7.08.2007

Obama Watch

A really interesting Newsweek cover article about Barack Obama and the racial issues surrounding the campaign.

I read the whole thing. It's worth a read. He's got a neat story, and right now, he's got momentum in the race. We'll see what happens- here's still a long way to go. Here's a bit that I read outloud to Josh:

Obama's first campaign was among the mostly white voters at Harvard Law School. At the time, in the early 1990s, the school was torn over racial issues such as affirmative action. On the left, there was anger at the failure to appoint African-American professors; on the right, there was dismay at the influence of liberal scholars who condemned the criminal-justice system as skewed against minorities and the poor. Amid this turmoil, Obama won election to the presidency of the influential law review by seeking consensus—with the support of a bloc of conservative students.

The conservatives knew he wasn't one of them, says former classmate Bradford Berenson (who later served in George W. Bush's White House). "What really set him apart from the people who had roughly the same views he did is that he did not demonize the people on the other side of the dispute," says Berenson. "He was not the sort to accuse people of being racist for having different views of affirmative action." Obama rewarded the conservatives by appointing several to the masthead of the law review, which angered some of his more-liberal supporters.


A note to Beth: Yes, I had trouble editing the subject line of this post. I was able to do it in Preview mode.

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