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Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President
Barack Obama's inspirational politics and personal mythology have overshadowed his fascinating history. Young Mr. Obama gives us the missing the portrait of the politician as a young leader, often too ambitious for his own good, but still equipped with a rare ability to inspire change. The route to the White House began on the streets of Chicago's South Side. Edward McClelland, a veteran Chicago journalist, tells the real story of the first black president's political education in the capital of the African American political community. Obama's touch wasn't always golden, and the unflappable and charismatic campaigner we know today nearly derailed his political career with a disastrous run for Congress in 2000. Obama learned from his mistakes, and rebuilt his public persona. Young Mr. Obama is a masterpiece of political reporting, peeling away the audacity, the T-shirts, and the inspiring speeches to craft acompelling and surpassingly readable account of how local politics shaped a national leader.
276 pages, Hardcover
First published October 12, 2010
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About the author
Edward McClelland
10 books38 followersEdward McClelland is the author of Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President, which will be published in October by Bloomsbury Press. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, and on the websites Salon and Slate, among others. A graduate of Michigan State University, he lives in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood.
His previous books include Horseplayers: Life at the Track, and The Third Coast: Sailors, Strippers, Fishermen, Folksingers, Long-Haired Ojibway Painters and God-Save-the-Queen Monarchists of the Great Lakes."
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 14, 2013
This is as much a portrait of politics Chicago style as it is the story of now President Obama. Fascinating look at how politics shape our world and how Obama developed into the person he is today.
(during first campaign in Chicago) p. 111 "Obama told writer Hank DeZutter that he was running for office to empower ordinary citizens, just as he'd done as a community organizer. 'what if a politician were to see his job as that of an organizer, as part teacher and part advocate, one who does not sell voters short but who educates them about the real choices before them? As an elected publi official, for instance, I Could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer. We would come together to form concrete economic development strategies, take advantage of existing laws and structures and create bridges and bonds within all sectors of the community. We must form grass-root structures that would hold me and other elected officials more accountable for their actions.'
(during campaign against Rush) p. 149 "Obama criticized Rush for not reaching outside the black community in his campaign for mayor. It was time for lacks to stop cursing whites and Latinos and figure out what the races had in common. I've been a community organizer, Obama argues so I can walk into a housing project. and I've been to Harvard Law, so I can walk into a corporate boardroom, too. 'I'm more likely to be able to build the kinds of coalitions and craft the sort of message that appeals to a broad range of people, and tha's how you get things accomplished in Congress.'
(after defeat by Rush) p. 166 'We nned a new style of politics to deal with the issues that are important to people. What's not clear to me is whether I should do that as an elected official or by influencing government in ways that actually improve people's lives.'
(2002 against "dumb war) p. 204 'I don't oppose all wars. and I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots or patriotism. what I am opposed to is a dumb war. a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agenda down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and hardships borne. What I am opposed is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in median income -- to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depresseion. That's what I am opposed to. a dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.'
for full text http://www.npr.org/templates/story/st...
(during first campaign in Chicago) p. 111 "Obama told writer Hank DeZutter that he was running for office to empower ordinary citizens, just as he'd done as a community organizer. 'what if a politician were to see his job as that of an organizer, as part teacher and part advocate, one who does not sell voters short but who educates them about the real choices before them? As an elected publi official, for instance, I Could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer. We would come together to form concrete economic development strategies, take advantage of existing laws and structures and create bridges and bonds within all sectors of the community. We must form grass-root structures that would hold me and other elected officials more accountable for their actions.'
(during campaign against Rush) p. 149 "Obama criticized Rush for not reaching outside the black community in his campaign for mayor. It was time for lacks to stop cursing whites and Latinos and figure out what the races had in common. I've been a community organizer, Obama argues so I can walk into a housing project. and I've been to Harvard Law, so I can walk into a corporate boardroom, too. 'I'm more likely to be able to build the kinds of coalitions and craft the sort of message that appeals to a broad range of people, and tha's how you get things accomplished in Congress.'
(after defeat by Rush) p. 166 'We nned a new style of politics to deal with the issues that are important to people. What's not clear to me is whether I should do that as an elected official or by influencing government in ways that actually improve people's lives.'
(2002 against "dumb war) p. 204 'I don't oppose all wars. and I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots or patriotism. what I am opposed to is a dumb war. a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agenda down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and hardships borne. What I am opposed is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in median income -- to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depresseion. That's what I am opposed to. a dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.'
for full text http://www.npr.org/templates/story/st...
November 20, 2017
I was too young (and not yet an Illinoisian) to follow Obama's rise before that scintillating speech in 2004. So this was a nice way to delve deeper into the background my forever POTUS. Made me so nostalgic somehow.
