>> not a common name for a women. her father wanted her name stanley because of the grave disappointment that his daughter hadn't been otherwise. he eventually went by ann. i'll call her ann. her name was stanley. and she decided to be an anthropologist at a certain point. particularly in the area of indonesian studies and craftsman and she was a mentor at the university of hawaii who happened to be the granddaughter of john dewey, her name is alice dewey. you asked about a the difference between his memoir and this book, they are radically different. >> you hmm. -- uh-huh. memoir is the story. he can be researched. i think obama did research for his. but it's highly shaped thing. literarily shaped. he doesn't do the work of a reporter or historian or archive work, he's doing personal work. literary work of self-understanding. and his book has no politics in it whatsoever. his bookends politics begins. it's the book of a prepolitical mantle. though he may have had inhibition. to go back to the hawaii, the other big missing piece or one the larger misses pieces of the autobioif i -- autobiography. the dreams of the mother. it's about someone trying to battle, learn about, a ghost. a father who leaves the household in infancy, reappears for 10 days when obama is a kid, disappears again, and obama hearing all kinds of stories about him the way kids do, but can't get his hands around them. that's the big drama of the book. there's three big sections to the book. it's a highly structured young man. and it's very good. but it's highly structured. at the end, this is not somebody that we know to be in tiers a lot. he ends weeping. one these sections weeping at the father's grave. his mother comes up while disagree with me in the campaign and journalism as kind of flighty, a certain kind of '60s character with a skirt and interested in kind of left leaning politics of international development sort. kind of trying to help myrrh african-american son unctioning being african-american by giving him jackson records or certain kinds of books. what could she do? in my search and talking to obama's half sister who spent more time, he's an interesting figure. >> and very complex. >> pardon? extremely collection. obama adeers her is the absence in high school. he's being raised by his grandparents. that's something everybody loves. i found her to be an richer character in life than she was in the his aught biography. >> she was trying to help him deal with being an outsider. they have to basically move out of the house. >> and it's exactly right. when she started doing research in java, they lived on the old pal lace lace -- palace grounds. the second husband had royal relations. they were allowed toly in palace grounds. when barack obama jr. would make his trips to join his mother on vacation, they had to move off of the palace grounds. it was one thing to have an american, it was quite another to have an african-american. this is not a guy who suffers the slings and arrows and knife sticks of john lewis, but one the great hero of the civil rights movement said, you are born into this country at any generation as an african-american and you don't escape suffering at all. and so barack obama -- what is the night he becomes a national and international figure? it comes in the summer of 2004, boston, in d.c. if you are in d.c., you don't have a senator. go and say raise your hand if you know who the state senator is, six hands will go up, and phi of -- five of them are lying. he makes the speak that knocks everybody out. everybody knows who he is. he's on the radio show and group. he goes to logan airport with his campaign manager named jim. and he's pulled aside for extra wanting and searching opinion now that didn't happened to jim colley. and colley saying, obama, you know, what the hell? and obama says, and i quote, these are the words that colley recalled, dude, not to worry. i've got it. this has been happening to me all of my life. nobody suggested that he didn't have access to elite institutions, columbia, harvard law school. he didn't escape that experience either. i don't care if he grew up in hawaii. even in hawaii which prides itself on multiculturalism, expect for one thing. all of the black people are on military bases. expect for a couple of kids here or there. so it was a really difficult struggle for him. >> how does that inform his personality, his world view? chris colley who was an advisor often describes the appearance of living in america as a black man. to experience something that deep muscle tissue bruising. not the kind of thing that you might be able to see, but the kind of thing that you steal and i could in the way you that might feel arthritis in the brain. it's there. and it's surfaces and lets you know that it's there from time to time. to the extent that he has that, how does that inform? >> i think chris headley, who's he was the dean at the law school in berkeley and has known obama for a while. race ain't rocket science. it's much harder than rocket science. what if his friends at harvard law school, casandra describes obama because of the interpreter. kind of way you go and that becomes your lens. because obama grew up in the worlds gnat way that most of us do not, he's able to do that in a political sense. he can go into a african-american church and claim a creditability there. because he's spent -- and he had to go achieve that. he didn't just walk through the door as a child. but he can go also to all kinds of other communities and translate that community to them. therefore, the met fore of fore fore -- metaphor of the bridge is not found. obama himself acts as the bridge. i don't want to dive too deep. there's no doubt that people's backgrounds and their associations and the way they grew up and the way they were educated and the historical moment that they are in affects who they are. they accounts their presidency. i'm not suggesting for a second that he's thinking about race in the situation room and talking about iron and afghanistan. >> there were meetings, several after to run for president where he was surrounded by friends and advisers. and in one particular meeting, he talked about what it would mean to run for black america. and he talks about how he -- he envisioned what that moment would feel like for young people to wake up the morning after the election and realize, wait, i wasn't dreaming the night before. the united states just elected the black man to the presidency. he thought about that and articulated that he talked about that. do you get the sense that he also was thinking about what that