History > 2008 > USA > Politics (V)

The Long Run

Teaching Law, Testing Ideas,

Obama Stood Apart

July 30, 2008
The New York Times
By JODI KANTOR

CHICAGO — The young law professor stood apart in too many ways to count. At a school where economic analysis was all the rage, he taught rights, race and gender. Other faculty members dreamed of tenured positions; he turned them down. While most colleagues published by the pound, he never completed a single work of legal scholarship.

At a formal institution, Barack Obama was a loose presence, joking with students about their romantic prospects, using first names, referring to case law one moment and “The Godfather” the next. He was also an enigmatic one, often leaving fellow faculty members guessing about his precise views.

Mr. Obama, now the junior senator from Illinois and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, spent 12 years at the University of Chicago Law School. Most aspiring politicians do not dwell in the halls of academia, and few promising young legal thinkers toil in state legislatures. Mr. Obama planted a foot in each, splitting his weeks between an elite law school and the far less rarefied atmosphere of the Illinois Senate.

Before he outraised every other presidential primary candidate in American history, Mr. Obama marched students through the thickets of campaign finance law. Before he helped redraw his own State Senate district, making it whiter and wealthier, he taught districting as a racially fraught study in how power is secured. And before he posed what may be the ultimate test of racial equality — whether Americans will elect a black president — he led students through African-Americans’ long fight for equal status.

Standing in his favorite classroom in the austere main building, sharp-witted students looming above him, Mr. Obama refined his public speaking style, his debating abilities, his beliefs.

“He tested his ideas in classrooms,” said Dennis Hutchinson, a colleague. Every seminar hour brought a new round of, “Is affirmative action justified? Under what circumstances?” as Mr. Hutchinson put it.

But Mr. Obama’s years at the law school are also another chapter — see United States Senate, c. 2006 — in which he seemed as intently focused on his own political rise as on the institution itself. Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was well liked at the law school, yet he was always slightly apart from it, leaving some colleagues feeling a little cheated that he did not fully engage. The Chicago faculty is more rightward-leaning than that of other top law schools, but if teaching alongside some of the most formidable conservative minds in the country had any impact on Mr. Obama, no one can quite point to it.

“I don’t think anything that went on in these chambers affected him,” said Richard Epstein, a libertarian colleague who says he longed for Mr. Obama to venture beyond his ideological and topical comfort zones. “His entire life, as best I can tell, is one in which he’s always been a thoughtful listener and questioner, but he’s never stepped up to the plate and taken full swings.”

Mr. Obama had other business on his mind, embarking on five political races during his 12 years at the school. Teaching gave him satisfaction, along with a perch and a paycheck, but he was impatient with academic debates over “whether to drop a footnote or not drop a footnote,” said Abner J. Mikva, a mentor whose own career has spanned Congress, the federal bench and the same law school.

Douglas Baird, another colleague, remembers once asking Mr. Obama to assess potential candidates for governor.

“First of all, I’m not running for governor, “ Mr. Obama told him. “But if I did, I would expect you to support me.”

He was a third-year state senator at the time.
 

Popular and Enigmatic

Mr. Obama arrived at the law school in 1991 thanks to Michael W. McConnell, a conservative scholar who is now a federal appellate judge. As president of The Harvard Law Review, Mr. Obama had impressed Mr. McConnell with editing suggestions on an article; on little more than that, the law school gave him a fellowship, which amounted to an office and a computer, which he used to write his memoir, “Dreams From My Father.”

The school had almost no black faculty members, a special embarrassment given its location on the South Side. Its sleek halls bordered a neighborhood crumbling with poverty and neglect. In his 2000 Congressional primary race, Representative Bobby L. Rush, a former Black Panther running for re-election, used Mr. Obama’s ties to the school to label him an egghead and an elitist.

At the school, Mr. Obama taught three courses, ascending to senior lecturer, a title otherwise carried only by a few federal judges. His most traditional course was in the due process and equal protection areas of constitutional law. His voting rights class traced the evolution of election law, from the disenfranchisement of blacks to contemporary debates over districting and campaign finance. Mr. Obama was so interested in the subject that he helped Richard Pildes, a professor at New York University, develop a leading casebook in the field.

His most original course, a historical and political seminar as much as a legal one, was on racism and law. Mr. Obama improvised his own textbook, including classic cases like Brown v. Board of Education, and essays by Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Dubois, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, as well as conservative thinkers like Robert H. Bork.

Mr. Obama was especially eager for his charges to understand the horrors of the past, students say. He assigned a 1919 catalog of lynching victims, including some who were first raped or stripped of their ears and fingers, others who were pregnant or lynched with their children, and some whose charred bodies were sold off, bone fragment by bone fragment, to gawkers.

“Are there legal remedies that alleviate not just existing racism, but racism from the past?” Adam Gross, now a public interest lawyer in Chicago, wrote in his class notes in April 1994.

For all the weighty material, Mr. Obama had a disarming touch. He did not belittle students; instead he drew them out, restating and polishing halting answers, students recall. In one class on race, he imitated the way clueless white people talked. “Why are your friends at the housing projects shooting each other?” he asked in a mock-innocent voice.

A favorite theme, said Salil Mehra, now a law professor at Temple University, were the values and cultural touchstones that Americans share. Mr. Obama’s case in point: his wife, Michelle, a black woman, loved “The Brady Bunch” so much that she could identify every episode by its opening shots.

As his reputation for frank, exciting discussion spread, enrollment in his classes swelled. Most scores on his teaching evaluations were positive to superlative. Some students started referring to themselves as his groupies. (Mr. Obama, in turn, could play the star. In what even some fans saw as self-absorption, Mr. Obama’s hypothetical cases occasionally featured himself. “Take Barack Obama, there’s a good-looking guy,” he would introduce a twisty legal case.)

Challenging Assumptions

Liberals flocked to his classes, seeking refuge. After all, the professor was a progressive politician who backed child care subsidies and laws against racial profiling, and in a 1996 interview with the school newspaper sounded skeptical of President Bill Clinton’s efforts to reach across the aisle.

“On the national level, bipartisanship usually means Democrats ignore the needs of the poor and abandon the idea that government can play a role in issues of poverty, race discrimination, sex discrimination or environmental protection,” Mr. Obama said.

But the liberal students did not necessarily find reassurance. “For people who thought they were getting a doctrinal, rah-rah experience, it wasn’t that kind of class,” said D. Daniel Sokol, a former student who now teaches law at the University of Florida at Gainesville.

For one thing, Mr. Obama’s courses chronicled the failure of liberal policies and court-led efforts at social change: the Reconstruction-era amendments that were rendered meaningless by a century of resistance, the way the triumph of Brown gave way to fights over busing, the voting rights laws that crowded blacks into as few districts as possible. He was wary of noble theories, students say; instead, they call Mr. Obama a contextualist, willing to look past legal niceties to get results.

For another, Mr. Obama liked to provoke. He wanted his charges to try arguing that life was better under segregation, that black people were better athletes than white ones.

“I remember thinking, ‘You’re offending my liberal instincts,’ ” Mary Ellen Callahan, now a privacy lawyer in Washington, recalled.

In his voting rights course, Mr. Obama taught Lani Guinier’s proposals for structuring elections differently to increase minority representation. Opponents attacked those suggestions when Ms. Guinier was nominated as assistant attorney general for civil rights in 1993, costing her the post.

“I think he thought they were good and worth trying,” said David Franklin, who now teaches law at DePaul University in Chicago.

But whether out of professorial reserve or budding political caution, Mr. Obama would not say so directly. “He surfaced all the competing points of view on Guinier’s proposals with total neutrality and equanimity,” Mr. Franklin said. “He just let the class debate the merits of them back and forth.”

While students appreciated Mr. Obama’s evenhandedness, colleagues sometimes wanted him to take a stand. When two fellow faculty members asked him to support a controversial antigang measure, allowing the Chicago police to disperse and eventually arrest loiterers who had no clear reason to gather, Mr. Obama discussed the issue with unusual thoughtfulness, they say, but gave little sign of who should prevail — the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposed the measure, or the community groups that supported it out of concern about crime.

“He just observed it with a kind of interest,” said Daniel Kahan, now a professor at Yale.

Nor could his views be gleaned from scholarship; Mr. Obama has never published any. He was too busy, but also, Mr. Epstein believes, he was unwilling to put his name to anything that could haunt him politically, as Ms. Guinier’s writings had hurt her. “He figured out, you lay low,” Mr. Epstein said.

The Chicago law faculty is full of intellectually fiery friendships that burn across ideological lines. Three times a week, professors do combat over lunch at a special round table in the university’s faculty club, and they share and defend their research in workshop discussions. Mr. Obama rarely attended, even when he was in town.

“I’m not sure he was close to anyone,” Mr. Hutchinson said, except for a few liberal constitutional law professors, like Cass Sunstein, now an occasional adviser to his campaign. Mr. Obama was working two other jobs, after all, in the State Senate and at a civil rights law firm.

Several colleagues say Mr. Obama was surely influenced by the ideas swirling around the law school campus: the prevailing market-friendliness, or economic analysis of the impact of laws. But none could say how. “I’m not sure we changed him,” Mr. Baird said.

Because he never fully engaged, Mr. Obama “doesn’t have the slightest sense of where folks like me are coming from,” Mr. Epstein said. “He was a successful teacher and an absentee tenant on the other issues.”

Leaving the Classroom

As Mr. Obama built his political career, his so-called groupies became an early core of supporters, handing out leaflets and hosting fund-raisers in their modest apartments.

“Maybe we charged an audacious $20?” said Jesse Ruiz, now a corporate lawyer in Chicago. Mr. Obama was sheepish asking for even that, Mr. Ruiz recalls. With no staff, Mr. Obama would come by the day after a fund-raiser to stuff the proceeds into a backpack.

Mr. Obama never mentioned his humiliating, hopeless campaign against Mr. Rush in class (he lost by a two-to-one margin), though colleagues noticed that he seemed exhausted and was smoking more than usual.

Soon after, the faculty saw an opening and made him its best offer yet: Tenure upon hiring. A handsome salary, more than the $60,000 he was making in the State Senate or the $60,000 he earned teaching part time. A job for Michelle Obama directing the legal clinic.

Your political career is dead, Daniel Fischel, then the dean, said he told Mr. Obama, gently. Mr. Obama turned the offer down. Two years later, he decided to run for the Senate. He canceled his course load and has not taught since.

Now, watching the news, it is dawning on Mr. Obama’s former students that he was mining material for his political future even as he taught them.

Byron Rodriguez, a real estate lawyer in San Francisco, recalls his professor’s admiration for the soaring but plainspoken speeches of Frederick Douglass.

“No one speaks this way anymore,” Mr. Obama told his class, wondering aloud what had happened to the art of political oratory. In particular, Mr. Obama admired Douglass’s use of a collective voice that embraced black and white concerns, one that Mr. Obama has now adopted himself.

In class, Mr. Obama sounded many of the same themes he does on the campaign trail, Ms. Callahan said, ticking them off: “self-determinism as opposed to paternalism, strength in numbers, his concept of community development.”

But as a professor, students say, Mr. Obama was in the business of complication, showing that even the best-reasoned rules have unintended consequences, that competing legal interests cannot always be resolved, that a rule that promotes justice in one case can be unfair in the next.

So even some former students who are thrilled at Mr. Obama’s success wince when they hear him speaking like the politician he has so fully become.

“When you hear him talking about issues, it’s at a level so much simpler than the one he’s capable of,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “He was a lot more fun to listen to back then.”

    Teaching Law, Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Apart, NYT, 30.7.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/30/us/politics/30law.html

Health Plan From Obama Spurs Debate

July 23, 2008
The New York Times
By KEVIN SACK

It is one of the most audacious promises in a campaign that has been thick with them.

In speech after speech, Senator Barack Obama has vowed that he will lower the country’s health care costs enough to “bring down premiums by $2,500 for the typical family.” Moreover, Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has promised that his health plan will be in place “by the end of my first term as president of the United States.”

Whether Mr. Obama can deliver is a matter of considerable dispute among health analysts and economists. While there is consensus that the American health care system is bloated with waste, eliminating enough to save $2,500 per family would require simultaneous and synergistic solutions to a host of problems that have proved intractable for decades.

Even if the next president and Congress can muster the political will, analysts question whether significant savings would materialize in as little as four years, or even in 10. But as Mr. Obama confronts an electorate that is deeply unsettled by escalating health costs, he is offering a precise “chicken in every pot” guarantee based on numbers that are largely unknowable. Furthermore, it is not completely clear what he is promising.

His words about lowering “premiums” by $2,500 for the average family of four have been fairly consistent. But the health policy advisers who formulated the figure say it actually represents the average family’s share of savings not only in premiums paid by individuals, but also in premiums paid by employers and in tax-supported health programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

“What we’re trying to do,” said one of the advisers, David M. Cutler, in explaining the gap between Mr. Obama’s words and his intent, “is find a way to talk to people in a way they understand.”

The original arithmetic was somewhat basic. In May 2007, three Harvard professors who are unpaid advisers to the Obama campaign — Mr. Cutler, David Blumenthal and Jeffrey Liebman — produced a memorandum offering their “best guess” that a menu of changes would produce savings of at least $200 billion a year (it has since been revised to $214 billion). That would amount to about 8 percent of the $2.5 trillion in health care spending projected for 2009, when the next president takes office.

