In the Illinois State Senate, Obama Proved to Be Pragmatic and Shrewd

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT, Early Experience: This is the second article in a series on the lives and careers of the 2008 presidential contenders.

At State Level, Obama Proved to Be Pragmatic and Shrewd
By JANNY SCOTT
Published: July 30, 2007


(Seth Perlman/Associated Press)
Emil Jones, left, the Illinois Senate president, with Barack Obama, saying goodbye to his colleagues after his election to the United States Senate in 2004.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — There was something improbable about the new guy from Chicago via Honolulu and Jakarta, Indonesia, the one with the Harvard law degree and the job teaching constitutional law, turning up here in January 1997 among the housewives, ex-mayors and occasional soybean farmer serving in the State Senate.

The new senator, Barack Obama, was a progressive Democrat in a time of tight Republican control. He was a former community organizer in a place where power is famously held by a tight few. He was a neophyte promising reform in a culture that a University of Illinois political studies professor describes as “really tough and, frankly, still quite corrupt.”...

Mr. Obama did not bring revolution to Springfield in his eight years in the Senate, the longest chapter in his short public life. But he turned out to be practical and shrewd, a politician capable of playing hardball to win election (he squeezed every opponent out of his first race), a legislator with a sharp eye for an opportunity, a strategist willing to compromise to accomplish things.

He positioned himself early on as a protégé of the powerful Democratic leader, Senator Emil Jones, a beneficiary of the Chicago political machine. He courted collaboration with Republicans. He endured hazing from a few black colleagues, played poker with lobbyists, studiously took up golf. (“An awful lot happens on the golf course,” a friend, Jean Rudd, says he told her.)

By the time he left Springfield in 2004, he had built not only the connections necessary to win election to the United States Senate but a record not inconsistent with his lofty rhetoric of consensus building and bipartisanship....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/us/politics/30obama.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

[madrchsod]

1. obama is well qualified

the latest example...the democrats could`t decide on a budget so the republicans now have their voice in the budget process. the democratic party is basically ran by an extended family and several others who from time to time get to arguing over how much each one is going to get.

illinois waits until either party becomes so corrupt that we vote the whole dam bunch out or they get thrown in jail. the latest was the ryan scandal that fitzgerald prosecuted..now he`s looking at the democratic machine in chicago and the governor of illinois....

obama is well qualified because he had to navigate this sea of inequity called illinois politics