The PBS documentary series Frontline did a series of interviews with Barack Obamas Harvard Law School colleagues. Of particular interest is the fourth interview in the series by Bradford Berenson, one of the few conservative law students at Harvard at that time.
Berensen went on to be Deputy White House Counsel in the George W. Bush administration:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/choice2008/obama/harvard.html
Heres an excerpt from the Bradford Berenson interview: You dont become president of the Harvard Law Review, no matter how political, or how liberal the place is, by virtue of affirmative action, or by virtue of not being at the very top of your class in terms of legal ability. Barack was at the very top of his class in terms of legal ability. He had a first-class legal mind and, in my view, was selected to be President of the Harvard Law Review entirely on his merits.
And I will personally find you 5 lawyers who were at Harvard with him who will privately say that he was a "....lazy, blithering idiot who pulled the race card on every question."
Berenson could just be practicing a very wise legal and politically correct stratagem, viz: