The Long-Shot Candidate

when we went to illinois nearly two years ago to do a story on a young charismatic senator named barack obama it wasn't because we thought he was going to be elected the 44th president of the united states nobody thought that but he was becoming a political phenomenon and there had never been a presidential candidate quite like him his last name rhymed with osama his middle name was hussein racially he was half white and half black and politically he was green it would have been easy to dismiss him were it not for the fact that he was running second in the polls behind hillary clinton for the democratic presidential nomination we wanted to find out what all the fuss was about this is the old state capitol we've got obviously a lot of history here it was a frigid february night in 2007 at the old state capitol in springfield illinois where barack obama a first-term senator with two years of national political experience planned to announce his candidacy for president the following day three years ago you were a state legislator here in springfield what makes you think that you're qualified to be president of the united states you know i think we're in a moment of history where probably the most important thing we need to do is to bring the country together and one of the skills that i bring to bear is being able to pull together the different strands of american life and and and focus on what we have in common you don't have any doubts that you're ready no where do you get all this confidence my wife asked me that all the time he said at this desk as he gave us a tour of the building where abraham lincoln served in the legislature and delivered the house divided speech there was much for obama to be confident about at age 45 he was one of only three black senators since reconstruction the first african-american president of the harvard law review a professor of constitutional law at the university of chicago and the author of two best-selling books this is a campaign matter this is a campaign banner and he was just audacious enough to invite comparisons to one of the few american presidents who was elected with even less political experience than he had and he grew into the presidency in ways that i think nobody would have anticipated we had first met him the week before at the winter meeting of the democratic national committee in washington it was in the parlance of politicos a cattle call an opportunity for all 10 democratic presidential hopefuls to make their pitch to the movers and shakers i know that it's hard to believe that we can do this obama's reception was warm which you might expect for a rising young star but it was a tough room there is no stopping us join me most of those in attendance were already committed to senator hillary clinton or john edwards and obama's candidacy was not yet taken seriously at least by the party establishment so nice to see you how are you how are you how are you but it was a much different story later that afternoon on the campus of george mason university in the virginia suburbs where obama held his first campaign rally just two weeks after establishing an exploratory presidential committee our staff had nothing to do with organizing this these kids organized it we just showed up how soon are we ready to start it was our first exposure to what came to be known as obama mania let's just roll let's go let's go talk to some people hey hey you sensed immediately that something unusual was going on something rarely seen in american politics you guys are too fired up 5 000 students had turned out to see him flooding the main floor of the johnson center and ringing the floors above he had opposed the iraq war from the very beginning and he urged his young audience to cast aside its cynicism of politics and engage the system evoking the words of martin luther king the ark of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice it bends towards justice but here's the thing young people it doesn't bend on its own he had yet to declare his candidacy but he was already the biggest political celebrity in america propelled by the media hunger for a fresh face and a good story he had graced the covers of time and newsweek been endorsed by oprah and the campaign itself seemed to have morphed out of his latest book tour mr obama is america ready for black presidents as he left the stage and made his way out of the building he was mobbed by a crush of people protected only by university security it was not a problem he encountered in the u.s senate whereas the junior senator from illinois he was 88th on the list of seniority a political neophyte and a body where patience is prized budgets are about priorities but frustrated by the ways of washington and concerned about being co-opted or compromised he decided that this was his moment to make the move i want to read you a quote from the saint petersburg times obama needs more than one senate term to qualify for the presidency of the united states the world is too complex and dangerous for this likable charismatic african-american neophyte to practice on-the-job training right why are you in such a hurry why not you know you know the truth is i'm not we have a narrow window to solve some of the problems that we face 10 years from now we may not be in a position to to recover the sense of respect around the world that we've lost over the last six years certainly when you look at our energy policy and environment uh and the prospects of climate change we've got to make some decisions right now and so i feel a sense of urgency for the country there were all sorts of things that mitigated his chances for success not the least of which was race his father was a black man from kenya his mother a white woman from kansas and he spent his formative years living with his maternal grandparents in hawaii a black child and a white family he struggled with his racial identity if you look african-american in this society you're treated as an african-american and when you're a child in particular that is how you begin to identify yourself how important is race in defining yourself i am rooted in the african-american community but i'm not defined by it i am comfortable in my racial identity but that's not all i am you think the country's ready for a black president yes you don't think it's going to hold you back no i you know the i think if i uh don't win this race uh it will be because of other factors it's it's going to be because i have not shown to the american people a vision for where the country needs to go that that they can embrace this whole area a few days later we were driving around the south side of chicago where that vision had begun to take shape after graduating from columbia university obama took a job working as a community organizer for thirteen thousand dollars a year i worked out of the basement right here in holy rosary church you can make a left here this is augel gardens which is a public housing project it was obama's first real interface with politics and government and helped convince him that change comes from the bottom up by mobilizing grassroots support one of the tenets of his campaign but support was slow in coming from the african-american community where some dismissed him as the son of an immigrant not a descendant of slaves there are african-americans who don't think that you're black enough who don't think that you have had the required experience uh the truth of the matter is you know when i'm walking down the south side of chicago and visiting my barber shop and uh playing basketball in uh in some of these neighborhoods those aren't questions i get asked they think you're blocked as far as they can tell i also notice when i'm catching a cab nobody nobody's confused about that either as a consequence he would make lasting political friendships here that would help him later in his career but after three years as a community organizer obama enrolled at harvard law school and through a summer program with a chicago law firm he met michelle robinson another harvard law school grad who was assigned to look after him you were his mentor i was yeah i was i was his boss no no i was a first year associate at sidley in austin and he was a first-year summer associate was it love at first sight no no no it was interest at first sight because i had this preconceived notion about who this guy was going to be because you know i'd read his biography but then he came in that that first day and he was cuter than he looked on his picture so i was impressed and we went to lunch and we actually had a good good conversation he was interesting he was self-deprecating he was uh he was he was funny uh and his background was was just amazing and when did it become how long did it take to become something more than that i i was persistent so i i asked her out and she uh she said no she was taking this uh this whole advisory thing too seriously eventually she gave in i i took her to basket robbins for ice cream and that sealed the deal when they first got married 16 years ago they lived at her parents home on chicago's south side right here is uh my mother-in-law's uh house the house that michelle grew up in and we lived on the second floor before we could afford our own apartment i studied the bar up in that little uh little alcove right up there and uh so my mother-in-law still lives here this is the favorite place to hang out for my two daughters really they still love coming over to grandma's house where she basically lets them get away with anything they want the obamas now live in this house on the edge of the university of chicago campus where michelle was an executive with the university's hospitals the two girls sasha and malia were five and eight and they were the ones who let us in when we rang the doorbell does your dad do this every weekend no he used to what else does he make besides tina fish chili and that's it what about my what about my delicious cheese toast i guess yeah that you don't think that qualifies as a that's cooking huh no not exactly listen i actually used to cook before uh before michelle and i got married uh and then we got married and then we got married and i stopped the two girls were interested in their father's campaign only to the extent that it influenced their campaign to get a dog their only memory of the white house when they made the tour was president bush's dog so so that was their main focus uh was the the possibility this is our end this is our ending because they've been angling for this dog for a long time you run for president but if we get a dog we don't care what you do when it came to politics michelle was always the harder cell does it put strains on the marriage from time to time oh no absolutely it has would you let him go ahead and do this yeah yeah yeah absolutely i think if i weren't married to him i'd want him to be in there so i don't want to stand in the way of that because we have to work out a few things so we've had those arguments uh and uh and i've lost them all well we we were with him at george mason and it was like it was like a rock concert i mean he was people were mobbing him do you understand the scarismo thing you see it yeah yeah i do i do i'm not moved in that way but you were saying the other day that uh uh you have your husband and then there's this character barack obama barack obama that's how the kids see it there's barack obama yeah and he's a he's an interesting fascinating yeah you might vote for him i would vote for him but he has nothing to do i want him to run for office yeah he has nothing to do with the what goes on here the guy who uh you know doesn't uh put up this doesn't put up with sex yeah no two different people is he competitive oh yeah yeah no no he doesn't like to lose yeah no he's he's a competitor he's a he's a he's an athlete you know even playing a pickup game even playing scrabble he likes to win this is a tough question to ask but a number of years ago colin powell was thinking about running for president and his wife alma really did not want him to run because she was worried about some crazy person with a gun has that been a factor i mean have you talked about that is that something that you think about i don't lose sleep over it um because the realities are is that you know as a black man you know where i can get shot going to the gas station you know so you you know you can't you know you you can't make decisions based on on fear and the possibility of what might happen uh we we just weren't raised that way the following saturday february 10 2007 they made the trip to springfield where barack obama formally declared his candidacy for president of the united states from the steps of the old capitol i know that i haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of washington but i've been there long enough to know that the ways of washington must change it seemed like a real long shot but 17 000 people waited hours in seven degree temperatures to witness the occasion obama's two-year audition before the american people had begun you

Channel: CBS

Views: 1,859,451

Keywords: 60, Minutes, Steve, Kroft, Barack, Obama, Illinois, Senator, 44, President, White, House, Politics, Hillary, Clinton, John, McCain, Joe, Biden, Sarah, Palin, Primaries, Election

Id: F8MxP9adPO8

Length: 14min 36sec (876 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 29 2008