The memorandum attributed specific savings to several broad initiatives, with the numbers plucked from recent studies. Investments in computerized medical records would save $77 billion a year, the advisers wrote. Reducing administrative costs in the insurance industry would yield up to $46 billion. Improving prevention programs and chronic disease management would be worth $81 billion.

The total savings were then divided by the country’s population, multiplied for a family of four, and rounded down slightly to a number that was easy to grasp: $2,500. The average cost of family coverage bought through an employer was $12,106 in 2007, with workers paying $3,281 of that amount, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health research group.

Mr. Obama aspires to cover the country’s 47 million uninsured by requiring insurers to accept all comers, regardless of their health status, and by providing generous tax credits to low-income workers. The tax credits could be used to buy into a new federal health plan or private plans marketed through a government exchange.

The subsidies are expensive, estimated at well over $100 billion. Other components of the Obama plan also bear up-front costs, like a pledge to spend $50 billion over five years to speed the computerization of health records, $6 billion a year on tax credits to small businesses that provide coverage to workers, and an unspecified amount to buffer businesses from high-cost insurance claims.

The source Mr. Obama has identified to pay for them — the repeal of President Bush’s tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 — would cover only about half. That means additional health care savings would be needed, not only to keep premiums under control but also to help pay for the subsidies.

A consensus has emerged among health economists that at least a third of the country’s spending on health care is unnecessary. Both Mr. Obama, of Illinois, and his Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, agree that significant sums could be saved through reductions in unneeded procedures and improvements in electronic record-keeping, prevention and chronic disease management.

But the dollar values Mr. Obama has attached to individual components of his plan are beginning to attract scrutiny. In particular, the Congressional Budget Office issued a report in May questioning the amount to be saved from the computerization of health systems.

Mr. Obama took his estimate of $77 billion a year from a 2005 study by the RAND Corporation (which cautioned that reductions of that magnitude would not emerge for 15 years). The Congressional analysts found, however, that for various methodological reasons the RAND study was “not an appropriate guide” to potential savings.

This month, Mr. Obama’s health advisers tried to recast the debate so that the questioning of any one number would not undermine the plan’s broader credibility. They enlisted eight health policy experts to sign a letter that, without endorsing the math behind any single initiative, proclaimed it was “not only possible, but likely” that Mr. Obama could save $200 billion annually. They did not say by when.

Mr. Cutler, who helped collect the signatures, said he and his colleagues had decided “that our attempt to lay out one plausible scenario for the savings had created more problems than it had solved.” He added: “Putting the debate where this message puts it — do you believe we can save 8 percent of health spending through a major series of public and private reforms — asks the question in a way that is much more productive than the issue of ‘Do you believe a single estimate among many, many studies?’ ”

Mr. Obama’s economic policy director, Jason Furman, said the campaign’s estimates were conservative and asserted that much of the savings would come quickly. “We think we could get to $2,500 in savings by the end of the first term, or be very close to it,” Mr. Furman said.

The campaign won additional backing this week from Kenneth E. Thorpe of Emory University, an authority on health care costs who helped formulate Bill Clinton’s failed plan in 1993. In an assessment that he initiated in coordination with the campaign, Mr. Thorpe wrote that if all of Mr. Obama’s proposals were enacted they would reduce health spending by between $203 billion and $273 billion by 2012. He calculated that half of the savings would accrue to the federal government.

The Obama advisers said that while not all of the savings would translate into lower premiums, consumers would gain in other ways. The savings to employers would be passed along as higher wages, they predicted, and the savings to government would eventually mean either lower taxes or added benefits.

But whether employers and governments respond that way cannot be guaranteed, particularly in a difficult economy. And a number of health policy experts have questioned whether the $2,500 projection is either fiscally or politically realistic. Reducing health care costs, they emphasized, means taking money from someone’s pocket and rationing care that Americans have come to expect, a recipe for stiff resistance.

“There is no easy money because, as the saying goes, one person’s fraud and abuse is another person’s income,” said Joseph R. Antos of the American Enterprise Institute. “I wouldn’t think that four years or eight years or probably 10 years will be enough to see numbers of that sort.”

The Commonwealth Fund, a health research group in New York, published a study in December projecting that a robust overhaul consisting of 15 broad initiatives would generate savings of only 6 percent after 10 years. “Doing it by the end of a first term is ambitious and would require tough policies,” said Karen Davis, the group’s president.

Jonathan B. Oberlander, who teaches health policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, called it wishful thinking. “Do they have the potential to generate significant savings in the long run?” Dr. Oberlander asked. “Yes. Do I believe they will produce substantial savings in the short run that can be used to finance Obama’s plan? No.”

    Health Plan From Obama Spurs Debate, NYT, 23.7.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/us/23health.html

Obama Raises $52 Million in June,

Keeping Campaign on Pace to Its Goal

July 18, 2008
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON — Senator Barack Obama’s campaign said Thursday that it collected $52 million in June, the second-best fund-raising month of the year, through an aggressive mix of small and large contributions that produced more than twice the amount raised by Senator John McCain.

After becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee for president last month, Mr. Obama also helped the Democratic National Committee sharply increase its fund-raising to $22.4 million in June. The Obama campaign and the party have a combined $92.3 million in the bank, which is slightly less than Republicans and the McCain campaign, which began July with about $95 million.

David Plouffe, the campaign manager for Mr. Obama, announced the June fund-raising tally on Thursday in an e-mail message to supporters. Yet the magnitude of the fund-raising challenge — reaching a goal of $300 million — was underscored by Mr. Plouffe’s pitch for each of the donors to give $25 more.

“I know this isn’t the first time we’ve asked you for money, and it won’t be the last,” Mr. Plouffe wrote. “We have developed a strategy — a very aggressive strategy — that will only work if our millions of supporters continue to contribute their time and their money.”

Although the $52 million came close to reaching the record that Mr. Obama set in February by raising $55 million, the figure is on pace with, or slightly below, projections that campaign aides have set for party fund-raisers. Democrats said they hope to raise about $300 million for the campaign, in addition to about $180 million for the national committee.

The Obama campaign is spending the money at a rapid pace, through television advertising and by opening scores of offices in states to be strongly contested, including ones where Democrats have not been competitive in recent presidential elections. In Virginia, for example, 20 offices are opening on Saturday, and in Montana, six have already opened.

Last week, Mr. McCain reported raising more than $22 million in June, his best month of the year. But because Mr. McCain is participating in the public financing system — he will receive $84 million to spend from the time he is formally nominated to Election Day — his fund-raising burden is less than Mr. Obama’s, and he is more reliant on the Republican National Committee.

