From Outsider To Politician

Obama had enjoyed giving interviews to reporters during his tenure as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, classmates remembered, and legislative sessions provided a forum in which he liked to deliver impassioned arguments in front of his colleagues and the media. He had a mastery of constitutional law and a talent for elegant speaking, assets that served him well as a University of Chicago law professor, where students would listen to his lectures, rapt. But in Springfield, his speeches sometimes played out to a soundtrack of groans or the background chatter of indifference. Colleagues sometimes walked around the room while Obama spoke, and he often sat down discouraged.

Once, at a revenue committee meeting, Obama delayed the proceedings to raise a series of astute questions about committee bylaws. He spoke only a few sentences before a senior colleague interrupted him.

"Hey, enough already," said Denny Jacobs, a Democrat. "Learn on your own damn time, will you? Some of us want to finish this up and get the hell out of here."

"Barack had this misconception that you could change votes with thoughtful questions and good debate," said Jacobs, who has since retired from politics to become a lobbyist. "That was a little idealistic, if you ask me. It's not necessarily about smarts and logic down there. Votes are made with a lot of horse trading, compromise, coercion, working with the other side. Those are things that Barack can do -- can do very well, actually. But it took him a little while to figure it out."

Said Hendon: "Sure, he was smart. But he didn't understand the basics of politics yet. He wasn't a good politician."

Stuck in the legislative minority, Obama had nothing but time to stew over his slow start. Republicans set the schedule, and they left Democrats in the dark about what time each day's session would begin and end. Obama lived at the Renaissance Inn, on the edge of downtown, where the long vistas of farmland from a room on the top floor reinforced the distance between his new life and his family. He watched ESPN. He played basketball each morning at the YMCA. He talked to his wife, Michelle, for almost an hour each night.

After weekends at home in Chicago, Obama sometimes considered leaving late for the legislative session to spend an extra day at home, some of his friends said. He would miss nothing but a few meaningless votes, he reasoned, and he could accomplish more by meeting with constituents in his Hyde Park neighborhood. Friends persuaded him to return to Springfield only when they reminded him of the political ramifications: A lot of missed votes, advisers said, might permanently scar his résumé. He needed to succeed downstate in order to build a record.

"There were times when the politics of Springfield troubled him, but he's not somebody who throws up his hands," said Abner Mikva, a former congressman who mentored Obama in Chicago politics. "He realized he needed to do some things their way, not always his way. He changed his approach. He knows how to adapt and succeed."

Midway through Obama's first term, Jacobs realized that he would be a quick learner. One day Jacobs stopped the new senator in a hallway of the Capitol and pointed out a decorative poster on the wall. It showed how a bill becomes a law in Illinois, and it depicted a chart of steady progress as legislation moved efficiently from one house to the next. Each step was illustrated with bold, black lines. Obama laughed at the simplification.

The chart, he and Jacobs agreed, might be more useful as toilet paper in the men's restroom.

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Obama needed allies to make headway in a place like this, so he set out to find some. A group of Springfield political aides and lobbyists invited him to join their poker game, a low-stakes gathering attended by three other senators. On a weeknight in April 1996, Obama met the other players in a private room at a local country club. Big-screen TVs showed a Chicago Bulls game, and cigar smoke clouded the air.