November 15, 2010
Lost Hope: How Obama Okie-doked the Liberals.
This week should signal the final wake up call for liberals who supported Obama in 2008 as just a few days ago the Obama Administration positioned itself to prolong both the military operations in Iraq and the War in Afghanistan. And this week the Obama Administration seems to be in the process of cutting a deal to extend Bush’s tax cuts to the rich while Republicans are touting a ban on earmarks and a cut in Defense spending.
Listening to liberal callers on talk radio programs this past week it was easy to pick up on their disenfranchisement. How had Obama ticked off the liberals to this degree?
Friday afternoon, less than 24 hours after watching a Frontline program called Obama’s Deal, I picked up a book by Edward McClellend called Young Mr. Obama. These two mainstream media offerings were related to some degree. Obama’s Deal documented the two year ordeal that President Obama went through to get his ObamaCare passed into law, while Young Mr. Obama detailed Barack’s rise from a community organizer on Chicago’s southside to becoming the only black U.S. Senator by 2004. The Frontline program and McClellend’s book both go a long way in explaining the misgivings that liberals have over Obama’s actions as President thus far, for the wheeling and dealing it took for Obama to become an U.S. Senator and the wheeling and dealing it took for him to pass the Health Care bill show that, like every other politician, Obama has no qualms about throwing out liberal principles in order to force his agenda.
As an Illinois state senator and as a U.S. senator Obama sold out liberal ideas for the advancement of his own career and agenda regularly, everything from allowing developers (similar to the one’s he took contributions from) to demolish a historic nightclub in his district (on Forty-seventh street) known as Geri’s Palm Tavern to voting to close the DCFS office on Chicago’s Westside to appease fiscal conservatives. (Further example is given in McClelland’s book as Obama was implicated in the porking out of a $29 million gun range to Sparta, Illinois in order to get its Senator to support him).
Similarly, when campaigning for POTUS Obama promised that if elected he would run corporate lobbyists out of Washington and he badgered the Bush Administration for letting the Health Insurance Industry write the Health and Drug bills—only to turn right around after getting elected and directly ushering in the Health Insurance lobbyists and the Drug Industry lobbyist into the white house to do basically the same thing all over again: i.e. to author his ObamaCare. And The liberals were thinking: WTF?!?
Obama’s promises of false hope were especially damaging to Americans liberals because the thin membrane separating Liberals from anarchy or total apathy is that Liberals have a hope (there’s that word) that the American political system has the potential to bring about change by ETHICALLY working within that system. Anarchists and apathetic Americans don’t have that hope. So when you dash this hope, the Liberals are left with two alternatives. One, they can totally turn their back on the American political system (anarchy or apathy). Or two they can evolve into Progressives.
The dashed hopes began when Obama gained the white house and from Day One he showed that there wasn’t going to be any CHANGE in the way politics were done in Washington. He wasn’t throwing lobbyists out of the capital—he was inviting them in. He wasn’t sticking it to fraudulent, wasteful and abusive corporate CEOs—he was bailing them out! And what happened to the total transparency (so that each individual could make an informed decision) that he promised? After two years of this Obama had proven to Liberals what they had HOPED wasn’t true: that our political system breeds unethical maneuvering.
To Liberals, Obama’s pattern of putting his agenda ahead of ethics was reminiscent of the Bush/Cheney administration. For Liberals, the question of “In the long run is ObamaCare best for the United States?” cannot be asked without looking at the facts around the cost in which it came to be—just as had been the case when a half dozen years earlier Liberals were asking the question “Was getting rid of Saddam Hussein (and taking over Iraq’s oil) the best thing for the United States?” Ofcourse Saddam was a terrible man and he had to go, that is given—just as it is a given that our broken Health Care system pre-Obama Care was terrible and it had to go. BUT, in both cases Liberals have asked: “Was it worth the cost? Was the replacement any better? Did we sacrifice our moral ground to achieve it?”
Of course Obama didn’t have to kill and maim thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens to get his ObamaCare passed. He didn’t have to torture Iraqi citizens at Abu Ghraib or use white phosperous on innocent Iraqi citizens. He didn’t have to destroy Iraq’s infrastructure, schools, roads, markets, their government, etc to pass his ObamaCare. And he didn’t have to put the lives of thousands of U.S. military folks at risk (although the rights of millions of Americans were trampled on by ObamaCare in its mandate for all citizens to be required to buy into the corrupt corporate health insurance industry by 2014). So obviously comparing Obama’s march toward ObamaCare to Bush/Cheney’s march to the war for oil in Iraq isn’t exactly the same. But what is the same is the way Obama exerted his will to push his agenda compared to the way that Bush/Cheney set out to push their agenda. It was politics as usual—the exact thing that Obama promised us that he wasn’t going to do. A promise, that more than anything else, inspired Liberals to get out and vote for Obama in 2008. And now it is the breaking of that promise that will cause Liberals NOT to vote for Obama in 2012. For they have lost Hope
This week should signal the final wake up call for liberals who supported Obama in 2008 as just a few days ago the Obama Administration positioned itself to prolong both the military operations in Iraq and the War in Afghanistan. And this week the Obama Administration seems to be in the process of cutting a deal to extend Bush’s tax cuts to the rich while Republicans are touting a ban on earmarks and a cut in Defense spending.