The Obama campaign plans to file its official June numbers with the Federal Election Commission on Sunday, when it will reveal information on donors and detail its spending.

A campaign spokesman, Bill Burton, said about $50 million of the June total came in contributions earmarked for the primary campaign. That money must be spent before Mr. Obama formally accepts the party’s nomination at the Democratic convention in August. The remaining $2 million can be spent only on the general election contest with Mr. McCain.

After breaking fund-raising records throughout the winter and spring, some supporters feared that Mr. Obama’s contributions had slowed considerably. In May, he raised $21.9 million, which was one of the weakest fund-raising months of his candidacy, as he closed out his nominating fight with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

When asked about the health of his fund-raising late last week, Mr. Obama played down any concern, telling reporters, “I think you guys should wait until we release our numbers to make a decision as to how underwhelming they are.”

Since the campaign began in February 2007, Mr. Obama has raised nearly $340 million.

Mr. Obama spent more time raising money in June than he had in virtually any other month since the campaign began, with fund-raising events in most every city he passed through. He is the first candidate of a major party to forgo public financing for the general election since the presidential financing system was created three decades ago in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

In his message to supporters on Thursday, Mr. Plouffe said the average June contribution was $68. The campaign has been asking donors to give again and again, until they reach the $2,300 that can be given to each of the primary and general election efforts.

Karen Finney, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said party contributions had increased considerably in June after Mr. Obama effectively clinched the nomination, with the party raising $22.4 million in June, compared to $4.7 million in May. The increase is attributed to a joint committee created with the Obama campaign, with the candidate attending several events where the maximum donation to the party is $28,500.

On Thursday, the Obama campaign and the national committee announced the establishment of a cooperative fund-raising agreement with 18 state Democratic Parties. The group, which will be called the Committee for Change, will pay the salaries of hundreds of workers doing political field work in swing states.

    Obama Raises $52 Million in June, Keeping Campaign on Pace to Its Goal, NYT, 18.7.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/us/politics/18donate.html

Picturing Obama

July 17, 2008
Page D1
The Wall Street Journal
By CHRISTINA S.N. LEWIS

This week's New Yorker magazine cover, an illustration depicting Sen. Barack Obama and his wife as fist-bumping terrorists, has been all over the news. But that isn't the only Obama-related artwork attracting attention these days. Collectors, investors and fund-raisers -- many of them looking to cash in on the candidate's popularity and place in history -- are snapping up campaign posters and other works depicting the presumptive Democratic nominee.

On Saturday, Def Jam Recordings founder Russell Simmons will host his annual celebrity-studded benefit at his home in East Hampton, N.Y., to raise money for his arts-education charity. Attendees can bid on the leading auction item, a stenciled Obama portrait titled "Hope" by artist Shepard Fairey. On Wednesday, presale bidding for the work donated by the artist had reached $60,000, double its initial estimate.

"I have a feeling that this painting is going to be very valuable," says Mr. Simmons, a supporter of Mr. Obama. Mr. Simmons says he bought a similar work from Mr. Fairey for himself and plans to hang it in his 8,000-square-foot Manhattan apartment.

Much of the Obama art market is centered on "street art," a graffiti-inspired genre that takes the form of posters, stickers and other works that are meant to be plastered in public spaces. Limited-edition campaign posters that originally sold for as little as $45 are now selling at online auction site eBay Inc. for thousands of dollars, bid up by people assuming that prices will rise even further if Mr. Obama is elected.

The expected price appreciation extends to works by artists who aren't well-known. For example, a Scott Hansen poster called "Progress" (edition of 5,000) sold on the campaign's Web site for $70 each. After it sold out, it went for as much as $300 on eBay, but now it sells for roughly $120.

Knowledgeable collectors have already turned a profit by buying multiples. Tanley Wong, a 30-year-old consultant for Fannie Mae in Washington, D.C., owns 30 to 40 Obama art prints, including several of Mr. Fairey's "Hope" prints, which were originally handed out at a rally at the University of California, Los Angeles. Mr. Wong, who has donated $1,000 to the Obama campaign, bought the posters for roughly $75 each on eBay from UCLA students and has subsequently resold some online for about $700 each.

"I'm really happy I was able to sell those and use the money to buy more art," Mr. Wong says. "Art's an investment."

Presidential campaign paraphernalia has been collected since the days of George Washington, but never on this scale. Noted artists have created prints in support of a campaign before. Andy Warhol's 1972 "Vote McGovern," showing Richard Nixon's face tinted green, is now a classic piece of political art. In June, one sold for $23,000 at Santa Monica Auctions.

There appears to be little demand for art promoting Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, art experts say. According to statistics from eBay, only six McCain-related art items sold on the site in the past 60 days, with an average selling price of $57. That's compared with 889 Obama-related art items that have sold in the past 60 days, with an average selling price of $127. Of course McCain-related art sales may be lagging behind because there are fewer pieces available.

"The art world is always entirely left of center," says photo-realist painter Chuck Close, who has previously done portraits of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Al Gore.

To be sure, it is far from clear that the value of the Obama works will hold up. Prices have fluctuated, driven by news and events throughout the campaign season. For example, prices for Obama-related items on eBay dipped in March during the controversy over the candidate's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, according to Ken Harman, a collector and art blogger.

Some might say the market shows signs of a bubble: a swift run-up in prices, speculators buying as an investment, and frequent flipping. But street-art experts say values for the prints by prominent artists are likely to hold due to Mr. Obama's celebrity, the historic nature of his campaign and the talent of the artists.

The most-coveted works include limited-edition posters by noted street artists Mr. Fairey and Ron English. In January, Mr. Fairey designed "Progress" (edition of 350), a Kennedyesque image of Mr. Obama that has become closely tied to the campaign. Mr. English created "Abraham Obama," (edition of 200) of Mr. Obama's face merged with Abraham Lincoln's.

"It's a nice crossover between fine art and propaganda," says Alex W. Smith, a contemporary and urban art specialist for Phillips de Pury & Co., an auction house. "Obama is such an icon to the public already that would suggest that the work will be valuable no matter if he wins or loses. ... It's partially the hype of the times."

In a sign of how the traditional art community has accepted these posters, this fall, fine-arts auction house Bonhams will sell one of Mr. English's prints with a presale estimate of about $2,000; they originally sold online for less than $200.

Not all Obama-related items are on canvas. The arts-and-crafts online marketplace site Etsy.com sells Obama jewelry and night lights. And Cincinnati artist Van Taylor has created "The Obama Sneaker," a hand-painted portrait on Nike Air Force Ones.

The growing appetite and prices for Obama-related campaign material has led some people to criticize speculators for buying and reselling the posters without donating money to the campaign.

