Fire on the Prairie: Harold Washington, Chicago Politics, and the Roots of the Obama Presidency

Foreword to the Revised Edition

Foreword to the Revised Edition CLARENCE PAGE T hink back for a moment to that truly historic Democratic primary race. Recall for a moment that eloquent African American candidate who threw his hat into the ring against two popular white candidates with big political names. Many questioned the audacity of his effort to unseat the favorite, a famously tenacious and barrier-breaking woman who would not let past controversies dim the sense of inevitability that she projected with her formidable résumé and high-powered political connections. The smart money as to who would be her real competition was mostly on her other challenger, a popular young white male with a famous name and major populist appeal, especially with his mostly blue-collar base. Conventional wisdom cast the black candidate as an eloquent long shot, a spoiler who probably would use this race to build his name for his future ambitions . This perceived also-ran status insulated him from direct attacks, until he showed signs of winning. African American voters liked the black candidate, but they, too, wondered, Was he “ready”? Among other puzzles, could he untie the big double bind on racial ambitions in America: Could he be “black enough” for black folks without being “too black” for white folks? Such questions leaped out at me during Barack Obama’s campaign for the White House—because they echoed the same questions raised by Harold Washington’s turbulent campaign twenty-five years earlier to become Chicago ’s first black mayor. viii Foreword to the Revised Edition In fact, the entire scenario that I have outlined here describes both Washington ’s primary battle with Jane Byrne and Richard M. Daley and Obama’s horse race with Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards. Having covered Washington’s campaign years earlier, I quickly heard its echoes in Obama’s crusade, beginning with the spectacular political momentum that he generated with one expertly executed televised speech. His address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention gained more instant respect for him than any I had seen since Washington’s opening salvos in his first debate with Byrne and Daley. The next day, blue Harold Washington campaign buttons blossomed on chests across the Loop like flowers in springtime, and an amazing political saga began History is a series of events. Fire on the Prairie captures the history-making events that help us to understand how an independent black congressman, drafted into action by a frustrated constituency of community and civil rights activists, outwitted machine-style politics and calmed widespread racial anxieties just enough to break through traditional barriers of race, money, and connections to get himself elected. The more recent presidential victory by another black former state senator from Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood gives new significance to Gary Rivlin’s book and its almost prophetic vision of how Washington ’s election served as a reproducible model for political empowerment against tremendous odds and racial anxieties. Like Mike Royko’s Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago, Rivlin’s chronicle of Washington’s rise and power struggles has weathered the test of time as a classic Dickensian portrait of big city politics amid seismic racial, ethnic, and socio­ economic change. Obama says he never met Washington, but he appears to have been an eager student of Washington’s life. The excitement generated by Washington’s 1983 election helped to lure Obama as a Columbia University graduate to work as a community organizer in Chicago two years later, he says. “Those years,” Obama told WBEZ radio’s Cheryl Corley on the twentieth anniversary of the mayor’s death, “watching him as a larger-than-life figure and seeing the impact he had on the confidence of the African American community , the hopefulness of the community, it had a lasting impact on me. And I suspect that was the first time when I fully appreciated the potentials of a political figure, not just to pass laws, but also to change people’s attitude about themselves.” If Obama had no direct contact with Washington, he soon connected with others who did. Few were more significant than David Axelrod, President Obama’s political guru who covered the 1983 race as a political reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He became a political consultant the next year and in 1987 managed Washington’s reelection. Axelrod’s experience with Washington ’s campaigns helped him to help other clients win, including Senator Paul Simon in 1984 and eventually Mayor Richard M. Daley. Significantly, his winners...