Government - Article Review: Obama
Seeking Unity, Obama Feels Pull of Racial Divide By Ginger Thompson (NYT - 2/12/08) Senator Barack Obama first began seriously considering running for presidency about two years ago. At that time, he and his group of political advisors devoted only a few minutes to the issue of race, which the senator considered relatively unimportant in affecting his chances for success. Now, after several victories over his fellow Democrat and rival for the Democratic nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the initial lack of concern with race seems to have been justified. In radio interviews, Obama himself referred to his primary victories in Nebraska, Utah, and Idaho, which states do not have large contingents of African American voters. In the same interview, the senator also
Among the statements attributed to Wright he has said, "Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. When some of the efforts to resist aligning too closely with African American interests prompted suspicions about his campaign among black voters, Obama's African American advisors were forced to scramble to reach out to African American public figures and scholars to support his candidacy publicly. Early on in his campaign, white advisors to the senator to distance himself from his church pastor, Rev. Specifically, a Princeton scholar suggested that the senator should not be characterizing racism as a general social problem that affects all American society equally, but as a problem that still affects African Americans disproportionately. He described how previous African American candidates for high political office had relied too heavily on support from the African American community, which ultimately limited their appeal to non-African American voters as a result. While he does not consider race to be a major campaign issue for the senator, Mr. ss-the-board victories with black, white, and Asian voters across both genders, as well, in Washington State. , and to retract the invitation to the pastor to deliver Obama's campaign kick-off rally so as not to alienate white voters over the pastor's previous public sermons that many considered anti-white. According to the senator's chief campaign strategist, David Axelrod, the Obama campaign did not initially make detailed plans for negotiating the race issue, but that there is a certain general strategy as well as pitfalls to be avoided in doing so. Axelrod reminded the interviewer that Senator Obama is only the third African American elected to the Senate since the Reconstruction period after the Civil War and then suggested that the Obama campaign would seek to continue appealing to African American voters but in a manner that allowed more unified support from white voters across the nation at the same time. Axelrod still acknowledged the need for delicacy and diplomacy on that issue. Likewise, after a recent setback in Georgia, the Obama campaign began featuring the senator's wife Michelle, who, unlike the senator, is not biracial but an African American from the South Side of Chicago, and therefore, considered more identifiable with many African American voters. However, inside Senator Obama's campaign, the issue of race has generated several strategic disagreements.
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Acceptance Essays
