with a friend in which I admittedconcern with some of the strategies we were using to discredit and block nominees. Ihad no doubt of the damage that some of Bush’s judicial nominees might do; I wouldsupport the filibuster of some of these judges, if only to signal to the White House theneed to moderate its next selections. But elections ultimately meant something, I toldmy friend. Instead of relying on Senate procedures, there was one way to ensure thatjudges on the bench reflected our values, and that was to win at the polls.
　　My friend shook her head vehemently. “Do you really think that if the situations werereversed, Republicans would have any qualms about using the filibuster?” she asked.
　　I didn’t. And yet I doubted that our use of the filibuster would dispel the image ofDemocrats always being on the defensive—a perception that we used the courts andlawyers and procedural tricks to avoid having to win over popular opinion. Theperception wasn’t entirely fair: Republicans no less than Democrats often asked thecourts to overturn democratic decisions (like campaign finance laws) that they didn’tlike. Still, I wondered if, in our reliance on the courts to vindicate not only our rights butalso our values, progressives had lost too much faith in democracy.
　　Just as conservatives appeared to have lost any sense that democracy must be more thanwhat the majority insists upon. I thought back to an afternoon several years earlier,when as a member of the Illinois legislature I had argued for an amendment to include amother’s health exception in a Republican bill to ban partial-birth abortion. Theamendment failed on a party line vote, and afterward, I stepped out into the hallwaywith one of my Republican colleagues. Without the amendment, I said, the law wouldbe struck down by the courts as unconstitutional. He turned to me and said it didn’tmatter what amendment was attached—judges would do whatever they wanted to doanyway.
　　“It’s all politics,” he had said, turning to leave. “And right now we’ve got the votes.”
　　DO ANY OF these fights matter? For many of us, arguments over Senate procedure,separation of powers, judicial nominations, and rules of constitutional interpretationseem pretty esoteric, distant from our everyday concerns—just one more example ofpartisan jousting.
　　In fact, they do matter. Not only because the procedural rules of our government helpdefine the results—on everything from whether the government can regulate polluters towhether government can tap your phone—but because they define our democracy justas much as elections do. Our system of self-governance is an intricate affair; it isthrough that system, and by respecting that system, that we give shape to our values andshared commitments.
　　Of course, I’m biased. For ten years before coming to Washington, I taughtconstitutional law at the University of Chicago. I loved the law school classroom: thestripped-down nature of it, the high-wire act of standing in front of a room at thebeginning of each class with just blackboard and chalk, the students taking measure ofme, some intent or apprehensive, others demonstrative in their boredom, the tensionbroken by my first question—“What’s this case about?”—and the hands tentativelyrising, the initial responses and me pushing back against whatever arguments surfaced,until slowly the bare words were peeled back and what had appeared dry and lifelessjust a few minutes before suddenly came alive, and my students’ eyes stirred, the textbecoming for them a part not just of the past but of their present and their future.
　　Sometimes I imagined my work to be not so different from the work of the theologyprofessors who taught across campus—for, as I suspect was true for those teachingScripture, I found that my students often felt they knew the Constitution without havingreally read it. They were accustomed to plucking out phrases that they’d heard andusing them to bolster their immediate arguments, or ignoring passages that seemed tocontradict their views.
　　But what I appreciated most about teaching constitutional law, what I wanted mystudents to appreciate, was just how accessible the relevant documents remain after twocenturies. My students may have used me as a guide, but they needed no intermediary,for unlike the books of Timothy or Luke, the founding documents—the Declaration ofIndependence, the Federalist Papers, and the Constitution—present themselves as theproduct of men. We have a record of the Founders’ intentions, I would tell my students,their arguments and their palace intrigues. If we can’t always divine what was in theirhearts, we can at least cut through the mist of time and have some sense of the coreideals that motivated their work.
　　So how should we understand our Constitution, and what does it say about the currentcontroversies surrounding the courts? To begin with, a careful reading of our foundingdocuments reminds us just how much all of our attitudes have been shaped by them.
　　Take the idea of inalienable rights. More than two hundred years after the Declarationof Independence was written and the Bill of Rights was ratified, we continue to argueabout the meaning of a “reasonable” search, or whether the Second Amendmentprohibits all gun regulation, or whether the desecration of the flag should be consideredspeech. We debate whether such basic common-law rights as the right to marry or theright to maintain our bodily integrity are implicitly, if not explicitly, recognized by theConstitution, and whether these rights encompass personal decisions involving abortion,or end-of-life care, or homosexual partnerships.
　　And yet for all our disagreements we would be hard pressed to find a conservative orliberal in America today, whether Republican or Democrat, academic or layman, whodoesn’t subscribe to the basic set of individual liberties identified by the Founders andenshrined in our Constitution and our common law: the right to speak our minds; theright to worship how and if we wish; the right to peaceably assemble to petition ourgovernment; the right to own, buy, and sell property and not have it taken without faircompensation; the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures; the right notto be detained by the state without due process; the right to a fair and speedy trial; andthe right to make our own determinations, with minimal restriction, regarding familylife and the way we raise our children.
　　We consider these rights to be universal, a codification of liberty’s meaning,constraining all levels of government and applicable to all people within the boundariesof our political community. Moreover, we recognize that the very idea of theseuniversal rights presupposes the equal worth of every individual. In that sense, whereverwe lie on the political spectrum, we all subscribe to the Founders’ teachings.
　　We also understand that a declaration is not a government; a creed is not enough. TheFounders recognized that there were seeds of anarchy in the idea of individual freedom,an intoxicating danger in the idea of equality, for if everybody is truly free, without theconstraints of birth or rank or an inherited social order—if my notion of faith is nobetter or worse than yours, and my notions of truth and goodness and beauty are as trueand good and beautiful as yours—then how can we ever hope to form a society thatcoheres? Enlightenment thinkers like Hobbes and Locke suggested that free men wouldform governments as a bargain to ensure that one man’s freedom did not becomeanother man’s tyranny; that they would sacrifice individual license to better preservetheir liberty. And building on this concept, political theorists writing before theAmerican Revolution concluded that only a democracy could fulfill the need for bothfreedom and order—a form of government in which those who are governed grant theirconsent, and the laws constraining liberty are uniform, predictable, and transparent,applying equally to the rulers and the ruled.
　　The Founders were steeped in these theories, and yet they were faced with adiscouraging fact: In the history of the world to that point, there were scant examples offunctioning democracies, and none that were larger than the city-states of ancientGreece. With thirteen far-flung states and a diverse population of three or four million,an Athenian model of democracy was out of the question, the direct democracy of theNew England town meeting unmanageable. A republican form of government, in whichthe people elected representatives, seemed more promising, but even the most optimisticrepublicans had assumed that such a system could work only for a geographicallycompact and homogeneous political community—a community in which a commonculture, a common faith, and a well-developed set of civic virtues on the part of eachand every citizen limited contention and strife.
　　The solution that the Founders arrived at, after contentious debate and multiple drafts,proved to be their novel contribution to the world. The outlines of Madison’sconstitutional architecture are so familiar that even schoolchildren can recite them: notonly rule of law and representative government, not just a bill of rights, but also theseparation of the national government into three coequal branches, a bicameralCongress, and a concept of federalism that preserved authority in state governments, allof it designed to diffuse power, check factions, balance interests, and prevent tyranny byeither the few or the many. Moreover, our history has vindicated one of the Founders’
　　central insights: that republican self-government could actually work better in a largeand diverse society, where, in Hamilton’s words, the “jarring of parties” and differencesof opinion could “promote deliberation and circumspection.” As with our understandingof the Declaration, we debate the details of constitutional construction; we may object toCongress’s abuse of expanded commerce clause powers to the detriment of the states, orto the erosion of Congress’s power to declare war. But we are confident in thefundamental soundness of the Founders’ blueprints and the democratic house thatresulted. Conservative or liberal, we are all constitutionalists.
　　So if we all believe in individual liberty and we all believe in these rules of democracy,what is the modern argument between conservatives and liberals really about? If we’rehonest with ourselves, we’ll admit that much of the time we are arguing about results—the actual decisions that the courts and the legislature make about the profound anddifficult issues that help shape our lives. Should we let teachers lead our children inprayer and leave open the possibility that the minority faiths of some children arediminished? Or do we forbid such prayer and force parents of faith to hand over theirchildren to a secular world eight hours a day? Is a university being fair by taking thehistory of racial discrimination and exclusion into account when filling a limitednumber of slots in its medical school? Or does fairness demand that universities treatevery applicant in a color-blind fashion? More often than not, if a particular proceduralrule—the right to filibuster, say, or the Supreme Court’s approach to constitutionalinterpretation—helps us win the argument and yields the outcome we want, then for thatmoment at least we think it’s a pretty good rule. If it doesn’t help us win, then we tendnot to like it so much.
　　In that sense, my colleague in the Illinois legislature was right when he said that today’sconstitutional arguments can’t be separated from politics. But there’s more than justoutcomes at stake in our current debates about the Constitution and the proper role ofthe courts. We’re also arguing about how to argue—the means, in a big, crowded, noisydemocracy, of settling our disputes peacefully. We want to get our way, but most of usalso recognize the need for consistency, predictability, and coherence. We want therules governing our democracy to be fair.
　　And so, when we get in a tussle about abortion or flag burning, we appeal to a higherauthority—the Founding Fathers and the Constitution’s ratifiers—to give us moredirection. Some, like Justice Scalia, conclude that the original understanding must befollowed and that if we strictly obey this rule, then democracy is respected.
　　Others, like Justice Breyer, don’t dispute that the original meaning of constitutionalprovisions matters. But they insist that sometimes the original understanding can takeyou only so far—that on the truly hard cases, the truly big arguments, we have to takecontext, history, and the practical outcomes of a decision into account. According to thisview, the Founding Fathers and original ratifiers have told us how to think but are nolonger around to tell us what to think. We are on our own, and have only our ownreason and our judgment to rely on.
　　Who’s right? I’m not unsympathetic to Justice Scalia’s position; after all, in many casesthe language of the Constitution is perfectly clear and can be strictly applied. We don’thave to interpret how often elections are held, for example, or how old a president mustbe, and whenever possible judges should hew as closely as possible to the clear meaningof the text.
　　Moreover, I understand the strict constructionists’ reverence for the Founders; indeed,I’ve often wondered whether the Founders themselves recognized at the time the scopeof their accomplishment. They didn’t simply design the Constitution in the wake ofrevolution; they wrote the Federalist Papers to support it, shepherded the documentthrough ratification, and amended it with the Bill of Rights—all in the span of a fewshort years. As we read these documents, they seem so incredibly right that it’s easy tobelieve they are the result of natural law if not divine inspiration. So I appreciate thetemptation on the part of Justice Scalia and others to assume our democracy should betreated as fixed and unwavering; the fundamentalist faith that if the originalunderstanding of the Constitution is followed without question or deviation, and if weremain true to the rules that the Founders set forth, as they intended, then we will berewarded and all good will flow.
　　Ultimately, though, I have to side with Justice Breyer’s view of the Constitution—that itis not a static but rather a living document, and must be read in the context of an ever-changing world.
　　How could it be otherwise? The constitutional text provides us with the generalprinciple that we aren’t subject to unreasonable searches by the government. It can’t tellus the Founders’ specific views on the reasonableness of an NSA computer data-miningoperation. The constitutional text tells us that freedom of speech must be protected, butit doesn’t tell us what such freedom means in the context of the Internet.
　　Moreover, while much of the Constitution’s language is clear and can be strictlyapplied, our understanding of many of its most important provisions—like the dueprocess clause and the equal protection clause—has evolved greatly over time. Theoriginal understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment, for example, would certainlyallow sex discrimination and might even allow racial segregation—an understanding ofequality to which few of us would want to return.
　　Finally, anyone looking to resolve our modern constitutional dispute through strictconstruction has one more problem: The Founders and ratifiers themselves disagreedprofoundly, vehemently, on the meaning of their masterpiece. Before the ink on theconstitutional parchment was dry, arguments had erupted, not just about minorprovisions but about first principles, not just between peripheral figures but within theRevolution’s very core. They argued about how much power the national governmentshould have—to regulate the economy, to supersede state laws, to form a standingarmy, or to assume debt. They argued about the president’s role in establishing treatieswith foreign powers, and about the Supreme Court’s role in determining the law. Theyargued about the meaning of such basic rights as freedom of speech and freedom ofassembly, and on several occasions, when the fragile state seemed threatened, they werenot averse to ignoring those rights altogether. Given what we know of this scrum, withall its shifting alliances and occasionally underhanded tactics, it is unrealistic to believethat a judge, two hundred years later, can somehow discern the original intent of theFounders or ratifiers.
　　Some historians and legal theorists take the argument against strict construction onestep further. They conclude that the Constitution itself was largely a happy accident, adocument cobbled together not as the result of principle but as the result of power andpassion; that we can never hope to discern the Founders’ “original intentions” since theintentions of Jefferson were never those of Hamilton, and those of Hamilton differedgreatly from those of Adams; that because the “rules” of the Constitution werecontingent on time and place and the ambitions of the men who drafted them, ourinterpretation of the rules will necessarily reflect the same contingency, the same rawcompetition, the same imperatives—cloaked in high-minded phrasing—of thosefactions that ultimately prevail. And just as I recognize the comfort offered by the strictconstructionist, so I see a certain appeal to this shattering of myth, to the temptation tobelieve that the constitutional text doesn’t constrain us much at all, so that we are free toassert our own values unencumbered by fidelity to the stodgy traditions of a distant past.
　　It’s the freedom of the relativist, the rule breaker, the teenager who has discovered hisparents are imperfect and has learned to play one off of the other—the freedom of theapostate.
　　And yet, ultimately, such apostasy leaves me unsatisfied as well. Maybe I am toosteeped in the myth of the founding to reject it entirely. Maybe like those who rejectDarwin in favor of intelligent design, I prefer to assume that someone’s at the wheel. Inthe end, the question I keep asking myself is why, if the Constitution is only aboutpower and not about principle, if all we are doing is just making it up as we go along,has our own republic not only survived but served as the rough model for so many ofthe successful societies on earth?
　　The answer I settle on—which is by no means original to me—requires a shift inmetaphors, one that sees our democracy not as a house to be built, but as a conversationto be had. According to this conception, the genius of Madison’s design is not that itprovides us a fixed blueprint for action, the way a draftsman plots a building’sconstruction. It provides us with a framework and with rules, but fidelity to these ruleswill not guarantee a just society or assure agreement on what’s right. It won’t tell uswhether abortion is good or bad, a decision for a woman to make or a decision for alegislature. Nor will it tell us whether school prayer is better than no prayer at all.
　　What the framework of our Constitution can do is organize the way by which we argueabout our future. All of its elaborate machinery—its separation of powers and checksand balances and federalist principles and Bill of Rights—are designed to force us into aconversation, a “deliberative democracy” in which all citizens are required to engage ina process of testing their ideas against an external reality, persuading others of theirpoint of view, and building shifting alliances of consent. Because power in ourgovernment is so diffuse, the process of making law in America compels us to entertainthe possibility that we are not always right and to sometimes change our minds; itchallenges us to examine our motives and our interests constantly, and suggests thatboth our individual and collective judgments are at once legitimate and highly fallible.
　　The historical record supports such a view. After all, if there was one impulse shared byall the Founders, it was a rejection of all forms of absolute authority, whether the king,the theocrat, the general, the oligarch, the dictator, the majority, or anyone else whoclaims to make choices for us. George Washington declined Caesar’s crown because ofthis impulse, and stepped down after two terms. Hamilton’s plans for leading a NewArmy foundered and Adams’s reputation after the Alien and Sedition Acts suffered forfailing to abide by this impulse. It was Jefferson, not some liberal judge in the sixties,who called for a wall between church and state—and if we have declined to heedJefferson’s advice to engage in a revolution every two or three generations, it’s onlybecause the Constitution itself proved a sufficient defense against tyranny.
　　It’s not just absolute power that the Founders sought to prevent. Implicit in its structure,in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility ofany idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lockfuture generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities andminorities into the cruelties of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad. TheFounders may have trusted in God, but true to the Enlightenment spirit, they also trustedin the minds and senses that God had given them. They were suspicious of abstractionand liked asking questions, which is why at every turn in our early history theoryyielded to fact and necessity. Jefferson helped consolidate the power of the nationalgovernment even as he claimed to deplore and reject such power. Adams’s ideal of apolitics grounded solely in the public interest—a politics without politics—was provenobsolete the moment Washington stepped down from office. It may be the vision of theFounders that inspires us, but it was their realism, their practicality and flexibility andcuriosity, that ensured the Union’s survival.
　　I confess that there is a fundamental humility to this reading of the Constitution and ourdemocratic process. It seems to champion compromise, modesty, and muddlingthrough; to justify logrolling, deal-making, self-interest, pork barrels, paralysis, andinefficiency—all the sausage-making that no one wants to see and that editorialiststhroughout our history have often labeled as corrupt. And yet I think we make a mistakein assuming that democratic deliberation requires abandonment of our highest ideals, orof a commitment to the common good. After all, the Constitution ensures our freespeech not just so that we can shout at one another as loud as we please, deaf to whatothers might have to say (although we have that right). It also offers us the possibility ofa genuine marketplace of ideas, one in which the “jarring of parties” works on behalf of“deliberation and circumspection”; a marketplace in which, through debate andcompetition, we can expand our perspective, change our minds, and eventually arrivenot merely at agreements but at sound and fair agreements.
　　The Constitution’s system of checks and balances, separation of powers, and federalismmay often lead to groups with fixed interests angling and sparring for narrow advantage,but it doesn’t have to. Such diffusion of power may also force groups to take otherinterests into account and, indeed, may even alter over time how those groups think andfeel about their own interests.
　　The rejection of absolutism implicit in our constitutional structure may sometimes makeour politics seem unprincipled. But for most of our history it has encouraged the veryprocess of information gathering, analysis, and argument that allows us to make better,if not perfect, choices, not only about the means to our ends but also about the endsthemselves. Whether we are for or against affirmative action, for or against prayer inschools, we must test out our ideals, vision, and values against the realities of a commonlife, so that over time they may be refined, discarded, or replaced by new ideals, sharpervisions, deeper values. Indeed, it is that process, according to Madison, that broughtabout the Constitution itself, through a convention in which “no man felt himselfobliged to retain his opinions any longer than he was satisfied of their propriety andtruth, and was open to the force of argument.”
　　IN SUM, the Constitution envisions a road map by which we marry passion to reason,the ideal of individual freedom to the demands of community. And the amazing thing isthat it’s worked. Through the early days of the Union, through depressions and worldwars, through the multiple transformations of the economy and Western expansion andthe arrival of millions of immigrants to our shores, our democracy has not only survivedbut has thrived. It has been tested, of course, during times of war and fear, and it will nodoubt be tested again in the future.
　　But only once has the conversation broken down completely, and that was over the onesubject the Founders refused to talk about.
　　The Declaration of Independence may have been, in the words of historian Joseph Ellis,“a transformative moment in world history, when all laws and human relationshipsdependent on coercion would be swept away forever.” But that spirit of liberty didn’textend, in the minds of the Founders, to the slaves who worked their fields, made theirbeds, and nursed their children.
　　The Constitution’s exquisite machinery would secure the rights of citizens, thosedeemed members of America’s political community. But it provided no protection tothose outside the constitutional circle—the Native American whose treaties provedworthless before the court of the conqueror, or the black man Dred Scott, who wouldwalk into the Supreme Court a free man and leave a slave.
　　Democratic deliberation might have been sufficient to expand the franchise to whitemen without property and eventually women; reason, argument, and Americanpragmatism might have eased the economic growing pains of a great nation and helpedlessen religious and class tensions that would plague other nations. But deliberationalone could not provide the slave his freedom or cleanse America of its original sin. Inthe end, it was the sword that would sever his chains.
　　What does this say about our democracy? There’s a school of thought that sees theFounding Fathers only as hypocrites and the Constitution only as a betrayal of the grandideals set forth by the Declaration of Independence; that agrees with early abolitioniststhat the Great Compromise between North and South was a pact with the Devil. Others,representing the safer, more conventional wisdom, will insist that all the constitutionalcompromise on slavery—the omission of abolitionist sentiments from the original draftof the Declaration, the Three-fifths Clause and the Fugitive Slave Clause and theImportation Clause, the self-imposed gag rule that the Twenty-fourth Congress wouldplace on all debate regarding the issue of slavery, the very structure of federalism andthe Senate—was a necessary, if unfortunate, requirement for the formation of theUnion; that in their silence, the Founders only sought to postpone what they werecertain would be slavery’s ultimate demise; that this single lapse cannot detract from thegenius of the Constitution, which permitted the space for abolitionists to rally and thedebate to proceed, and provided the framework by which, after the Civil War had beenfought, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments could be passed, and theUnion finally perfected.
　　How can I, an American with the blood of Africa coursing through my veins, choosesides in such a dispute? I can’t. I love America too much, am too invested in what thiscountry has become, too committed to its institutions, its beauty, and even its ugliness,to focus entirely on the circumstances of its birth. But neither can I brush aside themagnitude of the injustice done, or erase the ghosts of generations past, or ignore theopen wound, the aching spirit, that ails this country still.
　　The best I can do in the face of our history is remind myself that it has not always beenthe pragmatist, the voice of reason, or the force of compromise, that has created theconditions for liberty. The hard, cold facts remind me that it was unbending idealistslike William Lloyd Garrison who first sounded the clarion call for justice; that it wasslaves and former slaves, men like Denmark Vesey and Frederick Douglass and womenlike Harriet Tubman, who recognized power would concede nothing without a fight. Itwas the wild-eyed prophecies of John Brown, his willingness to spill blood and not justwords on behalf of his visions, that helped force the issue of a nation half slave and halffree. I’m reminded that deliberation and the constitutional order may sometimes be theluxury of the powerful, and that it has sometimes been the cranks, the zealots, theprophets, the agitators, and the unreasonable—in other words, the absolutists—that havefought for a new order. Knowing this, I can’t summarily dismiss those possessed ofsimilar certainty today—the antiabortion activist who pickets my town hall meeting, orthe animal rights activist who raids a laboratory—no matter how deeply I disagree withtheir views. I am robbed even of the certainty of uncertainty—for sometimes absolutetruths may well be absolute.
　　I’M LEFT THEN with Lincoln, who like no man before or since understood both thedeliberative function of our democracy and the limits of such deliberation. Weremember him for the firmness and depth of his convictions—his unyielding oppositionto slavery and his determination that a house divided could not stand. But his presidencywas guided by a practicality that would distress us today, a practicality that led him totest various bargains with the South in order to maintain the Union without war; toappoint and discard general after general, strategy after strategy, once war broke out; tostretch the Constitution to the breaking point in order to see the war through to asuccessful conclusion. I like to believe that for Lincoln, it was never a matter ofabandoning conviction for the sake of expediency. Rather, it was a matter ofmaintaining within himself the balance between two contradictory ideas—that we musttalk and reach for common understandings, precisely because all of us are imperfect andcan never act with the certainty that God is on our side; and yet at times we must actnonetheless, as if we are certain, protected from error only by providence.
　　That self-awareness, that humility, led Lincoln to advance his principles through theframework of our democracy, through speeches and debate, through the reasonedarguments that might appeal to the better angels of our nature. It was this same humilitythat allowed him, once the conversation between North and South broke down and warbecame inevitable, to resist the temptation to demonize the fathers and sons who didbattle on the other side, or to diminish the horror of war, no matter how just it might be.
　　The blood of slaves reminds us that our pragmatism can sometimes be moral cowardice.
　　Lincoln, and those buried at Gettysburg, remind us that we should pursue our ownabsolute truths only if we acknowledge that there may be a terrible price to pay.
　　SUCH LATE-NIGHT meditations proved unnecessary in my immediate decision aboutGeorge W. Bush’s nominees to the federal court of appeals. In the end, the crisis in theSenate was averted, or at least postponed: Seven Democratic senators agreed not tofilibuster three of Bush’s five controversial nominees, and pledged that in the futurethey would reserve the filibuster for more “extraordinary circumstances.” In exchange,seven Republicans agreed to vote against a “nuclear option” that would permanentlyeliminate the filibuster—again, with the caveat that they could change their minds in theevent of “extraordinary circumstances.” What constituted “extraordinary circumstances”
　　no one could say, and both Democratic and Republican activists, itching for a fight,complained bitterly at what they perceived to be their side’s capitulation.
　　I declined to be a part of what would be called the Gang of Fourteen; given the profilesof some of the judges involved, it was hard to see what judicial nominee might be somuch worse as to constitute an “extraordinary circumstance” worthy of filibuster. Still, Icould not fault my colleagues for their efforts. The Democrats involved had made apractical decision—without the deal, the “nuclear option” would have likely gonethrough.
　　No one was more ecstatic with this turn of events than Senator Byrd. The day the dealwas announced, he walked triumphantly down the halls of the Capitol with RepublicanJohn Warner of Virginia, the younger members of the Gang trailing behind the oldlions. “We have kept the Republic!” Senator Byrd announced to a pack of reporters, andI smiled to myself, thinking back to the visit that the two of us had finally been able toarrange a few months earlier.
　　It was in Senator Byrd’s hideaway on the first floor of the Capitol, tucked alongside aseries of small, beautifully painted rooms where Senate committees once regularly met.
　　His secretary had led me into his private office, which was filled with books and whatlooked to be aging manuscripts, the walls lined with old photographs and campaignmemorabilia. Senator Byrd asked me if it would be all right if we took a fewphotographs together, and we shook hands and smiled for the photographer who waspresent. After the secretary and the photographer had left, we sat down in a pair of well-worn chairs. I inquired after his wife, who I had heard had taken a turn for the worse,and asked about some of the figures in the photos. Eventually I asked him what advicehe would give me as a new member of the Senate.
　　“Learn the rules,” he said. “Not just the rules, but the precedents as well.” He pointed toa series of thick binders behind him, each one affixed with a handwritten label. “Notmany people bother to learn them these days. Everything is so rushed, so manydemands on a senator’s time. But these rules unlock the power of the Senate. They’rethe keys to the kingdom.”
　　We spoke about the Senate’s past, the presidents he had known, the bills he hadmanaged. He told me I would do well in the Senate but that I shouldn’t be in too muchof a rush—so many senators today became fixated on the White House, notunderstanding that in the constitutional design it was the Senate that was supreme, theheart and soul of the Republic.
　　“So few people read the Constitution today,” Senator Byrd said, pulling out his copyfrom his breast pocket. “I’ve always said, this document and the Holy Bible, they’vebeen all the guidance I need.”
　　Before I left, he insisted that his secretary bring in a set of his Senate histories for me tohave. As he slowly set the beautifully bound books on the table and searched for a pen, Itold him how remarkable it was that he had found the time to write.
　　“Oh, I have been very fortunate,” he said, nodding to himself. “Much to be thankful for.
　　There’s not much I wouldn’t do over.” Suddenly he paused and looked squarely into myeyes. “I only have one regret, you know. The foolishness of youth…”
　　We sat there for a moment, considering the gap of years and experience between us.
　　“We all have regrets, Senator,” I said finally. “We just ask that in the end, God’s graceshines upon us.”
　　He studied my face for a moment, then nodded with the slightest of smiles and flippedopen the cover of one of the books. “God’s grace. Yes indeed. Let me sign these for youthen,” he said, and taking one hand to steady the other, he slowly scratched his name onthe gift.
Chapter 4 Politics
ONE OF MY favorite tasks of being a senator is hosting town hall meetings. I heldthirty-nine of them my first year in the Senate, all across Illinois, in tiny rural towns likeAnna and prosperous suburbs like Naperville, in black churches on the South Side and acollege in Rock Island. There’s not a lot of fanfare involved. My staff will call up thelocal high school, library, or community college to see if they’re willing to host theevent. A week or so in advance, we advertise in the town newspaper, in churchbulletins, and on the local radio station. On the day of the meeting I’ll show up a halfhour early to chat with town leaders and we’ll discuss local issues, perhaps a road inneed of repaving or plans for a new senior center. After taking a few photographs, weenter the hall where the crowd is waiting. I shake hands on my way to the stage, whichis usually bare except for a podium, a microphone, a bottle of water, and an Americanflag posted in its stand. And then, for the next hour or so, I answer to the people whosent me to Washington.
　　Attendance varies at these meetings: We’ve had as few as fifty people turn out, as manyas two thousand. But however many people show up, I am grateful to see them. Theyare a cross-section of the counties we visit: Republican and Democrat, old and young,fat and skinny, truck drivers, college professors, stay-at-home moms, veterans,schoolteachers, insurance agents, CPAs, secretaries, doctors, and social workers. Theyare generally polite and attentive, even when they disagree with me (or one another).
　　They ask me about prescription drugs, the deficit, human rights in Myanmar, ethanol,bird flu, school funding, and the space program. Often they will surprise me: A youngflaxen-haired woman in the middle of farm country will deliver a passionate plea forintervention in Darfur, or an elderly black gentleman in an inner-city neighborhood willquiz me on soil conservation.
　　And as I look out over the crowd, I somehow feel encouraged. In their bearing I seehard work. In the way they handle their children I see hope. My time with them is like adip in a cool stream. I feel cleansed afterward, glad for the work I have chosen.
　　At the end of the meeting, people will usually come up to shake hands, take pictures, ornudge their child forward to ask for an autograph. They slip things into my hand—articles, business cards, handwritten notes, armed-services medallions, small religiousobjects, good-luck charms. And sometimes someone will grab my hand and tell me thatthey have great hopes for me, but that they are worried that Washington is going tochange me and I will end up just like all the rest of the people in power.
　　Please stay who you are, they will say to me.
　　Please don’t disappoint us.
　　IT IS AN American tradition to attribute the problem with our politics to the quality ofour politicians. At times this is expressed in very specific terms: The president is amoron, or Congressman So-and-So is a bum. Sometimes a broader indictment is issued,as in “They’re all in the pockets of the special interests.” Most voters conclude thateveryone in Washington is “just playing politics,” meaning that votes or positions aretaken contrary to conscience, that they are based on campaign contributions or the pollsor loyalty to party rather than on trying to do what is right. Often, the fiercest criticismis reserved for the politician from one’s own ranks, the Democrat who “doesn’t standfor anything” or the “Republican in Name Only.” All of which leads to the conclusionthat if we want anything to change in Washington, we’ll need to throw the rascals out.
　　And yet year after year we keep the rascals right where they are, with the reelection ratefor House members hovering at around 96 percent.
　　Political scientists can give you a number of reasons for this phenomenon. In today’sinterconnected world, it’s difficult to penetrate the consciousness of a busy anddistracted electorate. As a result, winning in politics mainly comes down to a simplematter of name recognition, which is why most incumbents spend inordinate amounts oftheir time between elections making sure their names are repeated over and over again,whether at ribbon cuttings or Fourth of July parades or on the Sunday morning talkshow circuit. There’s the well-known fund-raising advantage that incumbents enjoy, forinterest groups—whether on the left or the right—tend to go with the odds when itcomes to political contributions. And there’s the role of political gerrymandering ininsulating House members from significant challenge: These days, almost everycongressional district is drawn by the ruling party with computer-driven precision toensure that a clear majority of Democrats or Republicans reside within its borders.
　　Indeed, it’s not a stretch to say that most voters no longer choose their representatives;instead, representatives choose their voters.
　　Another factor comes into play, though, one that is rarely mentioned but that helpsexplain why polls consistently show voters hating Congress but liking theircongressman. Hard as it may be to believe, most politicians are pretty likable folks.
　　Certainly I found this to be true of my Senate colleagues. One-on-one they made forwonderful company—I would be hard-pressed to name better storytellers than TedKennedy or Trent Lott, or sharper wits than Kent Conrad or Richard Shelby, or warmerindividuals than Debbie Stabenow or Mel Martinez. As a rule they proved to beintelligent, thoughtful, and hardworking people, willing to devote long hours andattention to the issues affecting their states. Yes, there were those who lived up to thestereotype, those who talked interminably or bullied their staffs; and the more time Ispent on the Senate floor, the more frequently I could identify in each senator the flawsthat we all suffer from to varying degrees—a bad temper here, a deep stubbornness orunquenchable vanity there. For the most part, though, the quotient of such attributes inthe Senate seemed no higher than would be found in any random slice of the generalpopulation. Even when talking to those colleagues with whom I most deeply disagreed,I was usually struck by their basic sincerity—their desire to get things right and leavethe country better and stronger; their desire to represent their constituents and theirvalues as faithfully as circumstances would allow.
　　So what happened to make these men and women appear as the grim, uncompromising,insincere, and occasionally mean characters that populate our nightly news? What was itabout the process that prevented reasonable, conscientious people from doing thenation’s business? The longer I served in Washington, the more I saw friends studyingmy face for signs of a change, probing me for a newfound pomposity, searching forhints of argumentativeness or guardedness. I began examining myself in the same way;I began to see certain characteristics that I held in common with my new colleagues, andI wondered what might prevent my own transformation into the stock politician of badTV movies.
　　ONE PLACE TO start my inquiry was to understand the nature of ambition, for in thisregard at least, senators are different. Few people end up being United States senatorsby accident; at a minimum, it requires a certain megalomania, a belief that of all thegifted people in your state, you are somehow uniquely qualified to speak on theirbehalf; a belief sufficiently strong that you are willing to endure the sometimesuplifting, occasionally harrowing, but always slightly ridiculous process we callcampaigns.
　　Moreover, ambition alone is not enough. Whatever the tangle of motives, both sacredand profane, that push us toward the goal of becoming a senator, those who succeedmust exhibit an almost fanatical single-mindedness, often disregarding their health,relationships, mental balance, and dignity. After my primary campaign was over, Iremember looking at my calendar and realizing that over a span of a year and a half, Ihad taken exactly seven days off. The rest of the time I had typically worked twelve tosixteen hours a day. This was not something I was particularly proud of. As Michellepointed out to me several times a week during the campaign, it just wasn’t normal.
　　Neither ambition nor single-mindedness fully accounts for the behavior of politicians,however. There is a companion emotion, perhaps more pervasive and certainly moredestructive, an emotion that, after the giddiness of your official announcement as acandidate, rapidly locks you in its grip and doesn’t release you until after Election Day.
　　That emotion is fear. Not just fear of losing—although that is bad enough—but fear oftotal, complete humiliation.
　　I still burn, for example, with the thought of my one loss in politics, a drubbing in 2000at the hands of incumbent Democratic Congressman Bobby Rush. It was a race in whicheverything that could go wrong did go wrong, in which my own mistakes werecompounded by tragedy and farce. Two weeks after announcing my candidacy, with afew thousand dollars raised, I commissioned my first poll and discovered that Mr.
　　Rush’s name recognition stood at about 90 percent, while mine stood at 11 percent. Hisapproval rating hovered around 70 percent—mine at 8. In that way I learned one of thecardinal rules of modern politics: Do the poll before you announce.
　　Things went downhill from there. In October, on my way to a meeting to secure anendorsement from one of the few party officials who had not already committed to myopponent, I heard a news flash on the radio that Congressman Rush’s adult son hadbeen shot and killed by a pair of drug dealers outside his house. I was shocked andsaddened for the congressman, and effectively suspended my campaign for a month.
　　Then, during the Christmas holidays, after having traveled to Hawaii for an abbreviatedfive-day trip to visit my grandmother and reacquaint myself with Michelle and then-eighteen-month-old Malia, the state legislature was called back into special session tovote on a piece of gun control legislation. With Malia sick and unable to fly, I missedthe vote, and the bill failed. Two days later, I got off the red-eye at O’Hare Airport, awailing baby in tow, Michelle not speaking to me, and was greeted by a front-page storyin the Chicago Tribune indicating that the gun bill had fallen a few votes short, and thatstate senator and congressional candidate Obama “had decided to remain on vacation”
　　in Hawaii. My campaign manager called, mentioning the potential ad the congressmanmight be running soon—palm trees, a man in a beach chair and straw hat sipping a maitai, a slack key guitar being strummed softly in the background, the voice-overexplaining, “While Chicago suffered the highest murder rate in its history, BarackObama…”
　　I stopped him there, having gotten the idea.
　　And so, less than halfway into the campaign, I knew in my bones that I was going tolose. Each morning from that point forward I awoke with a vague sense of dread,realizing that I would have to spend the day smiling and shaking hands and pretendingthat everything was going according to plan. In the few weeks before the primary, mycampaign recovered a bit: I did well in the sparsely covered debates, received somepositive coverage for proposals on health care and education, and even received theTribune endorsement. But it was too little too late. I arrived at my victory party todiscover that the race had already been called and that I had lost by thirty-one points.
　　I’m not suggesting that politicians are unique in suffering such disappointments. It’sthat unlike most people, who have the luxury of licking their wounds privately, thepolitician’s loss is on public display. There’s the cheerful concession speech you haveto make to a half-empty ballroom, the brave face you put on as you comfort staff andsupporters, the thank-you calls to those who helped, and the awkward requests forfurther help in retiring debt. You perform these tasks as best you can, and yet no matterhow much you tell yourself differently—no matter how convincingly you attribute theloss to bad timing or bad luck or lack of money—it’s impossible not to feel at somelevel as if you have been personally repudiated by the entire community, that you don’tquite have what it takes, and that everywhere you go the word “loser” is flashingthrough people’s minds. They’re the sorts of feelings that most people haven’texperienced since high school, when the girl you’d been pining over dismissed you witha joke in front of her friends, or you missed a pair of free throws with the big game onthe line—the kinds of feelings that most adults wisely organize their lives to avoid.
　　Imagine then the impact of these same emotions on the average big-time politician, who(unlike me) has rarely failed at anything in his life—who was the high schoolquarterback or the class valedictorian and whose father was a senator or admiral andwho has been told since he was a child that he was destined for great things. I remembertalking once to a corporate executive who had been a big supporter of Vice President AlGore during the 2000 presidential race. We were in his suitably plush office,overlooking all of midtown Manhattan, and he began describing to me a meeting thathad taken place six months or so after the election, when Gore was seeking investors forhis then-fledgling television venture.
　　“It was strange,” the executive told me. “Here he was, a former vice president, a manwho just a few months earlier had been on the verge of being the most powerful man onthe planet. During the campaign, I would take his calls any time of day, would rearrangemy schedule whenever he wanted to meet. But suddenly, after the election, when hewalked in, I couldn’t help feeling that the meeting was a chore. I hate to admit it,because I really like the guy. But at some level he wasn’t Al Gore, former vicepresident. He was just one of the hundred guys a day who are coming to me looking formoney. It made me realize what a big steep cliff you guys are on.”
　　A big steep cliff, the precipitous fall. Over the past five years, Al Gore has shown thesatisfaction and influence that a life after politics can bring, and I suspect the executiveis eagerly taking the former vice president’s calls once again. Still, in the aftermath ofhis 2000 loss, I imagine Gore would have sensed the change in his friend. Sitting there,pitching his television idea, trying to make the best of a bad situation, he might havethought how ridiculous were the circumstances in which he found himself; how after alifetime of work he could have lost it all because of a butterfly ballot that didn’t align,while his friend the executive, sitting across from him with the condescending smile,could afford to come in second in his business year after year, maybe see his company’sstock tumble or make an ill-considered investment, and yet still be consideredsuccessful, still enjoy the pride of accomplishment, the lavish compensation, theexercise of power. It wasn’t fair, but that wouldn’t change the facts for the former vicepresident. Like most men and women who followed the path of public life, Gore knewwhat he was getting himself into the moment he decided to run. In politics, there may besecond acts, but there is no second place.
　　MOST OF THE other sins of politics are derivative of this larger sin—the need to win,but also the need not to lose. Certainly that’s what the money chase is all about. Therewas a time, before campaign finance laws and snooping reporters, when money shapedpolitics through outright bribery; when a politician could treat his campaign fund as hispersonal bank account and accept fancy junkets; when big honoraria from those whosought influence were commonplace, and the shape of legislation went to the highestbidder. If recent news reports are accurate, these ranker forms of corruption have notgone away entirely; apparently there are still those in Washington who view politics asa means of getting rich, and who, while generally not dumb enough to accept bags ofsmall bills, are perfectly prepared to take care of contributors and properly feather theirbeds until the time is finally ripe to jump into the lucrative practice of lobbying onbehalf of those they once regulated.
　　More often, though, that’s not the way money influences politics. Few lobbyists profferan explicit quid pro quo to elected officials. They don’t have to. Their influence comessimply from having more access to those officials than the average voter, having betterinformation than the average voter, and having more staying power when it comes topromoting an obscure provision in the tax code that means billions for their clients andthat nobody else cares about.
