Obama eventually became a senior lecturer, focusing on constitutional law. But he wasn't a regular presence on campus because he was a legislator at the same time. Some around the law school regarded him as aloof, but Baird disagrees. "He's not someone who wears his emotions on his sleeve and he's never been that way," he says. "It's a characteristic, not a character flaw."

When Obama geared up to run for U.S. Senate, Baird again tried to discourage him. Think of the constant pressure to raise money, he warned.

"You'll spend two years of your life being a telemarketer, you're going to be calling total strangers," Baird recalls saying. "The best-case scenario is you'll wake up three weeks before the primary and there'll be a couple of people (opponents) in front of you."

In fact, Obama vaulted to victory in the crowded Democratic primary only after the multimillionaire front-runner imploded over personal problems.

Baird remembers talking with Abner Mikva, an Obama mentor, former judge and law school colleague the day after that primary win. "This is incredible, three weeks ago, he was running third," he told Mikva, who, according to Baird replied: "'Douglas, he has one attribute every successful politician has. He's lucky.'"

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Maybe Michael Kang should have bid on the chance to spend a day with Barack Obama in Springfield.

Word around campus was Obama liked to drive fast and was a fun guy, says Kang, recalling the fundraising auction he passed up while attending the University of Chicago Law School.

Instead, Kang's recollections of the man who will be the 44th president stem from being a third-year student in Obama's "Constitutional Law: Equal Protection and Due Process" class.

"I remember him as a good, thoughtful teacher. Very fair," says Kang, who teaches at Emory University School of Law in Atlanta. "It was very difficult to tell what he thought about an issue. He was happy to play devil's advocate. He wanted to be really balanced. He made people comfortable saying what they thought on politically sensitive issues, such as race or abortion."

Obama was "friendly and approachable, but not necessarily super-outgoing and talkative," Kang says. And while some professors at Chicago taught with "a clear viewpoint," he adds, "you wouldn't necessarily know what his politics were."

Kang remembers one after-class conversation with Obama about contentious court decisions involving abortion and contraceptives. "He was comfortable seeing both sides," Kang says. "On one hand, he gave a lot of respect to women's rights. On the other hand, he understood the process questions and the role of the courts."

Kang says he figured Obama was heading somewhere but in law school, he was "just an ordinary guy ... who didn't take himself too seriously, wanted to be reasonable and hear out different perspectives."

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