In February, Mr. Fairey's blog lambasted the profiteers as "greedy," explaining that he sells the work for $45 with the hope that fans will use them to spread awareness of Mr. Obama. He says resellers should give part of their proceeds to the campaign. As for himself, Mr. Fairey applies all of the profits from his Obama-related sales to making more posters promoting the candidate.

Other artists are retaliating as well. To bring prices down, Ray Noland, a Chicago-based freelance designer has issued a second edition of "Coast to Coast," a block-style print featuring Mr. Obama on a basketball court in front of the White House. Last week, it sold on eBay for $200. Mr. Noland's Web site now sells a similar print for $75.

Separately, the nonprofit, poster-tracking Web site expressobeans.com lists details on a number of Obama-themed posters whose prices are stable. And last month, Mr. Harman, a 25-year-old part-time artist, started the Obama Art Report online blog to track the art's skyrocketing prices and point out places to find it more cheaply. He began collecting screen prints of Mr. Obama when they cost hundreds of dollars. The roughly $4,000 he's spent on various works are now valued at $15,000 to $20,000, he says.

"Who's to say that it's unfair or unethical to try and sell a print to make a little extra money on the side," says Mr. Harman, who is auctioning off a "Progress" print by Mr. Hansen to benefit the campaign; bidding is at $142.55.

Sensing high demand, a host of other artists are now making Obama posters, including rock-poster designer Emek. Emek's "Obama Bomaye," released last week, shows the famous photograph of Muhammad Ali standing triumphantly over Sonny Liston but with their faces replaced by Mr. Obama's (as Mr. Ali) and Mr. McCain's (as the supine Mr. Liston). It is for sale on eBay for more than $200.

In Boston, Gallery XIV is exhibiting a massive multipanel billboard showing Mr. English's "Abraham." While the exhibit has drawn controversy due to an unauthorized sticker advertising campaign by Mr. English's fans, the gallery's director, William Kerr, says he has gotten so many purchase inquiries that he plans to auction off parts of the billboard to raise money for the campaign.

Charles Nesson, a professor of Internet law at Harvard University Law School, who was taken with Obama art after reading about the billboard in the news, says he will start the bidding at $1,000.

"If [the image] becomes significant in the campaign," says Mr. Nesson, "I think it could be really, really valuable."

Not all of the art is flattering to the Obama campaign. In Texas, Austin-based designer Baxter Orr, an Independent, created "Dope," a parody of Mr. Fairey's posters that makes sport of Mr. Obama's cocaine use as a young man. The posters are still available for $30 on the artist's Web site, and sales are slow. Mr. Orr says that buyers only want posters glorifying Mr. Obama. "If I [had] followed the herd and created pro-Obama posters," says Mr. Orr. "I am certain I would have made more money."

    Picturing Obama, WSJ, 17.7.2008, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121625710569060513.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today

America Gets to Know Obama, and Vice Versa

July 10, 2008
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY

BUTTE, Mont. — Senator Barack Obama marveled at the view here in Big Sky Country. He discovered that the gumbo in New Orleans was far tastier than in Chicago. And he was pleasantly surprised that he loved Austin, Tex., and its music — but who doesn’t?

The presidential campaign has not only given the country a chance to meet Mr. Obama. It has also given Mr. Obama a chance to meet the country, taking him to large swaths of the United States that he has never seen before.

Since his political rise began less than four years ago, he has visited New Orleans, toured parts of the Great Plains and traveled across the South — all for the first time. He made a nighttime stop to Mount Rushmore, paid his respects at the grave of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and dropped by the home of President Harry S. Truman.

Not since he was 11, when he traveled through a handful of states with his mother, grandmother and sister — by Greyhound bus, train and an occasional rental car — has Mr. Obama seen this much of America.

Having grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia and spending much of his adult life in large cities, Mr. Obama, 46, is now acquainting himself more deeply with his country and finds himself unusually surprised by some of his findings.

“A place that I’ve come to love, which I did not expect until this campaign, is Texas,” he said in an interview the other day aboard his campaign plane, a patchwork of the countryside passing below him. “I ended up loving Texas! I’ve been struck by how many beautiful places there are in the country that you don’t necessarily think of as beautiful. Pittsburgh, for example, is a really handsome town with the rivers and the hills.”

The Democratic primary campaign, because of its unusual duration, took Mr. Obama to nearly every state in the continental United States. Even a couple of states that he bypassed this year — Arkansas, for example, was deemed Clinton territory — he passed through in 2006 while campaigning for other Democratic candidates.

Most presidential nominees have been on the national stage for years or even decades, traveling the country raising money and building a network for themselves and others.

Over the course of a long career in politics, as well as his service in the Navy, Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, has seen much of the country. He was born in the Panama Canal Zone, but he lived in many places growing up, following his father’s military career from Virginia to California and several other states. Mr. McCain has traveled to 42 states since his presidential campaign began last year.

Mr. Obama’s first trips to Iowa and New Hampshire came on the cusp of his own debut as a presidential contender. The senator is a relative rarity, a candidate who is not from a famous family and whose background limited his opportunities to travel while in college and after.

His salary as a community organizer in Chicago — about $12,000 annually — allowed him to travel only once or twice a year. Now, it is more likely to be once or twice a day, and he often christens his arrival in a new destination with a personal greeting as he soaks in his surroundings.

“It is fun to be in Fargo,” he said one recent afternoon as he stood in the warm sunshine at an outdoor park on a swing through North Dakota. “But it doesn’t look like it does in the movie.”

Another favorite discovery, he said, was the wide-open beauty of Oregon. This spring, as his campaign bus traveled from Portland to Corvallis, he also picked up a bit of trivia.

“Oregon actually is the size of Great Britain, except it has 3 million people and Great Britain has 80 million,” Mr. Obama offered up in the interview. “You pick up facts like that, and you realize again how lucky we are.”

While nearly 20 years ago he chose to settle in Chicago, a city rich in history and with an immensely diverse population, he has no second residence to add texture to his life story. (Think, for a moment, if he were to defeat Senator John McCain in November: Does Illinois qualify as a setting for the Western White House?)

Mr. Obama’s success in the crowded Democratic primary season was rooted, to a large degree, in his biography. But in the general election campaign, one of his most pressing challenges is to assure voters that he is one of them, that his background and upbringing are not so different from theirs.

Even though he did not make his first trip to the continental United States until he was 11 and his family history is unique among presidential candidates, Mr. Obama said he did not consider himself to be at a political disadvantage.

“My grandparents and my mom, in many ways, were so quintessentially American that they transmitted those values to me at a very early age,” he said, adding that his childhood in Hawaii was filled with stories about their native Kansas, leaving him knowing far more than anything he knew about his father’s family in Kenya. “I feel like there hasn’t been a lot that has been unfamiliar to me as I’ve been traveling around.”

