Obama: A political journey — at warp speed

"The heart of the story was him being terrified to take a group into action," Kindler says. "He didn't paint himself as a conquering hero. He told people about potential failure, his own fear that it was not easy to go out there and create change for the neighborhood. I always remember that. The organizers I knew were full of bravado — 'we can't be beat.'"

As apprehensive as he was, the young Obama already was proving to be a quick learner with keen instincts.

"He clearly thought strategically and understood how you can move from one place to another," Kindler says. "The politics of what we did was less about partisanship than it was the politics of power. ...

"The thing he was brilliant at was establishing a rapport with folks quickly. It was based on who they were, what their motivations were, what they wanted to accomplish."

And yet, Kindler says, back then he never could have anticipated what was ahead.

"If you said Barack Obama would be president some day," he says, "it would be, 'President of what?'"

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Barack Obama had already made history as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review when he received a phone call from Chicago.

It was Douglas Baird, a professor in charge of the University of Chicago Law School's appointments committee. A colleague had tipped him off to Obama as an impressive prospect worth putting on his radar. So Baird moved fast, calling the third-year law student.

Are you interested in teaching law? he asked.

No, Obama replied, he planned to write a book about voting rights.

Baird extended an invitation: Come to the university, we'll give you a rent-free office and a word processor. You can write here.

"Here was a promising young scholar," Baird says, "and possession is nine-tenths of the law. The idea is a serious guy who is writing a book may well end up in law teaching. You'd much rather have him wake up deciding that when he's physically in your building."

Obama agreed, and about a month later, Baird says, he reported that his book had taken a different direction and it would be an autobiography — even though he was just in his early 30s.

Baird hoped Obama would become a permanent faculty member. Obama had other ideas: He wanted to run for state Senate.

"We spent a lot of time trying to persuade him to give up this political thing," Baird recalls. "We told him it was going to go nowhere."