The Exquisite Dilemma of Being Obama

By Perry Bacon Jr.

When Oprah Winfrey has declared you "more than a politician," when you've had dinner with Bill Gates and Steven Spielberg and received 300 speaking invitations a week, things are going well for you as a freshman Senator. So you might forgive Barack Obama for being cautious in his first year on Capitol Hill. Why should he risk blemishing an almost perfect public persona that could help him win the presidency one day? But last month Obama finally found his cause: he wanted to lead Democrats in the push for lobbying and ethics reform. The issue seemed perfect for him. It's high profile because of the Jack Abramoff scandal. And it plays to his cultivated image as a politician above party ideology. Unlike gay marriage or abortion, ethics reform is not polarizing; no one is in favor of corrupt legislators.

Senate Democratic leaders were happy to have Obama take the baton, but didn't want the Illinois Senator to indulge in his usual pox-on-both-their-houses political style, whereby he lectures Democrats and Republicans alike for being divided and looks for a bipartisan solution. Democrats wanted to attack the G.O.P. over the excesses of lobbyist and admitted felon Abramoff, a Republican, and get a law passed only on their terms. So Obama tried to split the difference. He showed up at a bipartisan meeting on lobbying reform with Republican Senator John McCain but later sent McCain a letter saying he would work on the Democrats' version of a reform bill, as Democratic leaders desired, rather than McCain's. In an angry, sarcastic letter in reply, McCain blasted Obama last week for his "disingenuousness" and "self-interested partisan posturing." "I concluded your professed concern for the institution [of Congress] and the public interest was genuine and admirable," McCain wrote. "Thank you for disabusing me of such notions."

The public scolding illustrated perfectly the exquisite dilemma of being Obama: How do you remain as popular as you are, preaching a message of unity, while also making some of the tough partisan decisions that define you as a politician and ultimately help advance your career? Obama's debut on the national stage, his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, mesmerized people because he seemed to speak for almost everyone, black and white, liberal and conservative, immigrant and native born. But in the Senate, where voting means you have to take sides, Obama has found that preserving his Everyman appeal is almost impossible.

While Obama has drawn praise from Democrats and Republicans for his intellect and diligence, he's struggling to please all those who expect something from him: liberals want the formerly feisty antiwar candidate to be the standard bearer for their causes, Democrats in Washington want him to take on Bush, African Americans want the only black Senator to speak out on racial issues, and moderates and Republicans like McCain want to see Obama's bipartisan side. It's a complicated balance, particularly for a man who would need the support of all those disparate groups to become President--a possibility he already has his eye on. "People have enormous expectations of him," says David Axelrod, one of Obama's top advisers. "And to live up to them is difficult. He's just a person, and the minute you start casting votes, you make some people happy and some people unhappy."

NAVIGATING THE SENATE

Before Obama ever cast a vote in the Senate, his picture had been splashed on magazine covers, and pundits were declaring he would be the first black President. That kind of fame can be awkward in the Senate--where nearly every member thinks he or she could be President. But Obama has won over his colleagues by using the Hillary Clinton approach of conspicuously paying respect to their experience. After his term began, he met with more than a dozen Senators, including Clinton and Ted Kennedy, to seek their advice. In weekly breakfast meetings for Illinois residents visiting Washington, Obama spends much of his time deferring to Illinois' other Senator, assistant Democratic leader Dick Durbin. Obama tells the tourists they should direct their questions to Durbin, "the second most powerful Democrat in the Senate," a man who is "working on every bill." Says California Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat: "It's nice to see someone that young, that talented, show humility."

Republicans have also embraced Obama, realizing that any legislation he co-sponsors will automatically get more attention because of his fame. Obama was able to get more done last year than his junior status would normally allow. He joined a bipartisan effort on avian flu that resulted in several billion dollars of funding to prepare for a possible outbreak. He helped get funding for veterans' health care increased $1.5 billion. The main G.O.P. worry is that Obama's political future may be too promising--that he would be hard to beat as a presidential contender.

Make no mistake: Obama wants to be more than a well-liked, effective Senator. He says someone asks him about his presidential prospects "every day." He won't run for President or Vice President in 2008, he says, but even his aides acknowledge that he doesn't intend to spend decades in the Senate. And he already looks the part. He dresses impeccably and carries his 6-ft. 2-in. frame with a liquid confidence. He's fully aware of his talents. "I probably always feel on some level I can persuade anybody I talk to," Obama told TIME.

But Obama's ambition sometimes makes him overly cautious. Eight months ago, when a TIME reporter asked him if he had read any interesting books or met any interesting people lately, he said he wanted to think about that and respond later. Obama rarely plays the role of attack dog for his party. "He's very carefully chosen what assignments he will take," says a Senate Democratic aide. Some Democrats complain that his high-profile alliances with Republicans--such as his joining with Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate, to push a bill to monitor Hurricane Katrina recovery spending--smack of a man positioning himself for a presidential run. "He needs to be careful not to look too political and too out for himself," says a Democratic strategist. "He needs to pick some fights [with Republicans]." The McCain battle was unintentional, and Obama has tried to walk away from it. He called McCain "cranky" but said he still respects him.