moment would mean for white america? and particularly for various segments of white america that might be resistance to that. >> i don't want to be glib, but in the sense what's the difference? african-american history is american history. there's no american history free of african-americans. african-americans were here a lot earlier than my relatives. there's no culture like african-american like music and literature. this is just who we are. it affects all of us. you're seeing the difficult side of it now. >> that's what i'm asking about. was he thinking about some of that element? >> this wasn't going to happen smoothly. weather he got elected or not. you see in the tea party movement, i'm not suggesting for a second that the everybody in the tea party is racist or even remotely the majority. there are movements coming through history. these kind of movements happen. but at the far end of it, you have seen and heard some pretty ugly things. even in the anxiety and african-american president and it creates a kind of certain vocabulary and a certain kind of outrage. we saw a phone message left on john lewis of all people, a phone message left. again, i don't want to suggest for a second that one phone message is paints an entire movement as racist. that would outrageous and wrong. but there are clearly, clearly some small part of the country that uses terms like we want our country back. what's that mean there's a kind of nostalgia for a imagined lost val halala when a president -- like barack obama is inconceivable in part. >> david, i want to reach back to the early years ago. because upon reading the book, some of you have just purchased the book for the first time. >> you can pressure it for a a -- purchase it for a second time. >> and buy one for your friends. upon reading the book, barack obama comes across a deeply ambitious man and was a deeply ambitious young man and was a deeply ambitious child and actually talked about the presidency much earlier than many. >> yeah, i think that was kid talk. and i think it's probably not a parent in the room who hasn't, you know, told his kid or should have been told or her kid that you can grow up to be anything. >> when he was in the congress, he ran for congress and got beat so bad he almost never got back into politics. i think he gets serious, really serious about himself in terms of ambition when he not only gets into the harvard law school but he becomes president of the harvard law review. that's when you begin to tell yourself that you are possessed of a healthy or enlarged or even engorged e bow that not only am i in the birthplace of the supreme court justices and senators and so on, but i am now the best of the best. in the case of the african-american president of the harvard law review, the next morning they are writing about the times and it's on the wires and all over the media. even when he running for small potatoes offices, there's a large sense. he shows up in chicago. even though it's given him many things, chicago doesn't immediately throw open his arms. hey, any office that you like. you want to be the mayor? it's yours. there was no way, the guy he would have run against and waited to leave, he's still in the office now. and he ran and his actions of running for -- acts of running for acts of impiety. he ran for the state senate thanks to allowed alice to try to run for congress. she lost in that and ran back and tried to get back and wanted obama to step aside. obama wouldn't do it. when obama got her thrown off of the ballot when she tried to get signatures to get him thrown off. the republican side might have been be -- it's not going to go any. he ran against former black panther and very popular, maybe not the greatest but popular, bobby rush. and he was defeated soundly, not only because bobby's son had been -- was killed in an act of violence on the street a couple of weeks after the race and his father died and the community was sympathetic. also because he didn't have the roots that bobby rush had. and bobby rush's campaign and another opponent put it out on the street that barack obama -- who was barack obama they asked? those questions didn't begin with sarah palin and john mccain. who is barack obama? they began much earlier. who is barack obama? he's not one of us. he has the white mother. he's from hawaii. he's backed by the university of chicago. highly controversial institution on the south side, especially for black folks. and also his money is coming from white people, from jews, i mean it got really, really ugly. and he got beat so bad that certainly michelle obama got the experience and left politics, maybe writing, teaching, running a foundation. that was that close. >> people who are successful often succeed if they fail. because they learned the proper lessons. >> absolutely. >> what did he learn? how did he move forward? >> he learned he's not a bobby rush. he's not a guy that's going to succeed by trying to out bobby rush robby -- bobby rush. he starts to go on trips throughout the states. he starts going south in the state for the old political hand. and he's been visiting these things. and he starts to see that white people who are cultural maybe closer to the other states that they are a lot closer too than chicago aren't dismissing me. i'm getting a friendly reception here. i translate. and so when he decides to run for senate, it's not as if he wins, but he does already. and he does very well, clearly in liberal suburbs. he sweeps the black folk. and he gets a little lucky. he gets a little lucky, wait for it, two more sex scandals. as you remember, blair hall who is certainly the richest if not the most skills, goes down in flames when his diverse records are -- divorce records are opened up. then he's going to run against a very strong republican who a former goldman sachs partner who's gone off to fund the really good school on the south side. he's now he's done well and now he's going to be good. his divorce records are open. barack obama ends up running against allen keys. the most sacrificial. i think the first time barack obama is in a really competitive race in his whole life, beside the harvard law school presidency, is the iowa caucuses against hillary. >> he has -- there's something interesting in his biography. you're lucky to get one good mentor to put their hands on your shoulders and give you advice and tell you the kind of thing that is you may not even want to hear. when the family god mother started passing out mentorships or good mentors, he was abundantly blessed. abner, judson minor, emile jones. >> it's a very long