Listening to liberal callers on talk radio programs this past week it was easy to pick up on their disenfranchisement. How had Obama ticked off the liberals to this degree?
Friday afternoon, less than 24 hours after watching a Frontline program called Obama’s Deal, I picked up a book by Edward McClellend called Young Mr. Obama. These two mainstream media offerings were related to some degree. Obama’s Deal documented the two year ordeal that President Obama went through to get his ObamaCare passed into law, while Young Mr. Obama detailed Barack’s rise from a community organizer on Chicago’s southside to becoming the only black U.S. Senator by 2004. The Frontline program and McClellend’s book both go a long way in explaining the misgivings that liberals have over Obama’s actions as President thus far, for the wheeling and dealing it took for Obama to become an U.S. Senator and the wheeling and dealing it took for him to pass the Health Care bill show that, like every other politician, Obama has no qualms about throwing out liberal principles in order to force his agenda.
As an Illinois state senator and as a U.S. senator Obama sold out liberal ideas for the advancement of his own career and agenda regularly, everything from allowing developers (similar to the one’s he took contributions from) to demolish a historic nightclub in his district (on Forty-seventh street) known as Geri’s Palm Tavern to voting to close the DCFS office on Chicago’s Westside to appease fiscal conservatives. (Further example is given in McClelland’s book as Obama was implicated in the porking out of a $29 million gun range to Sparta, Illinois in order to get its Senator to support him).
Similarly, when campaigning for POTUS Obama promised that if elected he would run corporate lobbyists out of Washington and he badgered the Bush Administration for letting the Health Insurance Industry write the Health and Drug bills—only to turn right around after getting elected and directly ushering in the Health Insurance lobbyists and the Drug Industry lobbyist into the white house to do basically the same thing all over again: i.e. to author his ObamaCare. And The liberals were thinking: WTF?!?
Obama’s promises of false hope were especially damaging to Americans liberals because the thin membrane separating Liberals from anarchy or total apathy is that Liberals have a hope (there’s that word) that the American political system has the potential to bring about change by ETHICALLY working within that system. Anarchists and apathetic Americans don’t have that hope. So when you dash this hope, the Liberals are left with two alternatives. One, they can totally turn their back on the American political system (anarchy or apathy). Or two they can evolve into Progressives.
The dashed hopes began when Obama gained the white house and from Day One he showed that there wasn’t going to be any CHANGE in the way politics were done in Washington. He wasn’t throwing lobbyists out of the capital—he was inviting them in. He wasn’t sticking it to fraudulent, wasteful and abusive corporate CEOs—he was bailing them out! And what happened to the total transparency (so that each individual could make an informed decision) that he promised? After two years of this Obama had proven to Liberals what they had HOPED wasn’t true: that our political system breeds unethical maneuvering.
To Liberals, Obama’s pattern of putting his agenda ahead of ethics was reminiscent of the Bush/Cheney administration. For Liberals, the question of “In the long run is ObamaCare best for the United States?” cannot be asked without looking at the facts around the cost in which it came to be—just as had been the case when a half dozen years earlier Liberals were asking the question “Was getting rid of Saddam Hussein (and taking over Iraq’s oil) the best thing for the United States?” Ofcourse Saddam was a terrible man and he had to go, that is given—just as it is a given that our broken Health Care system pre-Obama Care was terrible and it had to go. BUT, in both cases Liberals have asked: “Was it worth the cost? Was the replacement any better? Did we sacrifice our moral ground to achieve it?”
