The Amateur (4 page)
Authors: Edward Klein
Early in his campaign for the United States Senate, Obama appeared at the offices of
N’DIGO,
Chicago’s leading African-American magazine. Only months before, Hermene Hartman,
N’DIGO
’s dynamic founder and publisher, had put Obama on the cover of her magazine—a first for the state senator. This time, however, Obama was looking for more than mere publicity. He desperately needed money to fund his campaign.
N’DIGO,
Chicago’s leading African-American magazine. Only months before, Hermene Hartman,
N’DIGO
’s dynamic founder and publisher, had put Obama on the cover of her magazine—a first for the state senator. This time, however, Obama was looking for more than mere publicity. He desperately needed money to fund his campaign.
“He came to me and said, ‘I need you to raise $50,000 for me,’” Hartman recalled in an interview for this book. “I said, ‘You’re out of your mind. I don’t have $50,000, and if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you.’ And he said, ‘But I gotta get it. I opened up an office, turned the phones on, the lights are on, and I gotta move forward. C’mon, think of something.’
“He said, ‘I’ve got one more shot,’” Hartman continued. “Michelle’s going to kill me.” He couldn’t tell Michelle that he had gone ahead and secretly opened an office even though they didn’t have any money. He knew that she would be furious. She was fed up and wasn’t going to take it anymore. He had to be successful. It was do or die.
“So I called a friend named Al Johnson, who was the first African-American to have a General Motors dealership,” Hartman went on. “Al, who’s now deceased, was a political player, a supporter of politicians, and he had his own political action committee. I said, ‘Al, I have a wonderful person I want you to meet and support.’ And Al met Barack at the East Bank Club. Afterward, Al called me and said, ‘We hit it off. I gave your boy $50,000. I think he’s going to go far.’
“Now, in Chicago, ‘far’ is the mayor’s office,” Hartman went on. “And I said to Al, ‘I don’t see Barack in the mayor’s office. This is a national guy. He can cross over and appeal to both blacks and whites.’”
In addition to being the publisher of
N’DIGO
, Hermene Hartman is also the past president of the Alliance of Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs, a powerful group of African-Americans in Chicago. The members of ABLE, as the group is known, were the first to get behind Obama’s bid for the United States Senate.
N’DIGO
, Hermene Hartman is also the past president of the Alliance of Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs, a powerful group of African-Americans in Chicago. The members of ABLE, as the group is known, were the first to get behind Obama’s bid for the United States Senate.
“Barack was launched by black business people,” Hartman told me. “I call them Day One People. Jim Reynolds, who had met Barack on the basketball court and introduced him around, held a fundraiser for him in his living room. The next day, Barack called me to ask, ‘How did I do?’ I said, ‘You sounded like you’re running for dogcatcher.’ And he said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘If you’re running for United States senator, you have to broaden your view beyond neighborhood concerns. You have to go sit with Jesse Jackson. He knows these subjects—Africa, Europe, the whole international scene.’
“So I called Jesse and said, ‘Barack needs to talk to you. He needs some broadening.’ And Jesse said, ‘Sure, I’ll meet with him.’ Barack lived not far from Jesse’s Operation PUSH [People United to Save Humanity], and for the next year Jesse invited Barack to speak at PUSH every Saturday so that he could hone his speaking skills.”
Perhaps out of fear of alienating white voters, Obama never acknowledged his debt to Jesse Jackson. Nor, for that matter, did Obama show much gratitude to the many other African-Americans who had helped him ascend from obscurity to national acclaim. As Hartman put it to me: “Barack is not necessarily known for his loyalty.”
A particularly egregious case in point was Obama’s treatment of Steven Rogers, an African-American who made a fortune in the private sector before becoming the Gund Family Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
“I first met Obama at a golf fundraiser for a charter school on the West Side of Chicago, which serves predominantly African-American students from low-income families,” Rogers told me. “He was an unexpected addition to my foursome, who repeatedly talked to me about his desire to run for the United States Senate. I asked him, ‘What do you want from me?’ He said, ‘My wife will not allow me to run for the Senate until I clear up the debts from my unsuccessful run for Congress.’ I believe he told me that he had $8,000 of [private] debt. I donated $3,000.
“After that meeting,” Rogers continued, “he began leaving messages on my cell phone, asking for money for his campaign and that of other Democrats, such as Senator Tom Daschle. He told me that he wanted to show the Democratic Party leaders that he could raise money for candidates throughout the country, and that his success in doing so would increase his chances for being appointed to a powerful Senate committee, such as Finance. He specifically asked that I donate $2,000 to five Democrats who were running for reelection.
“I agreed to make the campaign contributions, and I invited him to address my students, which he did. Afterwards, in the parking lot, I asked him, ‘Where are you going next?’ He said, ‘Man, I’m going to the South Side. Every Saturday I’ve got to see Reverend [Jesse] Jackson.’ And I said, ‘When you get elected to the Senate, I want you to come back here and speak to my students.’ And he said, ‘I’ll tell you what. When I get elected, I’ll bring your students to Washington.’ I said, ‘Don’t bother. Just bring your black butt back here.’