Many of the regional distinctions in the United States, he said, “in terms of culture, politics, attitudes, people,” have been muted. After 18 months of traveling extensively across the country, he said, “the biggest differences have more to do with rural, suburban, urban, as opposed to north, south, east or west.”

Still, local newspapers have picked up on a handful of his on-location gaffes, which then are telegraphed to a wider audience by the Republican National Committee.

In May, when Mr. Obama arrived for a rally in South Dakota’s largest city, he declared: “Thank you, Sioux City!” That city, of course, is in Iowa. He was standing in Sioux Falls.

A week later, he greeted the crowd in a large arena in South Florida with, “How’s it going, Sunshine?” A few minutes later, he added, “It’s good to be in Sunshine!” Actually, he was in Sunrise, Fla.

The other day, as Mr. Obama made his second trip of the year to Butte, he exhaled as he took in the Rocky Mountains in the distance and the ridge that marks the Continental Divide.

“This is just a terrific opportunity for us to visit what has to be one of the prettiest states in the country,” Mr. Obama said, speaking over the applause of a few hundred local residents. “I’ve had a chance now to campaign in 49 states. The only place that I have not been yet is Alaska.”

In an interview as he left Montana, on a plane bound for Missouri, Mr. Obama previewed an itinerary that he hoped would come to pass.

“I will make it to Alaska at some point, but maybe after I’m president,” he said. “I can’t wait.”

    America Gets to Know Obama, and Vice Versa, NYT, 10.7.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/us/politics/10obama.html

Rising Convention Costs and Delays Worry Democrats

July 6, 2008
The New York Times
By LESLIE WAYNE

For all Senator Barack Obama’s success at raising money and generating excitement among voters, he faces a daunting challenge as he prepares to claim the nomination in August: a Democratic convention effort marred by costly setbacks and embarrassing delays.

With the Denver convention less than two months away, problems range from the serious — upwardly spiraling costs on key contracts still being negotiated — to the mundane, like the reluctance of local caterers to participate because of stringent rules on what delegates will be eating, down to the color of the food. At last count, plans to renovate the inside of the Pepsi Center for the Democrats are $6 million over budget, which may force convention planners to scale back on their original design or increase their fund-raising goals.

The convention is being organized by the Democratic National Committee, which is run by Howard Dean, with his chief of staff, the Rev. Leah D. Daughtry, leading the effort. Only in the last month has the Obama campaign been able to take over management of the convention planning with the candidate claiming the nomination, and his aides are increasingly frustrated, as the event nears, at organizers who they believe spent too freely, planned too slowly and underestimated actual costs.

The Obama campaign has dispatched 10 people to Denver to help “get a handle on the budget and make hard decisions” about what has to be done and how to move forward, said Bill Burton, a campaign spokesman.

With Democrats seeking to use the convention to move past the bitterness of their bruising primary fight, the gathering in Denver Aug. 25-28 is likely to draw intense interest as the Obama forces try to show a once-divided party rallying around the nominee. And their convention comes a week before the Minneapolis gathering of the Republicans, whose convention efforts have been much smoother.

Some of the Democratic missteps started soon after planning for the event began. The Democratic National Convention Committee decided not to take cheap office space and instead rented top-quality offices in downtown Denver at $100,000 a month, only to need less than half the space, which it then filled with rental furniture at $50,000 a month. And in a costly misstep, the Denver host committee, early on, told corporate donors that their contributions were not tax-deductible, rather than to encourage donations by saying that the tax-exempt application was pending and expected to be approved.

Overly ambitious environmental goals — to turn the event into a “green” convention — have backfired as only three states’ full delegations have so far agreed to participate in the program. Negotiations over where to locate demonstrators remain unsettled with members of the national news media concerned over proposals to locate the demonstrators — with their loud gatherings — next to the media tent.

And then there is the food: A 28-page contract requested by Denver organizers that caterers provide food in “at least three of the following five colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple and white.” Garnishes could not be counted toward the colors. No fried foods would be allowed. Organic and locally grown foods were mandated, and each plate had to be 50 percent fruits and vegetables. As a result, caterers are shying away.

For the Democratic Party, the danger is that a poorly run convention, or one that misses the mark financially, will reflect badly on the party and raise questions about Democratic management skills. And more worrisome for the Obama campaign is that it will be left with the bill for overruns or fund-raising shortfalls, and that the candidate will have to compete in raising money against a convention effort desperate for cash.

Natalie Wyeth, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Convention Committee in Denver, said the convention “is on track and we are confident that we are where we are supposed to be at this point in the game.”

She added, “We are exactly where we intended to be at.”

Ms. Wyeth also defended the party’s choice of office space, saying a cheaper alternative was rejected because it would have required extensive and costly improvements mandated by the city.

The Democratic convention is already running behind in its fund-raising. At last count, the convention was about $11 million short of the $40.6 million needed to stage the event — even before cost overruns were taken into consideration. This has prompted local newspapers to suggest in editorials that the Obama campaign should step in and begin to raise money for the committee.

Even more, those involved in the convention preparations portray Denver and party organizers as having squandered precious time, pushing critical decision-making into the final hours when it is more difficult to keep a lid on costs. Already, plans to have two dozen parties for the 56 delegations at locations throughout Denver were canceled, and instead there will be a single party at the city’s convention center.

“Major decisions are being settled only at the last minute,” said one convention organizer, who requested anonymity because of the confidentiality of the contracting process. “These contracts should have been out and signed last March or April. We still have no agreement on the budget or the scope of the work for the build-out at the Pepsi Center. There is no reason why it is so late, why important issues have not been addressed and why we are trying to figure these things out at the last minute.”

The Obama campaign is keeping a watchful eye on the process.

“Though there is much very hard work ahead,” said Mr. Burton, the campaign spokesman, “we are committed to having the best Democratic convention we ever had.”

Part of the problem, say those close to the plans, is a clash between the Obama campaign, which is tight-fisted about its money, and the Democratic convention committee, which failed to estimate properly the costs of the convention. As the Obama campaign begins to take over in Denver they are beginning to question why the party’s estimates for construction, entertainment and other components are so at odds with what actual costs are turning out to be.

“We are now going into the final construction phase, and it is turning out to be much higher,” said a person with knowledge of the budget, but who is not tied to either the Obama campaign or the party. “So the Obama camp is not pleased and is raising questions about where all the money had been going. And they look at the posh office space for the Democratic Party staff here, which is really plush, and they say, ‘They spent the money on that?’ ”

This last-minute scramble covers contracts to build the skyboxes, the podium and the news media center. The problems have forced organizers to consider — and reject — some cost-cutting proposals, like housing the media center in trailers or cutting out air-conditioning from the media tent.