Of course Obama didn’t have to kill and maim thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens to get his ObamaCare passed. He didn’t have to torture Iraqi citizens at Abu Ghraib or use white phosperous on innocent Iraqi citizens. He didn’t have to destroy Iraq’s infrastructure, schools, roads, markets, their government, etc to pass his ObamaCare. And he didn’t have to put the lives of thousands of U.S. military folks at risk (although the rights of millions of Americans were trampled on by ObamaCare in its mandate for all citizens to be required to buy into the corrupt corporate health insurance industry by 2014). So obviously comparing Obama’s march toward ObamaCare to Bush/Cheney’s march to the war for oil in Iraq isn’t exactly the same. But what is the same is the way Obama exerted his will to push his agenda compared to the way that Bush/Cheney set out to push their agenda. It was politics as usual—the exact thing that Obama promised us that he wasn’t going to do. A promise, that more than anything else, inspired Liberals to get out and vote for Obama in 2008. And now it is the breaking of that promise that will cause Liberals NOT to vote for Obama in 2012. For they have lost Hope
November 23, 2021
This book recounts the beginnings of Obama’s political career and unusual ascendance to power. I think my opinion of Obama was both improved and worsened after reading this book, which is probably a sign that the author did a good job of creating a fair and balanced narrative of events.
March 9, 2015
Another pulp political biography. Entertaining, but very superficial treatment of Obama's rise to power in Chicago. This also serves as a poor intro to Chicago style politics, as it doesn't really get into the workings of the machines. There are multiple passages where McClelland copy-pastes sentences or even whole paragraphs almost verbatim from earlier sections. The book really makes a point of portraying Obama as an opportunist and elitist character, without ever digging too deeply into his political ideology. I came away not having learned anything new about what turned Obama into the neoliberal monster that he is today. Despite my dislike of Obama's politics, it's amazing how far Obama has come as an orator, from his earlier description as a naive and overtly intellectual speaker unable to engage many of his South Side constituents. And no, engaging the South Side does not equate to "Obama's attempts to sound ghetto," Mr. McClelland.
January 21, 2011
Readable account of the early political career of President Obama. A major weakness is that the essay is entirely based on verbal interviews with no published (print or internet)documentation. A second weakness is that the author did not grow up in Chicago, and it subtly shows. However, McClelland overall does a credible job and presents an Obama that is no surprise: extremely hard working and intelligent but also arrogant, opportunistic, and cold with no understanding of the loyalties and dues that are part of politics, not just Chicago politics. The best insight is how Obama is a post racial politician and how black politics has changed between the generations of Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama. For the first time in American history, the elements have come together to enable a black(ish) politician to appeal to white voters.
April 13, 2011
While McClelland does not provide a lot of insight into the inner Obama (Dreams from My Father is likely the most we'll ever get on that front), he does provide a fascinating look at modern Chicago politics and how Obama grew into his campaign persona. You can see Obama's ideas and language emerge over time has he becomes the public figure we're familiar with today.
The funny thing is that for some reason, the Obama we see here reminds me a bit of Lyndon Johnson. Something about the combination of political acumen, ambition, and the good sense to get friendly with those who are older and more powerful. I'm fond of Johnson in all his chaotic evil charm, so this isn't necessarily a bad thing -- but it is surprising.
The funny thing is that for some reason, the Obama we see here reminds me a bit of Lyndon Johnson. Something about the combination of political acumen, ambition, and the good sense to get friendly with those who are older and more powerful. I'm fond of Johnson in all his chaotic evil charm, so this isn't necessarily a bad thing -- but it is surprising.
June 9, 2015
McLellan writes a book that, though pretty clearly biased in favor of the Democratic Party, still treats Barack Obama's rise to power fairly and evenly. The story itself isn't as interesting as one would think (turns out the president was a hard working, charismatic, intelligent man!), but the central thesis - that Chicago, Illinois is as responsible for Obama's prestige as anything else, is an interesting one, and well-executed. Blessedly, a map of important landmarks in the city is included, allowing me to get a much stronger, more visceral idea of the two decades it took Obama to reach the presidency.
December 26, 2015
McClelland focuses on the pivotal events in Obama's life between his growing up years (college, law school) and his rise to national prominence as a senator and candidate.
The author tells us what happened to Obama when he came to Chicago to be a community organizer. In the process, we learn about Chicago politics.
Anyone who has an interest in our president or an interest in community leadership will enjoy the bio.
The author tells us what happened to Obama when he came to Chicago to be a community organizer. In the process, we learn about Chicago politics.
Anyone who has an interest in our president or an interest in community leadership will enjoy the bio.
November 30, 2013
McClelland’s biography is a fascinating, unromanticized account of Barack Obama’s early days in Chicago. The book highlights his success as a South Side community organizer and his ambitious foray into politics. In his quest to become a powerful leader, Obama’s hubris is shown to be both an asset and an impediment.
January 5, 2011
Interesting history of President Obama during his first years in Chicago and through his Illinois Senate years.
August 10, 2012
My review in AND Magazine: http://www.andmagazine.com/content/an...
July 4, 2013
This is very interesting account of Barack Obama's start in Chicago politics.
November 10, 2015
Good quick read for those interested in getting things done.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews