awareness. >> narrator: tonight on frontline... >> you have people who never thought that they would see something like this in their lifetime. >> he's smart enough to look into the future and gutsy enough to take it on. >> very idealistic, very romantic, very symbolic, and very much charisma driven. >> obama has got inner toughness, the velvet glove around the steel fist. >> somebody who started out as a state senator is now the democratic president of the united states-- that's a pretty spectacular rise in 12 years. >> this is our moment, this is our time-- to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace. >> he really believes that he has something to offer and that he can make a difference in the way people live their lives. >> narrator: tonight on frontline, the story of barack obama-- his life and his rise to the presidency. "dreams of obama." >> the delegates are trickling into boston. >> 35,000 people are expected to descend on boston. >> the convention is being held in the heart of the city. >> narrator: in july 2004, as the democrats were nominating john kerry, a young newcomer was about to steal the show. >> the next senator from the state of illinois, barack obama. >> the buzz was there was this up-and-coming, young state senator from illinois. most people probably couldn't pronounce his name. >> tonight is a particular honor for me because, let's face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. my father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in kenya. >> he really emerged from very, i think, unlikely circumstances. his mother was a young woman who had been raised in the midwest. >> she was born in a town on the other side of the world, in kansas. >> she met in a russian class a student from africa, during her freshman year, named barack obama. >> my parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. >> they very quickly got married and senator obama was born in august of that year. >> narrator: in his first book, obama writes about his parents' struggle. >> the year that my parents were married, miscegenation still described a felony in over half the states in the union. in many parts of the south, my father could have been strung up from a tree for merely looking at my mother the wrong way. they would give me an african name, barack, or "blessed," believing that in a tolerant america your name is no barrier to success. >> but his father only stayed for a couple of years. and then, he went to study at harvard, and left the mom and the son behind. >> the marriage really fell apart at that point. he ultimately moved back to africa. >> narrator: he would only see his american son one other time. there were other women, and seven other children. >> his whole family seems to have been pretty free-thinking. and they seem to have been a pretty non-conformist household. and certainly, his mother went on to be a very free-thinking and much-traveled person. >> narrator: his mother remarried. they moved to indonesia, but her ambitions for her son were decidedly american. >> she came into my room at 4:00 in the morning, force fed me breakfast, and proceeded to teach me my english lessons for three hours before i left for school and she went to work. i offered stiff resistance to this regimen. she would patiently repeat her most powerful defense-- "this is no picnic for me either, buster." >> i think she felt like, here's this african-american child whose father has left him. he may suffer from some self- esteem issues. so she built his character up from the very beginning. she told him he was from almost a superior race of people, that he was a special person to the point that he seems to still believe that today. >> i stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger american story, that i owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that in no other country on earth is my story even possible. >> narrator: before the speech, behind the scenes, they watched obama prepare. >> he was like an athlete gearing up for the big game. and he kind of looked like that. and even when i asked him, is he going to be a big bust tonight, or is he going to be a big star? and he said, "well, you know, i got some game. i can play at this level. i'm lebron, baby." he was comparing himself, obviously, to lebron james, the phenom in the nba at that point. >> if there's a child on the south side of chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. ( applause ) if there's an arab-american family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. ( applause ) >> narrator: backstage, his wife michelle offered her advice. >> michelle, she didn't want him to go out there and come across as too arrogant. she gave this little "don't screw it up, buddy" line to him, which probably calmed his nerves a little bit. >> there is not a liberal america and a conservative america; there is the united states of america. there is not a black america and a white america, a latino america, an asian america; there's the united states of america. >> i knew much of it was rhetorical, and when he said there's no white america, there's no black america, i kind of winced a little bit, because i know that there is certainly a black america. but i understood where he was coming from. >> hope, in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty-- the audacity of hope. ( applause ) >> michelle sees this happening. and she has tears streaming down her... her cheeks. i'm sitting in the crowd and a woman next to me is crying, bawling her eyes out. she just keeps screaming, "this is history. this is history." >> we are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the united states of america. >> the speech he gave in 2004 was a stump speech that he gave... i mean, i was literally watching it on television and, like, reciting it. and i was calling a friend of mine. and both of us were cracking up that this was the same speech that he used to give to crowds of, like, ten people, or in some church on the south side where, you know, no one knew how to pronounce his name and, you know, they were just meeting him for the first time, and this was a speech he would give. >> thank you very much, everybody. god bless you! ( cheers and applause ) >> this guy's going places. >> this is like watching tiger woods. >> it's amazing he's still a state senator in illinois. >> narrator: immediately, the pundits and journalists began casting obama in a new light. >> forget about uniter and divider; tonight, we heard from a transcender. >> he lit it up. >> people talk about him quite openly as the first black president of the united states. >> obama is expected to be thrown into the limelight. >> he can barely show his face in public without creating some kind of sensation. >> narrator: january 2005. it's been five months since barack obama's speech at the convention in boston. now, he's the newly elected senator from illinois. >> and he arrives in the senate a celebrity, in the way that, sort of, hillary clinton was a celebrity when she arrived. >> narrator: the democrats had failed to recapture the white house or the congress. obama was their superstar, and to many, their future. >> he was sort of a person who democrats were placing their hopes in. >> narrator: the veterans knew it in their bones. they gathered around him. >> he came to the senate, almost immediately, with everyone's high expectations, with everyone's assumption that this was a man who was on a fast track. >> narrator: former democratic senate leader tom daschle had lost his bid for reelection. as he left, he decided to protect and nurture the party's newest asset. >> he was looking for staff. i had what i considered to be some of the best staff on the hill. >> narrator: daschle's top aide, pete rouse, was so powerful, they called him the "101st senator." rouse wanted to retire. obama courted him. >> i may be the one person in politics who have never seen his speech at the convention. i've never seen it. never even read it, for that matter, you know, which i probably shouldn't admit to. >> narrator: obama got his man-- rouse signed on. >> you could tell he had the magic. what he said to me, "i know what i'm good at, i know what i'm not good at. i can give a good speech. but i don't have any idea what it's like to get established in the senate." >> they wanted, more than anything else, to make him look like a serious senator. so, from the very beginning, everything was done with that in mind. >> narrator: obama and his team designed a detailed two-year plan. >> they put together a two-year plan to put him at the highest possible political peak going into the 2008 election cycle. >> narrator: the plan called for obama to avoid controversial issues, and slowly raise his profile. >> we took no out-of-state speaking engagements in the first nine months. didn't do any sunday shows. he didn't want to get out there and expose himself to being attacked for being somebody who was more interested in getting headlines than really doing his homework. so he had bigger plans than that. but he was very aware of the importance of being a team player and not raising people's hackles. >> narrator: but it was a big challenge to fit into the rigid traditions of the united states senate. >> it's a seniority system. he was the last person to ask a question on every committee hearing. so he would have to sit there for at least two hours before he could be heard. so there was no question that he was very much a freshman, no question at all. >> there was a story that one of his staffers told me. he goes in with obama to the first meeting of the foreign relations committee, which is obama's big play. and joe biden is chairing the meeting, and it's a confirmation hearing for condoleezza rice. and so it's kind of a historic moment. and midway through the meeting, biden is just going on and on. obama scribbles-- looking very serious, scribbles a little note on a piece of paper, and passes it back to his aide. and the aide's very excited because this is the first communication from senator obama. and the note says, "shoot. me. now." "shoot," period; "me," period; "now," period. >> narrator: the freshman senator was impatient. aides say he had his eyes on a bigger prize. >> you're in a divided senate, it's hard to get anything done. you came to the senate to get things done and the excitement of getting things done, and nothing's really happening. i'm sure he's thinking there should be more. i don't think he would have been a long-term senator. he's not on the path to being the leadership, to stay three, four terms. >> narrator: those who knew obama well say his ambitious streak was not new. for 20 years, he had been relentlessly and carefully working his way up, navigating treacherous political waters. >> he's someone that's long been involved in the nitty-gritty of this stuff. i don't think that's something that people always realize. i think the soaring rhetoric, the sort of icon-like image that obama has attained in this country, sometimes blinds us to the fact that he wasn't born onstage in 2004, but he had to rise through the ranks of machine politics in chicago to get where he is. and that's made him an incredibly effective politician. chicago is the capital of black america. this is the city, within a few miles of each other... >> i'm telling you what the facts are... >> louis farrakhan has his headquarters... >> the honorable elijah muhammad took sharp disagreement with dr. martin luther king, jr. >> jesse jackson has his headquarters. >> our time has come. >> it's the city where harold washington was mayor. >> the whole nation is watching as chicago has sent a powerful message. >> this guy who overcame great odds and lot of racism to lead this city. >> our government will be moving forward, as well, including more kinds of people than any government in the history of chicago. >> it's the capital of black america, and i think that's one of the things that drew barack obama to that city. >> narrator: in 1985, obama moved to chicago. he was 23. he'd grown up in hawaii and indonesia, went to college in california and new york, and now he was determined to put roots down, to try to be part of the african-american political struggle. >> but at night, lying in bed, i would let the slogans drift away, to be replaced with a series of images, romantic images, of a past i had never known. they were of the civil rights movement, mostly. they told me that i wasn't alone in my particular struggles. >> you read his books and you think, here's a guy who's wrestling with his own identity and his own place in the world. he is, throughout this, trying to figure himself out. >> that my father looked nothing like the people around me-- that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk-- barely registered in my mind. >> he says in his autobiography that he realized that he had to teach himself to be a black man in america, that this was something he couldn't learn from his mother and his grandparents. >> i had nothing to escape from except my own inner doubt. i was more like the black students who had grown up in the suburbs, kids whose parents had already paid the price of escape. >> barack has had to deal with dueling identities all of his life. nurtured by a white family and... and identifying with that family, but at the same time, when he's out... when he goes out, he's identified as something else. and he has had to make sense of that duality his entire life. >> narrator: obama became a community organizer on chicago's south side. >> there wasn't much detail to the idea; i didn't know anyone making a living that way. when classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, i couldn't answer them directly. instead, i'd pronounce on the need for change. "change won't come from the top," i would say. "change will come from a mobilized grass roots." >> we had put an ad in a number of newspapers for a community organizer in the south side of chicago. and barack sent me a resume. i'm looking for anybody whose a good... who might be a good organizer, but i particularly need somebody who's african american. >> you know, one way to put it is barack obama's looking for an authentic african-american experience, and gerry kellman, the chicago organizer, is looking for an authentic african american. >> he was a skinny young man, and in some of the communities he worked, there were a lot of single moms, single grandmothers. and they wanted to take him in and feed him and fatten him up. he was an eligible young man. they wanted to introduce him to their daughters and to their granddaughters, and he found a home and he was very comfortable here. >> narrator: but he wasn't always welcome. >> he had to work with a lot of different church leaders who weren't necessarily receptive to this young guy who came from the ivy league and did not have chicago roots. >> you know, chicago's a town that says, "we don't want nobody that nobody sent." well, barack was somebody that nobody sent. >> narrator: still, obama did have a model for how to succeed putting coalitions together-- the newly elected mayor, harold washington. >> blacks, whites, hispanics, jews, gentiles... ( cheers and applause ) >> harold washington was surely a phenomenon. >> ...have joined hands to form a new democratic coalition. >> harold washington had to be mayor for all the people of chicago, and had to be perceived as somebody who was prepared to be mayor of all of the people of chicago, and not just a mayor for the black community. >> what washington was able to do was to put together these coalitions-- african americans, latinos, and progressive whites. and he was able to pull that together and beat the machine. and that kind of coalition building was incredibly influential for barack. >> narrator: obama had a small measure of success as an organizer, but it had its limitations. >> after two-and-a-half years, he realizes you just can't get very far at community organizing. >> it structurally was not going to change racial discrimination. it was not going to change poverty in the united states. there simply would not be enough power there. >> at that point, he begins thinking about, "is there some other way to do the same job that i'm trying to do?" which is lift people out of poverty. >> he decided he needed to sort of see how politics worked on a sort of higher level than what he had access to as a street organizer in chicago. he needed to go off to law school. >> narrator: he took out student loans and was accepted at one of the nation's most prestigious law schools, harvard. >> brown, black and white-- we're all precious in god's sight. everybody is somebody... >> the political environment on the law school campus in the late '80s and early '90s was borderline toxic. >> no more racism. >> no more racism. >> no more sexism. >> harvard law school was a very divided institution. >> there's a lot of mutual animosity surrounding affirmative action. it's racially a very charged time. >> people just did a lot of talking and a lot of fighting. by the end, it's like one big, unhappy family. >> ...its first black member... >> narrator: barack obama found himself in the midst of the protests-- at one point, championing the cause of a black faculty member, professor derrick bell. >> and i remember him sauntering up to the front and not giving us a lecture, but engaging us in a conversation and speaking the truth. >> he was a very public figure on campus. everyone knew who he was. he was a very well-respected leader, probably the most well- respected student on campus. >> ...simply by his good looks and easy charm... >> narrator: in the superheated racial disputes, obama had become the middleman, a conciliator. >> he's always been very adept at walking this fine line between two dramatically different worlds, whether it be black and white, liberal and conservative. he's just extremely adroit at walking that tightrope. >> he was raised in a white family. he learned early on, i think, to move back and forth between different communities of people. >> narrator: the intellectual epicenter of the ideological battles tearing the law school apart was the prestigious harvard law review. >> i don't remember any physical violence. i certainly remember plenty of raised voices. i've worked at the supreme court. i've worked at the white house, i've been in washington now for almost 20 years, and the bitterest politics i've ever seen, in terms of getting personal and nasty, was on the harvard law review. >> narrator: brad berensen was a member of the conservative federalist society. one day, he and his associates would help run the bush administration. >> the conservatives on the harvard law school campus, at that time, were severely outnumbered. >> narrator: inside that toxic environment, obama's affinity for the federalist students surprised his black associates. >> i don't know why, at the time, he was able to communicate so well with them-- even spend social time with them, which was not something i would ever have done. i don't think he was agenda driven. i think he genuinely thought," some of these guys are nice, all of them are smart, some of them are funny. all of them have something to say." >> narrator: no african american had ever been president of the law review. in his second year, obama decided to run for it. >> if being on the law review is a great credential and a high honor, being the president of it is the greatest credential and the greatest honor. >> the voting for the presidency was an all-day process in which... it started out in the day with a lot of candidates, and they got basically voted off the island as the day progressed. >> one of my most p