“After he got elected, my students tried to contact him. He wouldn’t answer their calls. So I called and said, ‘Listen, Senator, I’d like you to come.’ And he said, ‘Listen, Steve, I can’t come. I’m just inundated with requests. I have governors calling me. I have Warren Buffett calling me.’ I said, ‘What about that money I gave you?’ And he said, ‘Come on, man, you should know better when politicians make promises.’
“I was furious, and I said, ‘You’re a dirty, rotten motherfucker. What kind of shit are you trying to pull? Fuck you, you big-eared motherfucker. You said you’d bring the Kellogg students to Washington, and all I’m asking is that you come speak to your constituents.’
“A year later, he finally showed up. He gave a powerful speech. He took pictures with my wife and me. And I haven’t spoken to him since. What you have with Barack Obama is a lack of character.”
CHAPTER 5
THE MAN WHO PREPARED OBAMA FOR THE PRESIDENCY
The true fanatic is a theocrat, someone who sees himself as acting on behalf of some super-personal force: the Race, the Party, History, the Proletariat, the Poor, and so on. These absolve him from evil, hence he may safely do anything in their service.
Religion’s Rebel Son
“I
bring you greetings from my pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.”
bring you greetings from my pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.”
For years, that was the way Barack Obama began his speeches when he appeared before black church groups all across America. By the time he became a United States senator and set out to run for president, Obama even
sounded
a lot like Jeremiah Wright. He had dropped his professorial manner of speaking and adopted Wright’s rhythmic cadences—his use of homey idioms, his pregnant pauses between phrases, and his rhetorical technique of creating a call-and-response pattern from the audience, which was aimed at whipping his listeners into a state of euphoria. (Obama employed this oratorical technique to great effect in the 2008 presidential campaign.)
sounded
a lot like Jeremiah Wright. He had dropped his professorial manner of speaking and adopted Wright’s rhythmic cadences—his use of homey idioms, his pregnant pauses between phrases, and his rhetorical technique of creating a call-and-response pattern from the audience, which was aimed at whipping his listeners into a state of euphoria. (Obama employed this oratorical technique to great effect in the 2008 presidential campaign.)
Until Obama married Michelle Robinson in 1991, when he was thirty years old, his most significant adult relationship was with Jeremiah Wright. His connection to Wright ran long and deep, and went back further than has been generally reported. It started well before Obama joined Wright’s congregation, Trinity United Church of Christ, where the pastor’s sermons on Black Liberation Theology encouraged a victimization mentality among his black parishioners.
When Jeremiah Wright and Trinity made headlines during the 2008 presidential race, most white Americans had never heard of Black Liberation Theology. According to Anthony B. Bradley, an associate professor of theology at The King’s College in New York City, Black Liberation Theology asserts “life for blacks in America has been in the past and will be in the future a life of being victimized by the oppression of whites. In today’s terms, it is the conviction that, forty years after the Civil Rights Act, conditions for blacks have not substantially changed....
“One of the pillars of Obama’s home church, Trinity United Church of Christ, is ‘economic parity,’” Professor Bradley continues. “On its website, Trinity claims that God is not pleased with ‘America’s economic mal-distribution.’ Among all of the controversial comments by Jeremiah Wright, the idea of massive wealth redistribution is the most alarming. The code language ‘economic parity’ and references to ‘mal-distribution’ is nothing more than channeling the twisted economic views of Karl Marx. Black Liberation theologians have explicitly stated a preference for Marxism as an ethical framework for the black church because Marxist thought is predicated on a system of oppressor class (whites) versus victim class (blacks).”
Echoes of Jeremiah Wright’s Marxist ideology can be found in many of Obama’s remarks. For instance, when Obama says, “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody,” he is channeling Jeremiah Wright. This should come as no surprise, since Wright’s influence on Obama was unrivaled for more than twenty years. And those were Obama’s formative years when his core beliefs took shape. Not even Michelle Obama held such intellectual and political sway over her husband.
Jeremiah Wright became far more than a religious and spiritual guide to Obama; he was his substitute father, life coach, and political inspiration wrapped in one package. At each step of Obama’s career, Wright was there with practical advice and counsel. Wright encouraged Obama to make a career of politics, and he offered to hook up Obama with members of Trinity United Church of Christ who had money and important connections. After Obama lost the congressional election to Bobby Rush and Michelle talked about divorcing him, a despondent Obama went to Wright for help. “Pick yourself up!” Wright exhorted him. “Pick yourself up!”
It would be no exaggeration to say that Jeremiah Wright was the person who fulfilled Obama’s father-hunger, repaired his fractured ego, and prepared him to run for president.
Neither Obama nor Jeremiah Wright has ever told the full story of how they came together. In the summer of 1985—four years before he met Michelle and seven years before he married her—Obama approached the Reverend Lacy Kirk “L. K.” Curry to seek his help in organizing black churches in Chicago’s African-American communities. Curry was the legendary minister of the Emmanuel Baptist Church and the president of Chicago’s Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, where Jeremiah Wright had once been a member of the board of directors. Obama struck Curry as cocksure and overconfident, and he told the young community organizer, “You know what your problem is, young man? You need to know a preacher who knows more than you do. You need to go talk to Jeremiah Wright.”
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