Барак Обама - The Audacity of Hope

And perhaps as the next race approaches, a voice within tells you that you don’t want to have to go through all the misery of raising all that money in small increments all over again. You realize that you no longer have the cachet you did as the upstart, the fresh face; you haven’t changed Washington, and you’ve made a lot of people unhappy with difficult votes. The path of least resistance — of fund-raisers organized by the special interests, the corporate PACs, and the top lobbying shops — starts to look awfully tempting, 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 learning the ropes. The problems of ordinary people, the voices of the Rust Belt town or the dwindling heartland, become a distant echo rather than a palpable reality, abstractions to be managed rather than battles to be fought.

THERE ARE OTHER forces at work on a senator. As important as money is in campaigns, it’s not just fund-raising that puts a candidate over the top. If you want to win in politics — if you don’t want to lose — then organized people can be just as important as cash, particularly in the low-turnout primaries that, in the world of the gerrymandered political map and divided electorates, are often the most significant race a candidate faces. Few people these days have the time or inclination to volunteer on a political campaign, particularly since the day-to-day tasks of working on a campaign generally involve licking envelopes and knocking on doors, not drafting speeches and thinking big thoughts. And so, if you are a candidate in need of political workers or voter lists, you go where people are already organized. For Democrats, this means the unions, the environmental groups, and the prochoice groups. For Republicans, it means the religious right, local chambers of commerce, the NRA, and the antitax organizations.

I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the term “special interests,” which lumps together ExxonMobil and bricklayers, the pharmaceutical lobby and the parents of special-ed kids. Most political scientists would probably disagree with me, but to my mind, there’s a difference between a corporate lobby whose clout is based on money alone, and a group of like-minded individuals — whether they be textile workers, gun aficionados, veterans, or family farmers — coming together to promote their interests; between those who use their economic power to magnify their political influence far beyond what their numbers might justify, and those who are simply seeking to pool their votes to sway their representatives. The former subvert the very idea of democracy. The latter are its essence.

Still, the impact of interest groups on candidates for office is not always pretty. To maintain an active membership, keep the donations coming in, and be heard above the din, the groups that have an impact on politics aren’t fashioned to promote the public interest. They aren’t searching for the most thoughtful, well-qualified, or broad-minded candidate to support. Instead, they are focused on a narrow set of concerns — their pensions, their crop supports, their cause. Simply put, they have an ax to grind. And they want you, the elected official, to help them grind it.

During my own primary campaign, for example, I must have filled out at least fifty questionnaires. None of them were subtle. Typically they would contain a list of ten or twelve questions, phrased along the following lines: “If elected, will you solemnly pledge to repeal the Scrooge Law, which has resulted in widows and orphans being kicked to the curb?”

Time dictated that I fill out only those questionnaires sent by organizations that might actually endorse me (given my voting record, the NRA and National Right to Life, for example, did not make the cut), so I could usually answer “yes” to most questions without any major discomfort. But every so often I would come across a question that gave me pause. I might agree with a union on the need to enforce labor and environmental standards in our trade laws, but did I believe that NAFTA should be repealed? I might agree that universal health care should be one of the nation’s top priorities, but did it follow that a constitutional amendment was the best way to achieve that goal? I found myself hedging on such questions, writing in the margins, explaining the difficult policy choices involved. My staff would shake their heads. Get one answer wrong, they explained, and the endorsement, the workers, and the mailing list would all go to the other guy. Get them all right, I thought, and you have just locked yourself into the 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 a typical, two-faced politician.

I lost some endorsements by not giving the right answer. A couple of times, a group surprised us and gave me their endorsement despite a wrong answer.

And then sometimes it didn’t matter how you filled out your questionnaire. In addition to Mr. Hull, my most formidable opponent in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate was the Illinois state comptroller, Dan Hynes, a fine man and able public servant whose father, Tom Hynes, happened to be a former state senate president, Cook County assessor, ward committeeman, Democratic National Committee member, and one of the most well-connected political figures in the state. Before even entering the race, Dan had already sewn up the support of 85 of the 102 Democratic county chairmen in the state, the majority of my colleagues in the state legislature, and Mike Madigan, who served 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 credits at 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 of organized labor. For seven years I had been their ally in the state legislature, sponsoring many 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 the campaign got rolling, odd things began to happen. The Teamsters held their endorsement 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 ever talking to me. Visiting a labor reception during the Illinois State Fair, we were told that no campaign signs would be allowed; when my staff and I arrived, we discovered the room plastered with Hynes posters. On the evening of the AFL–CIO endorsement session, I noticed a number of my labor friends averting their eyes as I walked through the room. An older guy who headed up one of the state’s bigger locals walked up and patted me on the back.

“It’s nothing personal, Barack,” he said with a rueful smile. “You know, Tom Hynes and me go back fifty years. Grew up in the same neighborhood. Belonged to the same parish. 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, representing textile, hotel, and foodservice workers — broke ranks and chose to endorse me over Hynes, support that proved critical in giving my campaign some semblance of weight. It was a risky move on their part; had I lost, those unions might have paid a price in access, in support, in credibility with their members.