Obama's Ascent
How do you leap from neighborhood activist to U.S. Senator to perhaps higher office?

In January, Barack Obama, 43, will become the only African American in the U.S. Senate—and just the third in the past 100 years. While that alone should be ample cause for contemplation, Obama's is really a story about what might be. In the past year, Obama has been compared, in all seriousness, to Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bill Clinton. Democrats debate whether he should run for President in 2012 or 2016.

In Washington the test begins. As the only black Senator, Obama will face expectations that will be hard to fulfill—especially if he wants to be a national candidate someday. Luckily, one of Obama's gifts is that he is meticulously self-aware, and he knows that the frenzy that surrounds him doesn't entirely make sense. Shortly before his victory, Obama spoke to Time at his campaign headquarters in Chicago. "What's going on? I'm not entirely sure," he said. "I think what people are most hungry for in politics right now is authenticity."

The turning point in Obama's career came in Boston on July 27, 2004, when he delivered one of the best speeches in convention history. Facing thousands of needy Democrats, he described a country that America wants very badly to be: a country not pockmarked by racism and fear. He described a place in which an African immigrant could marry a Midwestern white woman and their middle-class son could go to Harvard Law School and run for the U.S. Senate. Say what you will about America's current reputation in the world, but few would argue with his central, shining point: "In no other country on earth is my story even possible."

Obama is a master at shaping his own mythology. When he talks of his childhood, we hear little of the years he spent growing up in Hawaii, of his fondness for bodysurfing and sashimi. Instead we hear in every speech that his mother was from Kansas ("That's why I talk the way I do") and his father was from Kenya ("He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack").

Obama's background resonates because it proves his points. Like other young African-American politicians, from Congressmen Harold Ford Jr. of Tennessee to Artur Davis of Alabama, Obama does not sound like a civil-rights-era black politician. His style, as he puts it, is "not accusing but challenging Americans to live up to the highest ideals."

As he grew older, Obama wove in and out of the Establishment. After graduating from Columbia University in New York City, he moved to Chicago to be a community organizer. Four years later, he went to Harvard Law. In 1996 Obama ran for state senate and won. Impatient, he leaped again in 2000, this time challenging four-term U.S. Congressman Bobby Rush. A former Black Panther, Rush ridiculed Obama as a Harvard-educated carpetbagger. Obama got hammered, losing 2 to 1.

This year Obama chose a better race—for an open Senate seat. Then he got lucky. In the primary, his millionaire opponent, Blair Hull, was undone by media revelations that his ex-wife had sought a restraining order against him. In the general election, Republican Jack Ryan withdrew after his ex-wife made damaging allegations. Finally, the state's straggling Republican Party imported Alan Keyes—an arch-conservative from Maryland—to run against Obama.

For now, Richard Durbin, the senior Senator from Illinois, counsels Obama to follow the model of Hillary Clinton. As a national figure entering the Senate with more buzz than clout, Clinton did her homework, kept her head down and stayed in tireless contact with her New York constituents. Gradually, her political capital rose. Obama says he plans to ask for her advice. Depending on how the conversation goes, maybe they could wager on the chances of them ever running together for the White House. —from TIME, November 15, 2004

Questions

1. Describe Barack Obama's background.

2. How did Obama "get lucky" in the 2004 election?