　　As for most politicians, money isn’t about getting rich. In the Senate, at least, mostmembers are already rich. It’s about maintaining status and power; it’s about scaring offchallengers and fighting off the fear. Money can’t guarantee victory—it can’t buypassion, charisma, or the ability to tell a story. But without money, and the televisionads that consume all the money, you are pretty much guaranteed to lose.
　　The amounts of money involved are breathtaking, particularly in big state races withmultiple media markets. While in the state legislature, I never needed to spend morethan $100,000 on a race; in fact, I developed a reputation for being something of a stick-in-the-mud when it came to fund-raising, coauthoring the first campaign financelegislation to pass in twenty-five years, refusing meals from lobbyists, rejecting checksfrom gaming and tobacco interests. When I decided to run for the U.S. Senate, mymedia consultant, David Axelrod, had to sit me down to explain the facts of life. Ourcampaign plan called for a bare-bones budget, a heavy reliance on grassroots supportand “earned media”—that is, an ability to make our own news. Still, David informed methat one week of television advertising in the Chicago media market would costapproximately half a million dollars. Covering the rest of the state for a week would runabout $250,000. Figuring four weeks of TV, and all the overhead and staff for astatewide campaign, the final budget for the primary would be around $5 million.
　　Assuming I won the primary, I would then need to raise another $10 or $15 million forthe general election.
　　I went home that night and in neat columns proceeded to write down all the people Iknew who might give me a contribution. Next to their names, I wrote down themaximum amounts that I would feel comfortable asking them for.
　　My grand total came to $500,000.
　　Absent great personal wealth, there is basically one way of raising the kind of moneyinvolved in a U.S. Senate race. You have to ask rich people for it. In the first threemonths of my campaign, I would shut myself in a room with my fund-raising assistantand cold-call previous Democratic donors. It was not fun. Sometimes people wouldhang up on me. More often their secretary would take a message and I wouldn’t get areturn call, and I would call back two or three times until either I gave up or the person Iwas calling finally answered and gave me the courtesy of a person-to-person rejection. Istarted engaging in elaborate games of avoidance during call time—frequent bathroombreaks, extended coffee runs, suggestions to my policy staff that we fine-tune thateducation speech for the third or fourth time. At times during these sessions I thought ofmy grandfather, who in middle age had sold life insurance but wasn’t very good at it. Irecalled his anguish whenever he tried to schedule appointments with people whowould rather have had a root canal than talk to an insurance agent, as well as thedisapproving glances he received from my grandmother, who for most of their marriagemade more money than he did.
　　More than ever, I understood how my grandfather must have felt.
　　At the end of three months, our campaign had raised just $250,000—well below thethreshold of what it would take to be credible. To make matters worse, my race featuredwhat many politicians consider their worst nightmare: a self-financing candidate withbottomless pockets. His name was Blair Hull, and he had sold his financial tradingbusiness to Goldman Sachs a few years earlier for $531 million. Undoubtedly he had agenuine, if undefined, desire to serve, and by all accounts he was a brilliant man. But onthe campaign trail he was almost painfully shy, with the quirky, inward manner ofsomeone who’d spent most of his life alone in front of a computer screen. I suspect thatlike many people, he figured that being a politician—unlike being a doctor or airlinepilot or plumber—required no special expertise in anything useful, and that abusinessman like himself could perform at least as well, and probably better, than anyof the professional pols he saw on TV. In fact, Mr. Hull viewed his facility withnumbers as an invaluable asset: At one point in the campaign, he divulged to a reportera mathematical formula that he’d developed for winning campaigns, an algorithm thatbeganProbability = 1/(1 + exp(-1 × (-3.9659056 + (General Election Weight × 1.92380219)…and ended several indecipherable factors later.
　　All of which made it easy to write off Mr. Hull as an opponent—until one morning inApril or May, when I pulled out of the circular driveway of my condo complex on theway to the office and was greeted by row upon row of large red, white, and blue lawnsigns marching up and down the block. BLAIR HULL FOR U.S. SENATE, the signsread, and for the next five miles I saw them on every street and along every majorthoroughfare, in every direction and in every nook and cranny, in barbershop windowsand posted on abandoned buildings, in front of bus stops and behind grocery storecounters—Hull signs everywhere, dotting the landscape like daisies in spring.
　　There is a saying in Illinois politics that “signs don’t vote,” meaning that you can’tjudge a race by how many signs a candidate has. But nobody in Illinois had ever seenduring the course of an entire campaign the number of signs and billboards that Mr.
　　Hull had put up in a single day, or the frightening efficiency with which his crews ofpaid workers could yank up everybody else’s yard signs and replace them with Hullsigns in the span of a single evening. We began to read about certain neighborhoodleaders in the black community who had suddenly decided that Mr. Hull was achampion of the inner city, certain downstate leaders who extolled Mr. Hull’s support ofthe family farm. And then the television ads hit, six months out and ubiquitous untilElection Day, on every station around the state around the clock—Blair Hull withseniors, Blair Hull with children, Blair Hull ready to take back Washington from thespecial interests. By January 2004, Mr. Hull had moved into first place in the polls andmy supporters began swamping me with calls, insisting that I had to do something,telling me I had to get on TV immediately or all would be lost.
　　What could I do? I explained that unlike Mr. Hull I practically had a negative net worth.
　　Assuming the best-case scenario, our campaign would have enough money for exactlyfour weeks of television ads, and given this fact it probably didn’t make sense for us toblow the entire campaign budget in August. Everybody just needed to be patient, Iwould tell supporters. Stay confident. Don’t panic. Then I’d hang up the phone, look outthe window, and happen to catch sight of the RV in which Hull tooled around the state,big as an ocean liner and reputedly just as well appointed, and I would wonder to myselfif perhaps it was time to panic after all.
　　In many ways, I was luckier than most candidates in such circumstances. For whateverreason, at some point my campaign began to generate that mysterious, elusive quality ofmomentum, of buzz; it became fashionable among wealthy donors to promote mycause, and small donors around the state began sending checks through the Internet at apace we had never anticipated. Ironically, my dark-horse status protected me from someof the more dangerous pitfalls of fund-raising: Most of the corporate PACs avoided me,and so I owed them nothing; the handful of PACs that did give, like the League ofConservation Voters, typically represented causes I believed in and had long fought for.
　　Mr. Hull still ended up outspending me by a factor of six to one. But to his credit(although perhaps to his regret) he never ran a negative TV ad against me. My pollnumbers stayed within shouting distance of his, and in the final weeks of the campaign,just as my own TV spots started running and my numbers began to surge, his campaignimploded when allegations surfaced that he’d had some ugly run-ins with an ex-wife.
　　So for me, at least, the lack of wealth or significant corporate support wasn’t a barrier tovictory. Still, I can’t assume that the money chase didn’t alter me in some ways.
　　Certainly it eliminated any sense of shame I once had in asking strangers for large sumsof money. By the end of the campaign, the banter and small talk that had onceaccompanied my solicitation calls were eliminated. I cut to the chase and tried not totake no for an answer.
　　But I worry that there was also another change at work. Increasingly I found myselfspending time with people of means—law firm partners and investment bankers, hedgefund managers and venture capitalists. As a rule, they were smart, interesting people,knowledgeable about public policy, liberal in their politics, expecting nothing more thana hearing of their opinions in exchange for their checks. But they reflected, almostuniformly, the perspectives of their class: the top 1 percent or so of the income scalethat can afford to write a $2,000 check to a political candidate. They believed in the freemarket and an educational meritocracy; they found it hard to imagine that there mightbe any social ill that could not be cured by a high SAT score. They had no patience withprotectionism, found unions troublesome, and were not particularly sympathetic tothose whose lives were upended by the movements of global capital. Most wereadamantly prochoice and antigun and were vaguely suspicious of deep religioussentiment.
　　And although my own worldview and theirs corresponded in many ways—I had gone tothe same schools, after all, had read the same books, and worried about my kids in manyof the same ways—I found myself avoiding certain topics during conversations withthem, papering over possible differences, anticipating their expectations. On core issuesI was candid; I had no problem telling well-heeled supporters that the tax cuts they’dreceived from George Bush should be reversed. Whenever I could, I would try to sharewith them some of the perspectives I was hearing from other portions of the electorate:
　　the legitimate role of faith in politics, say, or the deep cultural meaning of guns in ruralparts of the state.
　　Still, I know that as a consequence of my fund-raising I became more like the wealthydonors I met, in the very particular sense that I spent more and more of my time abovethe fray, outside the world of immediate hunger, disappointment, fear, irrationality, andfrequent hardship of the other 99 percent of the population—that is, the people that I’dentered public life to serve. And in one fashion or another, I suspect this is true forevery senator: The longer you are a senator, the narrower the scope of your interactions.
　　You may fight it, with town hall meetings and listening tours and stops by the oldneighborhood. But your schedule dictates that you move in a different orbit from mostof the people you represent.
　　And perhaps as the next race approaches, a voice within tells you that you don’t want tohave to go through all the misery of raising all that money in small increments all overagain. You realize that you no longer have the cachet you did as the upstart, the freshface; you haven’t changed Washington, and you’ve made a lot of people unhappy withdifficult votes. The path of least resistance—of fund-raisers organized by the specialinterests, the corporate PACs, and the top lobbying shops—starts to look awfullytempting, and if the opinions of these insiders don’t quite jibe with those you once held,you learn to rationalize the changes as a matter of realism, of compromise, of learningthe ropes. The problems of ordinary people, the voices of the Rust Belt town or thedwindling heartland, become a distant echo rather than a palpable reality, abstractions tobe managed rather than battles to be fought.
　　THERE ARE OTHER forces at work on a senator. As important as money is incampaigns, it’s not just fund-raising that puts a candidate over the top. If you want towin in politics—if you don’t want to lose—then organized people can be just asimportant as cash, particularly in the low-turnout primaries that, in the world of thegerrymandered political map and divided electorates, are often the most significant racea candidate faces. Few people these days have the time or inclination to volunteer on apolitical campaign, particularly since the day-to-day tasks of working on a campaigngenerally involve licking envelopes and knocking on doors, not drafting speeches andthinking big thoughts. And so, if you are a candidate in need of political workers orvoter lists, you go where people are already organized. For Democrats, this means theunions, the environmental groups, and the prochoice groups. For Republicans, it meansthe religious right, local chambers of commerce, the NRA, and the antitaxorganizations.
　　I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the term “special interests,” which lumpstogether ExxonMobil and bricklayers, the pharmaceutical lobby and the parents ofspecial-ed kids. Most political scientists would probably disagree with me, but to mymind, there’s a difference between a corporate lobby whose clout is based on moneyalone, and a group of like-minded individuals—whether they be textile workers, gunaficionados, veterans, or family farmers—coming together to promote their interests;between those who use their economic power to magnify their political influence farbeyond what their numbers might justify, and those who are simply seeking to pooltheir votes to sway their representatives. The former subvert the very idea ofdemocracy. The latter are its essence.
　　Still, the impact of interest groups on candidates for office is not always pretty. Tomaintain an active membership, keep the donations coming in, and be heard above thedin, the groups that have an impact on politics aren’t fashioned to promote the publicinterest. They aren’t searching for the most thoughtful, well-qualified, or broad-mindedcandidate to support. Instead, they are focused on a narrow set of concerns—theirpensions, their crop supports, their cause. Simply put, they have an ax to grind. Andthey want you, the elected official, to help them grind it.
　　During my own primary campaign, for example, I must have filled out at least fiftyquestionnaires. None of them were subtle. Typically they would contain a list of ten ortwelve questions, phrased along the following lines: “If elected, will you solemnlypledge to repeal the Scrooge Law, which has resulted in widows and orphans beingkicked to the curb?”
　　Time dictated that I fill out only those questionnaires sent by organizations that mightactually endorse me (given my voting record, the NRA and National Right to Life, forexample, did not make the cut), so I could usually answer “yes” to most questionswithout any major discomfort. But every so often I would come across a question thatgave me pause. I might agree with a union on the need to enforce labor andenvironmental standards in our trade laws, but did I believe that NAFTA should berepealed? I might agree that universal health care should be one of the nation’s toppriorities, but did it follow that a constitutional amendment was the best way to achievethat goal? I found myself hedging on such questions, writing in the margins, explainingthe difficult policy choices involved. My staff would shake their heads. Get one answerwrong, they explained, and the endorsement, the workers, and the mailing list would allgo to the other guy. Get them all right, I thought, and you have just locked yourself intothe pattern of reflexive, partisan jousting that you have promised to help end.
　　Say one thing during the campaign and do another thing once in office, and you’re atypical, two-faced politician.
　　I lost some endorsements by not giving the right answer. A couple of times, a groupsurprised us and gave me their endorsement despite a wrong answer.
　　And then sometimes it didn’t matter how you filled out your questionnaire. In additionto Mr. Hull, my most formidable opponent in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senatewas the Illinois state comptroller, Dan Hynes, a fine man and able public servant whosefather, Tom Hynes, happened to be a former state senate president, Cook Countyassessor, ward committeeman, Democratic National Committee member, and one of themost well-connected political figures in the state. Before even entering the race, Danhad already sewn up the support of 85 of the 102 Democratic county chairmen in thestate, the majority of my colleagues in the state legislature, and Mike Madigan, whoserved as both Speaker of the House and chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party.
　　Scrolling down the list of endorsements on Dan’s website was like watching the creditsat the end of a movie—you left before it was finished.
　　Despite all this, I held out hope for a few endorsements of my own, particularly those oforganized labor. For seven years I had been their ally in the state legislature, sponsoringmany of their bills and making their case on the floor. I knew that traditionally the AFL-CIO endorsed those who had a strong record of voting on their behalf. But as thecampaign got rolling, odd things began to happen. The Teamsters held theirendorsement session in Chicago on a day when I had to be in Springfield for a vote;they refused to reschedule, and Mr. Hynes got their endorsement without them evertalking to me. Visiting a labor reception during the Illinois State Fair, we were told thatno campaign signs would be allowed; when my staff and I arrived, we discovered theroom plastered with Hynes posters. On the evening of the AFL-CIO endorsementsession, I noticed a number of my labor friends averting their eyes as I walked throughthe room. An older guy who headed up one of the state’s bigger locals walked up andpatted me on the back.
　　“It’s nothing personal, Barack,” he said with a rueful smile. “You know, Tom Hynesand me go back fifty years. Grew up in the same neighborhood. Belonged to the sameparish. Hell, I watched Danny grow up.”
　　I told him I understood.
　　“Maybe you could run for Danny’s spot once he goes to the Senate. Whaddya think?
　　You’d make a heck of a comptroller.”
　　I went over to my staff to tell them we would not be getting the AFL-CIO endorsement.
　　Again things worked out. The leaders of several of the largest service workers unions—the Illinois Federation of Teachers, SEIU, AFSCME, and UNITE HERE, representingtextile, hotel, and foodservice workers—broke ranks and chose to endorse me overHynes, support that proved critical in giving my campaign some semblance of weight. Itwas a risky move on their part; had I lost, those unions might have paid a price inaccess, in support, in credibility with their members.
　　So I owe those unions. When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back rightaway. I don’t consider this corrupting in any way; I don’t mind feeling obligated towardhome health-care workers who clean bedpans every day for little more than theminimum wage, or toward teachers in some of the toughest schools in the country,many of whom have to dip into their own pockets at the beginning of every school yearto buy crayons and books for their students. I got into politics to fight for these folks,and I’m glad a union is around to remind me of their struggles.
　　But I also understand that there will be times when these obligations collide with otherobligations—the obligation to inner-city children who are unable to read, say, or theobligation to children not yet born whom we are saddling with debt. Already there havebeen some strains—I’ve proposed experimenting with merit pay for teachers, forexample, and have called for raising fuel-efficiency standards despite opposition frommy friends at the United Auto Workers. I like to tell myself that I will continue to weighthe issues on the merits—just as I hope my Republican counterpart will weigh the no-new-tax pledge or opposition to stem cell research that he made before the election inlight of what’s best for the country as a whole, regardless of what his supportersdemand. I hope that I can always go to my union friends and explain why my positionmakes sense, how it’s consistent with both my values and their long-term interests.
　　But I suspect that the union leaders won’t always see it that way. There may be timeswhen they will see it as betrayal. They may alert their members that I have sold themout. I may get angry mail and angry phone calls. They may not endorse me the nexttime around.
　　And perhaps, if that happens to you enough times, and you almost lose a race because acritical constituency is mad at you, or you find yourself fending off a primary challengerwho’s calling you a traitor, you start to lose your stomach for confrontation. You askyourself, just what does good conscience dictate exactly: that you avoid capture by“special interests” or that you avoid dumping on your friends? The answer is notobvious. So you start voting as you would answer a questionnaire. You don’t ponderyour positions too deeply. You check the yes box up and down the line.
　　POLITICIANS HELD CAPTIVE by their big-money contributors or succumbing tointerest-group pressure—this is a staple of modern political reporting, the story line thatweaves its way into just about every analysis of what’s wrong with our democracy. Butfor the politician who is worried about keeping his seat, there is a third force that pushesand pulls at him, that shapes the nature of political debate and defines the scope of whathe feels he can and can’t do, the positions he can and can’t take. Forty or fifty years ago,that force would have been the party apparatus: the big-city bosses, the political fixers,the power brokers in Washington who could make or break a career with a phone call.
　　Today, that force is the media.
　　A disclaimer here: For a three-year span, from the time that I announced my candidacyfor the Senate to the end of my first year as a senator, I was the beneficiary ofunusually—and at times undeservedly—positive press coverage. No doubt some of thishad to do with my status as an underdog in my Senate primary, as well as my novelty asa black candidate with an exotic background. Maybe it also had something to do withmy style of communicating, which can be rambling, hesitant, and overly verbose (bothmy staff and Michelle often remind me of this), but which perhaps finds sympathy inthe literary class.
　　Moreover, even when I’ve been at the receiving end of negative stories, the politicalreporters I’ve dealt with have generally been straight shooters. They’ve taped ourconversations, tried to provide the context for my statements, and called me to get aresponse whenever I’ve been criticized.
　　So personally, at least, I have no cause for complaint. That doesn’t mean, though, that Ican afford to ignore the press. Precisely because I’ve watched the press cast me in alight that can be hard to live up to, I am mindful of how rapidly that process can work inreverse.
　　Simple math tells the tale. In the thirty-nine town hall meetings I held during my firstyear in office, turnout at each meeting averaged four to five hundred people, whichmeans that I was able to meet with maybe fifteen to twenty thousand people. Should Isustain this pace for the remainder of my term, I will have had direct, personal contactwith maybe ninety-five to one hundred thousand of my constituents by the time ElectionDay rolls around.
　　In contrast, a three-minute story on the lowest-rated local news broadcast in the Chicagomedia market may reach two hundred thousand people. In other words, I—like everypolitician at the federal level—am almost entirely dependent on the media to reach myconstituents. It is the filter through which my votes are interpreted, my statementsanalyzed, my beliefs examined. For the broad public at least, I am who the media says Iam. I say what they say I say. I become who they say I’ve become.
　　The media’s influence on our politics comes in many forms. What gets the mostattention these days is the growth of an unabashedly partisan press: talk radio, FoxNews, newspaper editorialists, the cable talk-show circuit, and most recently thebloggers, all of them trading insults, accusations, gossip, and innuendo twenty-fourhours a day, seven days a week. As others have noted, this style of opinion journalismisn’t really new; in some ways, it marks a return to the dominant tradition of Americanjournalism, an approach to the news that was nurtured by publishers like WilliamRandolph Hearst and Colonel McCormick before a more antiseptic notion of objectivejournalism emerged after World War II.
　　Still, it’s hard to deny that all the sound and fury, magnified through television and theInternet, coarsens the political culture. It makes tempers flare, helps breed distrust. Andwhether we politicians like to admit it or not, the constant vitriol can wear on the spirit.
　　Oddly enough, the cruder broadsides you don’t worry about too much; if RushLimbaugh’s listeners enjoy hearing him call me “Osama Obama,” my attitude is, letthem have their fun. It’s the more sophisticated practitioners who can sting you, in partbecause they have more credibility with the general public, in part because of the skillwith which they can pounce on your words and make you seem like a jerk.
　　In April 2005, for example, I appeared on the program to dedicate the new LincolnPresidential Library in Springfield. It was a five-minute speech in which I suggestedthat Abraham Lincoln’s humanity, his imperfections, were the qualities that made himso compelling. “In [Lincoln’s] rise from poverty,” I said in one part of my remarks, “hisself-study and ultimate mastery of language and of law, in his capacity to overcomepersonal loss and remain determined in the face of repeated defeat—in all of this, wesee a fundamental element of the American character, a belief that we can constantlyremake ourselves to fit our larger dreams.”
　　A few months later, Time magazine asked if I would be interested in writing an essayfor a special issue on Lincoln. I didn’t have time to write something new, so I asked themagazine’s editors if my speech would be acceptable. They said it was, but asked if Icould personalize it a bit more—say something about Lincoln’s impact on my life. Inbetween meetings I dashed off a few changes. One of those changes was to the passagequoted above, which now read, “In Lincoln’s rise from poverty, his ultimate mastery oflanguage and law, his capacity to overcome personal loss and remain determined in theface of repeated defeat—in all this, he reminded me not just of my own struggles.”
　　No sooner had the essay appeared than Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter andcolumnist for the Wall Street Journal, weighed in. Under the title “Conceit ofGovernment,” she wrote: “This week comes the previously careful Sen. Barack Obama,flapping his wings in Time Magazine and explaining that he’s a lot like AbrahamLincoln, only sort of better.” She went on to say, “There is nothing wrong with BarackObama’s resume, but it is a log-cabin-free zone. So far it is also a greatness-free zone. Ifhe keeps talking about himself like this it always will be.”
　　Ouch!
　　It’s hard to tell, of course, whether Ms. Noonan seriously thought I was comparingmyself to Lincoln, or whether she just took pleasure in filleting me so elegantly. Aspotshots from the press go, it was very mild—and not entirely undeserved.
　　Still, I was reminded of what my veteran colleagues already knew—that everystatement I made would be subject to scrutiny, dissected by every manner of pundit,interpreted in ways over which I had no control, and combed through for a potentialerror, misstatement, omission, or contradiction that might be filed away by theopposition party and appear in an unpleasant TV ad somewhere down the road. In anenvironment in which a single ill-considered remark can generate more bad publicitythan years of ill-considered policies, it should have come as no surprise to me that onCapitol Hill jokes got screened, irony became suspect, spontaneity was frowned upon,and passion was considered downright dangerous. I started to wonder how long it tookfor a politician to internalize all this; how long before the committee of scribes andeditors and censors took residence in your head; how long before even the “candid”
　　moments became scripted, so that you choked up or expressed outrage only on cue.
　　How long before you started sounding like a politician?
　　There was another lesson to be learned: As soon as Ms. Noonan’s column hit, it wentracing across the Internet, appearing on every right-wing website as proof of what anarrogant, shallow boob I was (just the quote Ms. Noonan selected, and not the essayitself, generally made an appearance on these sites). In that sense, the episode hinted at amore subtle and corrosive aspect of modern media—how a particular narrative, repeatedover and over again and hurled through cyberspace at the speed of light, eventuallybecomes a hard particle of reality; how political caricatures and nuggets of conventionalwisdom lodge themselves in our brain without us ever taking the time to examine them.
　　For example, it’s hard to find any mention of Democrats these days that doesn’t suggestwe are “weak” and “don’t stand for anything.” Republicans, on the other hand, are“strong” (if a little mean), and Bush is “decisive” no matter how often he changes hismind. A vote or speech by Hillary Clinton that runs against type is immediately labeledcalculating; the same move by John McCain burnishes his maverick credentials. “Bylaw,” according to one caustic observer, my name in any article must be preceded by thewords “rising star”—although Noonan’s piece lays the groundwork for a different ifequally familiar story line: the cautionary tale of a young man who comes toWashington, loses his head with all the publicity, and ultimately becomes eithercalculating or partisan (unless he can somehow manage to move decisively into themaverick camp).
　　Of course, the PR machinery of politicians and their parties helps feed these narratives,and over the last few election cycles, at least, Republicans have been far better at such“messaging” than the Democrats have been (a cliché that, unfortunately for usDemocrats, really is true). The spin works, though, precisely because the media itselfare hospitable to spin. Every reporter in Washington is working under pressuresimposed by editors and producers, who in turn are answering to publishers or networkexecutives, who in turn are poring over last week’s ratings or last year’s circulationfigures and trying to survive the growing preference for PlayStation and reality TV. Tomake the deadline, to maintain market share and feed the cable news beast, reportersstart to move in packs, working off the same news releases, the same set pieces, thesame stock figures. Meanwhile, for busy and therefore casual news consumers, a well-worn narrative is not entirely unwelcome. It makes few demands on our thought ortime; it’s quick and easy to digest. Accepting spin is easier on everybody.
　　This element of convenience also helps explain why, even among the most scrupulousreporters, objectivity often means publishing the talking points of different sides of adebate without any perspective on which side might actually be right. A typical storymight begin: “The White House today reported that despite the latest round of tax cuts,the deficit is projected to be cut in half by the year 2010.” This lead will then befollowed by a quote from a liberal analyst attacking the White House numbers and aconservative analyst defending the White House numbers. Is one analyst more crediblethan the other? Is there an independent analyst somewhere who might walk us throughthe numbers? Who knows? Rarely does the reporter have time for such details; the storyis not really about the merits of the tax cut or the dangers of the deficit but rather aboutthe dispute between the parties. After a few paragraphs, the reader can conclude thatRepublicans and Democrats are just bickering again and turn to the sports page, wherethe story line is less predictable and the box score tells you who won.
　　Indeed, part of what makes the juxtaposition of competing press releases so alluring toreporters is that it feeds that old journalistic standby—personal conflict. It’s hard todeny that political civility has declined in the past decade, and that the parties differsharply on major policy issues. But at least some of the decline in civility arises fromthe fact that, from the press’s perspective, civility is boring. Your quote doesn’t run ifyou say, “I see the other guy’s point of view” or “The issue’s really complicated.” Goon the attack, though, and you can barely fight off the cameras. Often, reporters will goout of their way to stir up the pot, asking questions in such a way as to provoke aninflammatory response. One TV reporter I know back in Chicago was so notorious forfeeding you the quote he wanted that his interviews felt like a Laurel and Hardy routine.
　　“Do you feel betrayed by the Governor’s decision yesterday?” he would ask me.
　　“No. I’ve talked to the Governor, and I’m sure we can work out our differences beforethe end of session.”
　　“Sure…but do you feel betrayed by the Governor?”
　　“I wouldn’t use that word. His view is that…”
　　“But isn’t this really a betrayal on the Governor’s part?”
　　The spin, the amplification of conflict, the indiscriminate search for scandal andmiscues—the cumulative impact of all this is to erode any agreed-upon standards forjudging the truth. There’s a wonderful, perhaps apocryphal story that people tell aboutDaniel Patrick Moynihan, the brilliant, prickly, and iconoclastic late senator from NewYork. Apparently, Moynihan was in a heated argument with one of his colleagues overan issue, and the other senator, sensing he was on the losing side of the argument,blurted out: “Well, you may disagree with me, Pat, but I’m entitled to my own opinion.”
　　To which Moynihan frostily replied, “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you arenot entitled to your own facts.”
　　Moynihan’s assertion no longer holds. We have no authoritative figure, no WalterCronkite or Edward R. Murrow whom we all listen to and trust to sort out contradictoryclaims. Instead, the media is splintered into a thousand fragments, each with its ownversion of reality, each claiming the loyalty of a splintered nation. Depending on yourviewing preferences, global climate change is or is not dangerously accelerating; thebudget deficit is going down or going up.
　　Nor is the phenomenon restricted to reporting on complicated issues. In early 2005,Newsweek published allegations that U.S. guards and interrogators at the GuantanamoBay detention center had goaded and abused prisoners by, among other things, flushinga Koran down the toilet. The White House insisted there was absolutely no truth to thestory. Without hard documentation and in the wake of violent protests in Pakistanregarding the article, Newsweek was forced to publish a self-immolating retraction.
　　Several months later, the Pentagon released a report indicating that some U.S. personnelat Guantanamo had in fact engaged in multiple instances of inappropriate activity—including instances in which U.S. female personnel pretended to smear menstrual bloodon detainees during questioning, and at least one instance of a guard splashing a Koranand a prisoner with urine. The Fox News crawl that afternoon: “Pentagon finds noevidence of Koran being flushed down the toilet.”
　　I understand that facts alone can’t always settle our political disputes. Our views onabortion aren’t determined by the science of fetal development, and our judgment onwhether and when to pull troops out of Iraq must necessarily be based on probabilities.
　　But sometimes there are more accurate and less accurate answers; sometimes there arefacts that cannot be spun, just as an argument about whether it’s raining can usually besettled by stepping outside. The absence of even rough agreement on the facts putsevery opinion on equal footing and therefore eliminates the basis for thoughtfulcompromise. It rewards not those who are right, but those—like the White House pressoffice—who can make their arguments most loudly, most frequently, most obstinately,and with the best backdrop.
　　Today’s politician understands this. He may not lie, but he understands that there is nogreat reward in store for those who speak the truth, particularly when the truth may becomplicated. The truth may cause consternation; the truth will be attacked; the mediawon’t have the patience to sort out all the facts and so the public may not know thedifference between truth and falsehood. What comes to matter then is positioning—thestatement on an issue that will avoid controversy or generate needed publicity, thestance that will fit both the image his press folks have constructed for him and one ofthe narrative boxes the media has created for politics in general. The politician may still,as a matter of personal integrity, insist on telling the truth as he sees it. But he does soknowing that whether he believes in his positions matters less than whether he lookslike he believes; that straight talk counts less than whether it sounds straight on TV.
　　From what I’ve observed, there are countless politicians who have crossed these hurdlesand kept their integrity intact, men and women who raise campaign contributionswithout being corrupted, garner support without being held captive by special interests,and manage the media without losing their sense of self. But there is one final hurdlethat, once you’ve settled in Washington, you cannot entirely avoid, one that is certain tomake at least a sizable portion of your constituency think ill of you—and that is thethoroughly unsatisfactory nature of the legislative process.
　　I don’t know a single legislator who doesn’t anguish on a regular basis over the votes heor she has to take. There are times when one feels a piece of legislation to be soobviously right that it merits little internal debate (John McCain’s amendmentprohibiting torture by the U.S. government comes to mind). At other times, a billappears on the floor that’s so blatantly one-sided or poorly designed that one wondershow the sponsor can maintain a straight face during debate.
　　But most of the time, legislation is a murky brew, the product of one hundredcompromises large and small, a blend of legitimate policy aims, political grandstanding,jerry-rigged regulatory schemes, and old-fashioned pork barrels. Often, as I readthrough the bills coming to the floor my first few months in the Senate, I wasconfronted with the fact that the principled thing was less clear than I had originallythought; that either an aye vote or a nay vote would leave me with some trace ofremorse. Should I vote for an energy bill that includes my provision to boost alternativefuel production and improves the status quo, but that’s wholly inadequate to the task oflessening America’s dependence on foreign oil? Should I vote against a change in theClean Air Act that will weaken regulations in some areas but strengthen regulation inothers, and create a more predictable system for corporate compliance? What if the billincreases pollution but funds clean coal technology that may bring jobs to animpoverished part of Illinois?
　　Again and again I find myself poring over the evidence, pro and con, as best I can in thelimited time available. My staff will inform me that the mail and phone calls are evenlydivided and that interest groups on both sides are keeping score. As the hour approachesto cast my vote, I am frequently reminded of something John F. Kennedy wrote fiftyyears ago in his book Profiles in Courage:
　　Few, if any, face the same dread finality of decision that confronts a Senator facing animportant call of the roll. He may want more time for his decision—he may believethere is something to be said for both sides—he may feel that a slight amendment couldremove all difficulties—but when that roll is called he cannot hide, he cannotequivocate, he cannot delay—and he senses that his constituency, like the Raven inPoe’s poem, is perched there on his Senate desk, croaking “Nevermore” as he casts thevote that stakes his political future.
　　That may be a little dramatic. Still, no legislator, state or federal, is immune from suchdifficult moments—and they are always far worse for the party out of power. As amember of the majority, you will have some input in any bill that’s important to youbefore it hits the floor. You can ask the committee chairman to include language thathelps your constituents or eliminate language that hurts them. You can even ask themajority leader or the chief sponsor to hold the bill until a compromise more to yourliking is reached.
　　If you’re in the minority party, you have no such protection. You must vote yes or no onwhatever bill comes up, with the knowledge that it’s unlikely to be a compromise thateither you or your supporters consider fair or just. In an era of indiscriminate logrollingand massive omnibus spending bills, you can also rest assured that no matter how manybad provisions there are in the bill, there will be something—funding for body armor forour troops, say, or some modest increase in veterans’ benefits—that makes the billpainful to oppose.
　　In its first term, at least, the Bush White House was a master of such legislativegamesmanship. There’s an instructive story about the negotiations surrounding the firstround of Bush tax cuts, when Karl Rove invited a Democratic senator over to the WhiteHouse to discuss the senator’s potential support for the President’s package. Bush hadwon the senator’s state handily in the previous election—in part on a platform of taxcuts—and the senator was generally supportive of lower marginal rates. Still, he wastroubled by the degree to which the proposed tax cuts were skewed toward the wealthyand suggested a few changes that would moderate the package’s impact.
　　“Make these changes,” the senator told Rove, “and not only will I vote for the bill, but Iguarantee you’ll get seventy votes out of the Senate.”
　　“We don’t want seventy votes,” Rove reportedly replied. “We want fifty-one.”
　　Rove may or may not have thought the White House bill was good policy, but he knewa political winner when he saw one. Either the senator voted aye and helped pass thePresident’s program, or he voted no and became a plump target during the next election.
　　In the end, the senator—like several red state Democrats—voted aye, which no doubtreflected the prevailing sentiment about tax cuts in his home state. Still, stories like thisillustrate some of the difficulties that any minority party faces in being “bipartisan.”
　　Everybody likes the idea of bipartisanship. The media, in particular, is enamored withthe term, since it contrasts neatly with the “partisan bickering” that is the dominant storyline of reporting on Capitol Hill.
　　Genuine bipartisanship, though, assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and thatthe quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upongoal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majoritywill be constrained—by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate—to negotiate in good faith. If these conditions do not hold—if nobody outsideWashington is really paying attention to the substance of the bill, if the true costs of thetax cut are buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars or so—themajority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100 percent of what it wants,go on to concede 10 percent, and then accuse any member of the minority party whofails to support this “compromise” of being “obstructionist.” For the minority party insuch circumstances, “bipartisanship” comes to mean getting chronically steamrolled,although individual senators may enjoy certain political rewards by consistently goingalong with the majority and hence gaining a reputation for being “moderate” or“centrist.”
　　Not surprisingly, there are activists who insist that Democratic senators stand fastagainst any Republican initiative these days—even those initiatives that have somemerit—as a matter of principle. It’s fair to say that none of these individuals has everrun for high public office as a Democrat in a predominantly Republican state, nor hasany been a target of several million dollars’ worth of negative TV ads. What everysenator understands is that while it’s easy to make a vote on a complicated piece oflegislation look evil and depraved in a thirty-second television commercial, it’s veryhard to explain the wisdom of that same vote in less than twenty minutes. What everysenator also knows is that during the course of a single term, he or she will have castseveral thousand votes. That’s a whole lot of potential explaining to do come electiontime.
　　Per
Chapter 5 Opportunity
ONE THING ABOUT being a U.S. senator—you fly a lot. There are the flights backand forth from Washington at least once a week. There are the trips to other states todeliver a speech, raise money, or campaign for your colleagues. If you represent a bigstate like Illinois, there are flights upstate or downstate, to attend town meetings orribbon cuttings and to make sure that the folks don’t think you’ve forgotten them.
　　Most of the time I fly commercial and sit in coach, hoping for an aisle or window seatand crossing my fingers that the guy in front of me doesn’t want to recline.
　　But there are times when—because I’m making multiple stops on a West Coast swing,say, or need to get to another city after the last commercial flight has left—I fly on aprivate jet. I hadn’t been aware of this option at first, assuming the cost would beprohibitive. But during the campaign, my staff explained that under Senate rules, asenator or candidate could travel on someone else’s jet and just pay the equivalent of afirst-class airfare. After looking at my campaign schedule and thinking about all thetime I would save, I decided to give private jets a try.
　　It turns out that the flying experience is a good deal different on a private jet. Privatejets depart from privately owned and managed terminals, with lounges that feature bigsoft couches and big-screen TVs and old aviation photographs on the walls. Therestrooms are generally empty and spotless, and have those mechanical shoe-shinemachines and mouthwash and mints in a bowl. There’s no sense of hurriedness at theseterminals; the plane is waiting for you if you’re late, ready for you if you’re early. A lotof times you can bypass the lounge altogether and drive your car straight onto thetarmac. Otherwise the pilots will greet you in the terminal, take your bags, and walk youout to the plane.
　　And the planes, well, they’re nice. The first time I took such a flight, I was on a CitationX, a sleek, compact, shiny machine with wood paneling and leather seats that you couldpull together to make a bed anytime you decided you wanted a nap. A shrimp salad andcheese plate occupied the seat behind me; up front, the minibar was fully stocked. Thepilots hung up my coat, offered me my choice of newspapers, and asked me if I wascomfortable. I was.
　　Then the plane took off, its Rolls-Royce engines gripping the air the way a well-madesports car grips the road. Shooting through the clouds, I turned on the small TV monitorin front of my seat. A map of the United States appeared, with the image of our planetracking west, along with our speed, our altitude, our time to destination, and thetemperature outside. At forty thousand feet, the plane leveled off, and I looked down atthe curving horizon and the scattered clouds, the geography of the earth laid out beforeme—first the flat, checkerboard fields of western Illinois, then the python curves of theMississippi, then more farmland and ranch land and eventually the jagged Rockies, stillsnow-peaked, until the sun went down and the orange sky narrowed to a thin red linethat was finally consumed by night and stars and moon.
　　I could see how people might get used to this.
　　The purpose of that particular trip was fund-raising, mostly—in preparation for mygeneral election campaign, several friends and supporters had organized events for mein L.A., San Diego, and San Francisco. But the most memorable part of the trip was avisit that I paid to the town of Mountain View, California, a few miles south of StanfordUniversity and Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley, where the search enginecompany Google maintains its corporate headquarters.
　　Google had already achieved iconic status by mid-2004, a symbol not just of thegrowing power of the Internet but of the global economy’s rapid transformation. On thedrive down from San Francisco, I reviewed the company’s history: how two StanfordPh.D. candidates in computer science, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had collaborated ina dorm room to develop a better way to search the web; how in 1998, with a milliondollars raised from various contacts, they had formed Google, with three employeesoperating out of a garage; how Google figured out an advertising model—based on textads that were nonintrusive and relevant to the user’s search—that made the companyprofitable even as the dot-com boom went bust; and how, six years after the company’sfounding, Google was about to go public at stock prices that would make Mr. Page andMr. Brin two of the richest people on earth.
　　Mountain View looked like a typical suburban California community—quiet streets,sparkling new office parks, unassuming homes that, because of the unique purchasingpower of Silicon Valley residents, probably ran a cool million or more. We pulled infront of a set of modern, modular buildings and were met by Google’s general counsel,David Drummond, an African American around my age who’d made the arrangementsfor my visit.
　　“When Larry and Sergey came to me looking to incorporate, I figured they were just acouple of really smart guys with another start-up idea,” David said. “I can’t say Iexpected all this.”
　　He took me on a tour of the main building, which felt more like a college student centerthan an office—a café on the ground floor, where the former chef of the Grateful Deadsupervised the preparation of gourmet meals for the entire staff; video games and aPing-Pong table and a fully equipped gym. (“People spend a lot of time here, so wewant to keep them happy.”) On the second floor, we passed clusters of men and womenin jeans and T-shirts, all of them in their twenties, working intently in front of theircomputer screens, or sprawled on couches and big rubber exercise balls, engaged inanimated conversation.
　　Eventually we found Larry Page, talking to an engineer about a software problem. Hewas dressed like his employees and, except for a few traces of early gray in his hair,didn’t look any older. We spoke about Google’s mission—to organize all of the world’sinformation into a universally accessible, unfiltered, and usable form—and the Googlesite index, which already included more than six billion web pages. Recently thecompany had launched a new web-based email system with a built-in search function;they were working on technology that would allow you to initiate a voice search overthe telephone, and had already started the Book Project, the goal of which was to scanevery book ever published into a web-accessible format, creating a virtual library thatwould store the entirety of human knowledge.
