Barack Obama, Politics

OBAMA FOR USA. Politics was very much on his mind as Barack Obama cemented his ties to Hyde Park, the Chicago neighborhood with a long history of electing reform-minded politicians. A tight-knit community that runs through the South Side, Hyde Park is a liberal bastion of integration in what is otherwise one of the nation's most segregated cities. At its heart is the University of Chicago, where Mr. Obama also began cultivating connections to the city's white legal elite, including Democrats like former U.S. Judge Abner J. Mikva and the former chairman of the F.C.C., Newton Minow. "He felt completely comfortable in Hyde Park," said Martha Minow, Newton's daughter and Mr. Obama's former law professor and mentor.

In 1992, Mr. Obama led a successful registration drive that added nearly 150,000 black voters and helped elect Carol Moseley Braun, a Democrat and the first African-American woman in the U.S. Senate. Judson Miner, the lawyer who hired him, was also active in Democratic politics. In 1995, Obama kicked off his candidacy for the Illinois Senate at the same Hyde Park hotel where Harold Washington, the city's first black mayor, had announced his candidacy.

He did not fit the profile of the typical black politician. For one, he had not grown up in the traditions of the American black church and he was younger than the generation of civil rights leaders for whom Birmingham and Selma were defining moments. He had thrived in white institutions with a style more conciliatory than confrontational, more technocrat than preacher. Like other members of a new class of black political leaders, he tended to speak about race indirectly or implicitly, when he spoke about it at all.

In a state where the Democratic machine still dominated local politics, he was an independent progressive. But once in the Senate, he learned to straddle all of these worlds. He found a mentor in an old-style boss, State Senator Emil Jones Jr., a black leader of the older generation. Mr. Jones made sure to give Obama headline-grabbing issues, including ethics reform and an issue important to the black community, legislation forcing the police to tape interrogations. He played in a regular poker game with other legislators.

However, the legislative footprints he left in Springfield were hardly deep. During the presidential campaign, his record of voting "present" 130 times, rather than casting an aye or a nay, was criticized, although Obama insisted that he did not use those present votes to duck taking controversial stands. And in 1999, he made a rare political miscalculation.

Despite warnings from friends like Newton Minow, he decided to challenge an incumbent Democratic congressman and former Black Panther, Bobby L. Rush. Mr. Rush enjoyed deep loyalty in the black community and trounced Obama. "He was blinded by his ambition," Representative Rush said later, but he nonetheless endorsed Obama for president.

In 2002, as Washington prepared to wage war in Iraq, Obama contemplated making an antiwar speech, something unusual for a state legislator. He consulted David Axelrod, a prominent national political consultant, and the speech he gave managed to carefully thread the political needle. He called the war in Iraq "dumb," while carefully pointing out that he was not opposed to all wars. His early stand against the war gave him a defining issue in his run for president.

Unexpectedly, a seat in the U.S. Senate opened up in 2004. This time, Obama was careful to get the blessing of Representative Jessie Jackson Jr., who was thought to have his eye on the seat but had decided against it. The winds were running strongly in Obama's favor. For one, he had been selected to give the keynote speech at the Democratic convention and he managed to set the place on fire with his youthful energy and lilting rhetoric.Then, his two most serious opponents self-destructed. He won the election with 70 percent of the popular vote.

So by the time he was sworn into the U.S. Senate, he was already a megawatt celebrity.

He did not fall in love with Washington. He was 99th in seniority and in the minority party for his first two years. At committee hearings he had to wait to speak until the end.

Although he won a seat on the coveted Senate Foreign Relations Committee and maintained a solidly liberal voting record, he disappointed some Democrats by not taking a more prominent role in opposing the war. In 2006, he voted against troop withdrawal, arguing that a firm date would hamstring diplomats and military commanders in the field. His most important accomplishment was a push for ethics reform, but as the legislation was reaching the Senate floor, Obama was criticized for not working harder to prevent the bill's collapse.

During the 2006 mid-term elections, Obama was his party's most sought-after campaigner and he raised money for many of his Democratic colleagues. In a matter of days, he raised nearly $1 million online, a glimpse of the fundraising prowess to come.

And he was running for president even as he was still getting lost in the Capitol's corridors.