A Series of Fortunate Events

Obama gathers his thoughts before speaking at the Iowa First Congressional District Democratic Caucus workshop in Peosta, Iowa, in July 14. (Jeremy Portje - Associated Press)

"He became an important person overnight," agrees Dem-ocratic political consultant Donna Brazile. What's unusual, Brazile says, is that most political celebrities -- Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, John McCain -- earn that status only after prolonged ordeals. "What's unique about Obama is that he's done it because he's cool. Because he's new."

In fact, the story of Obama's rise is more complicated -- and more interesting -- than simple novelty. To understand his ascent, it helps to invoke the anthropic principle, the theory some scientists use when exploring how a perfectly calibrated set of variables -- the necessary amounts of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen; the right temperature range; a propitious distance from the sun -- all had to be present for human life to arise on Earth. Had any one of thousands of factors not been present, our planet might have been a wasteland.

Similarly, had any number of events fallen out slightly differently, Barack Obama might have a lot more time to spend with his family just now. Had the late Harold Washington not been elected mayor of Chicago in 1983, changing what seemed possible for African American politicians in Illinois; had the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill not passed in 2002; had a series of Illinois politicians not suffered a run of spectacular marital problems; had John Kerry not been introduced by Obama during a stop on the former's 2004 presidential campaign, the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama would not have happened.

"It's not as though he's the accidental senator," Bullock says, "but, to some degree, his political story is a series of random walks and chance encounters."

To be sure, among the factors contributing to Obama's rise are innate gifts, including what Newton Minow, a Chicago attorney and mentor, calls "the combination of a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament." Obama is bright and attractive, with an air of calm as well as a wonderful speaking voice, hyper-articulate and sometimes pedantic, but also rich, warm, authoritative and reassuring. His voice, his appearance and his life story are particularly well suited to attract white votes. "We'd probably like it better if he talked like Jesse Jackson, but ya'll wouldn't," says African American political commentator Debra Dickerson.

And then there's ambition -- a given in any presidential candidate, but worth pointing out because Obama works hard to dispel the image of having sought his superstar status. "It's not about me, it's about you," he likes to tell his crowds. But according to those who know him, he has been talking about the presidency for more than a decade. "It was clear to me from the day I met him that he was thinking about politics," says Harvard Law School classmate Christine Spurell.

"There's a central conundrum about him," says another Harvard classmate, Brad Berenson. "On the one hand, he's this laid-back guy from Hawaii. On the other hand, he's vaulted himself into the race for president of the United States. And that doesn't happen by accident."

In some ways, nothing is more implausible than the coming together of Obama's parents. His mother, a white Kansan named Stanley Ann Dunham (her father had wanted a boy), met his Kenyan father, Barack Hussein Obama, in Hawaii in the late 1950s. Her family had relocated there, and he'd come to study at the University of Hawaii.

The second Barack Hussein Obama was born in 1961. After two years, his father left to pursue a PhD at Harvard (his fellowship did not cover family expenses), then returned to his home -- and first wife, whom he apparently had not divorced -- in Kenya.

Obama grew up a child of color in a white family, raised by his mother as well as loving grandparents. (He saw his father only once again; the elder Barack, by then a stranger to him, paid an awkward visit when the son was 10.) Obama spent several years in Indonesia after his mother married an Indonesian student. He returned to Hawaii to attend private school and live with his maternal grandparents in Honolulu, where he was largely insulated from the overt racism of 1970s America but became increasingly aware of the lack of African Americans around him.

In his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Obama portrays himself as drifting through high school, a little directionless and rebellious. It was becoming clear to him that there were aspects of his identity that white family members couldn't help him sort out. "I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America," he writes. The quest drove him East to New York City, where he graduated from Columbia University in 1983. In search of the communal spirit of the civil rights era, he decided to become a community organizer.

At that time, steel mills in Illinois and Indiana were closing, and an organizer named Gerald Kellman had been hired to help the devastated workers. Kellman's assignment included Chicago's South Side, home to one of the nation's largest African American communities. To win the cooperation of local leaders, Kellman promised to hire at least one black organizer. When he heard from Obama, he wasn't sure if he qualified racially. He asked his wife, who is of Japanese descent, if "Obama" might be a Japanese name, and she said it might. Kellman later met him in Manhattan and was impressed. After offering Obama the job, Kellman says, he gave him an advance to buy a car, "or something that resembled a car."