　　Toward the end of the tour, Larry led me to a room where a three-dimensional image ofthe earth rotated on a large flat-panel monitor. Larry asked the young Indian Americanengineer who was working nearby to explain what we were looking at.
　　“These lights represent all the searches that are going on right now,” the engineer said.
　　“Each color is a different language. If you move the toggle this way”—he caused thescreen to alter—“you can see the traffic patterns of the entire Internet system.”
　　The image was mesmerizing, more organic than mechanical, as if I were glimpsing theearly stages of some accelerating evolutionary process, in which all the boundariesbetween men—nationality, race, religion, wealth—were rendered invisible andirrelevant, so that the physicist in Cambridge, the bond trader in Tokyo, the student in aremote Indian village, and the manager of a Mexico City department store were drawninto a single, constant, thrumming conversation, time and space giving way to a worldspun entirely of light. Then I noticed the broad swaths of darkness as the globe spun onits axis—most of Africa, chunks of South Asia, even some portions of the United States,where the thick cords of light dissolved into a few discrete strands.
　　My reverie was broken by the appearance of Sergey, a compact man perhaps a fewyears younger than Larry. He suggested that I go with them to their TGIF assembly, atradition that they had maintained since the beginning of the company, when all ofGoogle’s employees got together over beer and food and discussed whatever they hadon their minds. As we entered a large hall, throngs of young people were already seated,some drinking and laughing, others still typing into PDAs or laptops, a buzz ofexcitement in the air. A group of fifty or so seemed more attentive than the rest, andDavid explained that these were the new hires, fresh from graduate school; today wastheir induction into the Google team. One by one, the new employees were introduced,their faces flashing on a big screen alongside information about their degrees, hobbies,and interests. At least half of the group looked Asian; a large percentage of the whiteshad Eastern European names. As far as I could tell, not one was black or Latino. Later,walking back to my car, I mentioned this to David and he nodded.
　　“We know it’s a problem,” he said, and mentioned efforts Google was making toprovide scholarships to expand the pool of minority and female math and sciencestudents. In the meantime, Google needed to stay competitive, which meant hiring thetop graduates of the top math, engineering, and computer science programs in thecountry—MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Berkeley. You could count on two hands, David toldme, the number of black and Latino kids in those programs.
　　In fact, according to David, just finding American-born engineers, whatever their race,was getting harder—which was why every company in Silicon Valley had come to relyheavily on foreign students. Lately, high-tech employers had a new set of worries: Since9/11 a lot of foreign students were having second thoughts about studying in the Statesdue to the difficulties in obtaining visas. Top-notch engineers or software designersdidn’t need to come to Silicon Valley anymore to find work or get financing for a start-up. High-tech firms were setting up operations in India and China at a rapid pace, andventure funds were now global; they would just as readily invest in Mumbai orShanghai as in California. And over the long term, David explained, that could spelltrouble for the U.S. economy.
　　“We’ll be able to keep attracting talent,” he said, “because we’re so well branded. Butfor the start-ups, some of the less established companies, the next Google, who knows?
　　I just hope somebody in Washington understands how competitive things have become.
　　Our dominance isn’t inevitable.”
　　AROUND THE SAME time that I visited Google, I took another trip that made methink about what was happening with the economy. This one was by car, not jet, alongmiles of empty highway, to a town called Galesburg, forty-five minutes or so from theIowa border in western Illinois.
　　Founded in 1836, Galesburg had begun as a college town when a group of Presbyterianand Congregational ministers in New York decided to bring their blend of social reformand practical education to the Western frontier. The resulting school, Knox College,became a hotbed of abolitionist activity before the Civil War—a branch of theUnderground Railroad had run through Galesburg, and Hiram Revels, the nation’s firstblack U.S. senator, attended the college’s prep school before moving back toMississippi. In 1854, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad line was completedthrough Galesburg, causing a boom in the region’s commerce. And four years later,some ten thousand people gathered to hear the fifth of the Lincoln-Douglas debates,during which Lincoln first framed his opposition to slavery as a moral issue.
　　It wasn’t this rich history, though, that had taken me to Galesburg. Instead, I’d gone tomeet with a group of union leaders from the Maytag plant, for the company hadannounced plans to lay off 1,600 employees and shift operations to Mexico. Like townsall across central and western Illinois, Galesburg had been pounded by the shift ofmanufacturing overseas. In the previous few years, the town had lost industrial partsmakers and a rubber-hose manufacturer; it was now in the process of seeing ButlerManufacturing, a steelmaker recently bought by Australians, shutter its doors. Already,Galesburg’s unemployment rate hovered near 8 percent. With the Maytag plant’sclosing, the town stood to lose another 5 to 10 percent of its entire employment base.
　　Inside the machinists’ union hall, seven or eight men and two or three women hadgathered on metal folding chairs, talking in muted voices, a few smoking cigarettes,most of them in their late forties or early fifties, all of them dressed in jeans or khakis,T-shirts or plaid work shirts. The union president, Dave Bevard, was a big, barrel-chested man in his mid-fifties, with a dark beard, tinted glasses, and a fedora that madehim look like a member of the band ZZ Top. He explained that the union had triedevery possible tactic to get Maytag to change its mind—talking to the press, contactingshareholders, soliciting support from local and state officials. The Maytag managementhad been unmoved.
　　“It ain’t like these guys aren’t making a profit,” Dave told me. “And if you ask ’em,they’ll tell you we’re one of the most productive plants in the company. Qualityworkmanship. Low error rates. We’ve taken cuts in pay, cuts in benefits, layoffs. Thestate and the city have given Maytag at least $10 million in tax breaks over the last eightyears, based on their promise to stay. But it’s never enough. Some CEO who’s alreadymaking millions of dollars decides he needs to boost the company stock price so he cancash in his options, and the easiest way to do that is to send the work to Mexico and paythe workers there a sixth of what we make.”
　　I asked them what steps state or federal agencies had taken to retrain workers, andalmost in unison the room laughed derisively. “Retraining is a joke,” the union vicepresident, Doug Dennison, said. “What are you going to retrain for when there aren’tany jobs out there?” He talked about how an employment counselor had suggested thathe try becoming a nursing aide, with wages not much higher than what Wal-Mart paidtheir floor clerks. One of the younger men in the group told me a particularly cruelstory: He had made up his mind to retrain as a computer technician, but a week into hiscourses, Maytag called him back. The Maytag work was temporary, but according to therules, if this man refused to accept Maytag’s offer, he’d no longer be eligible forretraining money. If, on the other hand, he did go back to Maytag and dropped out ofthe courses he was already taking, then the federal agency would consider him to haveused up his one-time training opportunity and wouldn’t pay for any retraining in thefuture.
　　I told the group that I’d tell their story during the campaign and offered a few proposalsthat my staff had developed—amending the tax code to eliminate tax breaks forcompanies who shifted operations offshore; revamping and better funding federalretraining programs. As I was getting ready to go, a big, sturdy man in a baseball capspoke up. He said his name was Tim Wheeler, and he’d been the head of the union atthe nearby Butler steel plant. Workers had already received their pink slips there, andTim was collecting unemployment insurance, trying to figure out what to do next. Hisbig worry now was health-care coverage.
　　“My son Mark needs a liver transplant,” he said grimly. “We’re on the waiting list for adonor, but with my health-care benefits used up, we’re trying to figure out if Medicaidwill cover the costs. Nobody can give me a clear answer, and you know, I’ll selleverything I got for Mark, go into debt, but I still…” Tim’s voice cracked; his wife,sitting beside him, buried her head in her hands. I tried to assure them that we wouldfind out exactly what Medicaid would cover. Tim nodded, putting his arm around hiswife’s shoulder.
　　On the drive back to Chicago, I tried to imagine Tim’s desperation: no job, an ailingson, his savings running out.
　　Those were the stories you missed on a private jet at forty thousand feet.
　　YOU’LL GET LITTLE argument these days, from either the left or the right, with thenotion that we’re going through a fundamental economic transformation. Advances indigital technology, fiber optics, the Internet, satellites, and transportation haveeffectively leveled the economic barriers between countries and continents. Pools ofcapital scour the earth in search of the best returns, with trillions of dollars movingacross borders with only a few keystrokes. The collapse of the Soviet Union, theinstitution of market-based reforms in India and China, the lowering of trade barriers,and the advent of big-box retailers like Wal-Mart have brought several billion peopleinto direct competition with American companies and American workers. Whether ornot the world is already flat, as columnist and author Thomas Friedman says, it iscertainly getting flatter every day.
　　There’s no doubt that globalization has brought significant benefits to Americanconsumers. It’s lowered prices on goods once considered luxuries, from big-screen TVsto peaches in winter, and increased the purchasing power of low-income Americans. It’shelped keep inflation in check, boosted returns for the millions of Americans nowinvested in the stock market, provided new markets for U.S. goods and services, andallowed countries like China and India to dramatically reduce poverty, which over thelong term makes for a more stable world.
　　But there’s also no denying that globalization has greatly increased economic instabilityfor millions of ordinary Americans. To stay competitive and keep investors happy in theglobal marketplace, U.S.-based companies have automated, downsized, outsourced, andoffshored. They’ve held the line on wage increases, and replaced defined-benefit healthand retirement plans with 401(k)s and Health Savings Accounts that shift more cost andrisk onto workers.
　　The result has been the emergence of what some call a “winner-take-all” economy, inwhich a rising tide doesn’t necessarily lift all boats. Over the past decade, we’ve seenstrong economic growth but anemic job growth; big leaps in productivity but flatliningwages; hefty corporate profits, but a shrinking share of those profits going to workers.
　　For those like Larry Page and Sergey Brin, for those with unique skills and talents andfor the knowledge workers—the engineers, lawyers, consultants, and marketers—whofacilitate their work, the potential rewards of a global marketplace have never beengreater. But for those like the workers at Maytag, whose skills can be automated ordigitized or shifted to countries with cheaper wages, the effects can be dire—a future inthe ever-growing pool of low-wage service work, with few benefits, the risk of financialruin in the event of an illness, and the inability to save for either retirement or a child’scollege education.
　　The question is what we should do about all this. Since the early nineties, when thesetrends first began to appear, one wing of the Democratic Party—led by Bill Clinton—has embraced the new economy, promoting free trade, fiscal discipline, and reforms ineducation and training that will help workers to compete for the high-value, high-wagejobs of the future. But a sizable chunk of the Democratic base—particularly blue-collarunion workers like Dave Bevard—has resisted this agenda. As far as they’re concerned,free trade has served the interests of Wall Street but has done little to stop thehemorrhaging of good-paying American jobs.
　　The Republican Party isn’t immune from these tensions. With the recent uproar aroundillegal immigration, for example, Pat Buchanan’s brand of “America first” conservatismmay see a resurgence within the GOP, and present a challenge to the BushAdministration’s free trade policies. And in his 2000 campaign and early in his firstterm, George W. Bush suggested a legitimate role for government, a “compassionateconservatism” that, the White House argues, has expressed itself in the Medicareprescription drug plan and the educational reform effort known as No Child LeftBehind—and that has given small-government conservatives heartburn.
　　For the most part, though, the Republican economic agenda under President Bush hasbeen devoted to tax cuts, reduced regulation, the privatization of government services—and more tax cuts. Administration officials call this the Ownership Society, but most ofits central tenets have been staples of laissez-faire economics since at least the 1930s: abelief that a sharp reduction—or in some cases, elimination—of taxes on incomes, largeestates, capital gains, and dividends will encourage capital formation, higher savingsrates, more business investment, and greater economic growth; a belief that governmentregulation inhibits and distorts the efficient working of the market; and a belief thatgovernment entitlement programs are inherently inefficient, breed dependency, andreduce individual responsibility, initiative, and choice.
　　Or, as Ronald Reagan succinctly put it: “Government is not the solution to our problem;government is the problem.”
　　So far, the Bush Administration has only achieved one-half of its equation; theRepublican-controlled Congress has pushed through successive rounds of tax cuts, buthas refused to make tough choices to control spending—special interest appropriations,also known as earmarks, are up 64 percent since Bush took office. Meanwhile,Democratic lawmakers (and the public) have resisted drastic cuts in vital investments—and outright rejected the Administration’s proposal to privatize Social Security.
　　Whether the Administration actually believes that the resulting federal budget deficitsand ballooning national debt don’t matter is unclear. What is clear is that the sea of redink has made it more difficult for future administrations to initiate any new investmentsto address the economic challenges of globalization or to strengthen America’s socialsafety net.
　　I don’t want to exaggerate the consequences of this stalemate. A strategy of doingnothing and letting globalization run its course won’t result in the imminent collapse ofthe U.S. economy. America’s GDP remains larger than China’s and India’s combined.
　　For now, at least, U.S.-based companies continue to hold an edge in such knowledge-based sectors as software design and pharmaceutical research, and our network ofuniversities and colleges remains the envy of the world.
　　But over the long term, doing nothing probably means an America very different fromthe one most of us grew up in. It will mean a nation even more stratified economicallyand socially than it currently is: one in which an increasingly prosperous knowledgeclass, living in exclusive enclaves, will be able to purchase whatever they want on themarketplace—private schools, private health care, private security, and private jets—while a growing number of their fellow citizens are consigned to low-paying servicejobs, vulnerable to dislocation, pressed to work longer hours, dependent on anunderfunded, overburdened, and underperforming public sector for their health care,their retirement, and their children’s educations.
　　It will mean an America in which we continue to mortgage our assets to foreign lendersand expose ourselves to the whims of oil producers; an America in which weunderinvest in the basic scientific research and workforce training that will determineour long-term economic prospects and neglect potential environmental crises. It willmean an America that’s more politically polarized and more politically unstable, aseconomic frustration boils over and leads people to turn on each other.
　　Worst of all, it will mean fewer opportunities for younger Americans, a decline in theupward mobility that’s been at the heart of this country’s promise since its founding.
　　That’s not the America we want for ourselves or our children. And I’m confident thatwe have the talent and the resources to create a better future, a future in which theeconomy grows and prosperity is shared. What’s preventing us from shaping that futureisn’t the absence of good ideas. It’s the absence of a national commitment to take thetough steps necessary to make America more competitive—and the absence of a newconsensus around the appropriate role of government in the marketplace.
　　TO BUILD THAT consensus, we need to take a look at how our market system hasevolved over time. Calvin Coolidge once said that “the chief business of the Americanpeople is business,” and indeed, it would be hard to find a country on earth that’s beenmore consistently hospitable to the logic of the marketplace. Our Constitution places theownership of private property at the very heart of our system of liberty. Our religioustraditions celebrate the value of hard work and express the conviction that a virtuous lifewill result in material reward. Rather than vilify the rich, we hold them up as rolemodels, and our mythology is steeped in stories of men on the make—the immigrantwho comes to this country with nothing and strikes it big, the young man who headsWest in search of his fortune. As Ted Turner famously said, in America money is howwe keep score.
　　The result of this business culture has been a prosperity that’s unmatched in humanhistory. It takes a trip overseas to fully appreciate just how good Americans have it;even our poor take for granted goods and services—electricity, clean water, indoorplumbing, telephones, televisions, and household appliances—that are still unattainablefor most of the world. America may have been blessed with some of the planet’s bestreal estate, but clearly it’s not just our natural resources that account for our economicsuccess. Our greatest asset has been our system of social organization, a system that forgenerations has encouraged constant innovation, individual initiative, and the efficientallocation of resources.
　　It should come as no surprise, then, that we have a tendency to take our free-marketsystem as a given, to assume that it flows naturally from the laws of supply and demandand Adam Smith’s invisible hand. And from this assumption, it’s not much of a leap toassume that any government intrusion into the magical workings of the market—whether through taxation, regulation, lawsuits, tariffs, labor protections, or spending onentitlements—necessarily undermines private enterprise and inhibits economic growth.
　　The bankruptcy of communism and socialism as alternative means of economicorganization has only reinforced this assumption. In our standard economics textbooksand in our modern political debates, laissez-faire is the default rule; anyone who wouldchallenge it swims against the prevailing tide.
　　It’s useful to remind ourselves, then, that our free-market system is the result neither ofnatural law nor of divine providence. Rather, it emerged through a painful process oftrial and error, a series of difficult choices between efficiency and fairness, stability andchange. And although the benefits of our free-market system have mostly derived fromthe individual efforts of generations of men and women pursuing their own vision ofhappiness, in each and every period of great economic upheaval and transition we’vedepended on government action to open up opportunity, encourage competition, andmake the market work better.
　　In broad outline, government action has taken three forms. First, government has beencalled upon throughout our history to build the infrastructure, train the workforce, andotherwise lay the foundations necessary for economic growth. All the Founding Fathersrecognized the connection between private property and liberty, but it was AlexanderHamilton who also recognized the vast potential of a national economy—one based noton America’s agrarian past but on a commercial and industrial future. To realize thispotential, Hamilton argued, America needed a strong and active national government,and as America’s first Treasury secretary he set about putting his ideas to work. Henationalized the Revolutionary War debt, which not only stitched together theeconomies of the individual states but helped spur a national system of credit and fluidcapital markets. He promoted policies—from strong patent laws to high tariffs—toencourage American manufacturing, and proposed investment in roads and bridgesneeded to move products to market.
　　Hamilton encountered fierce resistance from Thomas Jefferson, who feared that a strongnational government tied to wealthy commercial interests would undermine his visionof an egalitarian democracy tied to the land. But Hamilton understood that only throughthe liberation of capital from local landed interests could America tap into its mostpowerful resource—namely the energy and enterprise of the American people. This ideaof social mobility constituted one of the great early bargains of American capitalism;industrial and commercial capitalism might lead to greater instability, but it would be adynamic system in which anyone with enough energy and talent could rise to the top.
　　And on this point, at least, Jefferson agreed—it was based on his belief in ameritocracy, rather than a hereditary aristocracy, that Jefferson would champion thecreation of a national, government-financed university that could educate and traintalent across the new nation, and that he considered the founding of the University ofVirginia to be one of his greatest achievements.
　　This tradition, of government investment in America’s physical infrastructure and in itspeople, was thoroughly embraced by Abraham Lincoln and the early Republican Party.
　　For Lincoln, the essence of America was opportunity, the ability of “free labor” toadvance in life. Lincoln considered capitalism the best means of creating suchopportunity, but he also saw how the transition from an agricultural to an industrialsociety was disrupting lives and destroying communities.
　　So in the midst of civil war, Lincoln embarked on a series of policies that not only laidthe groundwork for a fully integrated national economy but extended the ladders ofopportunity downward to reach more and more people. He pushed for the constructionof the first transcontinental railroad. He incorporated the National Academy ofSciences, to spur basic research and scientific discovery that could lead to newtechnology and commercial applications. He passed the landmark Homestead Act of1862, which turned over vast amounts of public land across the western United States tosettlers from the East and immigrants from around the world, so that they, too, couldclaim a stake in the nation’s growing economy. And then, rather than leave thesehomesteaders to fend for themselves, he created a system of land grant colleges toinstruct farmers on the latest agricultural techniques, and to provide them the liberaleducation that would allow them to dream beyond the confines of life on the farm.
　　Hamilton’s and Lincoln’s basic insight—that the resources and power of the nationalgovernment can facilitate, rather than supplant, a vibrant free market—has continued tobe one of the cornerstones of both Republican and Democratic policies at every stage ofAmerica’s development. The Hoover Dam, the Tennessee Valley Authority, theinterstate highway system, the Internet, the Human Genome Project—time and again,government investment has helped pave the way for an explosion of private economicactivity. And through the creation of a system of public schools and institutions ofhigher education, as well as programs like the GI Bill that made a college educationavailable to millions, government has helped provide individuals the tools to adapt andinnovate in a climate of constant technological change.
　　Aside from making needed investments that private enterprise can’t or won’t make onits own, an active national government has also been indispensable in dealing withmarket failures—those recurring snags in any capitalist system that either inhibit theefficient workings of the market or result in harm to the public. Teddy Rooseveltrecognized that monopoly power could restrict competition, and made “trust busting” acenterpiece of his administration. Woodrow Wilson instituted the Federal ReserveBank, to manage the money supply and curb periodic panics in the financial markets.
　　Federal and state governments established the first consumer laws—the Pure Food andDrug Act, the Meat Inspection Act—to protect Americans from harmful products.
　　But it was during the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Depression that thegovernment’s vital role in regulating the marketplace became fully apparent. Withinvestor confidence shattered, bank runs threatening the collapse of the financialsystem, and a downward spiral in consumer demand and business investment, FDRengineered a series of government interventions that arrested further economiccontraction. For the next eight years, the New Deal administration experimented withpolicies to restart the economy, and although not all of these interventions producedtheir intended results, they did leave behind a regulatory structure that helps limit therisk of economic crisis: a Securities and Exchange Commission to ensure transparencyin the financial markets and protect smaller investors from fraud and insidermanipulation; FDIC insurance to provide confidence to bank depositors; andcountercyclical fiscal and monetary policies, whether in the form of tax cuts, increasedliquidity, or direct government spending, to stimulate demand when business andconsumers have pulled back from the market.
　　Finally—and most controversially—government has helped structure the socialcompact between business and the American worker. During America’s first 150 years,as capital became more concentrated in trusts and limited liability corporations, workerswere prevented by law and by violence from forming unions that would increase theirown leverage. Workers had almost no protections from unsafe or inhumane workingconditions, whether in sweatshops or meatpacking plants. Nor did American culturehave much sympathy for workers left impoverished by capitalism’s periodic gales of“creative destruction”—the recipe for individual success was greater toil, not pamperingfrom the state. What safety net did exist came from the uneven and meager resources ofprivate charity.
　　Again, it took the shock of the Great Depression, with a third of all people findingthemselves out of work, ill housed, ill clothed, and ill fed, for government to correct thisimbalance. Two years into office, FDR was able to push through Congress the SocialSecurity Act of 1935, the centerpiece of the new welfare state, a safety net that wouldlift almost half of all senior citizens out of poverty, provide unemployment insurancefor those who had lost their jobs, and provide modest welfare payments to the disabledand the elderly poor. FDR also initiated laws that fundamentally changed therelationship between capital and labor: the forty-hour workweek, child labor laws, andminimum wage laws; and the National Labor Relations Act, which made it possible toorganize broad-based industrial unions and forced employers to bargain in good faith.
　　Part of FDR’s rationale in passing these laws came straight out of Keynesianeconomics: One cure for economic depression was putting more disposable income inthe pockets of American workers. But FDR also understood that capitalism in ademocracy required the consent of the people, and that by giving workers a larger shareof the economic pie, his reforms would undercut the potential appeal of government-managed, command-and-control systems—whether fascist, socialist, or communist—that were gaining support all across Europe. As he would explain in 1944, “People whoare hungry, people who are out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”
　　For a while this seemed to be where the story would end—with FDR saving capitalismfrom itself through an activist federal government that invests in its people andinfrastructure, regulates the marketplace, and protects labor from chronic deprivation.
　　And in fact, for the next twenty-five years, through Republican and Democraticadministrations, this model of the American welfare state enjoyed a broad consensus.
　　There were those on the right who complained of creeping socialism, and those on theleft who believed FDR had not gone far enough. But the enormous growth of America’smass production economy, and the enormous gap in productive capacity between theUnited States and the war-torn economies of Europe and Asia, muted most ideologicalbattles. Without any serious rivals, U.S. companies could routinely pass on higher laborand regulatory costs to their customers. Full employment allowed unionized factoryworkers to move into the middle class, support a family on a single income, and enjoythe stability of health and retirement security. And in such an environment of steadycorporate profits and rising wages, policy makers found only modest political resistanceto higher taxes and more regulation to tackle pressing social problems—hence thecreation of the Great Society programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare,under Johnson; and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency andOccupational Health and Safety Administration under Nixon.
　　There was only one problem with this liberal triumph—capitalism would not stand still.
　　By the seventies, U.S. productivity growth, the engine of the postwar economy, beganto lag. The increased assertiveness of OPEC allowed foreign oil producers to lop off amuch bigger share of the global economy, exposing America’s vulnerability todisruptions in energy supplies. U.S. companies began to experience competition fromlow-cost producers in Asia, and by the eighties a flood of cheap imports—in textiles,shoes, electronics, and even automobiles—had started grabbing big chunks of thedomestic market. Meanwhile, U.S.-based multinational corporations began locatingsome of their production facilities overseas—partly to access these foreign markets, butalso to take advantage of cheap labor.
　　In this more competitive global environment, the old corporate formula of steady profitsand stodgy management no longer worked. With less ability to pass on higher costs orshoddy products to consumers, corporate profits and market share shrank, and corporateshareholders began demanding more value. Some corporations found ways to improveproductivity through innovation and automation. Others relied primarily on brutallayoffs, resistance to unionization, and a further shift of production overseas. Thosecorporate managers who didn’t adapt were vulnerable to corporate raiders and leveragedbuyout artists, who would make the changes for them, without any regard for theemployees whose lives might be upended or the communities that might be torn apart.
　　One way or another, American companies became leaner and meaner—with old-linemanufacturing workers and towns like Galesburg bearing the brunt of thistransformation.
　　It wasn’t just the private sector that had to adapt to this new environment. As RonaldReagan’s election made clear, the people wanted the government to change as well.
　　In his rhetoric, Reagan tended to exaggerate the degree to which the welfare state hadgrown over the previous twenty-five years. At its peak, the federal budget as a totalshare of the U.S. economy remained far below the comparable figures in WesternEurope, even when you factored in the enormous U.S. defense budget. Still, theconservative revolution that Reagan helped usher in gained traction because Reagan’scentral insight—that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overlybureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economicpie than with growing the pie—contained a good deal of truth. Just as too manycorporate managers, shielded from competition, had stopped delivering value, too manygovernment bureaucracies had stopped asking whether their shareholders (the Americantaxpayer) and their consumers (the users of government services) were getting theirmoney’s worth.
　　Not every government program worked the way it was advertised. Some functionscould be better carried out by the private sector, just as in some cases market-basedincentives could achieve the same results as command-and-control-style regulations, ata lower cost and with greater flexibility. The high marginal tax rates that existed whenReagan took office may not have curbed incentives to work or invest, but they diddistort investment decisions—and did lead to a wasteful industry of setting up taxshelters. And while welfare certainly provided relief for many impoverished Americans,it did create some perverse incentives when it came to the work ethic and familystability.
　　Forced to compromise with a Democrat-controlled Congress, Reagan would neverachieve many of his most ambitious plans for reducing government. But hefundamentally changed the terms of the political debate. The middle-class tax revoltbecame a permanent fixture in national politics and placed a ceiling on how muchgovernment could expand. For many Republicans, noninterference with the marketplacebecame an article of faith.
　　Of course, many voters continued to look to the government during economicdownturns, and Bill Clinton’s call for more aggressive government action on theeconomy helped lift him to the White House. After the politically disastrous defeat ofhis health-care plan and the election of a Republican Congress in 1994, Clinton had totrim his ambitions but was able to put a progressive slant on some of Reagan’s goals.
　　Declaring the era of big government over, Clinton signed welfare reform into law,pushed tax cuts for the middle class and working poor, and worked to reducebureaucracy and red tape. And it was Clinton who would accomplish what Reagannever did, putting the nation’s fiscal house in order even while lessening poverty andmaking modest new investments in education and job training. By the time Clinton leftoffice, it appeared as if some equilibrium had been achieved—a smaller government,but one that retained the social safety net FDR had first put into place.
　　Except capitalism is still not standing still. The policies of Reagan and Clinton mayhave trimmed some of the fat of the liberal welfare state, but they couldn’t change theunderlying realities of global competition and technological revolution. Jobs are stillmoving overseas—not just manufacturing work, but increasingly work in the servicesector that can be digitally transmitted, like basic computer programming. Businessescontinue to struggle with high health-care costs. America continues to import far morethan it exports, to borrow far more than it lends.
　　Without any clear governing philosophy, the Bush Administration and its congressionalallies have responded by pushing the conservative revolution to its logical conclusion—even lower taxes, even fewer regulations, and an even smaller safety net. But in takingthis approach, Republicans are fighting the last war, the war they waged and won in theeighties, while Democrats are forced to fight a rearguard action, defending the NewDeal programs of the thirties.
　　Neither strategy will work anymore. America can’t compete with China and Indiasimply by cutting costs and shrinking government—unless we’re willing to tolerate adrastic decline in American living standards, with smog-choked cities and beggarslining the streets. Nor can America compete simply by erecting trade barriers andraising the minimum wage—unless we’re willing to confiscate all the world’scomputers.
　　But our history should give us confidence that we don’t have to choose between anoppressive, government-run economy and a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism. It tellsus that we can emerge from great economic upheavals stronger, not weaker. Like thosewho came before us, we should be asking ourselves what mix of policies will lead to adynamic free market and widespread economic security, entrepreneurial innovation andupward mobility. And we can be guided throughout by Lincoln’s simple maxim: thatwe will do collectively, through our government, only those things that we cannot do aswell or at all individually and privately.
　　In other words, we should be guided by what works.
　　WHAT MIGHT SUCH a new economic consensus look like? I won’t pretend to haveall the answers, and a detailed discussion of U.S. economic policy would fill up severalvolumes. But I can offer a few examples of where we can break free of our currentpolitical stalemate; places where, in the tradition of Hamilton and Lincoln, we caninvest in our infrastructure and our people; ways that we can begin to modernize andrebuild the social contract that FDR first stitched together in the middle of the lastcentury.
　　Let’s start with those investments that can make America more competitive in theglobal economy: investments in education, science and technology, and energyindependence.
　　Throughout our history, education has been at the heart of a bargain this nation makeswith its citizens: If you work hard and take responsibility, you’ll have a chance for abetter life. And in a world where knowledge determines value in the job market, wherea child in Los Angeles has to compete not just with a child in Boston but also withmillions of children in Bangalore and Beijing, too many of America’s schools are notholding up their end of the bargain.
　　In 2005 I paid a visit to Thornton Township High School, a predominantly black highschool in Chicago’s southern suburbs. My staff had worked with teachers there toorganize a youth town hall meeting—representatives of each class spent weeksconducting surveys to find out what issues their fellow students were concerned aboutand then presented the results in a series of questions to me. At the meeting they talkedabout violence in the neighborhoods and a shortage of computers in their classrooms.
　　But their number one issue was this: Because the school district couldn’t afford to keepteachers for a full school day, Thornton let out every day at 1:30 in the afternoon. Withthe abbreviated schedule, there was no time for students to take science lab or foreignlanguage classes.
　　How come we’re getting shortchanged? they asked me. Seems like nobody even expectsus to go to college, they said.
　　They wanted more school.
　　We’ve become accustomed to such stories, of poor black and Latino childrenlanguishing in schools that can’t prepare them for the old industrial economy, much lessthe information age. But the problems with our educational system aren’t restricted tothe inner city. America now has one of the highest high school dropout rates in theindustrialized world. By their senior year, American high school students score loweron math and science tests than most of their foreign peers. Half of all teenagers can’tunderstand basic fractions, half of all nine-year-olds can’t perform basic multiplicationor division, and although more American students than ever are taking college entranceexams, only 22 percent are prepared to take college-level classes in English, math, andscience.
　　I don’t believe government alone can turn these statistics around. Parents have theprimary responsibility for instilling an ethic of hard work and educational achievementin their children. But parents rightly expect their government, through the publicschools, to serve as full partners in the educational process—just as it has for earliergenerations of Americans.
　　Unfortunately, instead of innovation and bold reform of our schools—the reforms thatwould allow the kids at Thornton to compete for the jobs at Google—what we’ve seenfrom government for close to two decades has been tinkering around the edges and atolerance for mediocrity. Partly this is a result of ideological battles that are as outdatedas they are predictable. Many conservatives argue that money doesn’t matter in raisingeducational achievement; that the problems in public schools are caused by haplessbureaucracies and intransigent teachers’ unions; and that the only solution is to break upthe government’s education monopoly by handing out vouchers. Meanwhile, those onthe left often find themselves defending an indefensible status quo, insisting that morespending alone will improve educational outcomes.
　　Both assumptions are wrong. Money does matter in education—otherwise why wouldparents pay so much to live in well-funded suburban school districts?—and many urbanand rural schools still suffer from overcrowded classrooms, outdated books, inadequateequipment, and teachers who are forced to pay out of pocket for basic supplies. Butthere’s no denying that the way many public schools are managed poses at least as big aproblem as how well they’re funded.
　　Our task, then, is to identify those reforms that have the highest impact on studentachievement, fund them adequately, and eliminate those programs that don’t produceresults. And in fact we already have hard evidence of reforms that work: a morechallenging and rigorous curriculum with emphasis on math, science, and literacy skills;longer hours and more days to give children the time and sustained attention they needto learn; early childhood education for every child, so they’re not already behind ontheir first day of school; meaningful, performance-based assessments that can provide afuller picture of how a student is doing; and the recruitment and training oftransformative principals and more effective teachers.
　　This last point—the need for good teachers—deserves emphasis. Recent studies showthat the single most important factor in determining a student’s achievement isn’t thecolor of his skin or where he comes from, but who the child’s teacher is. Unfortunately,too many of our schools depend on inexperienced teachers with little training in thesubjects they’re teaching, and too often those teachers are concentrated in alreadystruggling schools. Moreover, the situation is getting worse, not better: Each year,school districts are hemorrhaging experienced teachers as the Baby Boomers reachretirement, and two million teachers must be recruited in the next decade just to meetthe needs of rising enrollment.
　　The problem isn’t that there’s no interest in teaching; I constantly meet young peoplewho’ve graduated from top colleges and have signed up, through programs like Teachfor America, for two-year stints in some of the country’s toughest public schools. Theyfind the work extraordinarily rewarding; the kids they teach benefit from their creativityand enthusiasm. But by the end of two years, most have either changed careers ormoved to suburban schools—a consequence of low pay, a lack of support from theeducational bureaucracy, and a pervasive feeling of isolation.
　　If we’re serious about building a twenty-first-century school system, we’re going tohave to take the teaching profession seriously. This means changing the certificationprocess to allow a chemistry major who wants to teach to avoid expensive additionalcourse work; pairing up new recruits with master teachers to break their isolation; andgiving proven teachers more control over what goes on in their classrooms.
　　It also means paying teachers what they’re worth. There’s no reason why anexperienced, highly qualified, and effective teacher shouldn’t earn $100,000 annually atthe peak of his or her career. Highly skilled teachers in such critical fields as math andscience—as well as those willing to teach in the toughest urban schools—should be paideven more.
　　There’s just one catch. In exchange for more money, teachers need to become moreaccountable for their performance—and school districts need to have greater ability toget rid of ineffective teachers.
　　So far, teacher’s unions have resisted the idea of pay for performance, in part because itcould be disbursed at the whim of a principal. The unions also argue—rightly, I think—that most school districts rely solely on test scores to measure teacher performance, andthat test scores may be highly dependent on factors beyond any teacher’s control, likethe number of low-income or special-needs students in their classroom.
　　But these aren’t insoluble problems. Working with teacher’s unions, states and schooldistricts can develop better measures of performance, ones that combine test data with asystem of peer review (most teachers can tell you with amazing consistency whichteachers in their schools are really good, and which are really bad). And we can makesure that nonperforming teachers no longer handicap children who want to learn.
　　Indeed, if we’re to make the investments required to revamp our schools, then we willneed to rediscover our faith that every child can learn. Recently, I had the chance tovisit Dodge Elementary School, on the West Side of Chicago, a school that had oncebeen near the bottom on every measure but that is in the midst of a turnaround. While Iwas talking to some of the teachers about the challenges they faced, one young teachermentioned what she called the “These Kids Syndrome”—the willingness of society tofind a million excuses for why “these kids” can’t learn; how “these kids come fromtough backgrounds” or “these kids are too far behind.”
　　“When I hear that term, it drives me nuts,” the teacher told me. “They’re not ‘thesekids.’ They’re our kids.”
　　How America’s economy performs in the years to come may depend largely on howwell we take such wisdom to heart.
　　OUR INVESTMENT IN education can’t end with an improved elementary andsecondary school system. In a knowledge-based economy where eight of the ninefastest-growing occupations this decade require scientific or technological skills, mostworkers are going to need some form of higher education to fill the jobs of the future.
　　And just as our government instituted free and mandatory public high schools at thedawn of the twentieth century to provide workers the skills needed for the industrialage, our government has to help today’s workforce adjust to twenty-first-centuryrealities.
　　In many ways, our task should be easier than it was for policy makers a hundred yearsago. For one thing, our network of universities and community colleges already existsand is well equipped to take on more students. And Americans certainly don’t need tobe convinced of the value of a higher education—the percentage of young adults gettingbachelor’s degrees has risen steadily each decade, from around 16 percent in 1980 toalmost 33 percent today.
　　Where Americans do need help, immediately, is in managing the rising cost ofcollege—something with which Michelle and I are all too familiar (for the first ten yearsof our marriage, our combined monthly payments on our undergraduate and law schooldebt exceeded our mortgage by a healthy margin). Over the last five years, the averagetuition and fees at four-year public colleges, adjusted for inflation, have risen 40percent. To absorb these costs, students have been taking on ever-increasing debt levels,which discourages many undergraduates from pursuing careers in less lucrative fieldslike teaching. And an estimated two hundred thousand college-qualified students eachyear choose to forgo college altogether because they can’t figure out how to pay thebills.
　　There are a number of steps we can take to control costs and improve access to highereducation. States can limit annual tuition increases at public universities. For manynontraditional students, technical schools and online courses may provide a cost-effective option for retooling in a constantly changing economy. And students can insistthat their institutions focus their fund-raising efforts more on improving the quality ofinstruction than on building new football stadiums.
　　But no matter how well we do in controlling the spiraling cost of education, we will stillneed to provide many students and parents with more direct help in meeting collegeexpenses, whether through grants, low-interest loans, tax-free educational savingsaccounts, or full tax deductibility of tuition and fees. So far, Congress has been movingin the opposite direction, by raising interest rates on federally guaranteed student loansand failing to increase the size of grants for low-income students to keep pace withinflation. There’s no justification for such policies—not if we want to maintainopportunity and upward mobility as the hallmark of the U.S. economy.
　　There’s one other aspect of our educational system that merits attention—one thatspeaks to the heart of America’s competitiveness. Since Lincoln signed the Morrill Actand created the system of land grant colleges, institutions of higher learning have servedas the nation’s primary research and development laboratories. It’s through theseinstitutions that we’ve trained the innovators of the future, with the federal governmentproviding critical support for the infrastructure—everything from chemistry labs toparticle accelerators—and the dollars for research that may not have an immediatecommercial application but that can ultimately lead to major scientific breakthroughs.
　　Here, too, our policies have been moving in the wrong direction. At the 2006Northwestern University commencement, I fell into a conversation with Dr. RobertLanger, an Institute Professor of chemical engineering at MIT and one of the nation’sforemost scientists. Langer isn’t just an ivory tower academic—he holds more than fivehundred patents, and his research has led to everything from the development of thenicotine patch to brain cancer treatments. As we waited for the procession to begin, Iasked him about his current work, and he mentioned his research in tissue engineering,research that promised new, more effective methods of delivering drugs to the body.
　　Remembering the recent controversies surrounding stem cell research, I asked himwhether the Bush Administration’s limitation on the number of stem cell lines was thebiggest impediment to advances in his field. He shook his head.
　　“Having more stem cell lines would definitely be useful,” Langer told me, “but the realproblem we’re seeing is significant cutbacks in federal grants.” He explained that fifteenyears ago, 20 to 30 percent of all research proposals received significant federal support.
　　That level is now closer to 10 percent. For scientists and researchers, this means moretime spent raising money and less time spent on research. It also means that each year,more and more promising avenues of research are cut off—especially the high-riskresearch that may ultimately yield the biggest rewards.
　　Dr. Langer’s observation isn’t unique. Each month, it seems, scientists and engineersvisit my office to discuss the federal government’s diminished commitment to fundingbasic scientific research. Over the last three decades federal funding for the physical,mathematical, and engineering sciences has declined as a percentage of GDP—just atthe time when other countries are substantially increasing their own R & D budgets.
　　And as Dr. Langer points out, our declining support for basic research has a directimpact on the number of young people going into math, science, and engineering—which helps explain why China is graduating eight times as many engineers as theUnited States every year.
　　If we want an innovation economy, one that generates more Googles each year, then wehave to invest in our future innovators—by doubling federal funding of basic researchover the next five years, training one hundred thousand more engineers and scientistsover the next four years, or providing new research grants to the most outstanding early-career researchers in the country. The total price tag for maintaining our scientific andtechnological edge comes out to approximately $42 billion over five years—realmoney, to be sure, but just 15 percent of the most recent federal highway bill.
