The Audacity of Hope

room plastered with Hynes posters. On the evening of the AFL-CIO endorsement
session, I noticed a number of my labor friends averting their eyes as I walked through
the room. An older guy who headed up one of the state’s bigger locals walked up and
patted me on the back.
“It’s nothing personal, Barack,” he said with a rueful smile. “You know, Tom Hynes
and me go back fifty years. Grew up in the same neighborhood. Belonged to the same
parish. Hell, I watched Danny grow up.”
I told him I understood.
“Maybe you could run for Danny’s spot once he goes to the Senate. Whaddya think?
You’d make a heck of a comptroller.”
I went over to my staff to tell them we would not be getting the AFL-CIO endorsement.
Again things worked out. The leaders of several of the largest service workers unions—
the Illinois Federation of Teachers, SEIU, AFSCME, and UNITE HERE, representing
textile, hotel, and foodservice workers—broke ranks and chose to endorse me over
Hynes, support that proved critical in giving my campaign some semblance of weight. It
was a risky move on their part; had I lost, those unions might have paid a price in
access, in support, in credibility with their members.
So I owe those unions. When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right
away. I don’t consider this corrupting in any way; I don’t mind feeling obligated toward
home health-care workers who clean bedpans every day for little more than the
minimum wage, or toward teachers in some of the toughest schools in the country,
many of whom have to dip into their own pockets at the beginning of every school year
to buy crayons and books for their students. I got into politics to fight for these folks,
and I’m glad a union is around to remind me of their struggles.
But I also understand that there will be times when these obligations collide with other
obligations—the obligation to inner-city children who are unable to read, say, or the
obligation to children not yet born whom we are saddling with debt. Already there have
been some strains—I’ve proposed experimenting with merit pay for teachers, for
example, and have called for raising fuel-efficiency standards despite opposition from
my friends at the United Auto Workers. I like to tell myself that I will continue to weigh
the issues on the merits—just as I hope my Republican counterpart will weigh the nonew-tax
pledge or opposition to stem cell research that he made before the election in
light of what’s best for the country as a whole, regardless of what his supporters
demand. I hope that I can always go to my union friends and explain why my position
makes sense, how it’s consistent with both my values and their long-term interests.
But I suspect that the union leaders won’t always see it that way. There may be times
when they will see it as betrayal. They may alert their members that I have sold them
out. I may get angry mail and angry phone calls. They may not endorse me the next
time around.
And perhaps, if that happens to you enough times, and you almost lose a race because a
critical constituency is mad at you, or you find yourself fending off a primary challenger