Some of the efforts are being ridiculed by many in Denver. City Councilman Charlie Brown, a political independent, has devoted his monthly newsletter to “Food Fight” over the color-coded rules for convention food and is concerned that plans to handle the thousands of demonstrators expected to attend have not been fully thought out.

While Mr. Brown said he expects the city will “cowboy up” and have a successful convention, the lack of resolution about important issues like the demonstrators and food are “the donkey in the room.”

“We are having people say that they will be leaving town,” said Mr. Brown, who fears that the city could be in a no-win situation with the demonstrators — if there is insufficient police presence, the city could be overrun by them; if the police are overly aggressive, they will be criticized as overreacting.

And caterers, expected to feed the 40,000 people coming to town, are throwing up their hands over the food requirements.

“Everything that the Democrats did got off to a late start,” said Peggy Beck, a co-owner of Three Tomatoes Catering. “It was such an ordeal. We’ve jumped through hoops and hoops to bid on their stuff, and we had to have certain color food so the plates would be colorful.” In the end, the parties that she had been bidding on were canceled to save money. “This was some of the silliest stuff ever,” she added.

Nick Agro, head of Whirled Peas Catering, questioned whether the requirement for local organic food could meet cost constraints. “These were fantastic ideas, but I question who is willing to pay for these extra costs,” Mr. Agro said. “My experience is that it is all coming together slowly.”

In Denver, hotel space is also in short supply. James F. Smith, national political editor of The Boston Globe, said the Democratic Party could arrange only 5 of the 21 rooms his newspaper had required. And those are a 35-minute drive away at the Denver International Airport.

Dan Frosch contributed reporting from Denver.

    Rising Convention Costs and Delays Worry Democrats, NYT, 6.7.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/us/politics/06convention.html

Obama Plan Would Expand Faith-Based Program

July 2, 2008
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY and JOHN M. BRODER

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – With an eye toward courting evangelical voters, Senator Barack Obama arrived here on Tuesday to present a plan to expand on President Bush’s program of investing federal money into religious-based initiatives that are intended to fight poverty and perform community aid work.

“The fact is, the challenges we face today — from saving our planet to ending poverty — are simply too big for government to solve alone,” Mr. Obama is expected to say, according to a prepared text of his remarks. “We need all hands on deck.”

On the second day of a weeklong tour intended to highlight his values, Mr. Obama traveled to the battleground state of Ohio on Tuesday to present his proposal to get religious charities more involved in government programs. He is scheduled to give an afternoon speech here outside of the Eastside Community Ministry, a program providing food, clothes and youth ministry.

“Now, I know there are some who bristle at the notion that faith has a place in the public square,” Mr. Obama intends to say. “But the fact is, leaders in both parties have recognized the value of a partnership between the White House and faith-based groups.”

Mr. Obama is proposing $500 million per year to provide summer learning for 1 million poor children to help close achievement gaps for students. He proposes elevating the program to the “moral center” of his administration, calling it the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

He called for rules to make certain the new council wouldn’t violate the separation of church and state. Groups receiving money, aides said, would have to demonstrate the effectiveness of their programs.

The plan was met with praise from officials who crafted the Bush administration’s proposal, including John DiIulio, who in 2001 served as the director of Mr. Bush’s office on faith based initiatives.

“Senator Barack Obama has offered a principled, prudent, and problem-solving vision for the future of community-serving partnerships involving religious nonprofit organizations,” Mr. DiIulio said in a statement. “He has focused admirably on those groups that supply vital social services to people and communities in need. His plan reminds me of much that was best in both then-Vice President Al Gore's and then-Texas Governor George W. Bush's respective first speeches on the subject in 1999.”

Mr. Obama and his advisers are seeking support among relatively moderate evangelicals and are trying to take advantage of signs that some conservative Christians are rethinking their politics, urged along by a new generation of leadership and intensified concern about issues including climate change, genocide, AIDS and poverty.

Between now and November, the Obama forces are planning as many as 1,000 house parties and dozens of Christian rock concerts, gatherings of religious leaders, campus visits and telephone conference calls to bring together voters of all ages motivated by their faith to engage in politics. It is the most intensive effort yet by a Democratic candidate to reach out to self-identified evangelical or born-again Christians and to try to pry them away from their historical attachment to the Republican Party.

Mr. Obama is building his appeal in part on calls to heal political rifts and address human suffering. He is also drawing on his own characteristics and story, including his embrace of Christianity as an adult, a facility with biblical language and imagery and comfort in talking about how his religious beliefs animate his approach to public life.

But the subject of religion has become entangled in the false rumor that he is a Muslim. And it has been complicated by the effects of his association with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose brand of black liberation theology brought religion, race and patriotism into the campaign in ways not helpful to Mr. Obama. He also faces significant hurdles in appealing to religious voters because of his tolerance for abortion and same-sex marriage.

It appears that Mr. Obama’s religious outreach efforts will be met by an increasingly intense reaction from the religious right.

James C. Dobson, one of the most prominent evangelical leaders on the right, accused Mr. Obama last week of employing a deviant reading of Scripture and a “fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution” to justify his theology and world view.

The lobbying arm of another leading conservative Christian organization, the Family Research Council, began running advertisements last week highlighting Mr. Obama’s support for abortion rights and accusing him of hypocrisy for saying that he stands for family responsibility.

Joshua DuBois, director of religious affairs for the Obama campaign, said that the campaign expected resistance from a large part of the evangelical community, but that millions of faith voters were persuadable.

“We’re not going to convince everybody,” said Mr. DuBois, 25, a former associate pastor of a Pentecostal Assemblies of God church in Massachusetts. “The most committed pro-lifers probably won’t vote for him. But others will be open to him because they see he’s a man of integrity, a person of faith who listens to and understands people of all religious backgrounds.”

The Obama campaign does not need to convince everybody in order to have an effect on the voting outcome in key states, only a relatively narrow slice of the religiously motivated voters who supported Mr. Bush by substantial margins in 2000 and 2004. And polls indicate that evangelicals and other religious voters are already migrating away from their overwhelming support of the Republicans, some because of disillusionment about the war, others because of concern about global warming, still others because of uncertainty about the economy.

Corwin E. Smidt, a political scientist who directs the Henry Institute at Calvin College, a Christian liberal arts institution in Grand Rapids, Mich., said a survey of Christian voters he completed found that mainline Protestants were moving in a more Democratic direction.

“One of the things our survey revealed is that the kinds of issues that Obama is stressing would resonate with that particular group,” Mr. Smidt said.

He said that if Mr. Obama could chip into the 78 percent vote that Mr. Bush received from white evangelical Christians in 2004 it could affect the outcome of this year’s election.