　　In other words, we can afford to do what needs to be done. What’s missing is notmoney, but a national sense of urgency.
　　THE LAST CRITICAL investment we need to make America more competitive is in anenergy infrastructure that can move us toward energy independence. In the past, war ora direct threat to national security has shaken America out of its complacency and led tobigger investments in education and science, all with an eye toward minimizing ourvulnerabilities. That’s what happened at the height of the Cold War, when the launchingof the satellite Sputnik led to fears that the Soviets were slipping ahead of ustechnologically. In response, President Eisenhower doubled federal aid to education andprovided an entire generation of scientists and engineers the training they needed to leadrevolutionary advances. That same year, the Defense Advanced Research ProjectsAgency, or DARPA, was formed, providing billions of dollars to basic research thatwould eventually help create the Internet, bar codes, and computer-aided design. And in1961, President Kennedy would launch the Apollo space program, further inspiringyoung people across the country to enter the New Frontier of science.
　　Our current situation demands that we take the same approach with energy. It’s hard tooverstate the degree to which our addiction to oil undermines our future. According tothe National Commission on Energy Policy, without any changes to our energy policyU.S. demand for oil will jump 40 percent over the next twenty years. Over the sameperiod, worldwide demand is expected to jump at least 30 percent, as rapidly developingcountries like China and India expand industrial capacity and add 140 million cars totheir roads.
　　Our dependence on oil doesn’t just affect our economy. It undermines our nationalsecurity. A large portion of the $800 million we spend on foreign oil every day goes tosome of the world’s most volatile regimes—Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela, and,indirectly at least, Ira
Chapter 6 Faith
TWO DAYS AFTER I won the Democratic nomination in my U.S. Senate race, Ireceived an email from a doctor at the University of Chicago Medical School.
　　“Congratulations on your overwhelming and inspiring primary win,” the doctor wrote.
　　“I was happy to vote for you, and I will tell you that I am seriously considering votingfor you in the general election. I write to express my concerns that may, in the end,prevent me from supporting you.”
　　The doctor described himself as a Christian who understood his commitments to becomprehensive and “totalizing.” His faith led him to strongly oppose abortion and gaymarriage, but he said his faith also led him to question the idolatry of the free marketand the quick resort to militarism that seemed to characterize much of President Bush’sforeign policy.
　　The reason the doctor was considering voting for my opponent was not my position onabortion as such. Rather, he had read an entry that my campaign had posted on mywebsite, suggesting that I would fight “right-wing ideologues who want to take away awoman’s right to choose.” He went on to write:
　　I sense that you have a strong sense of justice and of the precarious position of justice inany polity, and I know that you have championed the plight of the voiceless. I alsosense that you are a fair-minded person with a high regard for reason…. Whatever yourconvictions, if you truly believe that those who oppose abortion are all ideologuesdriven by perverse desires to inflict suffering on women, then you, in my judgment, arenot fair-minded…. You know that weenter times that are fraught with possibilities forgood and for harm, times when we are struggling to make sense of a common polity inthe context of plurality, when we are unsure of what grounds we have for making anyclaims that involve others…. I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, onlythat you speak about this issue in fair-minded words.
　　I checked my website and found the offending words. They were not my own; my staffhad posted them to summarize my prochoice position during the Democratic primary, ata time when some of my opponents were questioning my commitment to protect Roe v.
　　Wade. Within the bubble of Democratic Party politics, this was standard boilerplate,designed to fire up the base. The notion of engaging the other side on the issue waspointless, the argument went; any ambiguity on the issue implied weakness, and facedwith the single-minded, give-no-quarter approach of antiabortion forces, we simplycould not afford weakness.
　　Rereading the doctor’s letter, though, I felt a pang of shame. Yes, I thought, there werethose in the antiabortion movement for whom I had no sympathy, those who jostled orblocked women who were entering clinics, shoving photographs of mangled fetuses inthe women’s faces and screaming at the top of their lungs; those who bullied andintimidated and occasionally resorted to violence.
　　But those antiabortion protesters weren’t the ones who occasionally appeared at mycampaign rallies. The ones I encountered usually showed up in the smaller, downstatecommunities that we visited, their expressions weary but determined as they stood insilent vigil outside whatever building in which the rally was taking place, theirhandmade signs or banners held before them like shields. They didn’t yell or try todisrupt our events, although they still made my staff jumpy. The first time a group ofprotesters showed up, my advance team went on red alert; five minutes before myarrival at the meeting hall, they called the car I was in and suggested that I slip inthrough the rear entrance to avoid a confrontation.
　　“I don’t want to go through the back,” I told the staffer driving me. “Tell them we’recoming through the front.”
　　We turned into the library parking lot and saw seven or eight protesters gathered along afence: several older women and what looked to be a family—a man and woman withtwo young children. I got out of the car, walked up to the group, and introduced myself.
　　The man shook my hand hesitantly and told me his name. He looked to be about myage, in jeans, a plaid shirt, and a St. Louis Cardinals cap. His wife shook my hand aswell, but the older women kept their distance. The children, maybe nine or ten yearsold, stared at me with undisguised curiosity.
　　“You folks want to come inside?” I asked.
　　“No, thank you,” the man said. He handed me a pamphlet. “Mr. Obama, I want you toknow that I agree with a lot of what you have to say.”
　　“I appreciate that.”
　　“And I know you’re a Christian, with a family of your own.”
　　“That’s true.”
　　“So how can you support murdering babies?”
　　I told him I understood his position but had to disagree with it. I explained my beliefthat few women made the decision to terminate a pregnancy casually; that any pregnantwoman felt the full force of the moral issues involved and wrestled with her consciencewhen making that heart-wrenching decision; that I feared a ban on abortion would forcewomen to seek unsafe abortions, as they had once done in this country and as theycontinued to do in countries that prosecute abortion doctors and the women who seektheir services. I suggested that perhaps we could agree on ways to reduce the number ofwomen who felt the need to have abortions in the first place.
　　The man listened politely and then pointed to statistics on the pamphlet listing thenumber of unborn children that, according to him, were sacrificed every year. After afew minutes, I said I had to go inside to greet my supporters and asked again if thegroup wanted to come in. Again the man declined. As I turned to go, his wife called outto me.
　　“I will pray for you,” she said. “I pray that you have a change of heart.”
　　Neither my mind nor my heart changed that day, nor did they in the days to come. But Idid have that family in mind as I wrote back to the doctor and thanked him for hisemail. The next day, I circulated the email to my staff and had the language on mywebsite changed to state in clear but simple terms my prochoice position. And thatnight, before I went to bed, I said a prayer of my own—that I might extend the samepresumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me.
　　IT IS A truism that we Americans are a religious people. According to the most recentsurveys, 95 percent of Americans believe in God, more than two-thirds belong to achurch, 37 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more peoplebelieve in angels than believe in evolution. Nor is religion confined to places ofworship. Books proclaiming the end of days sell millions of copies, Christian music fillsthe Billboard charts, and new megachurches seem to spring up daily on the outskirts ofevery major metropolis, providing everything from day care to singles mixers to yogaand Pilates classes. Our President routinely remarks on how Christ changed his heart,and football players point to the heavens after every touchdown, as if God were callingplays from the celestial sidelines.
　　Of course, such religiosity is hardly new. The Pilgrims came to our shores to escapereligious persecution and practice without impediment to their brand of strict Calvinism.
　　Evangelical revivalism has repeatedly swept across the nation, and waves of successiveimmigrants have used their faith to anchor their lives in a strange new world. Religioussentiment and religious activism have sparked some of our most powerful politicalmovements, from abolition to civil rights to the prairie populism of William JenningsBryan.
　　Still, if fifty years ago you had asked the most prominent cultural commentators of thetime just what the future of religion in America might be, they undoubtedly would havetold you it was on the decline. The old-time religion was withering away, it was argued,a victim of science, higher levels of education in the general population, and the marvelsof technology. Respectable folks might still attend church every Sunday; Bible-thumpers and faith healers might still work the Southern revival circuit; the fear of“godless communism” might help feed McCarthyism and the Red Scare. But for themost part, traditional religious practice—and certainly religious fundamentalism—wasconsidered incompatible with modernity, at most a refuge of the poor and uneducatedfrom the hardships of life. Even Billy Graham’s monumental crusades were treated as acurious anachronism by pundits and academics, vestiges of an earlier time that had littleto do with the serious work of managing a modern economy or shaping foreign policy.
　　By the time the sixties rolled around, many mainstream Protestant and Catholic leadershad concluded that if America’s religious institutions were to survive, they would haveto make themselves “relevant” to changing times—by accommodating church doctrineto science, and by articulating a social gospel that addressed the material issues ofeconomic inequality, racism, sexism, and American militarism.
　　What happened? In part, the cooling of religious enthusiasm among Americans wasalways exaggerated. On this score, at least, the conservative critique of “liberal elitism”
　　has a strong measure of truth: Ensconced in universities and large urban centers,academics, journalists, and purveyors of popular culture simply failed to appreciate thecontinuing role that all manner of religious expression played in communities across thecountry. Indeed, the failure of the country’s dominant cultural institutions toacknowledge America’s religious impulse helped foster a degree of religiousentrepreneurship unmatched elsewhere in the industrialized world. Pushed out of sightbut still throbbing with vitality throughout the heartland and the Bible Belt, a paralleluniverse emerged, a world not only of revivals and thriving ministries but also ofChristian television, radio, universities, publishers, and entertainment, all of whichallowed the devout to ignore the popular culture as surely as they were being ignored.
　　The reluctance on the part of many evangelicals to be drawn into politics—their inwardfocus on individual salvation and willingness to render unto Caesar what is his—mighthave endured indefinitely had it not been for the social upheavals of the sixties. In theminds of Southern Christians, the decision of a distant federal court to dismantlesegregation seemed of a piece with its decisions to eliminate prayer in schools—amultipronged assault on the pillars of traditional Southern life. Across America, thewomen’s movement, the sexual revolution, the increasing assertiveness of gays andlesbians, and most powerfully the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade seemed adirect challenge to the church’s teachings about marriage, sexuality, and the proper rolesof men and women. Feeling mocked and under attack, conservative Christians found itno longer possible to insulate themselves from the country’s broader political andcultural trends. And although it was Jimmy Carter who would first introduce thelanguage of evangelical Christianity into modern national politics, it was the RepublicanParty, with its increasing emphasis on tradition, order, and “family values,” that wasbest positioned to harvest this crop of politically awakened evangelicals and mobilizethem against the liberal orthodoxy.
　　The story of how Ronald Reagan, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, and finallyKarl Rove and George W. Bush mobilized this army of Christian foot soldiers need notbe repeated here. Suffice it to say that today white evangelical Christians (along withconservative Catholics) are the heart and soul of the Republican Party’s grassrootsbase—a core following continually mobilized by a network of pulpits and media outletsthat technology has only amplified. It is their issues—abortion, gay marriage, prayer inschools, intelligent design, Terri Schiavo, the posting of the Ten Commandments in thecourthouse, home schooling, voucher plans, and the makeup of the Supreme Court—that often dominate the headlines and serve as one of the major fault lines in Americanpolitics. The single biggest gap in party affiliation among white Americans is notbetween men and women, or between those who reside in so-called red states and thosewho reside in blue states, but between those who attend church regularly and those whodon’t. Democrats, meanwhile, are scrambling to “get religion,” even as a core segmentof our constituency remains stubbornly secular in orientation, and fears—rightly, nodoubt—that the agenda of an assertively Christian nation may not make room for themor their life choices.
　　But the growing political influence of the Christian right tells only part of the story. TheMoral Majority and the Christian Coalition may have tapped into the discontent ofmany evangelical Christians, but what is more remarkable is the ability of evangelicalChristianity not only to survive but to thrive in modern, high-tech America. At a timewhen mainline Protestant churches are all losing membership at a rapid clip,nondenominational evangelical churches are growing by leaps and bounds, elicitinglevels of commitment and participation from their membership that no other Americaninstitution can match. Their fervor has gone mainstream.
　　There are various explanations for this success, from the skill of evangelicals inmarketing religion to the charisma of their leaders. But their success also points to ahunger for the product they are selling, a hunger that goes beyond any particular issue orcause. Each day, it seems, thousands of Americans are going about their daily rounds—dropping off the kids at school, driving to the office, flying to a business meeting,shopping at the mall, trying to stay on their diets—and coming to the realization thatsomething is missing. They are deciding that their work, their possessions, theirdiversions, their sheer busyness are not enough. They want a sense of purpose, anarrative arc to their lives, something that will relieve a chronic loneliness or lift themabove the exhausting, relentless toll of daily life. They need an assurance that somebodyout there cares about them, is listening to them—that they are not just destined to traveldown a long highway toward nothingness.
　　IF I HAVE any insight into this movement toward a deepening religious commitment,perhaps it’s because it’s a road I have traveled.
　　I was not raised in a religious household. My maternal grandparents, who hailed fromKansas, had been steeped in religion as children: My grandfather had been raised bydevout Baptist grandparents after his father had gone AWOL and his mother committedsuicide, while my grandmother’s parents—who occupied a slightly higher station in thehierarchy of small-town, Great Depression society (her father worked for an oil refinery,her mother was a schoolteacher)—were practicing Methodists.
　　But for perhaps the same reasons that my grandparents would end up leaving Kansasand migrating to Hawaii, religious faith never really took root in their hearts. Mygrandmother was always too rational and too stubborn to accept anything she couldn’tsee, feel, touch, or count. My grandfather, the dreamer in our family, possessed the sortof restless soul that might have found refuge in religious belief had it not been for thoseother characteristics—an innate rebelliousness, a complete inability to discipline hisappetites, and a broad tolerance of other people’s weaknesses—that precluded him fromgetting too serious about anything.
　　This combination of traits—my grandmother’s flinty rationalism, my grandfather’sjoviality and incapacity to judge others or himself too strictly—got passed on to mymother. Her own experiences as a bookish, sensitive child growing up in small towns inKansas, Oklahoma, and Texas only reinforced this inherited skepticism. Her memoriesof the Christians who populated her youth were not fond ones. Occasionally, for mybenefit, she would recall the sanctimonious preachers who would dismiss three-quartersof the world’s people as ignorant heathens doomed to spend the afterlife in eternaldamnation—and who in the same breath would insist that the earth and the heavens hadbeen created in seven days, all geologic and astrophysical evidence to the contrary. Sheremembered the respectable church ladies who were always so quick to shun thoseunable to meet their standards of propriety, even as they desperately concealed theirown dirty little secrets; the church fathers who uttered racial epithets and chiseled theirworkers out of any nickel that they could.
　　For my mother, organized religion too often dressed up closed-mindedness in the garbof piety, cruelty and oppression in the cloak of righteousness.
　　This isn’t to say that she provided me with no religious instruction. In her mind, aworking knowledge of the world’s great religions was a necessary part of any well-rounded education. In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat onthe shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology. On Easter orChristmas Day my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to theBuddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancientHawaiian burial sites. But I was made to understand that such religious samplingsrequired no sustained commitment on my part—no introspective exertion or self-flagellation. Religion was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not itswellspring, just one of the many ways—and not necessarily the best way—that manattempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives.
　　In sum, my mother viewed religion through the eyes of the anthropologist that shewould become; it was a phenomenon to be treated with a suitable respect, but with asuitable detachment as well. Moreover, as a child I rarely came in contact with thosewho might offer a substantially different view of faith. My father was almost entirelyabsent from my childhood, having been divorced from my mother when I was two yearsold; in any event, although my father had been raised a Muslim, by the time he met mymother he was a confirmed atheist, thinking religion to be so much superstition, like themumbo-jumbo of witch doctors that he had witnessed in the Kenyan villages of hisyouth.
　　When my mother remarried, it was to an Indonesian with an equally skeptical bent, aman who saw religion as not particularly useful in the practical business of makingone’s way in the world, and who had grown up in a country that easily blended itsIslamic faith with remnants of Hinduism, Buddhism, and ancient animist traditions.
　　During the five years that we would live with my stepfather in Indonesia, I was sent firstto a neighborhood Catholic school and then to a predominantly Muslim school; in bothcases, my mother was less concerned with me learning the catechism or puzzling out themeaning of the muezzin’s call to evening prayer than she was with whether I wasproperly learning my multiplication tables.
　　And yet for all her professed secularism, my mother was in many ways the mostspiritually awakened person that I’ve ever known. She had an unswerving instinct forkindness, charity, and love, and spent much of her life acting on that instinct, sometimesto her detriment. Without the help of religious texts or outside authorities, she workedmightily to instill in me the values that many Americans learn in Sunday school:
　　honesty, empathy, discipline, delayed gratification, and hard work. She raged at povertyand injustice, and scorned those who were indifferent to both.
　　Most of all, she possessed an abiding sense of wonder, a reverence for life and itsprecious, transitory nature that could properly be described as devotional. During thecourse of the day, she might come across a painting, read a line of poetry, or hear apiece of music, and I would see tears well up in her eyes. Sometimes, as I was growingup, she would wake me up in the middle of the night to have me gaze at a particularlyspectacular moon, or she would have me close my eyes as we walked together attwilight to listen to the rustle of leaves. She loved to take children—any child—and sitthem in her lap and tickle them or play games with them or examine their hands, tracingout the miracle of bone and tendon and skin and delighting at the truths to be foundthere. She saw mysteries everywhere and took joy in the sheer strangeness of life.
　　It is only in retrospect, of course, that I fully understand how deeply this spirit of hersinfluenced me—how it sustained me despite the absence of a father in the house, how itbuoyed me through the rocky shoals of my adolescence, and how it invisibly guided thepath I would ultimately take. My fierce ambitions might have been fueled by myfather—by my knowledge of his achievements and failures, by my unspoken desire tosomehow earn his love, and by my resentments and anger toward him. But it was mymother’s fundamental faith—in the goodness of people and in the ultimate value of thisbrief life we’ve each been given—that channeled those ambitions. It was in search ofconfirmation of her values that I studied political philosophy, looking for both alanguage and systems of action that could help build community and make justice real.
　　And it was in search of some practical application of those values that I accepted workafter college as a community organizer for a group of churches in Chicago that weretrying to cope with joblessness, drugs, and hopelessness in their midst.
　　I have recorded in a previous book the ways in which my early work in Chicago helpedme grow into my manhood—how my work with the pastors and laypeople theredeepened my resolve to lead a public life, how they fortified my racial identity andconfirmed my belief in the capacity of ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Butmy experiences in Chicago also forced me to confront a dilemma that my mother neverfully resolved in her own life: the fact that I had no community or shared traditions inwhich to ground my most deeply held beliefs. The Christians with whom I workedrecognized themselves in me; they saw that I knew their Book and shared their valuesand sang their songs. But they sensed that a part of me remained removed, detached, anobserver among them. I came to realize that without a vessel for my beliefs, without anunequivocal commitment to a particular community of faith, I would be consigned atsome level to always remain apart, free in the way that my mother was free, but alsoalone in the same ways she was ultimately alone.
　　There are worse things than such freedom. My mother would live happily as a citizen ofthe world, stitching together a community of friends wherever she found herself,satisfying her need for meaning in her work and in her children. In such a life I, too,might have contented myself had it not been for the particular attributes of thehistorically black church, attributes that helped me shed some of my skepticism andembrace the Christian faith.
　　For one thing, I was drawn to the power of the African American religious tradition tospur social change. Out of necessity, the black church had to minister to the wholeperson. Out of necessity, the black church rarely had the luxury of separating individualsalvation from collective salvation. It had to serve as the center of the community’spolitical, economic, and social as well as spiritual life; it understood in an intimate waythe biblical call to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and challenge powers andprincipalities. In the history of these struggles, I was able to see faith as more than just acomfort to the weary or a hedge against death; rather, it was an active, palpable agent inthe world. In the day-to-day work of the men and women I met in church each day, intheir ability to “make a way out of no way” and maintain hope and dignity in the direstof circumstances, I could see the Word made manifest.
　　And perhaps it was out of this intimate knowledge of hardship, the grounding of faith instruggle, that the historically black church offered me a second insight: that faithdoesn’t mean that you don’t have doubts, or that you relinquish your hold on this world.
　　Long before it became fashionable among television evangelists, the typical blacksermon freely acknowledged that all Christians (including the pastors) could expect tostill experience the same greed, resentment, lust, and anger that everyone elseexperienced. The gospel songs, the happy feet, and the tears and shouts all spoke of arelease, an acknowledgment, and finally a channeling of those emotions. In the blackcommunity, the lines between sinner and saved were more fluid; the sins of those whocame to church were not so different from the sins of those who didn’t, and so were aslikely to be talked about with humor as with condemnation. You needed to come tochurch precisely because you were of this world, not apart from it; rich, poor, sinner,saved, you needed to embrace Christ precisely because you had sins to wash away—because you were human and needed an ally in your difficult journey, to make the peaksand valleys smooth and render all those crooked paths straight.
　　It was because of these newfound understandings—that religious commitment did notrequire me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic andsocial justice, or otherwise retreat from the world that I knew and loved—that I wasfinally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and bebaptized. It came about as a choice and not an epiphany; the questions I had did notmagically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, Ifelt God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself todiscovering His truth.
　　DISCUSSIONS OF FAITH are rarely heavy-handed within the confines of the Senate.
　　No one is quizzed on his or her religious affiliation; I have rarely heard God’s nameinvoked during debate on the floor. The Senate chaplain, Barry Black, is a wise andworldly man, former chief of navy chaplains, an African American who grew up in oneof the toughest neighborhoods in Baltimore and carries out his limited duties—offeringthe morning prayer, hosting voluntary Bible study sessions, providing spiritualcounseling to those who seek it—with a constant spirit of warmth and inclusiveness.
　　The Wednesday-morning prayer breakfast is entirely optional, bipartisan, andecumenical (Senator Norm Coleman, who is Jewish, is currently chief organizer on theRepublican side); those who choose to attend take turns selecting a passage fromScripture and leading group discussion. Hearing the sincerity, openness, humility, andgood humor with which even the most overtly religious senators—men like RickSantorum, Sam Brownback, or Tom Coburn—share their personal faith journeys duringthese breakfasts, one is tempted to assume that the impact of faith on politics is largelysalutary, a check on personal ambition, a ballast against the buffeting winds of today’sheadlines and political expediency.
　　Beyond the Senate’s genteel confines, though, any discussion of religion and its role inpolitics can turn a bit less civil. Take my Republican opponent in 2004, AmbassadorAlan Keyes, who deployed a novel argument for attracting voters in the waning days ofthe campaign.
　　“Christ would not vote for Barack Obama,” Mr. Keyes proclaimed, “because BarackObama has voted to behave in a way that it is inconceivable for Christ to havebehaved.”
　　This wasn’t the first time that Mr. Keyes had made such pronouncements. After myoriginal Republican opponent had been forced to withdraw in the wake of someawkward disclosures from his divorce file, the Illinois Republican Party, unable to settleon a local candidate, had decided to recruit Mr. Keyes for the task. The fact that Mr.
　　Keyes hailed from Maryland, had never lived in Illinois, had never won an election, andwas regarded by many in the national Republican Party as insufferable didn’t deter theIllinois GOP leadership. One Republican colleague of mine in the state senate providedme with a blunt explanation of their strategy: “We got our own Harvard-educatedconservative black guy to go up against the Harvard-educated liberal black guy. He maynot win, but at least he can knock that halo off your head.”
　　Mr. Keyes himself was not lacking in confidence. A Ph.D. from Harvard, a protégé ofJeane Kirkpatrick, and U.S. ambassador to the UN Economic and Social Council underRonald Reagan, he had burst into the public eye first as a two-time candidate for a U.S.
　　Senate seat from Maryland and then as a two-time candidate for the GOP presidentialnomination. He had been clobbered in all four races, but those losses had done nothingto diminish Mr. Keyes’s reputation in the eyes of his supporters; for them, electoralfailure seemed only to confirm his uncompromising devotion to conservative principles.
　　There was no doubt that the man could talk. At the drop of a hat Mr. Keyes coulddeliver a grammatically flawless disquisition on virtually any topic. On the stump, hecould wind himself up into a fiery intensity, his body rocking, his brow running withsweat, his fingers jabbing the air, his high-pitched voice trembling with emotion as hecalled the faithful to do battle against the forces of evil.
　　Unfortunately for him, neither his intellect nor his eloquence could overcome certaindefects as a candidate. Unlike most politicians, for example, Mr. Keyes made no effortto conceal what he clearly considered to be his moral and intellectual superiority. Withhis erect bearing, almost theatrically formal manner, and a hooded gaze that made himappear perpetually bored, he came off as a cross between a Pentecostal preacher andWilliam F. Buckley.
　　Moreover, that self-assuredness disabled in him the instincts for self-censorship thatallow most people to navigate the world without getting into constant fistfights. Mr.
　　Keyes said whatever popped into his mind, and with dogged logic would follow over acliff just about any idea that came to him. Already disadvantaged by a late start, a lackof funds, and his status as a carpetbagger, he proceeded during the course of a merethree months to offend just about everybody. He labeled all homosexuals—includingDick Cheney’s daughter—“selfish hedonists,” and insisted that adoption by gay couplesinevitably resulted in incest. He called the Illinois press corps a tool of the “anti-marriage, anti-life agenda.” He accused me of taking a “slaveholder’s position” in mydefense of abortion rights and called me a “hard-core, academic Marxist” for mysupport of universal health care and other social programs—and then added for goodmeasure that because I was not the descendant of slaves I was not really AfricanAmerican. At one point he even managed to alienate the conservative Republicans whorecruited him to Illinois by recommending—perhaps in a play for black votes—reparations in the form of a complete abolition of the income tax for all blacks withslave ancestry. (“This is a disaster!” sputtered one comment posted on the discussionboard of Illinois’s hard-right website, the Illinois Leader. “WHAT ABOUT THEWHITE GUYS!!!”)In other words, Alan Keyes was an ideal opponent; all I had to do was keep my mouthshut and start planning my swearing-in ceremony. And yet, as the campaign progressed,I found him getting under my skin in a way that few people ever have. When our pathscrossed during the campaign, I often had to suppress the rather uncharitable urge toeither taunt him or wring his neck. Once, when we bumped into each other at an IndianIndependence Day parade, I poked him in the chest while making a point, a bit of alpha-male behavior that I hadn’t engaged in since high school and which an observant newscrew gamely captured; the moment was replayed in slow motion on TV that evening. Inthe three debates that were held before the election, I was frequently tongue-tied,irritable, and uncharacteristically tense—a fact that the public (having by that pointwritten Mr. Keyes off) largely missed, but one that caused no small bit of distress tosome of my supporters. “Why are you letting this guy give you fits?” they would askme. For them, Mr. Keyes was a kook, an extremist, his arguments not even worthentertaining.
　　What they didn’t understand was that I could not help but take Mr. Keyes seriously. Forhe claimed to speak for my religion—and although I might not like what came out ofhis mouth, I had to admit that some of his views had many adherents within theChristian church.
　　His argument went something like this: America was founded on the twin principles ofGod-given liberty and Christian faith. Successive liberal administrations had hijackedthe federal government to serve a godless materialism and had thereby steadily chippedaway—through regulation, socialistic welfare programs, gun laws, compulsoryattendance at public schools, and the income tax (“the slave tax,” as Mr. Keyes calledit)—at individual liberty and traditional values. Liberal judges had further contributed tothis moral decay by perverting the First Amendment to mean the separation of churchand state, and by validating all sorts of aberrant behavior—particularly abortion andhomosexuality—that threatened to destroy the nuclear family. The answer to Americanrenewal, then, was simple: Restore religion generally—and Christianity in particular—to its rightful place at the center of our public and private lives, align the law withreligious precepts, and drastically restrict the power of federal government to legislatein areas prescribed neither by the Constitution nor by God’s commandments.
　　In other words, Alan Keyes presented the essential vision of the religious right in thiscountry, shorn of all caveat, compromise, or apology. Within its own terms, it wasentirely coherent, and provided Mr. Keyes with the certainty and fluency of an OldTestament prophet. And while I found it simple enough to dispose of his constitutionaland policy arguments, his readings of Scripture put me on the defensive.
　　Mr. Obama says he’s a Christian, Mr. Keyes would say, and yet he supports a lifestylethat the Bible calls an abomination.
　　Mr. Obama says he’s a Christian, but he supports the destruction of innocent and sacredlife.
　　What could I say? That a literal reading of the Bible was folly? That Mr. Keyes, aRoman Catholic, should disregard the Pope’s teachings? Unwilling to go there, Ianswered with the usual liberal response in such debates—that we live in a pluralisticsociety, that I can’t impose my religious views on another, that I was running to be aU.S. senator from Illinois and not the minister of Illinois. But even as I answered, I wasmindful of Mr. Keyes’s implicit accusation—that I remained steeped in doubt, that myfaith was adulterated, that I was not a true Christian.
　　IN A SENSE, my dilemma with Mr. Keyes mirrors the broader dilemma that liberalismhas faced in answering the religious right. Liberalism teaches us to be tolerant of otherpeople’s religious beliefs, so long as those beliefs don’t cause anyone harm or impingeon another’s right to believe differently. To the extent that religious communities arecontent to keep to themselves and faith is neatly confined as a matter of individualconscience, such tolerance is not tested.
　　But religion is rarely practiced in isolation; organized religion, at least, is a very publicaffair. The faithful may feel compelled by their religion to actively evangelize whereverthey can. They may feel that a secular state promotes values that directly offend theirbeliefs. They may want the larger society to validate and reinforce their views.
　　And when the religiously motivated assert themselves politically to achieve these aims,liberals get nervous. Those of us in public office may try to avoid the conversationabout religious values altogether, fearful of offending anyone and claiming that—regardless of our personal beliefs—constitutional principles tie our hands on issues likeabortion or school prayer. (Catholic politicians of a certain generation seem particularlycautious, perhaps because they came of age when large segments of America stillquestioned whether John F. Kennedy would end up taking orders from the Pope.) Someon the left (although not those in public office) go further, dismissing religion in thepublic square as inherently irrational, intolerant, and therefore dangerous—and notingthat, with its emphasis on personal salvation and the policing of private morality,religious talk has given conservatives cover to ignore questions of public morality, likepoverty or corporate malfeasance.
　　Such strategies of avoidance may work for progressives when the opponent is AlanKeyes. But over the long haul, I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledgethe power of faith in the lives of the American people, and so avoid joining a seriousdebate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy.
　　To begin with, it’s bad politics. There are a whole lot of religious people in America,including the majority of Democrats. When we abandon the field of religiousdiscourse—when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian orMuslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how itshould not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about ourobligations toward one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religiousbroadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome—others will fill the vacuum.
　　And those who do are likely to be those with the most insular views of faith, or whocynically use religion to justify partisan ends.
　　More fundamentally, the discomfort of some progressives with any hint of religiosityhas often inhibited us from effectively addressing issues in moral terms. Some of theproblem is rhetorical: Scrub language of all religious content and we forfeit the imageryand terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personalmorality and social justice. Imagine Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address withoutreference to “the judgments of the Lord,” or King’s “I Have a Dream” speech withoutreference to “all of God’s children.” Their summoning of a higher truth helped inspirewhat had seemed impossible and move the nation to embrace a common destiny. Ofcourse organized religion doesn’t have a monopoly on virtue, and one not need bereligious to make moral claims or appeal to a common good. But we should not avoidmaking such claims or appeals—or abandon any reference to our rich religioustraditions—in order to avoid giving offense.
　　Our failure as progressives to tap into the moral underpinnings of the nation is not justrhetorical, though. Our fear of getting “preachy” may also lead us to discount the rolethat values and culture play in addressing some of our most urgent social problems.
　　After all, the problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed, arenot simply technical problems in search of the perfect ten-point plan. They are alsorooted in societal indifference and individual callousness—the desire among those at thetop of the social ladder to maintain their wealth and status whatever the cost, as well asthe despair and self-destructiveness among those at the bottom of the social ladder.
　　Solving these problems will require changes in government policy; it will also requirechanges in hearts and minds. I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and thatour leaders must say so in the face of the gun manufacturers’ lobby. But I also believethat when a gangbanger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feelssomebody disrespected him, we have a problem of morality. Not only do we need topunish that man for his crime, but we need to acknowledge that there’s a hole in hisheart, one that government programs alone may not be able to repair. I believe invigorous enforcement of our nondiscrimination laws; I also believe that atransformation of conscience and a genuine commitment to diversity on the part of thenation’s CEOs could bring quicker results than a battalion of lawyers. I think we shouldput more of our tax dollars into educating poor girls and boys, and give them theinformation about contraception that can prevent unwanted pregnancies, lower abortionrates, and help ensure that every child is loved and cherished. But I also think faith canfortify a young woman’s sense of self, a young man’s sense of responsibility, and thesense of reverence all young people should have for the act of sexual intimacy.
　　I am not suggesting that every progressive suddenly latch on to religious terminology orthat we abandon the fight for institutional change in favor of “a thousand points oflight.” I recognize how often appeals to private virtue become excuses for inaction.
　　Moreover, nothing is more transparent than inauthentic expressions of faith—such asthe politician who shows up at a black church around election time and claps (offrhythm) to the gospel choir or sprinkles in a few biblical citations to spice up athoroughly dry policy speech.
　　I am suggesting that if we progressives shed some of our own biases, we mightrecognize the values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to themoral and material direction of our country. We might recognize that the call tosacrifice on behalf of the next generation, the need to think in terms of “thou” and notjust “I,” resonates in religious congregations across the country. We need to take faithseriously not simply to block the religious right but to engage all persons of faith in thelarger project of American renewal.
　　Some of this is already beginning to happen. Megachurch pastors like Rick Warren andT. D. Jakes are wielding their enormous influence to confront AIDS, Third World debtrelief, and the genocide in Darfur. Self-described “progressive evangelicals” like JimWallis and Tony Campolo are lifting up the biblical injunction to help the poor as ameans of mobilizing Christians against budget cuts to social programs and growinginequality. And across the country, individual churches like my own are sponsoringday-care programs, building senior centers, and helping ex-offenders reclaim their lives.
　　But to build on these still tentative partnerships between the religious and secularworlds, more work will need to be done. The tensions and suspicions on each side of thereligious divide will have to be squarely addressed, and each side will need to acceptsome ground rules for collaboration.
　　The first and most difficult step for some evangelical Christians is to acknowledge thecritical role that the establishment clause has played not only in the development of ourdemocracy but also in the robustness of our religious practice. Contrary to the claims ofmany on the Christian right who rail against the separation of church and state, theirargument is not with a handful of liberal sixties judges. It is with the drafters of the Billof Rights and the forebears of today’s evangelical church.
　　Many of the leading lights of the Revolution, most notably Franklin and Jefferson, weredeists who—while believing in an Almighty God—questioned not only the dogmas ofthe Christian church but the central tenets of Christianity itself (including Christ’sdivinity). Jefferson and Madison in particular argued for what Jefferson called a “wallof separation” between church and state, as a means of protecting individual liberty inreligious belief and practice, guarding the state against sectarian strife, and defendingorganized religion against the state’s encroachment or undue influence.
　　Of course, not all the Founding Fathers agreed; men like Patrick Henry and John Adamsforwarded a variety of proposals to use the arm of the state to promote religion. Butwhile it was Jefferson and Madison who pushed through the Virginia statute of religiousfreedom that would become the model for the First Amendment’s religion clauses, itwasn’t these students of the Enlightenment who proved to be the most effectivechampions of a separation between church and state.
　　Rather, it was Baptists like Reverend John Leland and other evangelicals who providedthe popular support needed to get these provisions ratified. They did so because theywere outsiders; because their style of exuberant worship appealed to the lower classes;because their evangelization of all comers—including slaves—threatened theestablished order; because they were no respecters of rank and privilege; and becausethey were consistently persecuted and disdained by the dominant Anglican Church inthe South and the Congregationalist orders of the North. Not only did they rightly fearthat any state-sponsored religion might encroach on their ability, as religious minorities,to practice their faith; they also believed that religious vitality inevitably withers whencompelled or supported by the state. In the words of the Reverend Leland, “It is erroralone, that stands in need of government to support it; truth can and will do betterwithout…it.”
　　Jefferson and Leland’s formula for religious freedom worked. Not only has Americaavoided the sorts of religious strife that continue to plague the globe, but religiousinstitutions have continued to thrive—a phenomenon that some observers attributedirectly to the absence of a state-sponsored church, and hence a premium on religiousexperimentation and volunteerism. Moreover, given the increasing diversity ofAmerica’s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whateverwe once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, aMuslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.
　　But let’s even assume that we only had Christians within our borders. WhoseChristianity would we teach in the schools? James Dobson’s or Al Sharpton’s? Whichpassages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus,which suggests that slavery is all right and eating shellfish is an abomination? Howabout Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Orshould we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount—a passage so radical that it’s doubtfulthat our Defense Department would survive its application?
　　This brings us to a different point—the manner in which religious views should informpublic debate and guide elected officials. Surely, secularists are wrong when they askbelievers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square; FrederickDouglass, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin LutherKing, Jr.—indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history—not only weremotivated by faith but repeatedly used religious language to argue their causes. To saythat men and women should not inject their “personal morality” into public-policydebates is a practical absurdity; our law is by definition a codification of morality, muchof it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
　　What our deliberative, pluralistic democracy does demand is that the religiouslymotivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. Itrequires that their proposals must be subject to argument and amenable to reason. If Iam opposed to abortion for religious reasons and seek to pass a law banning thepractice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or invoke God’s will andexpect that argument to carry the day. If I want others to listen to me, then I have toexplain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths,including those with no faith at all.
　　For those who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do, such rulesof engagement may seem just one more example of the tyranny of the secular andmaterial worlds over the sacred and eternal. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have nochoice. Almost by definition, faith and reason operate in different domains and involvedifferent paths to discerning truth. Reason—and science—involves the accumulation ofknowledge based on realities that we can all apprehend. Religion, by contrast, is basedon truths that are not provable through ordinary human understanding—the “belief inthings not seen.” When science teachers insist on keeping creationism or intelligentdesign out of their classrooms, they are not asserting that scientific knowledge issuperior to religious insight. They are simply insisting that each path to knowledgeinvolves different rules and that those rules are not interchangeable.
　　Politics is hardly a science, and it too infrequently depends on reason. But in apluralistic democracy, the same distinctions apply. Politics, like science, depends on ourability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. Moreover,politics (unlike science) involves compromise, the art of the possible. At somefundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It insists on the impossible.
　　If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God’s edicts, regardless ofthe consequences. To base one’s life on such uncompromising commitments may besublime; to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.
　　The story of Abraham and Isaac offers a simple but powerful example. According to theBible, Abraham is ordered by God to offer up his “only son, Isaac, whom you love,” asa burnt offering. Without argument, Abraham takes Isaac to the mountaintop, binds himto an altar, and raises his knife, prepared to act as God has commanded.
　　Of course, we know the happy ending—God sends down an angel to intercede at thevery last minute. Abraham has passed God’s test of devotion. He becomes a model offidelity to God, and his great faith is rewarded through future generations. And yet it isfair to say that if any of us saw a twenty-first-century Abraham raising the knife on theroof of his apartment building, we would call the police; we would wrestle him down;even if we saw him lower the knife at the last minute, we would expect the Departmentof Children and Family Services to take Isaac away and charge Abraham with childabuse. We would do so because God doesn’t reveal Himself or His angels to all of us ina single moment. We do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees,true as those experiences may be. So the best we can do is act in accordance with thosethings that are possible for all of us to know, understanding that a part of what we knowto be true—as individuals or communities of faith—will be true for us alone.
　　Finally, any reconciliation between faith and democratic pluralism requires some senseof proportion. This is not entirely foreign to religious doctrine; even those who claimthe Bible’s inerrancy make distinctions between Scriptural edicts, based on a sense thatsome passages—the Ten Commandments, say, or a belief in Christ’s divinity—arecentral to Christian faith, while others are more culturally specific and may be modifiedto accommodate modern life. The American people intuitively understand this, which iswhy the majority of Catholics practice birth control and some of those opposed to gaymarriage nevertheless are opposed to a constitutional amendment banning it. Religiousleadership need not accept such wisdom in counseling their flocks, but they shouldrecognize this wisdom in their politics.
　　If a sense of proportion should guide Christian activism, then it must also guide thosewho police the boundaries between church and state. Not every mention of God inpublic is a breach in the wall of separation; as the Supreme Court has properlyrecognized, context matters. It is doubtful that children reciting the Pledge of Allegiancefeel oppressed as a consequence of muttering the phrase “under God”; I didn’t.