list. >> how does it happen? did he choose him or did he find his own mentors? >> there are certain young people. a long time ago al gore wrote that it was a youngish person. barack obama is more mature than younger students. he was more posed. he wasn't sort of feverish in his ambitions. he was the most over used word in the world, he was cooler about it. he's also smart. before that when he was -- i think this maybe the most important mentor of all and certainly somebody who spent amounts of time with him when he was a community organization, he was hired by a guy named jerry kelman, a jewish guy who converted to catholicism who's working with the catholic perishes and he desperately, desperately needed a black organizer. it's hard for him to march into the black churches and expect everybody to, you know, drop before him and do what he wanted in terms of community organization. he needed a black organizer. and he found this skinny kid who had applied after reading in the public library. and jerry kelman really was his coach, his teacher, in the place where he finds and he's not responsible for everybody, because jeremiah wright is also very important in this. it's the place and time where he finds seriousness, a sense of idealism, a sense of community and a sense of home. even hawaii so some extent, he wasn't going back there. there's nothing for him there. what's going to be the congressman from honolulu? the south side of chicago, not just chicago, the south side, that was home. he also found a church. and that was very important. jeremiah wright is an essential figure in the early time frame. >> and he found michelle. >> and he found michelle obama when he became back, he did an internship at a law firm and there was michelle obama who had proceeded him at harvard law. she was about the same age, but because he had been an organizer, they weren't together at harvard law. and he was knocked out by her. she job not -- she, not so fast. >> she's an interesting character. because she keeps him grounded when the world is going crazy and the world seems to rise up and greet him where ever he goes. she's always saying i hope at some point he does something to earn all of the accolades. as you describe it, it's part of the chemistry in their relationship. >> right, it's the gimlet observer and the one puncturing his not inconsiderable self-regard at certain times. but in the end, he seems to win most of the ma josh -- major battling. she is very reluctant about politics. she came from a family, and from a city where the view of politics is, you know, the dailies. great triumph of harold washington. they were excited by that as everybody was in the community. but very weary of politics. the whole idea of running for state senate. she was right. the black caucus can't stand him. the work is boring. he's board. he finds it trivial. he has a very low boredom threshold. which also speaks to the ego. and then he runs for congress and gets creamed. and she says enough is enough. we can do well and do good at the same time. we have all of these loans. enough is enough. and he has to get it one more shot and wins the senate seat. >> she's as committed to community service as she is. >> but in a different way. >> that's very strong. >> she's very committed and played that out as the professional women in the hospital and all of the rest. electoral politics is something she came far less willingly. >> what explains his restlessness? >> again, i want to be careful of the psycho analytic couch. there's a lot of the character that's created, there's no reason not to indulge it that is deliberately to the father. once he actually learns about his father's career, he reacts to it. his father thought that he was going to be at the very pinnacle of postcolonial politics. he was going to go on the air lift as a young man to the university of hawaii, get the education that he could get in the united states, then went to harvard and got a degree in economics. and he thought he was going to be back in the circle and all of the rest and he was going to have an extremely powerful voice there. somebody on the left spectrum of kenyan politics. and it just all went south. politics didn't work out. it's a long story politics didn't work out as he thought. he was extremelier raddic. he's a terrible husband and not a very good father at all. at one thing, one of his children who lives in china, has said that obama sr. beat one of his wifes and his life ends with drinking and cracking up in a car and dying. this is the crazy life that obama would simply not stand for. i think this kind of meticulousness, the reserve, the carefulness. he describes. this is not me psychoanalyzing him, he describes, at least in some part a reaction to the kind of father. >> how did people under estimate him when he ran the first presidential run? let's consider the first primary in iowa? in iowa, remember, there were very few black people in iowa. last time i was there. and why did he win iowa? you run for the tiny caucus for forever. two things were important, and let's leave aside hillary clinton's own campaign problems and in that campaign and all of the miscalculations. obama, and organization. real discipline and a kind of innovative organization and obama is something to separate himself and capture a lefts cleaning party faithful this iowa. very, very different. to me, it's an incredibly convincing. who was this guy? he beat hillary. they are on an equal or almost equal plane. everything is gang busted after that. >> one the things that people didn't respect is the importance of community from the brief period of time he spent and how he applied that to his candidacy and how he might apply that to how he know operates in the white house? >> i think he's constantly using it in the campaign, less so now, but in the campaign for how he imagined it would be. he would talk about i imagine a politician as the organizer. but the truth is, we learned a lot about things that not everyone knew. it was confrontational and rough figure, self-styled rough figure. why much of his time. obama was not that. although community organizing is such. especially in chicago is completely associated with the legacy. so i think community organize gave more to barack obama than barack obama could ever give to community organizing. especially in that sort of period of a time. he had some modest accomplishments and that eventually came to pass. i think part of what he learned is the frustration of community organizing. that he looked around and looked at harold washington unfulfilled prompts. here's somebody