The Steepest Climb

Meanwhile, in the Republican Party, Sen. Edward Brooke of Massachusetts had quietly begun thinking of himself as a future president. As the first African American to be popularly elected to the Senate, in 1966, he had quickly become a national star, called on to give speeches and appear at fundraisers across the country. According to Brooke, Michigan Gov. George Romney talked to him about a Romney-Brooke ticket in the early phases of the 1968 presidential race.

Romney's campaign imploded after the governor made some ill-advised remarks about being the victim of "brainwashing" regarding the Vietnam War. But the Romney overture got Brooke to pondering his own ambitions. "Why couldn't I be president of the United States? Is it too soon? How strong would the support of blacks be? Would I be acceptable to white voters in the South and Midwest as I assumed I would be for white voters in New York and the Northeast? I delved into it more than I have said," Brooke disclosed in an interview.

Like Obama, Brooke had just arrived in the Senate and was already wondering what more he could become. He had been an Army officer in World War II, attorney general in Massachusetts and "had gained a lot of confidence," as he put it, in navigating segregated environments. In Brooke's time, the prevailing wisdom was that the only imaginable path to the Oval Office for a black politician would be to somehow get picked as a running mate first. On a few occasions, notably when Richard Nixon was pondering replacements for Vice President Spiro Agnew, Brooke's name was floated. Soon Brooke began thinking grander possibilities. He even perused some national voting data his staff compiled.

"Had I been reelected in '78 and served another term," he says, "I would have thought about testing the waters."

Brooke, however, lost that year's Senate race to Democrat Paul Tsongas and never reentered politics.

The watershed moment in the evolution to Barack Obama was Jesse Jackson's decision to run for president in 1984. There had long been discussions among the nation's prominent black elected officials and civil rights figures that revolved around an essential question: How do we get beyond supporting the potential Democratic nominee to supporting one of our own? Hatcher, who was Jackson's national campaign chairman in 1984, recalls a pivotal meeting in 1983 at Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

Twenty to 25 elected officials and leaders of black organizations were there, Hatcher remembers, buoyed by Harold Washington's election as Chicago's first black mayor and driven by concern over Reagan administration policies. Still, virtually all of the best presidential prospects in the room, Hatcher says, had "a very elaborate explanation as to why they could not run or would not run." Some were worried about jeopardizing their standing with the eventual nominee; others were worried about their groups' nonprofit status. Jackson said he had urged Young, then mayor of Atlanta, to run, but he declined.

At some point, Hatcher recalls, "Jesse said, 'Well, if no one else is willing to run, I'll run.' That didn't sit very well with certain people there." It was true that Jackson had an ego that rubbed some the wrong way. But Hatcher says: "One of the things Jesse brought to the table was he had this network, these relationships with black preachers all over the country. When they learned he was running, many of them got their parishioners to contribute small amounts of money to the campaign. . . . Jesse Jackson also had something the more conventional candidates did not have, and that was the ability to get publicity, to get on the evening news, without paying for it."

Jackson's first campaign, often viewed as largely symbolic, exceeded expectations -- he won five Democratic primaries and caucuses -- and set the stage for a more ambitious campaign in 1988. On his second attempt, Jackson won 13 primaries and caucuses, doubled his total votes to 7 million and took 29 percent of the total primary vote. He finished a strong runner-up to Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis, who reeled in campaign contributions at four times the rate of Jackson.

In assessing the climate for Obama's candidacy, Jackson says: "We have not changed, African Americans. White America is changing, in many ways. There is, in a real sense today, a new generation of possibilities."

A retrospective session on Jackson's '88 campaign was recently held in Wisconsin, where the candidate had drawn some of his largest crowds in a state with a black population of only 4 percent. Steve Cobble, Jackson's '88 delegate coordinator, hopes that a series of such forums can be held throughout the country.

Jackson announced early his unsolicited support for Obama, but says he has not been asked to campaign for the Illinois senator in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina. "He has a circle of allies, [David] Axelrod and that group. I have not been part of that circle. . . . But I have maintained a good relationship with him."

Obama was a recent graduate of Columbia University when Jackson launched his first campaign, and once told Jackson that he was inspired watching him on television debating Walter Mondale and Gary Hart. Now, Obama is trying to carve out a legacy of his own.

With a week to go before the Iowa caucuses, Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones Jr., one of Obama's political godfathers, is reminded of a story. It is from September 2004, when Obama was campaigning for the Senate in an overwhelmingly white, rural part of the state. Several thousand had gathered to see the Democratic nominee. After Obama spoke, an 84-year-old white woman approached Jones. "I hope I live long enough," she said, according to Jones, who is black. "This man is going to be president, and I want to vote for him."

It was Jones's first glimpse of Obama's broad appeal, and he didn't share the anecdote with the candidate. But he wondered: Might it actually happen?

"It was really amazing," Jones says, adding: "What happens is folks try to pigeonhole you, and he would never let folks pigeonhole him."