　　Allowing the use of school property for meetings by voluntary student prayer groupsshould not be a threat, any more than its use by the high school Republican Club shouldthreaten Democrats. And one can envision certain faith-based programs—targeting ex-offenders or substance abusers—that offer a uniquely powerful way of solving problemsand hence merit carefully tailored support.
　　THESE BROAD PRINCIPLES for discussing faith within a democracy are not all-inclusive. It would be helpful, for example, if in debates about matters touching onreligion—as in all of democratic discourse—we could resist the temptation to imputebad faith to those who disagree with us. In judging the persuasiveness of various moralclaims, we should be on the lookout for inconsistency in how such claims are applied:
　　As a general rule, I am more prone to listen to those who are as outraged by theindecency of homelessness as they are by the indecency of music videos. And we needto recognize that sometimes our argument is less about what is right than about whomakes the final determination—whether we need the coercive arm of the state toenforce our values, or whether the subject is one best left to individual conscience andevolving norms.
　　Of course, even steadfast application of these principles won’t resolve every conflict.
　　The willingness of many who oppose abortion to make an exception for rape and incestindicates a willingness to bend principle for the sake of practical considerations; thewillingness of even the most ardent prochoice advocates to accept some restrictions onlate-term abortion marks a recognition that a fetus is more than a body part and thatsociety has some interest in its development. Still, between those who believe that lifebegins at conception and those who consider the fetus an extension of the woman’sbody until birth, a point is rapidly reached at which compromise is not possible. At thatpoint, the best we can do is ensure that persuasion rather than violence or intimidationdetermines the political outcome—and that we refocus at least some of our energies onreducing the number of unwanted pregnancies through education (including aboutabstinence), contraception, adoption, or any other strategies that have broad support andhave been proven to work.
　　For many practicing Christians, the same inability to compromise may apply to gaymarriage. I find such a position troublesome, particularly in a society in which Christianmen and women have been known to engage in adultery or other violations of their faithwithout civil penalty. All too often I have sat in a church and heard a pastor use gaybashing as a cheap parlor trick—“It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!” he willshout, usually when the sermon is not going so well. I believe that American society canchoose to carve out a special place for the union of a man and a woman as the unit ofchild rearing most common to every culture. I am not willing to have the state denyAmerican citizens a civil union that confers equivalent rights on such basic matters ashospital visitation or health insurance coverage simply because the people they love areof the same sex—nor am I willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers anobscure line in Romans to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on theMount.
　　Perhaps I am sensitive on this issue because I have seen the pain my own carelessnesshas caused. Before my election, in the middle of my debates with Mr. Keyes, I receiveda phone message from one of my strongest supporters. She was a small-business owner,a mother, and a thoughtful, generous person. She was also a lesbian who had lived in amonogamous relationship with her partner for the last decade.
　　She knew when she decided to support me that I was opposed to same-sex marriage,and she had heard me argue that, in the absence of any meaningful consensus, theheightened focus on marriage was a distraction from other, attainable measures toprevent discrimination against gays and lesbians. Her phone message in this instancehad been prompted by a radio interview she had heard in which I had referenced myreligious traditions in explaining my position on the issue. She told me that she hadbeen hurt by my remarks; she felt that by bringing religion into the equation, I wassuggesting that she, and others like her, were somehow bad people.
　　I felt bad, and told her so in a return call. As I spoke to her I was reminded that nomatter how much Christians who oppose homosexuality may claim that they hate thesin but love the sinner, such a judgment inflicts pain on good people—people who aremade in the image of God, and who are often truer to Christ’s message than those whocondemn them. And I was reminded that it is my obligation, not only as an electedofficial in a pluralistic society but also as a Christian, to remain open to the possibilitythat my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided, just as I cannot claiminfallibility in my support of abortion rights. I must admit that I may have been infectedwith society’s prejudices and predilections and attributed them to God; that Jesus’ callto love one another might demand a different conclusion; and that in years hence I maybe seen as someone who was on the wrong side of history. I don’t believe such doubtsmake me a bad Christian. I believe they make me human, limited in my understandingsof God’s purpose and therefore prone to sin. When I read the Bible, I do so with thebelief that it is not a static text but the Living Word and that I must be continually opento new revelations—whether they come from a lesbian friend or a doctor opposed toabortion.
　　THIS IS NOT to say that I’m unanchored in my faith. There are some things that I’mabsolutely sure about—the Golden Rule, the need to battle cruelty in all its forms, thevalue of love and charity, humility and grace.
　　Those beliefs were driven home two years ago when I flew down to Birmingham,Alabama, to deliver a speech at the city’s Civil Rights Institute. The institute is rightacross the street from the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the site where, in 1963, fouryoung children—Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and DeniseMcNair—lost their lives when a bomb planted by white supremacists exploded duringSunday school, and before my talk I took the opportunity to visit the church. The youngpastor and several deacons greeted me at the door and showed me the still-visible scaralong the wall where the bomb went off. I saw the clock at the back of the church, stillfrozen at 10:22 a.m. I studied the portraits of the four little girls.
　　After the tour, the pastor, deacons, and I held hands and said a prayer in the sanctuary.
　　Then they left me to sit in one of the pews and gather my thoughts. What must it havebeen like for those parents forty years ago, I wondered, knowing that their preciousdaughters had been snatched away by violence at once so casual and so vicious? Howcould they endure the anguish unless they were certain that some purpose lay behindtheir children’s murders, that some meaning could be found in immeasurable loss?
　　Those parents would have seen the mourners pour in from all across the nation, wouldhave read the condolences from across the globe, would have watched as LyndonJohnson announced on national television that the time had come to overcome, wouldhave seen Congress finally pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Friends and strangersalike would have assured them that their daughters had not died in vain—that they hadawakened the conscience of a nation and helped liberate a people; that the bomb hadburst a dam to let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.
　　And yet would even that knowledge be enough to console your grief, to keep you frommadness and eternal rage—unless you also knew that your child had gone on to a betterplace?
　　My thoughts turned to my mother and her final days, after cancer had spread throughher body and it was clear that there was no coming back. She had admitted to me duringthe course of her illness that she was not ready to die; the suddenness of it all had takenher by surprise, as if the physical world she loved so much had turned on her, betrayedher. And although she fought valiantly, endured the pain and chemotherapy with graceand good humor to the very end, more than once I saw fear flash across her eyes. Morethan fear of pain or fear of the unknown, it was the sheer loneliness of death thatfrightened her, I think—the notion that on this final journey, on this last adventure, shewould have no one to fully share her experiences with, no one who could marvel withher at the body’s capacity to inflict pain on itself, or laugh at the stark absurdity of lifeonce one’s hair starts falling out and one’s salivary glands shut down.
　　I carried such thoughts with me as I left the church and made my speech. Later thatnight, back home in Chicago, I sat at the dinner table, watching Malia and Sasha as theylaughed and bickered and resisted their string beans before their mother chased them upthe stairs and to their baths. Alone in the kitchen washing the dishes, I imagined my twogirls growing up, and I felt the ache that every parent must feel at one time or another,that desire to snatch up each moment of your child’s presence and never let go—topreserve every gesture, to lock in for all eternity the sight of their curls or the feel oftheir fingers clasped around yours. I thought of Sasha asking me once what happenedwhen we die—“I don’t want to die, Daddy,” she had added matter-of-factly—and I hadhugged her and said, “You’ve got a long, long way before you have to worry aboutthat,” which had seemed to satisfy her. I wondered whether I should have told her thetruth, that I wasn’t sure what happens when we die, any more than I was sure of wherethe soul resides or what existed before the Big Bang. Walking up the stairs, though, Iknew what I hoped for—that my mother was together in some way with those four littlegirls, capable in some fashion of embracing them, of finding joy in their spirits.
　　I know that tucking in my daughters that night, I grasped a little bit of heaven.
Chapter 7 Race
THE FUNERAL WAS held in a big church, a gleaming, geometric structure spreadout over ten well-manicured acres. Reputedly, it had cost $35 million to build, andevery dollar showed—there was a banquet hall, a conference center, a 1,200-car parkinglot, a state-of-the-art sound system, and a TV production facility with digital editingequipment.
　　Inside the church sanctuary, some four thousand mourners had already gathered, mostof them African American, many of them professionals of one sort or another: doctors,lawyers, accountants, educators, and real estate brokers. On the stage, senators,governors, and captains of industry mingled with black leaders like Jesse Jackson, JohnLewis, Al Sharpton, and T. D. Jakes. Outside, under a bright October sun, thousandsmore stood along the quiet streets: elderly couples, solitary men, young women withstrollers, some waving to the motorcades that occasionally passed, others standing inquiet contemplation, all of them waiting to pay their final respects to the diminutive,gray-haired woman who lay in the casket within.
　　The choir sang; the pastor said an opening prayer. Former President Bill Clinton rose tospeak, and began to describe what it had been like for him as a white Southern boy toride in segregated buses, how the civil rights movement that Rosa Parks helped sparkhad liberated him and his white neighbors from their own bigotry. Clinton’s ease withhis black audience, their almost giddy affection for him, spoke of reconciliation, offorgiveness, a partial mending of the past’s grievous wounds.
　　In many ways, seeing a man who was both the former leader of the free world and a sonof the South acknowledge the debt he owed a black seamstress was a fitting tribute tothe legacy of Rosa Parks. Indeed, the magnificent church, the multitude of black electedofficials, the evident prosperity of so many of those in attendance, and my own presenceonstage as a United States senator—all of it could be traced to that December day in1955 when, with quiet determination and unruffled dignity, Mrs. Parks had refused tosurrender her seat on a bus. In honoring Rosa Parks, we honored others as well, thethousands of women and men and children across the South whose names were absentfrom the history books, whose stories had been lost in the slow eddies of time, butwhose courage and grace had helped liberate a people.
　　And yet, as I sat and listened to the former President and the procession of speakers thatfollowed, my mind kept wandering back to the scenes of devastation that had dominatedthe news just two months earlier, when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast andNew Orleans was submerged. I recalled images of teenage mothers weeping or cursingin front of the New Orleans Superdome, their listless infants hoisted to their hips, andold women in wheelchairs, heads lolled back from the heat, their withered legs exposedunder soiled dresses. I thought about the news footage of a solitary body someone hadlaid beside a wall, motionless beneath the flimsy dignity of a blanket; and the scenes ofshirtless young men in sagging pants, their legs churning through the dark waters, theirarms draped with whatever goods they had managed to grab from nearby stores, thespark of chaos in their eyes.
　　I had been out of the country when the hurricane first hit the Gulf, on my way backfrom a trip to Russia. One week after the initial tragedy, though, I traveled to Houston,joining Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as George H. W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, asthey announced fund-raising efforts on behalf of the hurricane’s victims and visitedwith some of the twenty-five thousand evacuees who were now sheltered in the HoustonAstrodome and adjoining Reliant Center.
　　The city of Houston had done an impressive job setting up emergency facilities toaccommodate so many people, working with the Red Cross and FEMA to provide themwith food, clothing, shelter, and medical care. But as we walked along the rows of cotsthat now lined the Reliant Center, shaking hands, playing with children, listening topeople’s stories, it was obvious that many of Katrina’s survivors had been abandonedlong before the hurricane struck. They were the faces of any inner-city neighborhood inany American city, the faces of black poverty—the jobless and almost jobless, the sickand soon to be sick, the frail and the elderly. A young mother talked about handing offher children to a bus full of strangers. Old men quietly described the houses they hadlost and the absence of any insurance or family to fall back on. A group of young meninsisted that the levees had been blown up by those who wished to rid New Orleans ofblack people. One tall, gaunt woman, looking haggard in an Astros T-shirt two sizes toobig, clutched my arm and pulled me toward her.
　　“We didn’t have nothin’ before the storm,” she whispered. “Now we got less thannothin’.”
　　In the days that followed, I returned to Washington and worked the phones, trying tosecure relief supplies and contributions. In Senate Democratic Caucus meetings, mycolleagues and I discussed possible legislation. I appeared on the Sunday morning newsshows, rejecting the notion that the Administration had acted slowly because Katrina’svictims were black—“the incompetence was color-blind,” I said—but insisting that theAdministration’s inadequate planning showed a degree of remove from, andindifference toward, the problems of inner-city poverty that had to be addressed. Lateone afternoon we joined Republican senators in what the Bush Administration deemed aclassified briefing on the federal response. Almost the entire Cabinet was there, alongwith the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and for an hour Secretaries Chertoff, Rumsfeld,and the rest bristled with confidence—and displayed not the slightest bit of remorse—asthey recited the number of evacuations made, military rations distributed, NationalGuard troops deployed. A few nights later, we watched President Bush in that eerie,floodlit square, acknowledging the legacy of racial injustice that the tragedy had helpedexpose and proclaiming that New Orleans would rise again.
　　And now, sitting at the funeral of Rosa Parks, nearly two months after the storm, afterthe outrage and shame that Americans across the country had felt during the crisis, afterthe speeches and emails and memos and caucus meetings, after television specials andessays and extended newspaper coverage, it felt as if nothing had happened. Carsremained on rooftops. Bodies were still being discovered. Stories drifted back from theGulf that the big contractors were landing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth ofcontracts, circumventing prevailing wage and affirmative action laws, hiring illegalimmigrants to keep their costs down. The sense that the nation had reached atransformative moment—that it had had its conscience stirred out of a long slumber andwould launch a renewed war on poverty—had quickly died away.
　　Instead, we sat in church, eulogizing Rosa Parks, reminiscing about past victories,entombed in nostalgia. Already, legislation was moving to place a statue of Mrs. Parksunder the Capitol dome. There would be a commemorative stamp bearing her likeness,and countless streets, schools, and libraries across America would no doubt bear hername. I wondered what Rosa Parks would make of all of this—whether stamps orstatues could summon her spirit, or whether honoring her memory demanded somethingmore.
　　I thought about what that woman in Houston had whispered to me, and wondered howwe might be judged, in those days after the levee broke.
　　WHEN I MEET people for the first time, they sometimes quote back to me a line in myspeech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that seemed to strike a chord:
　　“There is not a black America and white America and Latino America and AsianAmerica—there’s the United States of America.” For them, it seems to capture a visionof America finally freed from the past of Jim Crow and slavery, Japanese internmentcamps and Mexican braceros, workplace tensions and cultural conflict—an Americathat fulfills Dr. King’s promise that we be judged not by the color of our skin but by thecontent of our character.
　　In a sense I have no choice but to believe in this vision of America. As the child of ablack man and a white woman, someone who was born in the racial melting pot ofHawaii, with a sister who’s half Indonesian but who’s usually mistaken for Mexican orPuerto Rican, and a brother-in-law and niece of Chinese descent, with some bloodrelatives who resemble Margaret Thatcher and others who could pass for Bernie Mac,so that family get-togethers over Christmas take on the appearance of a UN GeneralAssembly meeting, I’ve never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis ofrace, or measuring my worth on the basis of tribe.
　　Moreover, I believe that part of America’s genius has always been its ability to absorbnewcomers, to forge a national identity out of the disparate lot that arrived on ourshores. In this we’ve been aided by a Constitution that—despite being marred by theoriginal sin of slavery—has at its very core the idea of equal citizenship under the law;and an economic system that, more than any other, has offered opportunity to allcomers, regardless of status or title or rank. Of course, racism and nativist sentimentshave repeatedly undermined these ideals; the powerful and the privileged have oftenexploited or stirred prejudice to further their own ends. But in the hands of reformers,from Tubman to Douglass to Chavez to King, these ideals of equality have graduallyshaped how we understand ourselves and allowed us to form a multicultural nation thelikes of which exists nowhere else on earth.
　　Finally, those lines in my speech describe the demographic realities of America’s future.
　　Already, Texas, California, New Mexico, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia aremajority minority. Twelve other states have populations that are more than a thirdLatino, black, and/or Asian. Latino Americans now number forty-two million and arethe fastest-growing demographic group, accounting for almost half of the nation’spopulation growth between 2004 and 2005; the Asian American population, though farsmaller, has experienced a similar surge and is expected to increase by more than 200percent over the next forty-five years. Shortly after 2050, experts project, America willno longer be a majority white country—with consequences for our economics, ourpolitics, and our culture that we cannot fully anticipate.
　　Still, when I hear commentators interpreting my speech to mean that we have arrived ata “postracial politics” or that we already live in a color-blind society, I have to offer aword of caution. To say that we are one people is not to suggest that race no longermatters—that the fight for equality has been won, or that the problems that minoritiesface in this country today are largely self-inflicted. We know the statistics: On almostevery single socioeconomic indicator, from infant mortality to life expectancy toemployment to home ownership, black and Latino Americans in particular continue tolag far behind their white counterparts. In corporate boardrooms across America,minorities are grossly underrepresented; in the United States Senate, there are only threeLatinos and two Asian members (both from Hawaii), and as I write today I am thechamber’s sole African American. To suggest that our racial attitudes play no part inthese disparities is to turn a blind eye to both our history and our experience—and torelieve ourselves of the responsibility to make things right.
　　Moreover, while my own upbringing hardly typifies the African American experience—and although, largely through luck and circumstance, I now occupy a position thatinsulates me from most of the bumps and bruises that the average black man mustendure—I can recite the usual litany of petty slights that during my forty-five years havebeen directed my way: security guards tailing me as I shop in department stores, whitecouples who toss me their car keys as I stand outside a restaurant waiting for the valet,police cars pulling me over for no apparent reason. I know what it’s like to have peopletell me I can’t do something because of my color, and I know the bitter swill ofswallowed-back anger. I know as well that Michelle and I must be continually vigilantagainst some of the debilitating story lines that our daughters may absorb—from TVand music and friends and the streets—about who the world thinks they are, and whatthe world imagines they should be.
　　To think clearly about race, then, requires us to see the world on a split screen—tomaintain in our sights the kind of America that we want while looking squarely atAmerica as it is, to acknowledge the sins of our past and the challenges of the presentwithout becoming trapped in cynicism or despair. I have witnessed a profound shift inrace relations in my lifetime. I have felt it as surely as one feels a change in thetemperature. When I hear some in the black community deny those changes, I think itnot only dishonors those who struggled on our behalf but also robs us of our agency tocomplete the work they began. But as much as I insist that things have gotten better, Iam mindful of this truth as well: Better isn’t good enough.
　　MY CAMPAIGN for the U.S. Senate indicates some of the changes that have takenplace in both the white and black communities of Illinois over the past twenty-fiveyears. By the time I ran, Illinois already had a history of blacks elected to statewideoffice, including a black state comptroller and attorney general (Roland Burris), aUnited States senator (Carol Moseley Braun), and a sitting secretary of state, JesseWhite, who had been the state’s leading vote-getter only two years earlier. Because ofthe pioneering success of these public officials, my own campaign was no longer anovelty—I might not have been favored to win, but the fact of my race didn’t foreclosethe possibility.
　　Moreover, the types of voters who ultimately gravitated to my campaign defied theconventional wisdom. On the day I announced my candidacy for the U.S. Senate, forexample, three of my white state senate colleagues showed up to endorse me. Theyweren’t what we in Chicago call “Lakefront Liberals”—the so-called Volvo-driving,latte-sipping, white-wine-drinking Democrats that Republicans love to poke fun at andmight be expected to embrace a lost cause such as mine. Instead, they were threemiddle-aged, working-class guys—Terry Link of Lake County, Denny Jacobs of theQuad Cities, and Larry Walsh of Will County—all of whom represented mostly white,mostly working-class or suburban communities outside Chicago.
　　It helped that these men knew me well; the four of us had served together in Springfieldduring the previous seven years and had maintained a weekly poker game whenever wewere in session. It also helped that each of them prided himself on his independence,and was therefore willing to stick with me despite pressure from more favored whitecandidates.
　　But it wasn’t just our personal relationships that led them to support me (although thestrength of my friendships with these men—all of whom grew up in neighborhoods andat a time in which hostility toward blacks was hardly unusual—itself said somethingabout the evolution of race relations). Senators Link, Jacobs, and Walsh are hard-nosed,experienced politicians; they had no interest in backing losers or putting their ownpositions at risk. The fact was, they all thought that I’d “sell” in their districts—oncetheir constituents met me and could get past the name.
　　They didn’t make such a judgment blind. For seven years they had watched me interactwith their constituents, in the state capitol or on visits to their districts. They had seenwhite mothers hand me their children for pictures and watched white World War II vetsshake my hand after I addressed their convention. They sensed what I’d come to knowfrom a lifetime of experience: that whatever preconceived notions white Americans maycontinue to hold, the overwhelming majority of them these days are able—if given thetime—to look beyond race in making their judgments of people.
　　This isn’t to say that prejudice has vanished. None of us—black, white, Latino, orAsian—is immune to the stereotypes that our culture continues to feed us, especiallystereotypes about black criminality, black intelligence, or the black work ethic. Ingeneral, members of every minority group continue to be measured largely by thedegree of our assimilation—how closely speech patterns, dress, or demeanor conform tothe dominant white culture—and the more that a minority strays from these externalmarkers, the more he or she is subject to negative assumptions. If an internalization ofantidiscrimination norms over the past three decades—not to mention basic decency—prevents most whites from consciously acting on such stereotypes in their dailyinteractions with persons of other races, it’s unrealistic to believe that these stereotypesdon’t have some cumulative impact on the often snap decisions of who’s hired andwho’s promoted, on who’s arrested and who’s prosecuted, on how you feel about thecustomer who just walked into your store or about the demographics of your children’sschool.
　　I maintain, however, that in today’s America such prejudices are far more loosely heldthan they once were—and hence are subject to refutation. A black teenage boy walkingdown the street may elicit fear in a white couple, but if he turns out to be their son’sfriend from school he may be invited over for dinner. A black man may have troublecatching a cab late at night, but if he is a capable software engineer Microsoft will haveno qualms about hiring him.
　　I cannot prove these assertions; surveys of racial attitudes are notoriously unreliable.
　　And even if I’m right, it’s cold comfort to many minorities. After all, spending one’sdays refuting stereotypes can be a wearying business. It’s the added weight that manyminorities, especially African Americans, so often describe in their daily round—thefeeling that as a group we have no store of goodwill in America’s accounts, that asindividuals we must prove ourselves anew each day, that we will rarely get the benefitof the doubt and will have little margin for error. Making a way through such a worldrequires the black child to fight off the additional hesitation that she may feel when shestands at the threshold of a mostly white classroom on the first day of school; it requiresthe Latina woman to fight off self-doubt as she prepares for a job interview at a mostlywhite company.
　　Most of all, it requires fighting off the temptation to stop making the effort. Fewminorities can isolate themselves entirely from white society—certainly not in the waythat whites can successfully avoid contact with members of other races. But it ispossible for minorities to pull down the shutters psychologically, to protect themselvesby assuming the worst. “Why should I have to make the effort to disabuse whites oftheir ignorance about us?” I’ve had some blacks tell me. “We’ve been trying for threehundred years, and it hasn’t worked yet.”
　　To which I suggest that the alternative is surrender—to what has been instead of whatmight be.
　　One of the things I value most in representing Illinois is the way it has disrupted myown assumptions about racial attitudes. During my Senate campaign, for example, Itraveled with Illinois’s senior senator, Dick Durbin, on a thirty-nine-city tour ofsouthern Illinois. One of our scheduled stops was a town called Cairo, at the verysouthern tip of the state, where the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers meet, a town madefamous during the late sixties and early seventies as the site of some of the worst racialconflict anywhere outside of the Deep South. Dick had first visited Cairo during thisperiod, when as a young attorney working for then Lieutenant Governor Paul Simon, hehad been sent to investigate what might be done to lessen the tensions there. As wedrove down to Cairo, Dick recalled that visit: how, upon his arrival, he’d been warnednot to use the telephone in his motel room because the switchboard operator was amember of the White Citizens Council; how white store owners had closed theirbusinesses rather than succumb to boycotters’ demands to hire blacks; how blackresidents told him of their efforts to integrate the schools, their fear and frustration, thestories of lynching and jailhouse suicides, shootings and riots.
　　By the time we pulled into Cairo, I didn’t know what to expect. Although it wasmidday, the town felt abandoned, a handful of stores open along the main road, a fewelderly couples coming out of what appeared to be a health clinic. Turning a corner, wearrived at a large parking lot, where a crowd of a couple of hundred were milling about.
　　A quarter of them were black, almost all the rest white.
　　They were all wearing blue buttons that read OBAMA FOR U.S. SENATE.
　　Ed Smith, a big, hearty guy who was the Midwest regional manager of the Laborers’
　　International Union and who’d grown up in Cairo, strode up to our van with a big grinon his face.
　　“Welcome,” he said, shaking our hands as we got off the bus. “Hope you’re hungry,’cause we got a barbecue going and my mom’s cooking.”
　　I don’t presume to know exactly what was in the minds of the white people in the crowdthat day. Most were my age and older and so would at least have remembered, if notbeen a direct part of, those grimmer days thirty years before. No doubt many of themwere there because Ed Smith, one of the most powerful men in the region, wanted themto be there; others may have been there for the food, or just to see the spectacle of a U.S.
　　senator and a candidate for the Senate campaign in their town.
　　I do know that the barbecue was terrific, the conversation spirited, the people seeminglyglad to see us. For an hour or so we ate, took pictures, and listened to people’s concerns.
　　We discussed what might be done to restart the area’s economy and get more moneyinto the schools; we heard about sons and daughters on their way to Iraq and the need totear down an old hospital that had become a blight on downtown. And by the time weleft, I felt a relationship had been established between me and the people I’d met—nothing transformative, but perhaps enough to weaken some of our biases and reinforcesome of our better impulses. In other words, a quotient of trust had been built.
　　Of course, such trust between the races is often tentative. It can wither without asustaining effort. It may last only so long as minorities remain quiescent, silent toinjustice; it can be blown asunder by a few well-timed negative ads featuring whiteworkers displaced by affirmative action, or the news of a police shooting of an unarmedblack or Latino youth.
　　But I also believe that moments like the one in Cairo ripple from their immediate point:
　　that people of all races carry these moments into their homes and places of worship; thatsuch moments shade a conversation with their children or their coworkers and can weardown, in slow, steady waves, the hatred and suspicion that isolation breeds.
　　Recently, I was back in southern Illinois, driving with one of my downstate fielddirectors, a young white man named Robert Stephan, after a long day of speeches andappearances in the area. It was a beautiful spring night, the broad waters and duskybanks of the Mississippi shimmering under a full, low-flung moon. The watersreminded me of Cairo and all the other towns up and down the river, the settlements thathad risen and fallen with the barge traffic and the often sad, tough, cruel histories thathad been deposited there at the confluence of the free and enslaved, the world of Huckand the world of Jim.
　　I mentioned to Robert the progress we’d made on tearing down the old hospital inCairo—our office had started meeting with the state health department and localofficials—and told him about my first visit to the town. Because Robert had grown upin the southern part of the state, we soon found ourselves talking about the racialattitudes of his friends and neighbors. Just the previous week, he said, a few local guyswith some influence had invited him to join them at a small social club in Alton, acouple of blocks from the house where he’d been raised. Robert had never been to theplace, but it seemed nice enough. The food had been served, the group was makingsome small talk, when Robert noticed that of the fifty or so people in the room not asingle person was black. Since Alton’s population is about a quarter African American,Robert thought this odd, and asked the men about it.
　　It’s a private club, one of them said.
　　At first, Robert didn’t understand—had no blacks tried to join? When they said nothing,he said, It’s 2006, for God’s sake.
　　The men shrugged. It’s always been that way, they told him. No blacks allowed.
　　Which is when Robert dropped his napkin on his plate, said good night, and left.
　　I suppose I could spend time brooding over those men in the club, file it as evidencethat white people still maintain a simmering hostility toward those who look like me.
　　But I don’t want to confer on such bigotry a power it no longer possesses.
　　I choose to think about Robert instead, and the small but difficult gesture he made. If ayoung man like Robert can make the effort to cross the currents of habit and fear inorder to do what he knows is right, then I want to be sure that I’m there to meet him onthe other side and help him onto shore.
　　MY ELECTION WASN’T just aided by the evolving racial attitudes of Illinois’s whitevoters. It reflected changes in Illinois’s African American community as well.
　　One measure of these changes could be seen in the types of early support my campaignreceived. Of the first $500,000 that I raised during the primary, close to half came fromblack businesses and professionals. It was a black-owned radio station, WVON, thatfirst began to mention my campaign on the Chicago airwaves, and a black-ownedweekly newsmagazine, N’Digo, that first featured me on its cover. One of the first timesI needed a corporate jet for the campaign, it was a black friend who lent me his.
　　Such capacity simply did not exist a generation ago. Although Chicago has always hadone of the more vibrant black business communities in the country, in the sixties andseventies only a handful of self-made men—John Johnson, the founder of Ebony andJet; George Johnson, the founder of Johnson Products; Ed Gardner, the founder of SoftSheen; and Al Johnson, the first black in the country to own a GM franchise—wouldhave been considered wealthy by the standards of white America.
　　Today not only is the city filled with black doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants, andother professionals, but blacks also occupy some of the highest management positionsin corporate Chicago. Blacks own restaurant chains, investment banks, PR agencies,real estate investment trusts, and architectural firms. They can afford to live inneighborhoods of their choosing and send their children to the best private schools.
　　They are actively recruited to join civic boards and generously support all manner ofcharities.
　　Statistically, the number of African Americans who occupy the top fifth of the incomeladder remains relatively small. Moreover, every black professional and businesspersonin Chicago can tell you stories of the roadblocks they still experience on account ofrace. Few African American entrepreneurs have either the inherited wealth or the angelinvestors to help launch their businesses or cushion them from a sudden economicdownturn. Few doubt that if they were white they would be further along in reachingtheir goals.
　　And yet you won’t hear these men and women use race as a crutch or point todiscrimination as an excuse for failure. In fact, what characterizes this new generationof black professionals is their rejection of any limits to what they can achieve. When afriend who had been the number one bond salesman at Merrill Lynch’s Chicago officedecided to start his own investment bank, his goal wasn’t to grow it into the top blackfirm—he wanted it to become the top firm, period. When another friend decided toleave an executive position at General Motors to start his own parking service companyin partnership with Hyatt, his mother thought he was crazy. “She couldn’t imagineanything better than having a management job at GM,” he told me, “because those jobswere unattainable for her generation. But I knew I wanted to build something of myown.”
　　That simple notion—that one isn’t confined in one’s dreams—is so central to ourunderstanding of America that it seems almost commonplace. But in black America, theidea represents a radical break from the past, a severing of the psychological shackles ofslavery and Jim Crow. It is perhaps the most important legacy of the civil rightsmovement, a gift from those leaders like John Lewis and Rosa Parks who marched,rallied, and endured threats, arrests, and beatings to widen the doors of freedom. And itis also a testament to that generation of African American mothers and fathers whoseheroism was less dramatic but no less important: parents who worked all their lives injobs that were too small for them, without complaint, scrimping and saving to buy asmall home; parents who did without so that their children could take dance classes orthe school-sponsored field trip; parents who coached Little League games and bakedbirthday cakes and badgered teachers to make sure that their children weren’t trackedinto the less challenging programs; parents who dragged their children to church everySunday, whupped their children’s behinds when they got out of line, and looked out forall the children on the block during long summer days and into the night. Parents whopushed their children to achieve and fortified them with a love that could withstandwhatever the larger society might throw at them.
　　It is through this quintessentially American path of upward mobility that the blackmiddle class has grown fourfold in a generation, and that the black poverty rate was cutin half. Through a similar process of hard work and commitment to family, Latinoshave seen comparable gains: From 1979 to 1999, the number of Latino familiesconsidered middle class has grown by more than 70 percent. In their hopes andexpectations, these black and Latino workers are largely indistinguishable from theirwhite counterparts. They are the people who make our economy run and our democracyflourish—the teachers, mechanics, nurses, computer technicians, assembly-line workers,bus drivers, postal workers, store managers, plumbers, and repairmen who constituteAmerica’s vital heart.
　　And yet, for all the progress that’s been made in the past four decades, a stubborn gapremains between the living standards of black, Latino, and white workers. The averageblack wage is 75 percent of the average white wage; the average Latino wage is 71percent of the average white wage. Black median net worth is about $6,000, and Latinomedian net worth is about $8,000, compared to $88,000 for whites. When laid off fromtheir job or confronted with a family emergency, blacks and Latinos have less savings todraw on, and parents are less able to lend their children a helping hand. Even middle-class blacks and Latinos pay more for insurance, are less likely to own their own homes,and suffer poorer health than Americans as a whole. More minorities may be living theAmerican dream, but their hold on that dream remains tenuous.
　　How we close this persistent gap—and how much of a role government should play inachieving that goal—remains one of the central controversies of American politics. Butthere should be some strategies we can all agree on. We might start with completing theunfinished business of the civil rights movement—namely, enforcing nondiscriminationlaws in such basic areas as employment, housing, and education. Anyone who thinksthat such enforcement is no longer needed should pay a visit to one of the suburbanoffice parks in their area and count the number of blacks employed there, even in therelatively unskilled jobs, or stop by a local trade union hall and inquire as to the numberof blacks in the apprenticeship program, or read recent studies showing that real estatebrokers continue to steer prospective black homeowners away from predominantlywhite neighborhoods. Unless you live in a state without many black residents, I thinkyou’ll agree that something’s amiss.
　　Under recent Republican Administrations, such enforcement of civil rights laws hasbeen tepid at best, and under the current Administration, it’s been essentiallynonexistent—unless one counts the eagerness of the Justice Department’s Civil RightsDivision to label university scholarship or educational enrichment programs targeted atminority students as “reverse discrimination,” no matter how underrepresented minoritystudents may be in a particular institution or field, and no matter how incidental theprogram’s impact on white students.
　　This should be a source of concern across the political spectrum, even to those whooppose affirmative action. Affirmative action programs, when properly structured, canopen up opportunities otherwise closed to qualified minorities without diminishingopportunities for white students. Given the dearth of black and Latino Ph.D. candidatesin mathematics and the physical sciences, for example, a modest scholarship programfor minorities interested in getting advanced degrees in these fields (a recent target of aJustice Department inquiry) won’t keep white students out of such programs, but canbroaden the pool of talent that America will need for all of us to prosper in atechnology-based economy. Moreover, as a lawyer who’s worked on civil rights cases, Ican say that where there’s strong evidence of prolonged and systematic discriminationby large corporations, trade unions, or branches of municipal government, goals andtimetables for minority hiring may be the only meaningful remedy available.
　　Many Americans disagree with me on this as a matter of principle, arguing that ourinstitutions should never take race into account, even if it is to help victims of pastdiscrimination. Fair enough—I understand their arguments, and don’t expect the debateto be settled anytime soon. But that shouldn’t stop us from at least making sure thatwhen two equally qualified people—one minority and one white—apply for a job,house, or loan, and the white person is consistently preferred, then the government,through its prosecutors and through its courts, should step in to make things right.
　　We should also agree that the responsibility to close the gap can’t come fromgovernment alone; minorities, individually and collectively, have responsibilities aswell. Many of the social or cultural factors that negatively affect black people, forexample, simply mirror in exaggerated form problems that afflict America as a whole:
　　too much television (the average black household has the television on more than elevenhours per day), too much consumption of poisons (blacks smoke more and eat more fastfood), and a lack of emphasis on educational achievement.
　　Then there’s the collapse of the two-parent black household, a phenomenon that isoccurring at such an alarming rate when compared to the rest of American society thatwhat was once a difference in degree has become a difference in kind, a phenomenonthat reflects a casualness toward sex and child rearing among black men that rendersblack children more vulnerable—and for which there is simply no excuse.
　　Taken together, these factors impede progress. Moreover, although government actioncan help change behavior (encouraging supermarket chains with fresh produce to locatein black neighborhoods, to take just one small example, would go a long way towardchanging people’s eating habits), a transformation in attitudes has to begin in the home,and in neighborhoods, and in places of worship. Community-based institutions,particularly the historically black church, have to help families reinvigorate in youngpeople a reverence for educational achievement, encourage healthier lifestyles, andreenergize traditional social norms surrounding the joys and obligations of fatherhood.
　　Ultimately, though, the most important tool to close the gap between minority and whiteworkers may have little to do with race at all. These days, what ails working-class andmiddle-class blacks and Latinos is not fundamentally different from what ails theirwhite counterparts: downsizing, outsourcing, automation, wage stagnation, thedismantling of employer-based health-care and pension plans, and schools that fail toteach young people the skills they need to compete in a global economy. (Blacks inparticular have been vulnerable to these trends, since they are more reliant on blue-collar manufacturing jobs and are less likely to live in suburban communities wherenew jobs are being generated.) And what would help minority workers are the samethings that would help white workers: the opportunity to earn a living wage, theeducation and training that lead to such jobs, labor laws and tax laws that restore somebalance to the distribution of the nation’s wealth, and health-care, child care, andretirement systems that working people can count on.
　　This pattern—of a rising tide lifting minority boats—has certainly held true in the past.
　　The progress made by the previous generation of Latinos and African Americansoccurred primarily because the same ladders of opportunity that built the white middleclass were for the first time made available to minorities as well. They benefited, as allpeople did, from an economy that was growing and a government interested in investingin its people. Not only did tight labor markets, access to capital, and programs like PellGrants and Perkins Loans benefit blacks directly; growing incomes and a sense ofsecurity among whites made them less resistant to minority claims for equality.
　　The same formula holds true today. As recently as 1999, the black unemployment ratefell to record lows and black income rose to record highs not because of a surge inaffirmative action hiring or a sudden change in the black work ethic but because theeconomy was booming and government took a few modest measures—like theexpansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit—to spread the wealth around. If you wantto know the secret of Bill Clinton’s popularity among African Americans, you needlook no further than these statistics.
　　But these same statistics should also force those of us interested in racial equality toconduct an honest accounting of the costs and benefits of our current strategies. Even aswe continue to defend affirmative action as a useful, if limited, tool to expandopportunity to underrepresented minorities, we should consider spending a lot more ofour political capital convincing America to make the investments needed to ensure thatall children perform at grade level and graduate from high school—a goal that, if met,would do more than affirmative action to help those black and Latino children who needit the most. Similarly, we should support targeted programs to eliminate existing healthdisparities between minorities and whites (some evidence suggests that even whenincome and levels of insurance are factored out, minorities may still be receiving worsecare), but a plan for universal health-care coverage would do more to eliminate healthdisparities between whites and minorities than any race-specific programs we mightdesign.
　　An emphasis on universal, as opposed to race-specific, programs isn’t just good policy;it’s also good politics. I remember once sitting with one of my Democratic colleagues inthe Illinois state senate as we listened to another fellow senator—an African Americanwhom I’ll call John Doe who represented a largely inner-city district—launch into alengthy and passionate peroration on why the elimination of a certain program was acase of blatant racism. After a few minutes, the white senator (who had one of thechamber’s more liberal voting records) turned to me and said, “You know what theproblem is with John? Whenever I hear him, he makes me feel more white.”
　　In defense of my black colleague, I pointed out that it’s not always easy for a blackpolitician to gauge the right tone to take—too angry? not angry enough?—whendiscussing the enormous hardships facing his or her constituents. Still, my whitecolleague’s comment was instructive. Rightly or wrongly, white guilt has largelyexhausted itself in America; even the most fair-minded of whites, those who wouldgenuinely like to see racial inequality ended and poverty relieved, tend to push backagainst suggestions of racial victimization—or race-specific claims based on the historyof race discrimination in this country.
　　Some of this has to do with the success of conservatives in fanning the politics ofresentment—by wildly overstating, for example, the adverse effects of affirmativeaction on white workers. But mainly it’s a matter of simple self-interest. Most whiteAmericans figure that they haven’t engaged in discrimination themselves and haveplenty of their own problems to worry about. They also know that with a national debtapproaching $9 trillion and annual deficits of almost $300 billion, the country hasprecious few resources to help them with those problems.
　　As a result, proposals that solely benefit minorities and dissect Americans into “us” and“them” may generate a few short-term concessions when the costs to whites aren’t toohigh, but they can’t serve as the basis for the kinds of sustained, broad-based politicalcoalitions needed to transform America. On the other hand, universal appeals aroundstrategies that help all Americans (schools that teach, jobs that pay, health care foreveryone who needs it, a government that helps out after a flood), along with measuresthat ensure our laws apply equally to everyone and hence uphold broadly held Americanideals (like better enforcement of existing civil rights laws), can serve as the basis forsuch coalitions—even if such strategies disproportionately help minorities.