HOLDING HIS BASE

Obama was a little-known Illinois legislator four years ago with a last name that sounded a lot like "Osama." But after some strong speeches he gave in 2002 and 2003 opposing the Iraq war, antiwar activists were instrumental in helping him win his Senate seat. They thought that once in office, Obama would be a loud voice attacking the Bush Administration's war policy. Instead, he said little about Iraq most of last year, and his position in a November speech was barely distinguishable from what congressional Republicans say: More progress toward stability in Iraq needs to be made in 2006, but any sort of immediate troop withdrawal would be a mistake. "Barack has taken a more moderate stance, and that has angered a lot of people," says Marilyn Katz, a Chicago antiwar activist who still supports him.

"It's not that I'm being cautious," Obama says, speaking about his antiwar critics. "It's that I disagree with them." Part of the problem is that Obama appeared on the Illinois scene in 2002 and on the national stage two years later without people knowing much about him. So liberals in particular have often projected onto him views he doesn't have. Plus, Obama prides himself on being a politician who is unpredictable and difficult to label as either a centrist or a liberal.

But in the Illinois senate, Obama took major risks on legislation that could have cast him as a liberal. He was the key leader behind a law requiring that all confessions and interrogations in murder cases be videotaped, a provision about which many police and prosecutors and even Illinois' Democratic Governor at first expressed doubts. "That was risky," says Julie Hamos, a Democratic Illinois state representative. "We haven't seen that exactly on the national level."

Obama says he's not moving to the center. "My street cred as a progressive is not something I worry too much about," he says. But Obama's boldest moves in Washington have been to scold the Democratic base. Last fall Obama voted against Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. But when liberal bloggers bashed several other Democratic Senators for supporting Roberts, Obama defended his colleagues. In a posting of more than 2,100 words on the popular liberal blog Daily Kos, which flashed around the political world, he wrote that the way to stop conservative judicial nominees was by winning Senate seats and the presidency, not "vilifying good allies."

After Senator John Kerry announced that he would organize a filibuster to block the Supreme Court appointment of Samuel Alito last month, Obama was skeptical, saying "There is an overreliance on the part of Democrats for procedural maneuvers" and noting that his party clearly didn't have the votes to stop the appointment. The comments infuriated many of the liberal activists and Senate Democratic aides working to stop the nomination. The next day, Obama voted for the filibuster he had criticized, which failed, as he had predicted. "You're either for it or against it," said a Democratic activist who was working to build support for the filibuster. The waffling also puzzled some Republicans who like Obama. "That's very disappointing," said Lindsey Graham of South Carolina about Obama's vote.

RACE MATTERS

Unlike Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, Obama is part of a new generation of black leaders who insist on being seen as more than representatives of their race. That's in part because, as the biracial son of a white mother and an immigrant father from Kenya, he belongs to more than one. But it's also because he has declined to assume the role. When President George W. Bush suggested last year that his proposed Social Security private-accounts plan would help African-American men, because on average they die earlier than members of other demographic groups and often don't collect much of their Social Security money, Senate Democrats approached Obama to speak on the issue. He was reluctant and attacked Bush on this point only after some prodding, arguing that the current system helps blacks more than Bush's accounts would. Obama was more public in his criticism of Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina, but he declined to join other black leaders who said the debacle showed that Bush didn't care about African Americans. Privately, the Congressional Black Caucus, a group of 43 African-American members, complains that Obama hasn't done enough to push its causes--like organizing to oppose Bush's judicial nominees.

Obama sees no need to be a black leader on all issues. "I don't know who the top white leader is," he said, naming Bill Gates, President Bush and Bono as possibilities. He says his African-American roots are very important to him. Photos of Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King Jr. adorn his office walls, along with a painting of Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court Justice. Within his political-action committee, Obama has created a fund to support one-week training courses for minorities interested in working on political campaigns. Concerned about government-sponsored killing in the Darfur region of Sudan, he plans to visit that country on a trip to Africa this summer.

Obama says he does not worry that his political career is a delicate balancing act. And if it is, he does not consider that grounds for complaint. "That's a high-class problem to have," he says. But it is a problem, argues Obama critic David Sirota, a former Democratic congressional aide from Montana who now runs a blog that is popular among Washington insiders. Sirota is worried that Obama's caution may muddle his record in the Senate--which, as Kerry found out, could ultimately hurt his chances of winning the White House. "He's got all the talent," says Sirota. "The question is, Are you willing to be criticized? Are you willing to be attacked?"

Asked again in early February in an interview with TIME in his Senate office what he had been reading, Obama had an answer this time: E.L. Doctorow's new novel about the Civil War, The March, and the Bible. He added that he had picked a passage in the Book of Romans, Chapter 12, to read at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. It is a passage about humility.

For a Q&A with Barack Obama, visit time.com