Mr. Obama won one important vote from the evangelical community when he received the endorsement of the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, leader of a Methodist megachurch in Houston, who has long been close to Mr. Bush and who officiated at Jenna Bush’s wedding in May in Crawford, Tex. Mr. Caldwell denounced Mr. Dobson for his critique of Mr. Obama’s faith and has assembled a group of religious leaders to defend Mr. Obama.

Mr. McCain, who was raised an Episcopalian but switched to the Baptist church of his wife, Cindy, has never had the same levels of support among this group as Mr. Bush enjoyed, not least because he once labeled the evangelical leaders Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson “agents of intolerance,” a characterization he has since backed away from.

Mr. McCain does not talk much in public about religion, and Christian conservatives have been slow to embrace him. He turned some off by quickly denouncing two supporters, the Rev. John Hagee and the Rev. Rod Parsley, after controversial statements they made came to light.

Mark DeMoss, a public relations executive who represents Franklin Graham and other church leaders and conservative religious organizations, said recently that Mr. Obama could conceivably win as much as 40 percent of the evangelical vote.

“He is going to do reasonably well,” Mr. DeMoss said, “and that is due to a combination of things. One of them is a lack of passion and enthusiasm for John McCain among a lot of these folks, and Obama seems to be doing the right kinds of things to reach out to them.”

Mr. DeMoss cited the meeting two weeks ago in Chicago in which Mr. Obama met privately with 30 religious leaders from many traditions and political persuasions, including several, like Mr. Graham, who were never likely to support him.

Mr. Obama won praise for his openness to those who disagreed with him, Mr. DeMoss said, but he stood firm in his support for abortion rights and cemented opposition from those for whom that is a bedrock issue.

Mr. Obama is also reaching out to young evangelicals, the so-called Joshua generation, a group that would seem to be a fertile ground for recruitment.

Leaders of the movement of progressives on religion and values, including Mara Vanderslice, Eric Sapp and Burns Strider (who advised Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton), are also working alongside the Obama campaign to attract support from these younger religious voters.

Gabe Lyons, founder of the Fermi Project, a nonprofit group that educates church and youth leaders about Christianity and society, said many young evangelicals from the left and right had been turned off to politics.

“Obama is doing a better job of talking about his religious views and values than John McCain is,” Mr. Lyons, 33, said. “The challenge is that the closer young evangelicals get to understanding his policies the more they will struggle with them and many will slowly back off because for them abortion is such a huge point.”

In a brief video shown at the beginning of meetings with religious voters, Mr. Obama says he is “blessed” to help lead a conversation about the role of religious people in changing the world. He speaks of poverty and war, health care and unemployment, and says that addressing these problems “will require not just a change in government policy but a change of heart and a change of attitude.”

    Obama Plan Would Expand Faith-Based Program, NYT, 2.7.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/politics/02campaigncnd.html?hp

The South Will Fall Again

July 1, 2008
The New York Times
By THOMAS F. SCHALLER

Washington

THE interim between the primaries and the parties’ nominating conventions is, according to ancient writ, a fertile period for presidential campaigns to talk about how they plan to expand the political map in the fall. This year is no different. Barack Obama’s strategists are suggesting that the first African-American presidential nominee of a major political party can parlay increased turnout among black voters into a string of victories in the South.

Given that roughly half of all African-Americans live in the 11 former Confederate states, the idea seems intuitive enough. It’s also wrong. Prying Southern electoral votes away from the Republicans is not so simple.

Two pervasive and persistent myths about racial voting in the modern South are behind the notion that Mr. Obama might win in places like Georgia, North Carolina and Mississippi.

The first myth is that African-American turnout in the South is low. Black voters are actually well represented in the Southern electorate: In the 11 states of the former Confederacy, African-Americans were 17.9 percent of the age-eligible population and 17.9 percent of actual voters in 2004, analysis of Census Bureau data shows.

And when socioeconomic status is held constant, black voters go to the polls at higher rates than white voters in the South. In other words, a 40-year-old African-American plumber making $60,000 a year is, on average, more likely to vote than a white man of similar background.

The second myth is that Democratic presidential candidates fare better in Southern states that have large numbers of African-Americans. In fact, the reverse is true, because the more blacks there are in a Southern state, the more likely the white voters are to vote Republican.

Mississippi, the state with the nation’s highest percentage of African-Americans in its population, illustrates how difficult Mr. Obama’s task will be in the South. Four years ago, President Bush beat John Kerry there by 20 points. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that Mr. Obama could increase black turnout in Mississippi to 39 percent of the statewide electorate, up from 34 percent in 2004, according to exit polls. And let’s assume that Mr. Obama will win 95 percent of those voters, up from the 90 percent who voted for Mr. Kerry four years ago.

If that happened, the black vote would yield Mr. Obama 37 percent of Mississippi’s statewide votes. To get the last 13 percent he needs for a majority, Mr. Obama would need to persuade a mere 21 percent of white voters in Mississippi to support him. Sounds easy, right?

But only 14 percent of white voters in the state supported Mr. Kerry. Mr. Obama would need to increase that number by 7 percentage points — a 50 percent increase. Mr. Obama struggled to attract white Democrats in states like Ohio and South Dakota. It strains credulity to believe that he will attract three white voters in Mississippi for every two that Mr. Kerry did.

Keep in mind that this analysis (and the speculation that Mr. Obama will generate unprecedented black turnout in the South) does not consider the possibility that white voter turnout will rise, too. Passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act led to an upsurge in black voting in the South, but it also caused many white Southerners to register and vote as well — for the Republicans.

Granted, Mr. Obama’s campaign isn’t counting on Mississippi. What about Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia, the three states that are routinely cited as new possibilities for the Democratic column this fall?

Mr. Obama can write off Georgia and North Carolina for the same reasons that Mississippi is beyond his reach — although the math in those two states is slightly less daunting. Virginia, however, is the one Southern state that Mr. Obama has a reasonable chance of winning. And it’s precisely because the home of Robert E. Lee, as NBC News’s political director, Chuck Todd, has suggested, is seceding from the Confederacy.

The demographic makeup of the electorate in Virginia is unlike that of any other state in the South. The black population in Virginia is, as a percentage, among the lowest in the region. And during the last two decades, the state has also experienced a huge influx of upscale non-Southerners, who have taken over the Washington suburbs of northern Virginia. (Florida is a perennial target for similar reasons. With a relatively small black population, a big Hispanic voting bloc and a large contingent of relocated retirees from the North, it is the least Southern of the Southern states.)

In the rest of the South, Mr. Obama cannot overcome reality. Even if unprecedented numbers of black voters turn out to vote for him, the white vote will serve as a formidable counterbalance. Mr. Obama should not hope to capture states in the country’s most racially polarized region.

Thomas F. Schaller, a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, is the author of “Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South.”

The South Will Fall Again, NYT, 1.7.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/opinion/01schaller.html