　　Such a shift in emphasis is not easy: Old habits die hard, and there is always a fear onthe part of many minorities that unless racial discrimination, past and present, stays onthe front burner, white America will be let off the hook and hard-fought gains may bereversed. I understand these fears—nowhere is it ordained that history moves in astraight line, and during difficult economic times it is possible that the imperatives ofracial equality get shunted aside.
　　Still, when I look at what past generations of minorities have had to overcome, I amoptimistic about the ability of this next generation to continue their advance into theeconomic mainstream. For most of our recent history, the rungs on the opportunityladder may have been more slippery for blacks; the admittance of Latinos intofirehouses and corporate suites may have been grudging. But despite all that, thecombination of economic growth, government investment in broad-based programs toencourage upward mobility, and a modest commitment to enforce the simple principleof nondiscrimination was sufficient to pull the large majority of blacks and Latinos intothe socioeconomic mainstream within a generation.
　　We need to remind ourselves of this achievement. What’s remarkable is not the numberof minorities who have failed to climb into the middle class but the number whosucceeded against the odds; not the anger and bitterness that parents of color havetransmitted to their children but the degree to which such emotions have ebbed. Thatknowledge gives us something to build on. It tells us that more progress can be made.
　　IF UNIVERSAL STRATEGIES that target the challenges facing all Americans can goa long way toward closing the gap between blacks, Latinos, and whites, there are twoaspects of race relations in America that require special attention—issues that fan theflames of racial conflict and undermine the progress that’s been made. With respect tothe African American community, the issue is the deteriorating condition of the inner-city poor. With respect to Latinos, it is the problem of undocumented workers and thepolitical firestorm surrounding immigration.
　　One of my favorite restaurants in Chicago is a place called MacArthur’s. It’s away fromthe Loop, on the west end of the West Side on Madison Street, a simple, brightly litspace with booths of blond wood that seat maybe a hundred people. On any day of theweek, about that many people can be found lining up—families, teenagers, groups ofmatronly women and elderly men—all waiting their turn, cafeteria-style, for platesfilled with fried chicken, catfish, hoppin’ John, collard greens, meatloaf, cornbread, andother soul-food standards. As these folks will tell you, it’s well worth the wait.
　　The restaurant’s owner, Mac Alexander, is a big, barrel-chested man in his early sixties,with thinning gray hair, a mustache, and a slight squint behind his glasses that gives hima pensive, professorial air. He’s an army vet, born in Lexington, Mississippi, who losthis left leg in Vietnam; after his convalescence, he and his wife moved to Chicago,where he took business courses while working in a warehouse. In 1972, he openedMac’s Records, and helped found the Westside Business Improvement Association,pledging to fix up what he calls his “little corner of the world.”
　　By any measure he has succeeded. His record store grew; he opened up the restaurantand hired local residents to work there; he started buying and rehabbing run-downbuildings and renting them out. It’s because of the efforts of men and women like Macthat the view along Madison Street is not as grim as the West Side’s reputation mightsuggest. There are clothing stores and pharmacies and what seems like a church onevery block. Off the main thoroughfare you will find the same small bungalows—withneatly trimmed lawns and carefully tended flower beds—that make up many ofChicago’s neighborhoods.
　　But travel a few blocks farther in any direction and you will also experience a differentside of Mac’s world: the throngs of young men on corners casting furtive glances upand down the street; the sound of sirens blending with the periodic thump of car stereosturned up full blast; the dark, boarded-up buildings and hastily scrawled gang signs; therubbish everywhere, swirling in winter winds. Recently, the Chicago Police Departmentinstalled permanent cameras and flashing lights atop the lampposts of Madison, bathingeach block in a perpetual blue glow. The folks who live along Madison didn’t complain;flashing blue lights are a familiar enough sight. They’re just one more reminder of whateverybody knows—that the community’s immune system has broken down almostentirely, weakened by drugs and gunfire and despair; that despite the best efforts offolks like Mac, a virus has taken hold, and a people is wasting away.
　　“Crime’s nothing new on the West Side,” Mac told me one afternoon as we walked tolook at one of his buildings. “I mean, back in the seventies, the police didn’t really takethe idea of looking after black neighborhoods seriously. As long as trouble didn’t spillout into the white neighborhoods, they didn’t care. First store I opened, on Lake andDamen, I must’ve had eight, nine break-ins in a row.
　　“The police are more responsive now,” Mac said. “The commander out here, he’s agood brother, does the best he can. But he’s just as overwhelmed as everybody else.
　　See, these kids out here, they just don’t care. Police don’t scare ’em, jail doesn’t scare’em—more than half of the young guys out here already got a record. If the police pickup ten guys standing on a corner, another ten’ll take their place in an hour.
　　“That’s the thing that’s changed…the attitude of these kids. You can’t blame them,really, because most of them have nothing at home. Their mothers can’t tell themnothing—a lot of these women are still children themselves. Father’s in jail. Nobodyaround to guide the kids, keep them in school, teach them respect. So these boys justraise themselves, basically, on the streets. That’s all they know. The gang, that’s theirfamily. They don’t see any jobs out here except the drug trade. Don’t get me wrong,we’ve still got a lot of good families around here…not a lot of money necessarily, butdoing their best to keep their kids out of trouble. But they’re just too outnumbered. Thelonger they stay, the more they feel their kids are at risk. So the minute they get achance, they move out. And that just leaves things worse.”
　　Mac shook his head. “I don’t know. I keep thinking we can turn things around. But I’llbe honest with you, Barack—it’s hard not to feel sometimes like the situation ishopeless. Hard—and getting harder.”
　　I hear a lot of such sentiments in the African American community these days, a frankacknowledgment that conditions in the heart of the inner city are spinning out ofcontrol. Sometimes the conversation will center on statistics—the infant mortality rate(on par with Malaysia among poor black Americans), or black male unemployment(estimated at more than a third in some Chicago neighborhoods), or the number of blackmen who can expect to go through the criminal justice system at some point in theirlives (one in three nationally).
　　But more often the conversation focuses on personal stories, offered as evidence of afundamental breakdown within a portion of our community and voiced with a mixtureof sadness and incredulity. A teacher will talk about what it’s like to have an eight-year-old shout obscenities and threaten her with bodily harm. A public defender will describea fifteen-year-old’s harrowing rap sheet or the nonchalance with which his clientspredict they will not live to see their thirtieth year. A pediatrician will describe theteenage parents who don’t think there’s anything wrong with feeding their toddlerspotato chips for breakfast, or who admit to having left their five- or six-year-old alone athome.
　　These are the stories of those who didn’t make it out of history’s confinement, of theneighborhoods within the black community that house the poorest of the poor, servingas repositories for all the scars of slavery and violence of Jim Crow, the internalizedrage and the forced ignorance, the shame of men who could not protect their women orsupport their families, the children who grew up being told they wouldn’t amount toanything and had no one there to undo the damage.
　　There was a time, of course, when such deep intergenerational poverty could still shocka nation—when the publication of Michael Harrington’s The Other America or BobbyKennedy’s visits to the Mississippi Delta could inspire outrage and a call to action. Notanymore. Today the images of the so-called underclass are ubiquitous, a permanentfixture in American popular culture—in film and TV, where they’re the foil of choicefor the forces of law and order; in rap music and videos, where the gangsta life isglorified and mimicked by white and black teenagers alike (although white teenagers, atleast, are aware that theirs is just a pose); and on the nightly news, where thedepredation to be found in the inner city always makes for good copy. Rather thanevoke our sympathy, our familiarity with the lives of the black poor has bred spasms offear and outright contempt. But mostly it’s bred indifference. Black men filling ourprisons, black children unable to read or caught in a gangland shooting, the blackhomeless sleeping on grates and in the parks of our nation’s capital—we take thesethings for granted, as part of the natural order, a tragic situation, perhaps, but not one forwhich we are culpable, and certainly not something subject to change.
　　This concept of a black underclass—separate, apart, alien in its behavior and in itsvalues—has also played a central role in modern American politics. It was partly onbehalf of fixing the black ghetto that Johnson’s War on Poverty was launched, and itwas on the basis of that war’s failures, both real and perceived, that conservatives turnedmuch of the country against the very concept of the welfare state. A cottage industrygrew within conservative think tanks, arguing not only that cultural pathologies—ratherthan racism or structural inequalities built into our economy—were responsible forblack poverty but also that government programs like welfare, coupled with liberaljudges who coddled criminals, actually made these pathologies worse. On television,images of innocent children with distended bellies were replaced with those of blacklooters and muggers; news reports focused less on the black maid struggling to makeends meet and more on the “welfare queen” who had babies just to collect a check.
　　What was needed, conservatives argued, was a stern dose of discipline—more police,more prisons, more personal responsibility, and an end to welfare. If such strategiescould not transform the black ghetto, at least they would contain it and keephardworking taxpayers from throwing good money after bad.
　　That conservatives won over white public opinion should come as no surprise. Theirarguments tapped into a distinction between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poorthat has a long and varied history in America, an argument that has often been raciallyor ethnically tinged and that has gained greater currency during those periods—like theseventies and eighties—when economic times are tough. The response of liberal policymakers and civil rights leaders didn’t help; in their urgency to avoid blaming the victimsof historical racism, they tended to downplay or ignore evidence that entrenchedbehavioral patterns among the black poor really were contributing to intergenerationalpoverty. (Most famously, Daniel Patrick Moynihan was accused of racism in the earlysixties when he raised alarms about the rise of out-of-wedlock births among the blackpoor.) This willingness to dismiss the role that values played in shaping the economicsuccess of a community strained credulity and alienated working-class whites—particularly since some of the most liberal policy makers lived lives far removed fromurban disorder.
　　The truth is that such rising frustration with conditions in the inner city was hardlyrestricted to whites. In most black neighborhoods, law-abiding, hardworking residentshave been demanding more aggressive police protection for years, since they are farmore likely to be victims of crime. In private—around kitchen tables, in barbershops,and after church—black folks can often be heard bemoaning the eroding work ethic,inadequate parenting, and declining sexual mores with a fervor that would make theHeritage Foundation proud.
　　In that sense, black attitudes regarding the sources of chronic poverty are far moreconservative than black politics would care to admit. What you won’t hear, though, areblacks using such terms as “predator” in describing a young gang member, or“underclass” in describing mothers on welfare—language that divides the worldbetween those who are worthy of our concern and those who are not. For blackAmericans, such separation from the poor is never an option, and not just because thecolor of our skin—and the conclusions the larger society draws from our color—makesall of us only as free, only as respected, as the least of us.
　　It’s also because blacks know the back story to the inner city’s dysfunction. Most blackswho grew up in Chicago remember the collective story of the great migration from theSouth, how after arriving in the North blacks were forced into ghettos because of racialsteering and restrictive covenants and stacked up in public housing, where the schoolswere substandard and the parks were underfunded and police protection was nonexistentand the drug trade was tolerated. They remember how the plum patronage jobs werereserved for other immigrant groups and the blue-collar jobs that black folks relied onevaporated, so that families that had been intact began to crack under the pressure andordinary children slipped through those cracks, until a tipping point was reached andwhat had once been the sad exception somehow became the rule. They know whatdrove that homeless man to drink because he is their uncle. That hardened criminal—they remember when he was a little boy, so full of life and capable of love, for he istheir cousin.
　　In other words, African Americans understand that culture matters but that culture isshaped by circumstance. We know that many in the inner city are trapped by their ownself-destructive behaviors but that those behaviors are not innate. And because of thatknowledge, the black community remains convinced that if America finds its will to doso, then circumstances for those trapped in the inner city can be changed, individualattitudes among the poor will change in kind, and the damage can gradually be undone,if not for this generation then at least for the next.
　　Such wisdom might help us move beyond ideological bickering and serve as the basisof a renewed effort to tackle the problems of inner-city poverty. We could begin byacknowledging that perhaps the single biggest thing we could do to reduce such povertyis to encourage teenage girls to finish high school and avoid having children out ofwedlock. In this effort, school- and community-based programs that have a proven trackrecord of reducing teen pregnancy need to be expanded, but parents, clergy, andcommunity leaders also need to speak out more consistently on the issue.
　　We should also acknowledge that conservatives—and Bill Clinton—were right aboutwelfare as it was previously structured: By detaching income from work, and by makingno demands on welfare recipients other than a tolerance for intrusive bureaucracy andan assurance that no man lived in the same house as the mother of his children, the oldAFDC program sapped people of their initiative and eroded their self-respect. Anystrategy to reduce intergenerational poverty has to be centered on work, not welfare—not only because work provides independence and income but also because workprovides order, structure, dignity, and opportunities for growth in people’s lives.
　　But we also need to admit that work alone does not ensure that people can rise out ofpoverty. Across America, welfare reform has sharply reduced the number of people onthe public dole; it has also swelled the ranks of the working poor, with women churningin and out of the labor market, locked into jobs that don’t pay a living wage, forcedevery day to scramble for adequate child care, affordable housing, and accessible healthcare, only to find themselves at the end of each month wondering how they can stretchthe last few dollars that they have left to cover the food bill, the gas bill, and the baby’snew coat.
　　Strategies like an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit that help all low-wage workerscan make an enormous difference in the lives of these women and their children. But ifwe’re serious about breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty, then many of thesewomen will need some extra help with the basics that those living outside the inner cityoften take for granted. They need more police and more effective policing in theirneighborhoods, to provide them and their children some semblance of personal security.
　　They need access to community-based health centers that emphasize prevention—including reproductive health care, nutritional counseling, and in some cases treatmentfor substance abuse. They need a radical transformation of the schools their childrenattend, and access to affordable child care that will allow them to hold a full-time job orpursue their education.
　　And in many cases they need help learning to be effective parents. By the time manyinner-city children reach the school system, they’re already behind—unable to identifybasic numbers, colors, or the letters in the alphabet, unaccustomed to sitting still orparticipating in a structured environment, and often burdened by undiagnosed healthproblems. They’re unprepared not because they’re unloved but because their mothersdon’t know how to provide what they need. Well-structured government programs—prenatal counseling, access to regular pediatric care, parenting programs, and qualityearly-childhood-education programs—have a proven ability to help fill the void.
　　Finally, we need to tackle the nexus of unemployment and crime in the inner city so thatthe men who live there can begin fulfilling their responsibilities. The conventionalwisdom is that most unemployed inner-city men could find jobs if they really wanted towork; that they inevitably prefer drug dealing, with its attendant risks but potentialprofits, to the low-paying jobs that their lack of skills warrants. In fact, economistswho’ve studied the issue—and the young men whose fates are at stake—will tell youthat the costs and benefits of the street life don’t match the popular mythology: At thebottom or even the middle ranks of the industry, drug dealing is a minimum-wageaffair. For many inner-city men, what prevents gainful employment is not simply theabsence of motivation to get off the streets but the absence of a job history or anymarketable skills—and, increasingly, the stigma of a prison record.
　　Ask Mac, who has made it part of his mission to provide young men in hisneighborhood a second chance. Ninety-five percent of his male employees are ex-felons, including one of his best cooks, who has been in and out of prison for the pasttwenty years for various drug offenses and one count of armed robbery. Mac starts themout at eight dollars an hour and tops them out at fifteen dollars an hour. He has noshortage of applicants. Mac’s the first one to admit that some of the guys come in withissues—they aren’t used to getting to work on time, and a lot of them aren’t used totaking orders from a su
Chapter 8 The World Beyond Our Borders
INDONESIA IS A nation of islands—more than seventeen thousand in all, spreadalong the equator between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, between Australia and theSouth China Sea. Most Indonesians are of Malay stock and live on the larger islands ofJava, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Bali. On the far eastern islands like Ambonand the Indonesian portion of New Guinea the people are, in varying degrees, ofMelanesian ancestry. Indonesia’s climate is tropical, and its rain forests were onceteeming with exotic species like the orangutan and the Sumatran tiger. Today, those rainforests are rapidly dwindling, victim to logging, mining, and the cultivation of rice, tea,coffee, and palm oil. Deprived of their natural habitat, orangutans are now anendangered species; no more than a few hundred Sumatran tigers remain in the wild.
　　With more than 240 million people, Indonesia’s population ranks fourth in the world,behind China, India, and the United States. More than seven hundred ethnic groupsreside within the country’s borders, and more than 742 languages are spoken there.
　　Almost 90 percent of Indonesia’s population practice Islam, making it the world’slargest Muslim nation. Indonesia is OPEC’s only Asian member, although as aconsequence of aging infrastructure, depleted reserves, and high domestic consumptionit is now a net importer of crude oil. The national language is Bahasa Indonesia. Thecapital is Jakarta. The currency is the rupiah.
　　Most Americans can’t locate Indonesia on a map.
　　This fact is puzzling to Indonesians, since for the past sixty years the fate of their nationhas been directly tied to U.S. foreign policy. Ruled by a succession of sultanates andoften-splintering kingdoms for most of its history, the archipelago became a Dutchcolony—the Dutch East Indies—in the 1600s, a status that would last for more thanthree centuries. But in the lead-up to World War II, the Dutch East Indies’ ample oilreserves became a prime target of Japanese expansion; having thrown its lot in with theAxis powers and facing a U.S.-imposed oil embargo, Japan needed fuel for its militaryand industry. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan moved swiftly to take over theDutch colony, an occupation that would last for the duration of the war.
　　With the Japanese surrender in 1945, a budding Indonesian nationalist movementdeclared the country’s independence. The Dutch had other ideas, and attempted toreclaim their former territory. Four bloody years of war ensued. Eventually the Dutchbowed to mounting international pressure (the U.S. government, already concerned withthe spread of communism under the banner of anticolonialism, threatened theNetherlands with a cutoff of Marshall Plan funds) and recognized Indonesia’ssovereignty. The principal leader of the independence movement, a charismatic,flamboyant figure named Sukarno, became Indonesia’s first president.
　　Sukarno proved to be a major disappointment to Washington. Along with Nehru ofIndia and Nasser of Egypt, he helped found the nonaligned movement, an effort bynations newly liberated from colonial rule to navigate an independent path between theWest and the Soviet bloc. Indonesia’s Communist Party, although never formally inpower, grew in size and influence. Sukarno himself ramped up the anti-Westernrhetoric, nationalizing key industries, rejecting U.S. aid, and strengthening ties with theSoviets and China. With U.S. forces knee-deep in Vietnam and the domino theory still acentral tenet of U.S. foreign policy, the CIA began providing covert support to variousinsurgencies inside Indonesia, and cultivated close links with Indonesia’s militaryofficers, many of whom had been trained in the United States. In 1965, under theleadership of General Suharto, the military moved against Sukarno, and underemergency powers began a massive purge of communists and their sympathizers.
　　According to estimates, between 500,000 and one million people were slaughteredduring the purge, with 750,000 others imprisoned or forced into exile.
　　It was two years after the purge began, in 1967, the same year that Suharto assumed thepresidency, that my mother and I arrived in Jakarta, a consequence of her remarriage toan Indonesian student whom she’d met at the University of Hawaii. I was six at thetime, my mother twenty-four. In later years my mother would insist that had she knownwhat had transpired in the preceding months, we never would have made the trip. Butshe didn’t know—the full story of the coup and the purge was slow to appear inAmerican newspapers. Indonesians didn’t talk about it either. My stepfather, who hadseen his student visa revoked while still in Hawaii and had been conscripted into theIndonesian army a few months before our arrival, refused to talk politics with mymother, advising her that some things were best forgotten.
　　And in fact, forgetting the past was easy to do in Indonesia. Jakarta was still a sleepybackwater in those days, with few buildings over four or five stories high, cyclerickshaws outnumbering cars, the city center and wealthier sections of town—with theircolonial elegance and lush, well-tended lawns—quickly giving way to clots of smallvillages with unpaved roads and open sewers, dusty markets, and shanties of mud andbrick and plywood and corrugated iron that tumbled down gentle banks to murky riverswhere families bathed and washed laundry like pilgrims in the Ganges.
　　Our family was not well off in those early years; the Indonesian army didn’t pay itslieutenants much. We lived in a modest house on the outskirts of town, without air-conditioning, refrigeration, or flush toilets. We had no car—my stepfather rode amotorcycle, while my mother took the local jitney service every morning to the U.S.
　　embassy, where she worked as an English teacher. Without the money to go to theinternational school that most expatriate children attended, I went to local Indonesianschools and ran the streets with the children of farmers, servants, tailors, and clerks.
　　As a boy of seven or eight, none of this concerned me much. I remember those years asa joyous time, full of adventure and mystery—days of chasing down chickens andrunning from water buffalo, nights of shadow puppets and ghost stories and streetvendors bringing delectable sweets to our door. As it was, I knew that relative to ourneighbors we were doing fine—unlike many, we always had enough to eat.
　　And perhaps more than that, I understood, even at a young age, that my family’s statuswas determined not only by our wealth but by our ties to the West. My mother mightscowl at the attitudes she heard from other Americans in Jakarta, their condescensiontoward Indonesians, their unwillingness to learn anything about the country that washosting them—but given the exchange rate, she was glad to be getting paid in dollarsrather than the rupiahs her Indonesian colleagues at the embassy were paid. We mightlive as Indonesians lived—but every so often my mother would take me to theAmerican Club, where I could jump in the pool and watch cartoons and sip Coca-Colato my heart’s content. Sometimes, when my Indonesian friends came to our house, Iwould show them books of photographs, of Disneyland or the Empire State Building,that my grandmother had sent me; sometimes we would thumb through the SearsRoebuck catalog and marvel at the treasures on display. All this, I knew, was part of myheritage and set me apart, for my mother and I were citizens of the United States,beneficiaries of its power, safe and secure under the blanket of its protection.
　　The scope of that power was hard to miss. The U.S. military conducted joint exerciseswith the Indonesian military and training programs for its officers. President Suhartoturned to a cadre of American economists to design Indonesia’s development plan,based on free-market principles and foreign investment. American developmentconsultants formed a steady line outside government ministries, helping to manage themassive influx of foreign assistance from the U.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment and the World Bank. And although corruption permeated every level ofgovernment—even the smallest interaction with a policeman or bureaucrat involved abribe, and just about every commodity or product coming in and out of the country,from oil to wheat to automobiles, went through companies controlled by the president,his family, or members of the ruling junta—enough of the oil wealth and foreign aidwas plowed back into schools, roads, and other infrastructure that Indonesia’s generalpopulation saw its living standards rise dramatically; between 1967 and 1997, per capitaincome would go from $50 to $4,600 a year. As far as the United States was concerned,Indonesia had become a model of stability, a reliable supplier of raw materials andimporter of Western goods, a stalwart ally and bulwark against communism.
　　I would stay in Indonesia long enough to see some of this newfound prosperityfirsthand. Released from the army, my stepfather began working for an American oilcompany. We moved to a bigger house and got a car and a driver, a refrigerator, and atelevision set. But in 1971 my mother—concerned for my education and perhapsanticipating her own growing distance from my stepfather—sent me to live with mygrandparents in Hawaii. A year later she and my sister would join me. My mother’s tiesto Indonesia would never diminish; for the next twenty years she would travel back andforth, working for international agencies for six or twelve months at a time as aspecialist in women’s development issues, designing programs to help village womenstart their own businesses or bring their produce to market. But while during my teenageyears I would return to Indonesia three or four times on short visits, my life andattention gradually turned elsewhere.
　　What I know of Indonesia’s subsequent history, then, I know mainly through books,newspapers, and the stories my mother told me. For twenty-five years, in fits and starts,Indonesia’s economy continued to grow. Jakarta became a metropolis of almost ninemillion souls, with skyscrapers, slums, smog, and nightmare traffic. Men and womenleft the countryside to join the ranks of wage labor in manufacturing plants built byforeign investment, making sneakers for Nike and shirts for the Gap. Bali became theresort of choice for surfers and rock stars, with five-star hotels, Internet connections,and a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. By the early nineties, Indonesia wasconsidered an “Asian tiger,” the next great success story of a globalizing world.
　　Even the darker aspects of Indonesian life—its politics and human rights record—showed signs of improvement. When it came to sheer brutality, the post-1967 Suhartoregime never reached the levels of Iraq under Saddam Hussein; with his subdued, placidstyle, the Indonesian president would never attract the attention that more demonstrativestrongmen like Pinochet or the Shah of Iran did. By any measure, though, Suharto’s rulewas harshly repressive. Arrests and torture of dissidents were common, a free pressnonexistent, elections a mere formality. When ethnically based secessionist movementssprang up in areas like Aceh, the army targeted not just guerrillas but civilians for swiftretribution—murder, rape, villages set afire. And throughout the seventies and eighties,all this was done with the knowledge, if not outright approval, of U.S. administrations.
　　But with the end of the Cold War, Washington’s attitudes began to change. The StateDepartment began pressuring Indonesia to curb its human rights abuses. In 1992, afterIndonesian military units massacred peaceful demonstrators in Dili, East Timor,Congress terminated military aid to the Indonesian government. By 1996, Indonesianreformists had begun taking to the streets, openly talking about corruption in highoffices, the military’s excesses, and the need for free and fair elections.
　　Then, in 1997, the bottom fell out. A run on currencies and securities throughout Asiaengulfed an Indonesian economy already corroded by decades of corruption. Therupiah’s value fell 85 percent in a matter of months. Indonesian companies that hadborrowed in dollars saw their balance sheets collapse. In exchange for a $43 billionbailout, the Western-dominated International Monetary Fund, or IMF, insisted on aseries of austerity measures (cutting government subsidies, raising interest rates) thatwould lead the price of such staples as rice and kerosene to nearly double. By the timethe crisis was over, Indonesia’s economy had contracted almost 14 percent. Riots anddemonstrations grew so severe that Suharto was finally forced to resign, and in 1998 thecountry’s first free elections were held, with some forty-eight parties vying for seats andsome ninety-three million people casting their votes.
　　On the surface, at least, Indonesia has survived the twin shocks of financial meltdownand democratization. The stock market is booming, and a second national election wentoff without major incident, leading to a peaceful transfer of power. If corruptionremains endemic and the military remains a potent force, there’s been an explosion ofindependent newspapers and political parties to channel discontent.
　　On the other hand, democracy hasn’t brought a return to prosperity. Per capita income isnearly 22 percent less than it was in 1997. The gap between rich and poor, alwayscavernous, appears to have worsened. The average Indonesian’s sense of deprivation isamplified by the Internet and satellite TV, which beam in images of the unattainableriches of London, New York, Hong Kong, and Paris in exquisite detail. And anti-American sentiment, almost nonexistent during the Suharto years, is now widespread,thanks in part to perceptions that New York speculators and the IMF purposelytriggered the Asian financial crisis. In a 2003 poll, most Indonesians had a higheropinion of Osama bin Laden than they did of George W. Bush.
　　All of which underscores perhaps the most profound shift in Indonesia—the growth ofmilitant, fundamentalist Islam in the country. Traditionally, Indonesians practiced atolerant, almost syncretic brand of the faith, infused with the Buddhist, Hindu, andanimist traditions of earlier periods. Under the watchful eye of an explicitly secularSuharto government, alcohol was permitted, non-Muslims practiced their faith free frompersecution, and women—sporting skirts or sarongs as they rode buses or scooters onthe way to work—possessed all the rights that men possessed. Today, Islamic partiesmake up one of the largest political blocs, with many calling for the imposition ofsharia, or Islamic law. Seeded by funds from the Middle East, Wahhabist clerics,schools, and mosques now dot the countryside. Many Indonesian women have adoptedthe head coverings so familiar in the Muslim countries of North Africa and the PersianGulf; Islamic militants and self-proclaimed “vice squads” have attacked churches,nightclubs, casinos, and brothels. In 2002, an explosion in a Bali nightclub killed morethan two hundred people; similar suicide bombings followed in Jakarta in 2004 and Baliin 2005. Members of Jemaah Islamiah, a militant Islamic organization with links to AlQaeda, were tried for the bombings; while three of those connected to the bombingsreceived death sentences, the spiritual leader of the group, Abu Bakar Bashir, wasreleased after a twenty-six-month prison term.
　　It was on a beach just a few miles from the site of those bombings that I stayed the lasttime I visited Bali. When I think of that island, and all of Indonesia, I’m haunted bymemories—the feel of packed mud under bare feet as I wander through paddy fields;the sight of day breaking behind volcanic peaks; the muezzin’s call at night and thesmell of wood smoke; the dickering at the fruit stands alongside the road; the frenziedsound of a gamelan orchestra, the musicians’ faces lit by fire. I would like to takeMichelle and the girls to share that piece of my life, to climb the thousand-year-oldHindu ruins of Prambanan or swim in a river high in Balinese hills.
　　But my plans for such a trip keep getting delayed. I’m chronically busy, and travelingwith young children is always difficult. And, too, perhaps I am worried about what Iwill find there—that the land of my childhood will no longer match my memories. Asmuch as the world has shrunk, with its direct flights and cell phone coverage and CNNand Internet cafés, Indonesia feels more distant now than it did thirty years ago.
　　I fear it’s becoming a land of strangers.
　　IN THE FIELD of international affairs, it’s dangerous to extrapolate from theexperiences of a single country. In its history, geography, culture, and conflicts, eachnation is unique. And yet in many ways Indonesia serves as a useful metaphor for theworld beyond our borders—a world in which globalization and sectarianism, povertyand plenty, modernity and antiquity constantly collide.
　　Indonesia also provides a handy record of U.S. foreign policy over the past fifty years.
　　In broad outline at least, it’s all there: our role in liberating former colonies and creatinginternational institutions to help manage the post-World War II order; our tendency toview nations and conflicts through the prism of the Cold War; our tireless promotion ofAmerican-style capitalism and multinational corporations; the tolerance and occasionalencouragement of tyranny, corruption, and environmental degradation when it servedour interests; our optimism once the Cold War ended that Big Macs and the Internetwould lead to the end of historical conflicts; the growing economic power of Asia andthe growing resentment of the United States as the world’s sole superpower; therealization that in the short term, at least, democratization might lay bare, rather thanalleviate, ethnic hatreds and religious divisions—and that the wonders of globalizationmight also facilitate economic volatility, the spread of pandemics, and terrorism.
　　In other words, our record is mixed—not just in Indonesia but across the globe. Attimes, American foreign policy has been farsighted, simultaneously serving our nationalinterests, our ideals, and the interests of other nations. At other times American policieshave been misguided, based on false assumptions that ignore the legitimate aspirationsof other peoples, undermine our own credibility, and make for a more dangerous world.
　　Such ambiguity shouldn’t be surprising, for American foreign policy has always been ajumble of warring impulses. In the earliest days of the Republic, a policy of isolationismoften prevailed—a wariness of foreign intrigues that befitted a nation just emergingfrom a war of independence. “Why,” George Washington asked in his famous FarewellAddress, “by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle ourpeace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor orcaprice?” Washington’s view was reinforced by what he called America’s “detachedand distant situation,” a geographic separation that would permit the new nation to“defy material injury from external annoyance.”
　　Moreover, while America’s revolutionary origins and republican form of governmentmight make it sympathetic toward those seeking freedom elsewhere, America’s earlyleaders cautioned against idealistic attempts to export our way of life; according to JohnQuincy Adams, America should not go “abroad in search of monsters to destroy” nor“become the dictatress of the world.” Providence had charged America with the task ofmaking a new world, not reforming the old; protected by an ocean and with the bountyof a continent, America could best serve the cause of freedom by concentrating on itsown development, becoming a beacon of hope for other nations and people around theglobe.
　　But if suspicion of foreign entanglements is stamped into our DNA, then so is theimpulse to expand—geographically, commercially, and ideologically. Thomas Jeffersonexpressed early on the inevitability of expansion beyond the boundaries of the originalthirteen states, and his timetable for such expansion was greatly accelerated with theLouisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition. The same John Quincy Adamswho warned against U.S. adventurism abroad became a tireless advocate of continentalexpansion and served as the chief architect of the Monroe Doctrine—a warning toEuropean powers to keep out of the Western Hemisphere. As American soldiers andsettlers moved steadily west and southwest, successive administrations described theannexation of territory in terms of “manifest destiny”—the conviction that suchexpansion was preordained, part of God’s plan to extend what Andrew Jackson called“the area of freedom” across the continent.
　　Of course, manifest destiny also meant bloody and violent conquest—of NativeAmerican tribes forcibly removed from their lands and of the Mexican army defendingits territory. It was a conquest that, like slavery, contradicted America’s foundingprinciples and tended to be justified in explicitly racist terms, a conquest that Americanmythology has always had difficulty fully absorbing but that other countries recognizedfor what it was—an exercise in raw power.
　　With the end of the Civil War and the consolidation of what’s now the continentalUnited States, that power could not be denied. Intent on expanding markets for itsgoods, securing raw materials for its industry, and keeping sea lanes open for itscommerce, the nation turned its attention overseas. Hawaii was annexed, givingAmerica a foothold in the Pacific. The Spanish-American War delivered Puerto Rico,Guam, and the Philippines into U.S. control; when some members of the Senateobjected to the military occupation of an archipelago seven thousand miles away—anoccupation that would involve thousands of U.S. troops crushing a Philippineindependence movement—one senator argued that the acquisition would provide theUnited States with access to the China market and mean “a vast trade and wealth andpower.” America would never pursue the systematic colonization practiced by Europeannations, but it shed all inhibitions about meddling in the affairs of countries it deemedstrategically important. Theodore Roosevelt, for example, added a corollary to theMonroe Doctrine, declaring that the United States would intervene in any LatinAmerican or Caribbean country whose government it deemed not to America’s liking.
　　“The United States of America has not the option as to whether it will or it will not playa great part in the world,” Roosevelt would argue. “It must play a great part. All that itcan decide is whether it will play that part well or badly.”
　　By the start of the twentieth century, then, the motives that drove U.S. foreign policyseemed barely distinguishable from those of the other great powers, driven byrealpolitik and commercial interests. Isolationist sentiment in the population at largeremained strong, particularly when it came to conflicts in Europe, and when vital U.S.
　　interests did not seem directly at stake. But technology and trade were shrinking theglobe; determining which interests were vital and which ones were not becameincreasingly difficult. During World War I, Woodrow Wilson avoided Americaninvolvement until the repeated sinking of American vessels by German U-boats and theimminent collapse of the European continent made neutrality untenable. When the warwas over, America had emerged as the world’s dominant power—but a power whoseprosperity Wilson now understood to be linked to peace and prosperity in farawaylands.
　　It was in an effort to address this new reality that Wilson sought to reinterpret the ideaof America’s manifest destiny. Making “the world safe for democracy” didn’t justinvolve winning a war, he argued; it was in America’s interest to encourage the self-determination of all peoples and provide the world a legal framework that could helpavoid future conflicts. As part of the Treaty of Versailles, which detailed the terms ofGerman surrender, Wilson proposed a League of Nations to mediate conflicts betweennations, along with an international court and a set of international laws that would bindnot just the weak but also the strong. “This is the time of all others when Democracyshould prove its purity and its spiritual power to prevail,” Wilson said. “It is surely themanifest destiny of the United States to lead in the attempt to make this spirit prevail.”
　　Wilson’s proposals were initially greeted with enthusiasm in the United States andaround the world. The U.S. Senate, however, was less impressed. Republican SenateLeader Henry Cabot Lodge considered the League of Nations—and the very concept ofinternational law—as an encroachment on American sovereignty, a foolish constraint onAmerica’s ability to impose its will around the world. Aided by traditional isolationistsin both parties (many of whom had opposed American entry into World War I), as wellas Wilson’s stubborn unwillingness to compromise, the Senate refused to ratify U.S.
　　membership in the League.
　　For the next twenty years, America turned resolutely inward—reducing its army andnavy, refusing to join the World Court, standing idly by as Italy, Japan, and NaziGermany built up their military machines. The Senate became a hotbed of isolationism,passing a Neutrality Act that prevented the United States from lending assistance tocountries invaded by the Axis powers, and repeatedly ignoring the President’s appealsas Hitler’s armies marched across Europe. Not until the bombing of Pearl Harbor wouldAmerica realize its terrible mistake. “There is no such thing as security for any nation—or any individual—in a world ruled by the principles of gangsterism,” FDR would sayin his national address after the attack. “We cannot measure our safety in terms of mileson any map any more.”
　　In the aftermath of World War II, the United States would have a chance to apply theselessons to its foreign policy. With Europe and Japan in ruins, the Soviet Union bledwhite by its battles on the Eastern Front but already signaling its intentions to spread itsbrand of totalitarian communism as far as it could, America faced a choice. There werethose on the right who argued that only a unilateral foreign policy and an immediateinvasion of the Soviet Union could disable the emerging communist threat. Andalthough isolationism of the sort that prevailed in the thirties was now thoroughlydiscredited, there were those on the left who downplayed Soviet aggression, arguingthat given Soviet losses and the country’s critical role in the Allied victory, Stalinshould be accommodated.
　　America took neither path. Instead, the postwar leadership of President Truman, DeanAcheson, George Marshall, and George Kennan crafted the architecture of a new,postwar order that married Wilson’s idealism to hardheaded realism, an acceptance ofAmerica’s power with a humility regarding America’s ability to control events aroundthe world. Yes, these men argued, the world is a dangerous place, and the Soviet threatis real; America needed to maintain its military dominance and be prepared to use forcein defense of its interests across the globe. But even the power of the United States wasfinite—and because the battle against communism was also a battle of ideas, a test ofwhat system might best serve the hopes and dreams of billions of people around theworld, military might alone could not ensure America’s long-term prosperity orsecurity.
　　What America needed, then, were stable allies—allies that shared the ideals of freedom,democracy, and the rule of law, and that saw themselves as having a stake in a market-based economic system. Such alliances, both military and economic, entered into freelyand maintained by mutual consent, would be more lasting—and stir less resentment—than any collection of vassal states American imperialism might secure. Likewise, itwas in America’s interest to work with other countries to build up internationalinstitutions and promote international norms. Not because of a naive assumption thatinternational laws and treaties alone would end conflicts among nations or eliminate theneed for American military action, but because the more international norms werereinforced and the more America signaled a willingness to show restraint in the exerciseof its power, the fewer the number of conflicts that would arise—and the morelegitimate our actions would appear in the eyes of the world when we did have to movemilitarily.
　　In less than a decade, the infrastructure of a new world order was in place. There was aU.S. policy of containment with respect to communist expansion, backed not just byU.S. troops but also by security agreements with NATO and Japan; the Marshall Plan torebuild war-shattered economies; the Bretton Woods agreement to provide stability tothe world’s financial markets and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade toestablish rules governing world commerce; U.S. support for the independence of formerEuropean colonies; the IMF and World Bank to help integrate these newly independentnations into the world economy; and the United Nations to provide a forum forcollective security and international cooperation.
　　Sixty years later, we can see the results of this massive postwar undertaking: asuccessful outcome to the Cold War, an avoidance of nuclear catastrophe, the effectiveend of conflict between the world’s great military powers, and an era of unprecedentedeconomic growth at home and abroad.
　　It’s a remarkable achievement, perhaps the Greatest Generation’s greatest gift to us afterthe victory over fascism. But like any system built by man, it had its flaws andcontradictions; it could fall victim to the distortions of politics, the sins of hubris, thecorrupting effects of fear. Because of the enormity of the Soviet threat, and the shock ofcommunist takeovers in China and North Korea, American policy makers came to viewnationalist movements, ethnic struggles, reform efforts, or left-leaning policiesanywhere in the world through the lens of the Cold War—potential threats they feltoutweighed our professed commitment to freedom and democracy. For decades wewould tolerate and even aid thieves like Mobutu, thugs like Noriega, so long as theyopposed communism. Occasionally U.S. covert operations would engineer the removalof democratically elected leaders in countries like Iran—with seismic repercussions thathaunt us to this day.
　　America’s policy of containment also involved an enormous military buildup, matchingand then exceeding the Soviet and Chinese arsenals. Over time, the “iron triangle” ofthe Pentagon, defense contractors, and congressmen with large defense expenditures intheir districts amassed great power in shaping U.S. foreign policy. And although thethreat of nuclear war would preclude direct military confrontation with our superpowerrivals, U.S policy makers increasingly viewed problems elsewhere in the world througha military lens rather than a diplomatic one.
　　Most important, the postwar system over time suffered from too much politics and notenough deliberation and domestic consensus building. One of America’s strengthsimmediately following the war was a degree of domestic consensus surrounding foreignpolicy. There might have been fierce differences between Republicans and Democrats,but politics usually ended at the water’s edge; professionals, whether in the WhiteHouse, the Pentagon, the State Department, or the CIA, were expected to makedecisions based on facts and sound judgment, not ideology or electioneering. Moreover,that consensus extended to the public at large; programs like the Marshall Plan, whichinvolved a massive investment of U.S. funds, could not have gone forward without theAmerican people’s basic trust in their government, as well as a reciprocal faith on thepart of government officials that the American people could be trusted with the factsthat went into decisions that spent their tax dollars or sent their sons to war.
　　As the Cold War wore on, the key elements in this consensus began to erode. Politiciansdiscovered that they could get votes by being tougher on communism than theiropponents. Democrats were assailed for “losing China.” McCarthyism destroyed careersand crushed dissent. Kennedy would blame Republicans for a “missile gap” that didn’texist on his way to beating Nixon, who himself had made a career of Red-baiting hisopponents. Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson would all find their judgmentclouded by fear that they would be tagged as “soft on communism.” The Cold Wartechniques of secrecy, snooping, and misinformation, used against foreign governmentsand foreign populations, became tools of domestic politics, a means to harass critics,build support for questionable policies, or cover up blunders. The very ideals that wehad promised to export overseas were being betrayed at home.
　　All these trends came to a head in Vietnam. The disastrous consequences of thatconflict—for our credibility and prestige abroad, for our armed forces (which wouldtake a generation to recover), and most of all for those who fought—have been amplydocumented. But perhaps the biggest casualty of that war was the bond of trust betweenthe American people and their government—and between Americans themselves. As aconsequence of a more aggressive press corps and the images of body bags floodinginto living rooms, Americans began to realize that the best and the brightest inWashington didn’t always know what they were doing—and didn’t always tell the truth.
　　Increasingly, many on the left voiced opposition not only to the Vietnam War but alsoto the broader aims of American foreign policy. In their view, President Johnson,General Westmoreland, the CIA, the “military-industrial complex,” and internationalinstitutions like the World Bank were all manifestations of American arrogance,jingoism, racism, capitalism, and imperialism. Those on the right responded in kind,laying responsibility not only for the loss of Vietnam but also for the decline ofAmerica’s standing in the world squarely on the “blame America first” crowd—theprotesters, the hippies, Jane Fonda, the Ivy League intellectuals and liberal media whodenigrated patriotism, embraced a relativistic worldview, and undermined Americanresolve to confront godless communism.
　　Admittedly, these were caricatures, promoted by activists and political consultants.
　　Many Americans remained somewhere in the middle, still supportive of America’sefforts to defeat communism but skeptical of U.S. policies that might involve largenumbers of American casualties. Throughout the seventies and eighties, one could findDemocratic hawks and Republican doves; in Congress, there were men like MarkHatfield of Oregon and Sam Nunn of Georgia who sought to perpetuate the tradition ofa bipartisan foreign policy. But the caricatures were what shaped public impressionsduring election time, as Republicans increasingly portrayed Democrats as weak ondefense, and those suspicious of military and covert action abroad increasingly made theDemocratic Party their political home.
　　It was against this backdrop—an era of division rather than an era of consensus—thatmost Americans alive today formed whatever views they may have on foreign policy.
　　These were the years of Nixon and Kissinger, whose foreign policies were tacticallybrilliant but were overshadowed by domestic policies and a Cambodian bombingcampaign that were morally rudderless. They were the years of Jimmy Carter, aDemocrat who—with his emphasis on human rights—seemed prepared to once againalign moral concerns with a strong defense, until oil shocks, the humiliation of theIranian hostage crisis, and the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan made him seemnaive and ineffective.
　　Looming perhaps largest of all was Ronald Reagan, whose clarity about communismseemed matched by his blindness regarding other sources of misery in the world. Ipersonally came of age during the Reagan presidency—I was studying internationalaffairs at Columbia, and later working as a community organizer in Chicago—and likemany Democrats in those days I bemoaned the effect of Reagan’s policies toward theThird World: his administration’s support for the apartheid regime of South Africa, thefunding of El Salvador’s death squads, the invasion of tiny, hapless Grenada. The moreI studied nuclear arms policy, the more I found Star Wars to be ill conceived; the chasmbetween Reagan’s soaring rhetoric and the tawdry Iran-Contra deal left me speechless.
　　But at times, in arguments with some of my friends on the left, I would find myself inthe curious position of defending aspects of Reagan’s worldview. I didn’t understandwhy, for example, progressives should be less concerned about oppression behind theIron Curtain than they were about brutality in Chile. I couldn’t be persuaded that U.S.
　　multinationals and international terms of trade were single-handedly responsible forpoverty around the world; nobody forced corrupt leaders in Third World countries tosteal from their people. I might have arguments with the size of Reagan’s militarybuildup, but given the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, staying ahead of the Sovietsmilitarily seemed a sensible thing to do. Pride in our country, respect for our armedservices, a healthy appreciation for the dangers beyond our borders, an insistence thatthere was no easy equivalence between East and West—in all this I had no quarrel withReagan. And when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, I had to give the old man hisdue, even if I never gave him my vote.
　　Many people—including many Democrats—did give Reagan their vote, leadingRepublicans to argue that his presidency restored America’s foreign policy consensus.
　　Of course, that consensus was never really tested; Reagan’s war against communismwas mainly carried out through proxies and deficit spending, not the deployment of U.S.
　　troops. As it was, the end of the Cold War made Reagan’s formula seem ill suited to anew world. George H. W. Bush’s return to a more traditional, “realist” foreign policywould result in a steady management of the Soviet Union’s dissolution and an ablehandling of the first Gulf War. But with the American public’s attention focused on thedomestic economy, his skill in building international coalitions or judiciously projectingAmerican power did nothing to salvage his presidency.
　　By the time Bill Clinton came into office, conventional wisdom suggested thatAmerica’s post-Cold War foreign policy would be more a matter of trade than tanks,protecting American copyrights rather than American lives. Clinton himself understoodthat globalization involved not only new economic challenges but also new securitychallenges. In addition to promoting free trade and bolstering the international financialsystem, his administration would work to end long-festering conflicts in the Balkansand Northern Ireland and advance democratization in Eastern Europe, Latin America,Africa, and the former Soviet Union. But in the eyes of the public, at least, foreignpolicy in the nineties lacked any overarching theme or grand imperatives. U.S. militaryaction in particular seemed entirely a matter of choice, not necessity—the product of ourdesire to slap down rogue states, perhaps; or a function of humanitarian calculationsregarding the moral obligations we owed to Somalis, Haitians, Bosnians, or otherunlucky souls.
　　Then came September 11—and Americans felt their world turned upside down.
　　IN JANUARY 2006, I boarded a C-130 military cargo plane and took off for my firsttrip into Iraq. Two of my colleagues on the trip—Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana andCongressman Harold Ford, Jr. of Tennessee—had made the trip before, and theywarned me that the landings in Baghdad could be a bit uncomfortable: To evadepotential hostile fire, military flights in and out of Iraq’s capital city engaged in a seriesof sometimes stomach-turning maneuvers. As our plane cruised through the hazymorning, though, it was hard to feel concerned. Strapped into canvas seats, most of myfellow passengers had fallen asleep, their heads bobbing against the orange webbingthat ran down the center of the fuselage. One of the crew appeared to be playing a videogame; another placidly thumbed through our flight plans.
　　It had been four and a half years since I’d first heard reports of a plane hitting the WorldTrade Center. I had been in Chicago at the time, driving to a state legislative hearingdowntown. The reports on my car radio were sketchy, and I assumed that there musthave been an accident, a small prop plane perhaps veering off course. By the time Iarrived at my meeting, the second plane had already hit, and we were told to evacuatethe State of Illinois Building. Up and down the streets, people gathered, staring at thesky and at the Sears Tower. Later, in my law office, a group of us sat motionless as thenightmare images unfolded across the TV screen—a plane, dark as a shadow, vanishinginto glass and steel; men and women clinging to windowsills, then letting go; the shoutsand sobs from below and finally the rolling clouds of dust blotting out the sun.
　　I spent the next several weeks as most Americans did—calling friends in New York andD.C., sending donations, listening to the President’s speech, mourning the dead. And forme, as for most of us, the effect of September 11 felt profoundly personal. It wasn’t justthe magnitude of the destruction that affected me, or the memories of the five years I’dspent in New York—memories of streets and sights now reduced to rubble. Rather, itwas the intimacy of imagining those ordinary acts that 9/11’s victims must haveperformed in the hours before they were killed, the daily routines that constitute life inour modern world—the boarding of a plane, the jostling as we exit a commuter train,grabbing coffee and the morning paper at a newsstand, making small talk on theelevator. For most Americans, such routines represented a victory of order over chaos,the concrete expression of our belief that so long as we exercised, wore seat belts, had ajob with benefits, and avoided certain neighborhoods, our safety was ensured, ourfamilies protected.
　　Now chaos had come to our doorstep. As a consequence, we would have to actdifferently, understand the world differently. We would have to answer the call of anation. Within a week of the attacks, I watched the Senate vote 98-0 and the House vote420-1 to give the President the authority to “use all necessary and appropriate forceagainst those nations, organizations or persons” behind the attacks. Interest in the armedservices and applications to join the CIA soared, as young people across Americaresolved to serve their country. Nor were we alone. In Paris, Le Monde ran the bannerheadline “Nous sommes tous Américains” (“We are all Americans”). In Cairo, localmosques offered prayers of sympathy. For the first time since its founding in 1949,NATO invoked Article 5 of its charter, agreeing that the armed attack on one of itsmembers “shall be considered an attack against them all.” With justice at our backs andthe world by our side, we drove the Taliban government out of Kabul in just over amonth; Al Qaeda operatives fled or were captured or killed.
　　It was a good start by the Administration, I thought—steady, measured, andaccomplished with minimal casualties (only later would we discover the degree towhich our failure to put sufficient military pressure on Al Qaeda forces at Tora Boramay have led to bin Laden’s escape). And so, along with the rest of the world, I waitedwith anticipation for what I assumed would follow: the enunciation of a U.S. foreignpolicy for the twenty-first century, one that would not only adapt our military planning,intelligence operations, and homeland defenses to the threat of terrorist networks butbuild a new international consensus around the challenges of transnational threats.
　　This new blueprint never arrived. Instead what we got was an assortment of outdatedpolicies from eras gone by, dusted off, slapped together, and with new labels affixed.
　　Reagan’s “Evil Empire” was now “the Axis of Evil.” Theodore Roosevelt’s version ofthe Monroe Doctrine—the notion that we could preemptively remove governments notto our liking—was now the Bush Doctrine, only extended beyond the WesternHemisphere to span the globe. Manifest destiny was back in fashion; all that wasneeded, according to Bush, was American firepower, American resolve, and a “coalitionof the willing.”
　　Perhaps worst of all, the Bush Administration resuscitated a brand of politics not seensince the end of the Cold War. As the ouster of Saddam Hussein became the test casefor Bush’s doctrine of preventive war, those who questioned the Administration’srationale for invasion were accused of being “soft on terrorism” or “un-American.”
　　Instead of an honest accounting of this military campaign’s pros and cons, theAdministration initiated a public relations offensive: shading intelligence reports tosupport its case, grossly understating both the costs and the manpower requirements ofmilitary action, raising the specter of mushroom clouds.
　　The PR strategy worked; by the fall of 2002, a majority of Americans were convincedthat Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and at least 66 percentbelieved (falsely) that the Iraqi leader had been personally involved in the 9/11 attacks.
　　Support for an invasion of Iraq—and Bush’s approval rating—hovered around 60percent. With an eye on the midterm elections, Republicans stepped up the attacks andpushed for a vote authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein. And on October11, 2002, twenty-eight of the Senate’s fifty Democrats joined all but one Republican inhanding to Bush the power he wanted.
　　I was disappointed in that vote, although sympathetic to the pressures Democrats wereunder. I had felt some of those same pressures myself. By the fall of 2002, I had alreadydecided to run for the U.S. Senate and knew that possible war with Iraq would loomlarge in any campaign. When a group of Chicago activists asked if I would speak at alarge antiwar rally planned for October, a number of my friends warned me againsttaking so public a position on such a volatile issue. Not only was the idea of an invasionincreasingly popular, but on the merits I didn’t consider the case against war to be cut-and-dried. Like most analysts, I assumed that Saddam had chemical and biologicalweapons and coveted nuclear arms. I believed that he had repeatedly flouted UNresolutions and weapons inspectors and that such behavior had to have consequences.
　　That Saddam butchered his own people was undisputed; I had no doubt that the world,and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.
　　What I sensed, though, was that the threat Saddam posed was not imminent, theAdministration’s rationales for war were flimsy and ideologically driven, and the war inAfghanistan was far from complete. And I was certain that by choosing precipitous,unilateral military action over the hard slog of diplomacy, coercive inspections, andsmart sanctions, America was missing an opportunity to build a broad base of supportfor its policies.
　　And so I made the speech. To the two thousand people gathered in Chicago’s FederalPlaza, I explained that unlike some of the people in the crowd, I didn’t oppose allwars—that my grandfather had signed up for the war the day after Pearl Harbor wasbombed and had fought in Patton’s army. I also said that “after witnessing the carnageand destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this Administration’s pledge to huntdown and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance” andwould “willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again.”
　　What I could not support was “a dumb war, a rash war, a war based not on reason buton passion, not on principle but on politics.” And I said:
　　I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation ofundetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I knowthat an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong internationalsupport will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, ratherthan the best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of AlQaeda.
　　The speech was well received; activists began circulating the text on the Internet, and Iestablished a reputation for speaking my mind on hard issues—a reputation that wouldcarry me through a tough Democratic primary. But I had no way of knowing at the timewhether my assessment of the situation in Iraq was correct. When the invasion wasfinally launched and U.S. forces marched unimpeded through Baghdad, when I sawSaddam’s statue topple and watched the President stand atop the U.S.S. AbrahamLincoln, a banner behind him proclaiming “Mission Accomplished,” I began to suspectthat I might have been wrong—and was relieved to see the low number of Americancasualties involved.
　　And now, three years later—as the number of American deaths passed two thousandand the number of wounded passed sixteen thousand; after $250 billion in directspending and hundreds of billions more in future years to pay off the resulting debt andcare for disabled veterans; after two Iraqi national elections, one Iraqi constitutionalreferendum, and tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths; after watching anti-Americansentiment rise to record levels around the world and Afghanistan begin to slip back intochaos—I was flying into Baghdad as a member of the Senate, partially responsible fortrying to figure out just what to do with this mess.
　　The landing at Baghdad International Airport turned out not to be so bad—although Iwas thankful that we couldn’t see out the windows as the C-130 bucked and banked anddipped its way down. Our escort officer from the State Department was there to greetus, along with an assortment of military personnel with rifles slung over their shoulders.
　　After getting our security briefing, recording our blood types, and being fitted forhelmets and Kevlar vests, we boarded two Black Hawk helicopters and headed for theGreen Zone, flying low, passing over miles of mostly muddy, barren fields crisscrossedby narrow roads and punctuated by small groves of date trees and squat concreteshelters, many of them seemingly empty, some bulldozed down to their foundations.
　　Eventually Baghdad came into view, a sand-colored metropolis set in a circular pattern,the Tigris River cutting a broad, murky swath down its center. Even from the air the citylooked worn and battered, the traffic on the streets intermittent—although almost everyrooftop was cluttered with satellite dishes, which along with cell phone service had beentouted by U.S. officials as one of the successes of the reconstruction.
　　I would spend only a day and a half in Iraq, most of it in the Green Zone, a ten-mile-wide area of central Baghdad that had once been the heart of Saddam Hussein’sgovernment but was now a U.S.-controlled compound, surrounded along its perimeterby blast walls and barbed wire. Reconstruction teams briefed us about the difficulty ofmaintaining electrical power and oil production in the face of insurgent sabotage;intelligence officers described the growing threat of sectarian militias and theirinfiltration of Iraqi security forces. Later, we met with members of the Iraqi ElectionCommission, who spoke with enthusiasm about the high turnout during the recentelection, and for an hour we listened to U.S. Ambassador Khalilzad, a shrewd, elegantman with world-weary eyes, explain the delicate shuttle diplomacy in which he wasnow engaged, to bring Shi’ite, Sunni, and Kurdish factions into some sort of workableunity government.
　　In the afternoon we had an opportunity to have lunch with some of the troops in thehuge mess hall just off the swimming pool of what had once been Saddam’s presidentialpalace. They were a mix of regular forces, reservists, and National Guard units, frombig cities and small towns, blacks and whites and Latinos, many of them on their secondor third tour of duty. They spoke with pride as they told us what their units hadaccomplished—building schools, protecting electrical facilities, leading newly trainedIraqi soldiers on patrol, maintaining supply lines to those in far-flung regions of thecountry. Again and again, I was asked the same question: Why did the U.S. press onlyreport on bombings and killings? There was progress being made, they insisted—Ineeded to let the folks back home know that their work was not in vain.
　　It was easy, talking to these men and women, to understand their frustration, for all theAmericans I met in Iraq, whether military or civilian, impressed me with theirdedication, their skill, and their frank acknowledgment not only of the mistakes that hadbeen made but also of the difficulties of the task that still lay ahead. Indeed, the entireenterprise in Iraq bespoke American ingenuity, wealth, and technical know-how;standing inside the Green Zone or any of the large operating bases in Iraq and Kuwait,one could only marvel at the ability of our government to essentially erect entire citieswithin hostile territory, self-contained communities with their own power and sewagesystems, computer lines and wireless networks, basketball courts and ice cream stands.
　　More than that, one was reminded of that unique quality of American optimism thateverywhere was on display—the absence of cynicism despite the danger, sacrifice, andseemingly interminable setbacks, the insistence that at the end of the day our actionswould result in a better life for a nation of people we barely knew.
　　And yet, three conversations during the course of my visit would remind me of just howquixotic our efforts in Iraq still seemed—how, with all the American blood, treasure,and the best of intentions, the house we were building might be resting on quicksand.
　　The first conversation took place in the early evening, when our delegation held a pressconference with a group of foreign correspondents stationed in Baghdad. After theQ&A session, I asked the reporters if they’d stay for an informal, off-the-recordconversation. I was interested, I said, in getting some sense of life outside the GreenZone. They were happy to oblige, but insisted they could only stay for forty-fiveminutes—it was getting late, and like most residents of Baghdad, they generallyavoided traveling once the sun went down.
　　As a group, they were young, mostly in their twenties and early thirties, all of themdressed casually enough that they could pass for college students. Their faces, though,showed the stresses they were under—sixty journalists had already been killed in Iraqby that time. Indeed, at the start of our conversation they apologized for beingsomewhat distracted; they had just received word that one of their colleagues, a reporterwith the Christian Science Monitor named Jill Carroll, had been abducted, her driverfound killed on the side of a road. Now they were all working their contacts, trying totrack down her whereabouts. Such violence wasn’t unusual in Baghdad these days, theysaid, although Iraqis overwhelmingly bore the brunt of it. Fighting between Shi’ites andSunnis had become widespread, less strategic, less comprehensible, more frightening.
　　None of them thought that the elections would bring about significant improvement inthe security situation. I asked them if they thought a U.S. troop withdrawal might easetensions, expecting them to answer in the affirmative. Instead, they shook their heads.
　　“My best guess is the country would collapse into civil war within weeks,” one of thereporters told me. “One hundred, maybe two hundred thousand dead. We’re the onlything holding this place together.”
　　That night, our delegation accompanied Ambassador Khalilzad for dinner at the homeof Iraqi interim President Jalal Tala-bani. Security was tight as our convoy wound itsway past a maze of barricades out of the Green Zone; outside, our route was lined withU.S. troops at one-block intervals, and we were instructed to keep our vests and helmetson for the duration of the drive.
　　After ten minutes we arrived at a large villa, where we were greeted by the presidentand several members of the Iraqi interim government. They were all heavyset men,most in their fifties or sixties, with broad smiles but eyes that betrayed no emotion. Irecognized only one of the ministers—Mr. Ahmed Chalabi, the Western-educatedShi’ite who, as a leader of the exile group the Iraqi National Congress, had reportedlyfed U.S. intelligence agencies and Bush policy makers some of the prewar informationon which the decision to invade was made—information for which Chalabi’s group hadreceived millions of dollars, and that had turned out to be bogus. Since then Chalabi hadfallen out with his U.S. patrons; there were reports that he had steered U.S. classifiedinformation to the Iranians, and that Jordan still had a warrant out for his arrest afterhe’d been convicted in absentia on thirty-one charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse ofdepositor funds, and currency speculation. But he appeared to have landed on his feet;immaculately dressed, accompanied by his grown daughter, he was now the interimgovernment’s acting oil minister.
　　I didn’t speak much to Chalabi during dinner. Instead I was seated next to the formerinterim finance minister. He seemed impressive, speaking knowledgeably about Iraq’seconomy, its need to improve transparency and strengthen its legal framework to attractforeign investment. At the end of the evening, I mentioned my favorable impression toone of the embassy staff.
　　“He’s smart, no doubt about it,” the staffer said. “Of course, he’s also one of the leadersof the SCIRI Party. They control the Ministry of the Interior, which controls the police.
　　And the police, well…there have been problems with militia infiltration. Accusationsthat they’re grabbing Sunni leaders, bodies found the next morning, that kind ofthing…” The staffer’s voice trailed off, and he shrugged. “We work with what wehave.”
　　I had difficulty sleeping that night; instead, I watched the Redskins game, piped in livevia satellite to the pool house once reserved for Saddam and his guests. Several times Imuted the TV and heard mortar fire pierce the silence. The following morning, we tooka Black Hawk to the Marine base in Fallujah, out in the arid, western portion of Iraqcalled Anbar Province. Some of the fiercest fighting against the insurgency had takenplace in Sunni-dominated Anbar, and the atmosphere in the camp was considerablygrimmer than in the Green Zone; just the previous day, five Marines on patrol had beenkilled by roadside bombs or small-arms fire. The troops here looked rawer as well, mostof them in their early twenties, many still with pimples and the unformed bodies ofteenagers.
　　The general in charge of the camp had arranged a briefing, and we listened as thecamp’s senior officers explained the dilemma facing U.S. forces: With improvedcapabilities, they were arresting more and more insurgent leaders each day, but likestreet gangs back in Chicago, for every insurgent they arrested, there seemed to be twoready to take his place. Economics, and not just politics, seemed to be feeding theinsurgency—the central government had been neglecting Anbar, and maleunemployment hovered around 70 percent.
　　“For two or three dollars, you can pay some kid to plant a bomb,” one of the officerssaid. “That’s a lot of money out here.”
　　By the end of the briefing, a light fog had rolled in, delaying our flight to Kirkuk. Whilewaiting, my foreign policy staffer, Mark Lippert, wandered off to chat with one of theunit’s senior officers, while I struck up a conversation with one of the majorsresponsible for counterinsurgency strategy in the region. He was a soft-spoken man,short and with glasses; it was easy to imagine him as a high school math teacher. In fact,it turned out that before joining the Marines he had spent several years in thePhilippines as a member of the Peace Corps. Many of the lessons he had learned thereneeded to be applied to the military’s work in Iraq, he told me. He didn’t have anywherenear the number of Arabic-speakers needed to build trust with the local population. Weneeded to improve cultural sensitivity within U.S. forces, develop long-termrelationships with local leaders, and couple security forces to reconstruction teams, sothat Iraqis could see concrete benefits from U.S. efforts. All this would take time, hesaid, but he could already see changes for the better as the military adopted thesepractices throughout the country.
　　Our escort officer signaled that the chopper was ready to take off. I wished the majorluck and headed for the van. Mark came up beside me, and I asked him what he’dlearned from his conversation with the senior officer.
　　“I asked him what he thought we needed to do to best deal with the situation.”
　　“What did he say?”
　　“Leave.”
　　THE STORY OF America’s involvement in Iraq will be analyzed and debated for manyyears to come—indeed, it’s a story that’s still being written. At the moment, thesituation there has deteriorated to the point where it appears that a low-grade civil warhas begun, and while I believe that all Americans—regardless of their views on theoriginal decision to invade—have an interest in seeing a decent outcome in Iraq, Icannot honestly say that I am optimistic about Iraq’s short-term prospects.
　　I do know that at this stage it will be politics—the calculations of those hard,unsentimental men with whom I had dinner—and not the application of American forcethat determines what happens in Iraq. I believe as well that our strategic goals at thispoint should be well defined: achieving some semblance of stability in Iraq, ensuringthat those in power in Iraq are not hostile to the United States, and preventing Iraq frombecoming a base for terrorist activity. In pursuit of these goals, I believe it is in
Chapter 9 Family
BY THE START of my second year in the Senate, my life had settled into amanageable rhythm. I would leave Chicago Monday night or early Tuesday morning,depending on the Senate’s voting schedule. Other than daily trips to the Senate gym andthe rare lunch or dinner with a friend, the next three days would be consumed by apredictable series of tasks—committee markups, votes, caucus lunches, floorstatements, speeches, photos with interns, evening fund-raisers, returning phone calls,writing correspondence, reviewing legislation, drafting op-eds, recording podcasts,receiving policy briefings, hosting constituent coffees, and attending an endless series ofmeetings. On Thursday afternoon, we would get word from the cloakroom as to whenthe last vote would be, and at the appointed hour I’d line up in the well of the Senatealongside my colleagues to cast my vote, before trotting down the Capitol steps in hopesof catching a flight that would get me home before the girls went to bed.
　　Despite the hectic schedule, I found the work fascinating, if occasionally frustrating.
　　Contrary to popular perceptions, only about two dozen significant bills come up for aroll-call vote on the Senate floor every year, and almost none of those are sponsored bya member of the minority party. As a result, most of my major initiatives—theformation of public school innovation districts, a plan to help U.S. automakers pay fortheir retiree health-care costs in exchange for increased fuel economy standards, anexpansion of the Pell Grant program to help low-income students meet rising collegetuition costs—languished in committee.
　　On the other hand, thanks to great work by my staff, I managed to get a respectablenumber of amendments passed. We helped provide funds for homeless veterans. Weprovided tax credits to gas stations for installing E85 fuel pumps. We obtained fundingto help the World Health Organization monitor and respond to a potential avian flupandemic. We got an amendment out of the Senate eliminating no-bid contracts in thepost-Katrina reconstruction, so more money would actually end up in the hands of thetragedy’s victims. None of these amendments would transform the country, but I tooksatisfaction in knowing that each of them helped some people in a modest way ornudged the law in a direction that might prove to be more economical, moreresponsible, or more just.
　　One day in February I found myself in particularly good spirits, having just completed ahearing on legislation that Dick Lugar and I were sponsoring aimed at restrictingweapons proliferation and the black-market arms trade. Because Dick was not only theSenate’s leading expert on proliferation issues but also the chairman of the SenateForeign Relations Committee, prospects for the bill seemed promising. Wanting toshare the good news, I called Michelle from my D.C. office and started explaining thesignificance of the bill—how shoulder-to-air missiles could threaten commercial airtravel if they fell into the wrong hands, how small-arms stockpiles left over from theCold War continued to feed conflict across the globe. Michelle cut me off.
　　“We have ants.”
　　“Huh?”
　　“I found ants in the kitchen. And in the bathroom upstairs.”
　　“Okay…”
　　“I need you to buy some ant traps on your way home tomorrow. I’d get them myself,but I’ve got to take the girls to their doctor’s appointment after school. Can you do thatfor me?”
　　“Right. Ant traps.”
　　“Ant traps. Don’t forget, okay, honey? And buy more than one. Listen, I need to go intoa meeting. Love you.”
　　I hung up the receiver, wondering if Ted Kennedy or John McCain bought ant traps onthe way home from work.
　　MOST PEOPLE WHO meet my wife quickly conclude that she is remarkable. They areright about this—she is smart, funny, and thoroughly charming. She is also verybeautiful, although not in a way that men find intimidating or women find off-putting; itis the lived-in beauty of the mother and busy professional rather than the touched-upimage we see on the cover of glossy magazines. Often, after hearing her speak at somefunction or working with her on a project, people will approach me and say somethingto the effect of “You know I think the world of you, Barack, but your wife…wow!” Inod, knowing that if I ever had to run against her for public office, she would beat mewithout much difficulty.
　　Fortunately for me, Michelle would never go into politics. “I don’t have the patience,”
　　she says to people who ask. As is always the case, she is telling the truth.
　　I met Michelle in the summer of 1988, while we were both working at Sidley & Austin,a large corporate law firm based in Chicago. Although she is three years younger thanme, Michelle was already a practicing lawyer, having attended Harvard Law straight outof college. I had just finished my first year at law school and had been hired as asummer associate.
　　It was a difficult, transitional period in my life. I had enrolled in law school after threeyears of work as a community organizer, and although I enjoyed my studies, I stillharbored doubts about my decision. Privately, I worried that it represented theabandonment of my youthful ideals, a concession to the hard realities of money andpower—the world as it is rather than the world as it should be.
　　The idea of working at a corporate law firm, so near and yet so far removed from thepoor neighborhoods where my friends were still laboring, only worsened these fears.
　　But with student loans rapidly mounting, I was in no position to turn down the threemonths of salary Sidley was offering. And so, having sublet the cheapest apartment Icould find, having purchased the first three suits ever to appear in my closet and a newpair of shoes that turned out to be a half size too small and would absolutely cripple mefor the next nine weeks, I arrived at the firm one drizzly morning in early June and wasdirected to the office of the young attorney who’d been assigned to serve as my summeradvisor.
　　I don’t remember the details of that first conversation with Michelle. I remember thatshe was tall—almost my height in heels—and lovely, with a friendly, professionalmanner that matched her tailored suit and blouse. She explained how work was assignedat the firm, the nature of the various practice groups, and how to log our billable hours.
　　After showing me my office and giving me a tour of the library, she handed me off toone of the partners and told me that she would meet me for lunch.
　　Later Michelle would tell me that she had been pleasantly surprised when I walked intoher office; the drugstore snapshot that I’d sent in for the firm directory made my noselook a little big (even more enormous than usual, she might say), and she had beenskeptical when the secretaries who’d seen me during my interview told her I was cute:
　　“I figured that they were just impressed with any black man with a suit and a job.” Butif Michelle was impressed, she certainly didn’t tip her hand when we went to lunch. Idid learn that she had grown up on the South Side, in a small bungalow just north of theneighborhoods where I had organized. Her father was a pump operator for the city; hermother had been a housewife until the kids were grown, and now worked as a secretaryat a bank. She had attended Bryn Mawr Public Elementary School, gotten into WhitneyYoung Magnet School, and followed her brother to Princeton, where he had been a staron the basketball team. At Sidley she was part of the intellectual property group andspecialized in entertainment law; at some point, she said, she might have to considermoving to Los Angeles or New York to pursue her career.
　　Oh, Michelle was full of plans that day, on the fast track, with no time, she told me, fordistractions—especially men. But she knew how to laugh, brightly and easily, and Inoticed she didn’t seem in too much of a hurry to get back to the office. And there wassomething else, a glimmer that danced across her round, dark eyes whenever I looked ather, the slightest hint of uncertainty, as if, deep inside, she knew how fragile thingsreally were, and that if she ever let go, even for a moment, all her plans might quicklyunravel. That touched me somehow, that trace of vulnerability. I wanted to know thatpart of her.
　　For the next several weeks, we saw each other every day, in the law library or thecafeteria or at one of the many outings that law firms organize for their summerassociates to convince them that their life in the law will not be endless hours of poringthrough documents. She took me to one or two parties, tactfully overlooking my limitedwardrobe, and even tried to set me up with a couple of her friends. Still, she refused togo out on a proper date. It wasn’t appropriate, she said, since she was my advisor.
　　“That’s a poor excuse,” I told her. “Come on, what advice are you giving me? You’reshowing me how the copy machine works. You’re telling me what restaurants to try. Idon’t think the partners will consider one date a serious breach of firm policy.”
　　She shook her head. “Sorry.”
　　“Okay, I’ll quit. How’s that? You’re my advisor. Tell me who I have to talk to.”
　　Eventually I wore her down. After a firm picnic, she drove me back to my apartment,and I offered to buy her an ice cream cone at the Baskin-Robbins across the street. Wesat on the curb and ate our cones in the sticky afternoon heat, and I told her aboutworking at Baskin-Robbins when I was a teenager and how it was hard to look cool in abrown apron and cap. She told me that for a span of two or three years as a child, shehad refused to eat anything except peanut butter and jelly. I said that I’d like to meet herfamily. She said that she would like that.
　　I asked if I could kiss her. It tasted of chocolate.
　　We spent the rest of the summer together. I told her about organizing, and living inIndonesia, and what it was like to bodysurf. She told me about her childhood friends,and a trip to Paris she’d taken in high school, and her favorite Stevie Wonder songs.
　　But it wasn’t until I met Michelle’s family that I began to understand her. It turned outthat visiting the Robinson household was like dropping in on the set of Leave It toBeaver. There was Frasier, the kindly, good-humored father, who never missed a day ofwork or any of his son’s ball games. There was Marian, the pretty, sensible mother whobaked birthday cakes, kept order in the house, and had volunteered at school to makesure her children were behaving and that the teachers were doing what they weresupposed to be doing. There was Craig, the basketball-star brother, tall and friendly andcourteous and funny, working as an investment banker but dreaming of going intocoaching someday. And there were uncles and aunts and cousins everywhere, stoppingby to sit around the kitchen table and eat until they burst and tell wild stories and listento Grandpa’s old jazz collection and laugh deep into the night.
　　All that was missing was the dog. Marian didn’t want a dog tearing up the house.
　　What made this vision of domestic bliss all the more impressive was the fact that theRobinsons had had to overcome hardships that one rarely saw on prime-time TV. Therewere the usual issues of race, of course: the limited opportunities available to Michelle’sparents growing up in Chicago during the fifties and sixties; the racial steering andpanic peddling that had driven white families away from their neighborhood; the extraenergy required from black parents to compensate for smaller incomes and more violentstreets and underfunded playgrounds and indifferent schools.
　　But there was a more specific tragedy at the center of the Robinson household. At theage of thirty, in the prime of his life, Michelle’s father had been diagnosed with multiplesclerosis. For the next twenty-five years, as his condition steadily deteriorated, he hadcarried out his responsibilities to his family without a trace of self-pity, giving himselfan extra hour every morning to get to work, struggling with every physical act fromdriving a car to buttoning his shirt, smiling and joking as he labored—at first with alimp and eventually with the aid of two canes, his balding head beading with sweat—across a field to watch his son play, or across the living room to give his daughter a kiss.
　　After we were married, Michelle would help me understand the hidden toll that herfather’s illness had taken on her family; how heavy a burden Michelle’s mother hadbeen forced to carry; how carefully circumscribed their lives together had been, witheven the smallest outing carefully planned to avoid problems or awkwardness; howterrifyingly random life seemed beneath the smiles and laughter.
　　But back then I saw only the joy of the Robinson house. For someone like me, who hadbarely known his father, who had spent much of his life traveling from place to place,his bloodlines scattered to the four winds, the home that Frasier and Marian Robinsonhad built for themselves and their children stirred a longing for stability and a sense ofplace that I had not realized was there. Just as Michelle perhaps saw in me a life ofadventure, risk, travel to exotic lands—a wider horizon than she had previously allowedherself.
　　Six months after Michelle and I met, her father died suddenly of complications after akidney operation. I flew back to Chicago and stood at his gravesite, Michelle’s head onmy shoulder. As the casket was lowered, I promised Frasier Robinson that I would takecare of his girl. I realized that in some unspoken, still tentative way, she and I werealready becoming a family.
　　THERE’S A LOT of talk these days about the decline of the American family. Socialconservatives claim that the traditional family is under assault from Hollywood moviesand gay pride parades. Liberals point to the economic factors—from stagnating wagesto inadequate day care—that have put families under increasing duress. Our popularculture feeds the alarm, with tales of women consigned to permanent singlehood, menunwilling to make lasting commitments, and teens engaged in endless sexual escapades.
　　Nothing seems settled, as it was in the past; our roles and relationships all feel up forgrabs.
　　Given this hand-wringing, it may be helpful to step back and remind ourselves that theinstitution of marriage isn’t disappearing anytime soon. While it’s true that marriagerates have declined steadily since the 1950s, some of the decline is a result of moreAmericans delaying marriage to pursue an education or establish a career; by the age offorty-five, 89 percent of women and 83 percent of men will have tied the knot at leastonce. Married couples continue to head 67 percent of American families, and the vastmajority of Americans still consider marriage to be the best foundation for personalintimacy, economic stability, and child rearing.
　　Still, there’s no denying that the nature of the family has changed over the last fiftyyears. Although divorce rates have declined by 21 percent since their peak in the lateseventies and early eighties, half of all first marriages still end in divorce. Compared toour grandparents, we’re more tolerant of premarital sex, more likely to cohabit, andmore likely to live alone. We’re also far more likely to be raising children innontraditional households; 60 percent of all divorces involve children, 33 percent of allchildren are born out of wedlock, and 34 percent of children don’t live with theirbiological fathers.
　　These trends are particularly acute in the African American community, where it’s fairto say that the nuclear family is on the verge of collapse. Since 1950, the marriage ratefor black women has plummeted from 62 percent to 36 percent. Between 1960 and1995, the number of African American children living with two married parentsdropped by more than half; today 54 percent of all African American children live insingle-parent households, compared to about 23 percent of all white children.
　　For adults, at least, the effect of these changes is a mixed bag. Research suggests that onaverage, married couples live healthier, wealthier, and happier lives, but no one claimsthat men and women benefit from being trapped in bad or abusive marriages. Certainlythe decision of increasing numbers of Americans to delay marriage makes sense; notonly does today’s information economy demand more time in school, but studies showthat couples who wait until their late twenties or thirties to get married are more likelyto stay married than those who marry young.
　　Whatever the effect on adults, though, these trends haven’t been so good for ourchildren. Many single moms—including the one who raised me—do a heroic job onbehalf of their kids. Still, children living with single mothers are five times more likelyto be poor than children in two-parent households. Children in single-parent homes arealso more likely to drop out of school and become teen parents, even when income isfactored out. And the evidence suggests that on average, children who live with boththeir biological mother and father do better than those who live in stepfamilies or withcohabiting partners.
　　In light of these facts, policies that strengthen marriage for those who choose it and thatdiscourage unintended births outside of marriage are sensible goals to pursue. Forexample, most people agree that neither federal welfare programs nor the tax codeshould penalize married couples; those aspects of welfare reform enacted under Clintonand those elements of the Bush tax plan that reduced the marriage penalty enjoy strongbipartisan support.
　　The same goes for teen pregnancy prevention. Everyone agrees that teen pregnanciesplace both mother and child at risk for all sorts of problems. Since 1990, the teenpregnancy rate has dropped by 28 percent, an unadulterated piece of good news. Butteens still account for almost a quarter of out-of-wedlock births, and teen mothers aremore likely to have additional out-of-wedlock births as they get older. Community-based programs that have a proven track record in preventing unwanted pregnancies—both by encouraging abstinence and by promoting the proper use of contraception—deserve broad support.
　　Finally, preliminary research shows that marriage education workshops can make a realdifference in helping married couples stay together and in encouraging unmarriedcouples who are living together to form a more lasting bond. Expanding access to suchservices to low-income couples, perhaps in concert with job training and placement,medical coverage, and other services already available, should be something everybodycan agree on.
　　But for many social conservatives, these commonsense approaches don’t go far enough.
　　They want a return to a bygone era, in which sexuality outside of marriage was subjectto both punishment and shame, obtaining a divorce was far more difficult, and marriageoffered not merely personal fulfillment but also well-defined social roles for men andfor women. In their view, any government policy that appears to reward or even expressneutrality toward what they consider to be immoral behavior—whether providing birthcontrol to young people, abortion services to women, welfare support for unwedmothers, or legal recognition of same-sex unions—inherently devalues the marital bond.
　　Such policies take us one step closer, the argument goes, to a brave new world in whichgender differences have been erased, sex is purely recreational, marriage is disposable,motherhood is an inconvenience, and civilization itself rests on shifting sands.
　　I understand the impulse to restore a sense of order to a culture that’s constantly in flux.
　　And I certainly appreciate the desire of parents to shield their children from values theyconsider unwholesome; it’s a feeling I often share when I listen to the lyrics of songs onthe radio.
　　But all in all, I have little sympathy for those who would enlist the government in thetask of enforcing sexual morality. Like most Americans, I consider decisions about sex,marriage, divorce, and childbearing to be highly personal—at the very core of oursystem of individual liberty. Where such personal decisions raise the prospect ofsignificant harm to others—as is true with child abuse, incest, bigamy, domesticviolence, or failure to pay child support—society has a right and duty to step in. (Thosewho believe in the personhood of the fetus would put abortion in this category.) Beyondthat, I have no interest in seeing the president, Congress, or a government bureaucracyregulating what goes on in America’s bedrooms.
