OK....article in the issue with the cover:
The Political Scene
Making It
How Chicago shaped Obama.
by Ryan Lizza
*************************H/T to Flopping Aces**************************
Obama - Your Typical Politician,/b>
******************EXCERPT******************
Posted by: Curt @ 11:31 am in Barack Obama, Uncategorized
In the new issue of The New Yorker there is a long piece about what makes Obama tick. The author, Ryan Lizza, went looking to find out and found that the ticking is just Chicago politics as usual. No change, no new direction. Just plain ole politics. Its a long piece so Ive taken only bits and pieces of it that are relevant to understanding the messiah.
They start with someone who was beside him early on in his political career but became quite disillusioned by him:
Preckwinkle soon became an Obama loyalist, and she stuck with him in a State Senate campaign that strained or ruptured many friendships but was ultimately successful. Four years later, in 2000, she backed Obama in a doomed congressional campaign against a local icon, the former Black Panther Bobby Rush. And in 2004 Preckwinkle supported Obama during his improbable, successful run for the United States Senate. So it was startling to learn that Toni Preckwinkle had become disenchanted with Barack Obama.
Preckwinkle is a tall, commanding woman with a clipped gray Afro. She has represented her slice of the South Side for seventeen years and expresses no interest in higher office. On Chicagos City Council, she is often a dissenter against the wishes of Mayor Richard M. Daley. For anyone trying to understand Obamas breathtakingly rapid political ascent, Preckwinkle is an indispensable witnessa close observer, friend, and confidante during a period of Obamas life to which he rarely calls attention.
Although many of Obamas recent supporters have been surprised by signs of political opportunism, Preckwinkle wasnt. I think he was very strategic in his choice of friends and mentors, she told me. I spent ten years of my adult life working to be alderman. I finally got elected. This is a job I love. And Im perfectly happy with it. Im not sure thats the way that he approached his public lifethat he was going to try for a job and stay there for one period of time. In retrospect, I think he saw the positions he held as stepping stones to other things and therefore approached his public life differently than other people might have.
On issue after issue, Preckwinkle presented Obama as someone who thrived in the world of Chicago politics. She suggested that Obama joined Jeremiah Wrights Trinity United Church of Christ for political reasons. Its a church that would provide you with lots of social connections and prominent parishioners, she said. Its a good place for a politician to be a member. Preckwinkle was unsparing on the subject of the Chicago real-estate developer Antoin (Tony) Rezko, a friend of Obamas and one of his top fund-raisers, who was recently convicted of fraud, bribery, and money laundering: Who you take money from is a reflection of your knowledge at the time and your principles.
“Ms.Preckwinkle”
Whew! I would change my name so fast.