　　Moreover, I don’t believe we strengthen the family by bullying or coercing people intothe relationships we think are best for them—or by punishing those who fail to meet ourstandards of sexual propriety. I want to encourage young people to show morereverence toward sex and intimacy, and I applaud parents, congregations, andcommunity programs that transmit that message. But I’m not willing to consign ateenage girl to a lifetime of struggle because of lack of access to birth control. I wantcouples to understand the value of commitment and the sacrifices marriage entails. ButI’m not willing to use the force of law to keep couples together regardless of theirpersonal circumstances.
　　Perhaps I just find the ways of the human heart too various, and my own life tooimperfect, to believe myself qualified to serve as anyone’s moral arbiter. I do know thatin our fourteen years of marriage, Michelle and I have never had an argument as a resultof what other people are doing in their personal lives.
　　What we have argued about—repeatedly—is how to balance work and family in a waythat’s equitable to Michelle and good for our children. We’re not alone in this. In thesixties and early seventies, the household Michelle grew up in was the norm—morethan 70 percent of families had Mom at home and relied on Dad as the solebreadwinner.
　　Today those numbers are reversed. Seventy percent of families with children are headedby two working parents or a single working parent. The result has been what my policydirector and work-family expert Karen Kornbluh calls “the juggler family,” in whichparents struggle to pay the bills, look after their children, maintain a household, andmaintain their relationship. Keeping all these balls in the air takes its toll on family life.
　　As Karen explained when she was director of the Work and Family Program at the NewAmerica Foundation and testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Children andFamilies:
　　Americans today have 22 fewer hours a week to spend with their kids than they did in1969. Millions of children are left in unlicensed day care every day—or at home alonewith the TV as a babysitter. Employed mothers lose almost an hour of sleep a day intheir attempt to make it all add up. Recent data show that parents with school agechildren show high signs of stress—stress that has an impact on their productivity andwork—when they have inflexible jobs and unstable after-school care.
　　Sound familiar?
　　Many social conservatives suggest that this flood of women out of the home and intothe workplace is a direct consequence of feminist ideology, and hence can be reversed ifwomen will just come to their senses and return to their traditional homemaking roles.
　　It’s true that ideas about equality for women have played a critical role in thetransformation of the workplace; in the minds of most Americans, the opportunity forwomen to pursue careers, achieve economic independence, and realize their talents onan equal footing with men has been one of the great achievements of modern life.
　　But for the average American woman, the decision to work isn’t simply a matter ofchanging attitudes. It’s a matter of making ends meet.
　　Consider the facts. Over the last thirty years, the average earnings of American menhave grown less than 1 percent after being adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile, the cost ofeverything, from housing to health care to education, has steadily risen. What has kept alarge swath of American families from falling out of the middle class has been Mom’spaycheck. In their book The Two-Income Trap, Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagipoint out that the additional income mothers bring home isn’t going to luxury items.
　　Instead, almost all of it goes to purchase what families believe to be investments in theirchildren’s future—preschool education, college tuition, and most of all, homes in safeneighborhoods with good public schools. In fact, between these fixed costs and theadded expenses of a working mother (particularly day care and a second car), theaverage two-income family has less discretionary income—and is less financiallysecure—than its single-earner counterpart thirty years ago.
　　So is it possible for the average family to return to life on a single income? Not whenevery other family on the block is earning two incomes and bidding up the prices ofhomes, schools, and college tuition. Warren and Tyagi show that an average single-earner family today that tried to maintain a middle-class lifestyle would have 60 percentless discretionary income than its 1970s counterpart. In other words, for most families,having Mom stay at home means living in a less-safe neighborhood and enrolling theirchildren in a less-competitive school.
　　That’s not a choice most Americans are willing to make. Instead they do the best theycan under the circumstances, knowing that the type of household they grew up in—thetype of household in which Frasier and Marian Robinson raised their kids—has becomemuch, much harder to sustain.
　　BOTH MEN AND women have had to adjust to these new realities. But it’s hard toargue with Michelle when she insists that the burdens of the modern family fall moreheavily on the woman.
　　For the first few years of our marriage, Michelle and I went through the usualadjustments all couples go through: learning to read each other’s moods, accepting thequirks and habits of a stranger underfoot. Michelle liked to wake up early and couldbarely keep her eyes open after ten o’clock. I was a night owl and could be a bit grumpy(mean, Michelle would say) within the first half hour or so of getting out of bed. Partlybecause I was still working on my first book, and perhaps because I had lived much ofmy life as an only child, I would often spend the evening holed up in my office in theback of our railroad apartment; what I considered normal often left Michelle feelinglonely. I invariably left the butter out after breakfast and forgot to twist the little tiearound the bread bag; Michelle could rack up parking tickets like nobody’s business.
　　Mostly, though, those early years were full of ordinary pleasures—going to movies,having dinner with friends, catching the occasional concert. We were both workinghard: I was practicing law at a small civil rights firm and had started teaching at theUniversity of Chicago Law School, while Michelle had decided to leave her lawpractice, first to work in Chicago’s Department of Planning and then to run the Chicagoarm of a national service program called Public Allies. Our time together got squeezedeven more when I ran for the state legislature, but despite my lengthy absences and hergeneral dislike of politics, Michelle supported the decision; “I know it’s something thatyou want to do,” she would tell me. On the nights that I was in Springfield, we’d talkand laugh over the phone, sharing the humor and frustrations of our days apart, and Iwould fall asleep content in the knowledge of our love.
　　Then Malia was born, a Fourth of July baby, so calm and so beautiful, with big,hypnotic eyes that seemed to read the world the moment they opened. Malia’s arrivalcame at an ideal time for both of us: Because I was out of session and didn’t have toteach during the summer, I was able to spend every evening at home; meanwhile,Michelle had decided to accept a part-time job at the University of Chicago so she couldspend more time with the baby, and the new job didn’t start until October. For threemagical months the two of us fussed and fretted over our new baby, checking the crib tomake sure she was breathing, coaxing smiles from her, singing her songs, and taking somany pictures that we started to wonder if we were damaging her eyes. Suddenly ourdifferent biorhythms came in handy: While Michelle got some well-earned sleep, Iwould stay up until one or two in the morning, changing diapers, heating breast milk,feeling my daughter’s soft breath against my chest as I rocked her to sleep, guessing ather infant dreams.
　　But when fall came—when my classes started back up, the legislature went back intosession, and Michelle went back to work—the strains in our relationship began to show.
　　I was often gone for three days at a stretch, and even when I was back in Chicago, Imight have evening meetings to attend, or papers to grade, or briefs to write. Michellefound that a part-time job had a funny way of expanding. We found a wonderful in-home babysitter to look after Malia while we were at work, but with a full-timeemployee suddenly on our payroll, money got tight.
　　Tired and stressed, we had little time for conversation, much less romance. When Ilaunched my ill-fated congressional run, Michelle put up no pretense of being happywith the decision. My failure to clean up the kitchen suddenly became less endearing.
　　Leaning down to kiss Michelle good-bye in the morning, all I would get was a peck onthe cheek. By the time Sasha was born—just as beautiful, and almost as calm as hersister—my wife’s anger toward me seemed barely contained.
　　“You only think about yourself,” she would tell me. “I never thought I’d have to raise afamily alone.”
　　I was stung by such accusations; I thought she was being unfair. After all, it wasn’t as ifI went carousing with the boys every night. I made few demands of Michelle—I didn’texpect her to darn my socks or have dinner waiting for me when I got home. WheneverI could, I pitched in with the kids. All I asked for in return was a little tenderness.
　　Instead, I found myself subjected to endless negotiations about every detail of managingthe house, long lists of things that I needed to do or had forgotten to do, and a generallysour attitude. I reminded Michelle that compared to most families, we were incrediblylucky. I reminded her as well that for all my flaws, I loved her and the girls more thananything else. My love should be enough, I thought. As far as I was concerned, she hadnothing to complain about.
　　It was only upon reflection, after the trials of those years had passed and the kids hadstarted school, that I began to appreciate what Michelle had been going through at thetime, the struggles so typical of today’s working mother. For no matter how liberated Iliked to see myself as—no matter how much I told myself that Michelle and I wereequal partners, and that her dreams and ambitions were as important as my own—thefact was that when children showed up, it was Michelle and not I who was expected tomake the necessary adjustments. Sure, I helped, but it was always on my terms, on myschedule. Meanwhile, she was the one who had to put her career on hold. She was theone who had to make sure that the kids were fed and bathed every night. If Malia orSasha got sick or the babysitter failed to show up, it was she who, more often than not,had to get on the phone to cancel a meeting at work.
　　It wasn’t just the constant scrambling between her work and the children that madeMichelle’s situation so tough. It was also the fact that from her perspective she wasn’tdoing either job well. This was not true, of course; her employers loved her, andeveryone remarked on what a good mother she was. But I came to see that in her ownmind, two visions of herself were at war with each other—the desire to be the womanher mother had been, solid, dependable, making a home and always there for her kids;and the desire to excel in her profession, to make her mark on the world and realize allthose plans she’d had on the very first day that we met.
　　In the end, I credit Michelle’s strength—her willingness to manage these tensions andmake sacrifices on behalf of myself and the girls—with carrying us through the difficulttimes. But we also had resources at our disposal that many American families don’thave. For starters, Michelle’s and my status as professionals meant that we couldrework our schedules to handle an emergency (or just take a day off) without risk oflosing our jobs. Fifty-seven percent of American workers don’t have that luxury;indeed, most of them can’t take a day off to look after a child without losing pay orusing vacation days. For parents who do try to make their own schedules, flexibilityoften means accepting part-time or temporary work with no career ladder and few or nobenefits.
　　Michelle and I also had enough income to cover all the services that help ease thepressures of two-earner parenthood: reliable child care, extra babysitting whenever weneeded it, take-out dinners when we had neither the time nor the energy to cook,someone to come in and clean the house once a week, and private preschool andsummer day camp once the kids were old enough. For most American families, suchhelp is financially out of reach. The cost of day care is especially prohibitive; the UnitedStates is practically alone among Western nations in not providing government-subsidized, high-quality day-care services to all its workers.
　　Finally, Michelle and I had my mother-in-law, who lives only fifteen minutes awayfrom us, in the same house in which Michelle was raised. Marian is in her late sixtiesbut looks ten years younger, and last year, when Michelle went back to full-time work,Marian decided to cut her hours at the bank so she could pick up the girls from schooland look after them every afternoon. For many American families, such help is simplyunavailable; in fact, for many families, the situation is reversed—someone in the familyhas to provide care for an aging parent on top of other family responsibilities.
　　Of course, it’s not possible for the federal government to guarantee each family awonderful, healthy, semiretired mother-in-law who happens to live close by. But ifwe’re serious about family values, then we can put policies in place that make thejuggling of work and parenting a little bit easier. We could start by making high-qualityday care affordable for every family that needs it. In contrast to most Europeancountries, day care in the United States is a haphazard affair. Improved day-carelicensing and training, an expansion of the federal and state child tax credits, andsliding-scale subsidies to families that need them all could provide both middle-classand low-income parents some peace of mind during the workday—and benefitemployers through reduced absenteeism.
　　It’s also time to redesign our schools—not just for the sake of working parents, but alsoto help prepare our children for a more competitive world. Countless studies confirmthe educational benefits of strong preschool programs, which is why even families whohave a parent at home often seek them out. The same goes for longer school days,summer school, and after-school programs. Providing all kids access to these benefitswould cost money, but as part of broader school reform efforts, it’s a cost that we as asociety should be willing to bear.
　　Most of all, we need to work with employers to increase the flexibility of workschedules. The Clinton Administration took a step in this direction with the Family andMedical Leave Act (FMLA), but because it requires only unpaid leave and applies onlyto companies with more than fifty employees, most American workers aren’t able totake advantage of it. And although all other wealthy nations but one provide some formof paid parental leave, the business community’s resistance to mandated paid leave hasbeen fierce, in part because of concerns over how it would affect small businesses.
　　With a little creativity, we should be able to break this impasse. California has recentlyinitiated paid leave through its disability insurance fund, thereby making sure that thecosts aren’t borne by employers alone.
　　We can also give parents flexibility to meet their day-to-day needs. Already, manylarger companies offer formal flextime programs and report higher employee moraleand less employee turnover as a result. Great Britain has come up with a novel approachto the problem—as part of a highly popular “Work-Life Balance Campaign,” parentswith children under the age of six have the right to file a written request with employersfor a change in their schedule. Employers aren’t required to grant the request, but theyare required to meet with the employee to consider it; so far, one-quarter of all eligibleBritish parents have successfully negotiated more family-friendly hours without a dropin productivity. With a combination of such innovative policy making, technicalassistance, and greater public awareness, government can help businesses to do right bytheir employees at nominal expense.
　　Of course, none of these policies need discourage families from deciding to keep aparent at home, regardless of the financial sacrifices. For some families, that may meandoing without certain material comforts. For others, it may mean home schooling or amove to a community where the cost of living is lower. For some families, it may be thefather who stays at home—although for most families it will still be the mother whoserves as the primary caregiver.
　　Whatever the case may be, such decisions should be honored. If there’s one thing thatsocial conservatives have been right about, it’s that our modern culture sometimes failsto fully appreciate the extraordinary emotional and financial contributions—thesacrifices and just plain hard work—of the stay-at-home mom. Where socialconservatives have been wrong is in insisting that this traditional role is innate—the bestor only model of motherhood. I want my daughters to have a choice as to what’s bestfor them and their families. Whether they will have such choices will depend not just ontheir own efforts and attitudes. As Michelle has taught me, it will also depend on men—and American society—respecting and accommodating the choices they make.
　　“HI, DADDY.”
　　“Hey, sweetie-pie.”
　　It’s Friday afternoon and I’m home early to look after the girls while Michelle goes tothe hairdresser. I gather up Malia in a hug and notice a blond girl in our kitchen, peeringat me through a pair of oversized glasses.
　　“Who’s this?” I ask, setting Malia back on the floor.
　　“This is Sam. She’s over for a playdate.”
　　“Hi, Sam.” I offer Sam my hand, and she considers it for a moment before shaking itloosely. Malia rolls her eyes.
　　“Listen, Daddy…you don’t shake hands with kids.”
　　“You don’t?”
　　“No,” Malia says. “Not even teenagers shake hands. You may not have noticed, but thisis the twenty-first century.” Malia looks at Sam, who represses a smirk.
　　“So what do you do in the twenty-first century?”
　　“You just say ‘hey.’ Sometimes you wave. That’s pretty much it.”
　　“I see. I hope I didn’t embarrass you.”
　　Malia smiles. “That’s okay, Daddy. You didn’t know, because you’re used to shakinghands with grown-ups.”
　　“That’s true. Where’s your sister?”
　　“She’s upstairs.”
　　I walk upstairs to find Sasha standing in her underwear and a pink top. She pulls medown for a hug and then tells me she can’t find any shorts. I check in the closet and finda pair of blue shorts sitting right on top of her chest of drawers.
　　“What are these?”
　　Sasha frowns but reluctantly takes the shorts from me and pulls them on. After a fewminutes, she climbs into my lap.
　　“These shorts aren’t comfortable, Daddy.”
　　We go back into Sasha’s closet, open the drawer again, and find another pair of shorts,also blue. “How about these?” I ask.
　　Sasha frowns again. Standing there, she looks like a three-foot version of her mother.
　　Malia and Sam walk in to observe the stand-off.
　　“Sasha doesn’t like either of those shorts,” Malia explains.
　　I turn to Sasha and ask her why. She looks up at me warily, taking my measure.
　　“Pink and blue don’t go together,” she says finally.
　　Malia and Sam giggle. I try to look as stern as Michelle might look in suchcircumstances and tell Sasha to put on the shorts. She does what I say, but I realize she’sjust indulging me.
　　When it comes to my daughters, no one is buying my tough-guy routine.
　　Like many men today, I grew up without a father in the house. My mother and fatherdivorced when I was only two years old, and for most of my life I knew him onlythrough the letters he sent and the stories my mother and grandparents told. There weremen in my life—a stepfather with whom we lived for four years, and my grandfather,who along with my grandmother helped raise me the rest of the time—and both weregood men who treated me with affection. But my relationships with them werenecessarily partial, incomplete. In the case of my stepfather, this was a result of limitedduration and his natural reserve. And as close as I was to my grandfather, he was bothtoo old and too troubled to provide me with much direction.
　　It was women, then, who provided the ballast in my life—my grandmother, whosedogged practicality kept the family afloat, and my mother, whose love and clarity ofspirit kept my sister’s and my world centered. Because of them I never wanted foranything important. From them I would absorb the values that guide me to this day.
　　Still, as I got older I came to recognize how hard it had been for my mother andgrandmother to raise us without a strong male presence in the house. I felt as well themark that a father’s absence can leave on a child. I determined that my father’sirresponsibility toward his children, my stepfather’s remoteness, and my grandfather’sfailures would all become object lessons for me, and that my own children would have afather they could count on.
　　In the most basic sense, I’ve succeeded. My marriage is intact and my family isprovided for. I attend parent-teacher conferences and dance recitals, and my daughtersbask in my adoration. And yet, of all the areas of my life, it is in my capacities as ahusband and father that I entertain the most doubt.
　　I realize I’m not alone in this; at some level I’m just going through the same conflictingemotions that other fathers experience as they navigate an economy in flux andchanging social norms. Even as it becomes less and less attainable, the image of the1950s father—supporting his family with a nine-to-five job, sitting down for the dinnerthat his wife prepares every night, coaching Little League, and handling power tools—hovers over the culture no less powerfully than the image of the stay-at-home mom. Formany men today, the inability to be their family’s sole breadwinner is a source offrustration and even shame; one doesn’t have to be an economic determinist to believethat high unemployment and low wages contribute to the lack of parental involvementand low marriage rates among African American men.
　　For working men, no less than for working women, the terms of employment havechanged. Whether a high-paid professional or a worker on the assembly line, fathers areexpected to put in longer hours on the job than they did in the past. And these moredemanding work schedules are occurring precisely at the time when fathers areexpected—and in many cases want—to be more actively involved in the lives of theirchildren than their own fathers may have been in theirs.
　　But if the gap between the idea of parenthood in my head and the compromised realitythat I live isn’t unique, that doesn’t relieve my sense that I’m not always giving myfamily all that I could. Last Father’s Day, I was invited to speak to the members ofSalem Baptist Church on the South Side of Chicago. I didn’t have a prepared text, but Itook as my theme “what it takes to be a full-grown man.” I suggested that it was timethat men in general and black men in particular put away their excuses for not beingthere for their families. I reminded the men in the audience that being a father meantmore than bearing a child; that even those of us who were physically present in thehome are often emotionally absent; that precisely because many of us didn’t havefathers in the house we have to redouble our efforts to break the cycle; and that if wewant to pass on high expectations to our children, we have to have higher expectationsfor ourselves.
　　Thinking back on what I said, I ask myself sometimes how well I’m living up to myown exhortations. After all, unlike many of the men to whom I was speaking that day, Idon’t have to take on two jobs or the night shift in a valiant attempt to put food on thetable. I could find a job that allowed me to be home every night. Or I could find a jobthat paid more money, a job in which long hours might at least be justified by somemeasurable benefit to my family—the ability of Michelle to cut back her hours, say, or afat trust fund for the kids.
　　Instead, I have chosen a life with a ridiculous schedule, a life that requires me to begone from Michelle and the girls for long stretches of time and that exposes Michelle toall sorts of stress. I may tell myself that in some larger sense I am in politics for Maliaand Sasha, that the work I do will make the world a better place for them. But suchrationalizations seem feeble and painfully abstract when I’m missing one of the girls’
　　school potlucks because of a vote, or calling Michelle to tell her that session’s beenextended and we need to postpone our vacation. Indeed, my recent success in politicsdoes little to assuage the guilt; as Michelle told me once, only half joking, seeing yourdad’s picture in the paper may be kind of neat the first time it happens, but when ithappens all the time it’s probably kind of embarrassing.
　　And so I do my best to answer the accusation that floats around in my mind—that I amselfish, that I do what I do to feed my own ego or fill a void in my heart. When I’m notout of town, I try to be home for dinner, to hear from Malia and Sasha about their day,to read to them and tuck them into bed. I try not to schedule appearances on Sundays,and in the summers I’ll use the day to take the girls to the zoo or the pool; in the winterswe might visit a museum or the aquarium. I scold my daughters gently when theymisbehave, and try to limit their intake of both television and junk food. In all this I amencouraged by Michelle, although there are times when I get the sense that I’mencroaching on her space—that by my absences I may have forfeited certain rights tointerfere in the world she has built.
　　As for the girls, they seem to be thriving despite my frequent disappearances. Mostlythis is a testimony to Michelle’s parenting skills; she seems to have a perfect touchwhen it comes to Malia and Sasha, an ability to set firm boundaries without beingstifling. She’s also made sure that my election to the Senate hasn’t altered the girls’
　　routines very much, although what passes for a normal middle-class childhood inAmerica these days seems to have changed as much as has parenting. Gone are the dayswhen parents just sent their child outside or to the park and told him or her to be backbefore dinner. Today, with news of abductions and an apparent suspicion of anythingspontaneous or even a tiny bit slothful, the schedules of children seem to rival those oftheir parents. There are playdates, ballet classes, gymnastics classes, tennis lessons,piano lessons, soccer leagues, and what seem like weekly birthday parties. I told Maliaonce that during the entire time that I was growing up, I attended exactly two birthdayparties, both of which involved five or six kids, cone hats, and a cake. She looked at methe way I used to look at my grandfather when he told stories of the Depression—with amixture of fascination and incredulity.
　　It is left to Michelle to coordinate all the children’s activities, which she does with ageneral’s efficiency. When I can, I volunteer to help, which Michelle appreciates,although she is careful to limit my responsibilities. The day before Sasha’s birthdayparty this past June, I was told to procure twenty balloons, enough cheese pizza to feedtwenty kids, and ice. This seemed manageable, so when Michelle told me that she wasgoing to get goody bags to hand out at the end of the party, I suggested that I do that aswell. She laughed.
　　“You can’t handle goody bags,” she said. “Let me explain the goody bag thing. Youhave to go into the party store and choose the bags. Then you have to choose what toput in the bags, and what is in the boys’ bags has to be different from what is in thegirls’ bags. You’d walk in there and wander around the aisles for an hour, and then yourhead would explode.”
　　Feeling less confident, I got on the Internet. I found a place that sold balloons near thegymnastics studio where the party would be held, and a pizza place that promiseddelivery at 3:45 p.m. By the time the guests showed up the next day, the balloons werein place and the juice boxes were on ice. I sat with the other parents, catching up andwatching twenty or so five-year-olds run and jump and bounce on the equipment like aband of merry elves. I had a slight scare when at 3:50 the pizzas had not yet arrived, butthe delivery person got there ten minutes before the children were scheduled to eat.
　　Michelle’s brother, Craig, knowing the pressure I was under, gave me a high five.
　　Michelle looked up from putting pizza on paper plates and smiled.
　　As a grand finale, after all the pizza was eaten and the juice boxes drunk, after we hadsung “Happy Birthday” and eaten some cake, the gymnastics instructor gathered all thekids around an old, multicolored parachute and told Sasha to sit at its center. On thecount of three, Sasha was hoisted up into the air and back down again, then up for asecond time, and then for a third. And each time she rose above the billowing sail, shelaughed and laughed with a look of pure joy.
　　I wonder if Sasha will remember that moment when she is grown. Probably not; itseems as if I can retrieve only the barest fragments of memory from when I was five.
　　But I suspect that the happiness she felt on that parachute registers permanently in her;that such moments accumulate and embed themselves in a child’s character, becoming apart of their soul. Sometimes, when I listen to Michelle talk about her father, I hear theecho of such joy in her, the love and respect that Frasier Robinson earned not throughfame or spectacular deeds but through small, daily, ordinary acts—a love he earned bybeing there. And I ask myself whether my daughters will be able to speak of me in thatsame way.
　　As it is, the window for making such memories rapidly closes. Already Malia seems tobe moving into a different phase; she’s more curious about boys and relationships, moreself-conscious about what she wears. She’s always been older than her years, uncannilywise. Once, when she was just six years old and we were taking a walk together alongthe lake, she asked me out of the blue if our family was rich. I told her that we weren’treally rich, but that we had a lot more than most people. I asked her why she wanted toknow.
　　“Well…I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve decided I don’t want to be really, reallyrich. I think I want a simple life.”
　　Her words were so unexpected that I laughed. She looked up at me and smiled, but hereyes told me she’d meant what she said.
　　I often think of that conversation. I ask myself what Malia makes of my not-so-simplelife. Certainly she notices that other fathers attend her team’s soccer games more oftenthan I do. If this upsets her, she doesn’t let it show, for Malia tends to be protective ofother people’s feelings, trying to see the best in every situation. Still, it gives me smallcomfort to think that my eight-year-old daughter loves me enough to overlook myshortcomings.
　　I was able to get to one of Malia’s games recently, when session ended early for theweek. It was a fine summer afternoon, and the several fields were full of families when Iarrived, blacks and whites and Latinos and Asians from all over the city, women sittingon lawn chairs, men practicing kicks with their sons, grandparents helping babies tostand. I spotted Michelle and sat down on the grass beside her, and Sasha came to sit inmy lap. Malia was already out on the field, part of a swarm of players surrounding theball, and although soccer’s not her natural sport—she’s a head taller than some of herfriends, and her feet haven’t yet caught up to her height—she plays with an enthusiasmand competitiveness that makes us cheer loudly. At halftime, Malia came over to wherewe were sitting.
　　“How you feeling, sport?” I asked her.
　　“Great!” She took a swig of water. “Daddy, I have a question.”
　　“Shoot.”
　　“Can we get a dog?”
　　“What does your mother say?”
　　“She told me to ask you. I think I’m wearing her down.”
　　I looked at Michelle, who smiled and offered a shrug.
　　“How about we talk it over after the game?” I said.
　　“Okay.” Malia took another sip of water and kissed me on the cheek. “I’m glad you’rehome,” she said.
　　Before I could answer, she had turned around and started back out onto the field. Andfor an instant, in the glow of the late afternoon, I thought I saw my older daughter as thewoman she would become, as if with each step she were growing taller, her shapefilling out, her long legs carrying her into a life of her own.
　　I squeezed Sasha a little tighter in my lap. Perhaps sensing what I was feeling, Michelletook my hand. And I remembered a quote Michelle had given to a reporter during thecampaign, when he’d asked her what it was like being a political wife.
　　“It’s hard,” Michelle had said. Then, according to the reporter, she had added with a slysmile, “And that’s why Barack is such a grateful man.”
　　As usual, my wife is right.
Epilogue
MY SWEARING IN to the U.S. Senate in January 2005 completed a process thathad begun the day I announced my candidacy two years earlier—the exchange of arelatively anonymous life for a very public one.
　　To be sure, many things have remained constant. Our family still makes its home inChicago. I still go to the same Hyde Park barbershop to get my hair cut, Michelle and Ihave the same friends over to our house as we did before the election, and our daughtersstill run through the same playgrounds.
　　Still, there’s no doubt that the world has changed profoundly for me, in ways that Idon’t always care to admit. My words, my actions, my travel plans, and my tax returnsall end up in the morning papers or on the nightly news broadcast. My daughters have toendure the interruptions of well-meaning strangers whenever their father takes them tothe zoo. Even outside of Chicago, it’s becoming harder to walk unnoticed throughairports.
　　As a rule, I find it difficult to take all this attention very seriously. After all, there aredays when I still walk out of the house with a suit jacket that doesn’t match my suitpants. My thoughts are so much less tidy, my days so much less organized than theimage of me that now projects itself into the world, that it makes for occasional comicmoments. I remember the day before I was sworn in, my staff and I decided we shouldhold a press conference in our office. At the time, I was ranked ninety-ninth in seniority,and all the reporters were crammed into a tiny transition office in the basement of theDirksen Office Building, across the hall from the Senate supply store. It was my firstday in the building; I had not taken a single vote, had not introduced a single bill—indeed I had not even sat down at my desk when a very earnest reporter raised his handand asked, “Senator Obama, what is your place in history?”
　　Even some of the other reporters had to laugh.
　　Some of the hyperbole can be traced back to my speech at the 2004 DemocraticConvention in Boston, the point at which I first gained national attention. In fact, theprocess by which I was selected as the keynote speaker remains something of a mysteryto me. I had met John Kerry for the first time after the Illinois primary, when I spoke athis fund-raiser and accompanied him to a campaign event highlighting the importanceof job-training programs. A few weeks later, we got word that the Kerry people wantedme to speak at the convention, although it was not yet clear in what capacity. Oneafternoon, as I drove back from Springfield to Chicago for an evening campaign event,Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill called to deliver the news. After I hung up, Iturned to my driver, Mike Signator.
　　“I guess this is pretty big,” I said.
　　Mike nodded. “You could say that.”
　　I had only been to one previous Democratic convention, the 2000 Convention in LosAngeles. I hadn’t planned to attend that convention; I was just coming off my defeat inthe Democratic primary for the Illinois First Congressional District seat, and wasdetermined to spend most of the summer catching up on work at the law practice thatI’d left unattended during the campaign (a neglect that had left me more or less broke),as well as make up for lost time with a wife and daughter who had seen far too little ofme during the previous six months.
　　At the last minute, though, several friends and supporters who were planning to goinsisted that I join them. You need to make national contacts, they told me, for whenyou run again—and anyway, it will be fun. Although they didn’t say this at the time, Isuspect they saw a trip to the convention as a bit of useful therapy for me, on the theorythat the best thing to do after getting thrown off a horse is to get back on right away.
　　Eventually I relented and booked a flight to L.A. When I landed, I took the shuttle toHertz Rent A Car, handed the woman behind the counter my American Express card,and began looking at the map for directions to a cheap hotel that I’d found near VeniceBeach. After a few minutes the Hertz woman came back with a look of embarrassmenton her face.
　　“I’m sorry, Mr. Obama, but your card’s been rejected.”
　　“That can’t be right. Can you try again?”
　　“I tried twice, sir. Maybe you should call American Express.”
　　After half an hour on the phone, a kindhearted supervisor at American Expressauthorized the car rental. But the episode served as an omen of things to come. Notbeing a delegate, I couldn’t secure a floor pass; according to the Illinois Party chairman,he was already inundated with requests, and the best he could do was give me a passthat allowed entry only onto the convention site. I ended up watching most of thespeeches on various television screens scattered around the Staples Center, occasionallyfollowing friends or acquaintances into skyboxes where it was clear I didn’t belong. ByTuesday night, I realized that my presence was serving neither me nor the DemocraticParty any apparent purpose, and by Wednesday morning I was on the first flight back toChicago.
　　Given the distance between my previous role as a convention gate-crasher and mynewfound role as convention keynoter, I had some cause to worry that my appearance inBoston might not go very well. But perhaps because by that time I had becomeaccustomed to outlandish things happening in my campaign, I didn’t feel particularlynervous. A few days after the call from Ms. Cahill, I was back in my hotel room inSpringfield, making notes for a rough draft of the speech while watching a basketballgame. I thought about the themes that I’d sounded during the campaign—thewillingness of people to work hard if given the chance, the need for government to helpprovide a foundation for opportunity, the belief that Americans felt a sense of mutualobligation toward one another. I made a list of the issues I might touch on—health care,education, the war in Iraq.
　　But most of all, I thought about the voices of all the people I’d met on the campaigntrail. I remembered Tim Wheeler and his wife in Galesburg, trying to figure out how toget their teenage son the liver transplant he needed. I remembered a young man in EastMoline named Seamus Ahern who was on his way to Iraq—the desire he had to servehis country, the look of pride and apprehension on the face of his father. I remembered ayoung black woman I’d met in East St. Louis whose name I never would catch, but whotold me of her efforts to attend college even though no one in her family had evergraduated from high school.
　　It wasn’t just the struggles of these men and women that had moved me. Rather, it wastheir determination, their self-reliance, a relentless optimism in the face of hardship. Itbrought to mind a phrase that my pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., had once used ina sermon.
　　The audacity of hope.
　　That was the best of the American spirit, I thought—having the audacity to believedespite all the evidence to the contrary that we could restore a sense of community to anation torn by conflict; the gall to believe that despite personal setbacks, the loss of ajob or an illness in the family or a childhood mired in poverty, we had some control—and therefore responsibility—over our own fate.
　　It was that audacity, I thought, that joined us as one people. It was that pervasive spiritof hope that tied my own family’s story to the larger American story, and my own storyto those of the voters I sought to represent.
　　I turned off the basketball game and started to write.
　　A FEW WEEKS later, I arrived in Boston, caught three hours’ sleep, and traveled frommy hotel to the Fleet Center for my first appearance on Meet the Press. Toward the endof the segment, Tim Russert put up on the screen an excerpt from a 1996 interview withthe Cleveland Plain-Dealer that I had forgotten about entirely, in which the reporter hadasked me—as someone just getting into politics as a candidate for the Illinois statesenate—what I thought about the Democratic Convention in Chicago.
　　The convention’s for sale, right…. You’ve got these $10,000-a-plate dinners, GoldenCircle Clubs. I think when the average voter looks at that, they rightly feel they’ve beenlocked out of the process. They can’t attend a $10,000 breakfast. They know that thosewho can are going to get the kind of access they can’t imagine.
　　After the quote was removed from the screen, Russert turned to me. “A hundred andfifty donors gave $40 million to this convention,” he said. “It’s worse than Chicago,using your standards. Are you offended by that, and what message does that send theaverage voter?”
　　I replied that politics and money were a problem for both parties, but that John Kerry’svoting record, and my own, indicated that we voted for what was best for the country. Isaid that a convention wouldn’t change that, although I did suggest that the moreDemocrats could encourage participation from people who felt locked out of theprocess, the more we stayed true to our origins as the party of the average Joe, thestronger we would be as a party.
　　Privately, I thought my original 1996 quote was better.
　　There was a time when political conventions captured the urgency and drama ofpolitics—when nominations were determined by floor managers and head counts andside deals and arm-twisting, when passions or miscalculation might result in a second orthird or fourth round of balloting. But that time passed long ago. With the advent ofbinding primaries, the much-needed end to the dominance of party bosses andbackroom deals in smoke-filled rooms, today’s convention is bereft of surprises. Rather,it serves as a weeklong infomercial for the party and its nominee—as well as a means ofrewarding the party faithful and major contributors with four days of food, drink,entertainment, and shoptalk.
　　I spent most of the first three days at the convention fulfilling my role in this pageant. Ispoke to rooms full of major Democratic donors and had breakfast with delegates fromacross the fifty states. I practiced my speech in front of a video monitor, did a walk-through of how it would be staged, received instruction on where to stand, where towave, and how to best use the microphones. My communications director, RobertGibbs, and I trotted up and down the stairs of the Fleet Center, giving interviews thatwere sometimes only two minutes apart, to ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, andNPR, at each stop emphasizing the talking points that the Kerry-Edwards team hadprovided, each word of which had been undoubtedly tested in a battalion of polls and apanoply of focus groups.
　　Given the breakneck pace of my days, I didn’t have much time to worry about how myspeech would go over. It wasn’t until Tuesday night, after my staff and Michelle haddebated for half an hour over what tie I should wear (we finally settled on the tie thatRobert Gibbs was wearing), after we had ridden over to the Fleet Center and heardstrangers shout “Good luck!” and “Give ’em hell, Obama!,” after we had visited with avery gracious and funny Teresa Heinz Kerry in her hotel room, until finally it was justMichelle and me sitting backstage and watching the broadcast, that I started to feel justa tad bit nervous. I mentioned to Michelle that my stomach was feeling a little grumbly.
　　She hugged me tight, looked into my eyes, and said, “Just don’t screw it up, buddy!”
　　We both laughed. Just then, one of the production managers came into the hold roomand told me it was time to take my position offstage. Standing behind the black curtain,listening to Dick Durbin introduce me, I thought about my mother and father andgrandfather and what it might have been like for them to be in the audience. I thoughtabout my grandmother in Hawaii, watching the convention on TV because her back wastoo deteriorated for her to travel. I thought about all the volunteers and supporters backin Illinois who had worked so hard on my behalf.
　　Lord, let me tell their stories right, I said to myself. Then I walked onto the stage.
　　I WOULD BE lying if I said that the positive reaction to my speech at the Bostonconvention—the letters I received, the crowds who showed up to rallies once we gotback to Illinois—wasn’t personally gratifying. After all, I got into politics to have someinfluence on the public debate, because I thought I had something to say about thedirection we need to go as a country.
　　Still, the torrent of publicity that followed the speech reinforces my sense of howfleeting fame is, contingent as it is on a thousand different matters of chance, of eventsbreaking this way rather than that. I know that I am not so much smarter than the man Iwas six years ago, when I was temporarily stranded at LAX. My views on health care oreducation or foreign policy are not so much more refined than they were when I laboredin obscurity as a community organizer. If I am wiser, it is mainly because I havetraveled a little further down the path I have chosen for myself, the path of politics, andhave gotten a glimpse of where it may lead, for good and for ill.
　　I remember a conversation I had almost twenty years ago with a friend of mine, an olderman who had been active in the civil rights efforts in Chicago in the sixties and wasteaching urban studies at Northwestern University. I had just decided, after three yearsof organizing, to attend law school; because he was one of the few academics I knew, Ihad asked him if he would be willing to give me a recommendation.
　　He said he would be happy to write me the recommendation, but first wanted to knowwhat I intended to do with a law degree. I mentioned my interest in a civil rightspractice, and that at some point I might try my hand at running for office. He nodded hishead and asked whether I had considered what might be involved in taking such a path,what I would be willing to do to make the Law Review, or make partner, or get electedto that first office and then move up the ranks. As a rule, both law and politics requiredcompromise, he said; not just on issues, but on more fundamental things—your valuesand ideals. He wasn’t saying that to dissuade me, he said. It was just a fact. It wasbecause of his unwillingness to compromise that, although he had been approachedmany times in his youth to enter politics, he had always declined.
　　“It’s not that compromise is inherently wrong,” he said to me. “I just didn’t find itsatisfying. And the one thing I’ve discovered as I get older is that you have to do what issatisfying to you. In fact that’s one of the advantages of old age, I suppose, that you’vefinally learned what matters to you. It’s hard to know that at twenty-six. And theproblem is that nobody else can answer that question for you. You can only figure it outon your own.”
　　Twenty years later, I think back on that conversation and appreciate my friend’s wordsmore than I did at the time. For I am getting to an age where I have a sense of whatsatisfies me, and although I am perhaps more tolerant of compromise on the issues thanmy friend was, I know that my satisfaction is not to be found in the glare of televisioncameras or the applause of the crowd. Instead, it seems to come more often now fromknowing that in some demonstrable way I’ve been able to help people live their liveswith some measure of dignity. I think about what Benjamin Franklin wrote to hismother, explaining why he had devoted so much of his time to public service: “I wouldrather have it said, He lived usefully, than, He died rich.”
　　That’s what satisfies me now, I think—being useful to my family and the people whoelected me, leaving behind a legacy that will make our children’s lives more hopefulthan our own. Sometimes, working in Washington, I feel I am meeting that goal. Atother times, it seems as if the goal recedes from me, and all the activity I engage in—thehearings and speeches and press conferences and position papers—are an exercise invanity, useful to no one.
　　When I find myself in such moods, I like to take a run along the Mall. Usually I go inthe early evening, especially in the summer and fall, when the air in Washington iswarm and still and the leaves on the trees barely rustle. After dark, not many people areout—perhaps a few couples taking a walk, or homeless men on benches, organizingtheir possessions. Most of the time I stop at the Washington Monument, but sometimesI push on, across the street to the National World War II Memorial, then along theReflecting Pool to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, then up the stairs of the LincolnMemorial.
　　At night, the great shrine is lit but often empty. Standing between marble columns, Iread the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address. I look out over theReflecting Pool, imagining the crowd stilled by Dr. King’s mighty cadence, and thenbeyond that, to the floodlit obelisk and shining Capitol dome.
　　And in that place, I think about America and those who built it. This nation’s founders,who somehow rose above petty ambitions and narrow calculations to imagine a nationunfurling across a continent. And those like Lincoln and King, who ultimately laiddown their lives in the service of perfecting an imperfect union. And all the faceless,nameless men and women, slaves and soldiers and tailors and butchers, constructinglives for themselves and their children and grandchildren, brick by brick, rail by rail,calloused hand by calloused hand, to fill in the landscape of our collective dreams.
　　It is that process I wish to be a part of.
　　My heart is filled with love for this country.