REVIEW ESSAY

“Race” For America 2008: Breaking Throughon a Different Track

Charlton McIlwain

Published online: 6 March 2012# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. By Gwen Ifill. New York:Anchor Books, 2009. ISBN 0767928903, $24.95 paper, 320 pp.

The Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election. By Dan Balz andHaynes Johnson. New York: Viking, 2009. ISBN 0670021113, $29.95 hardcover, 432 pp.

Gwen Ifill’s The Breakthrough and Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson’s The Battle for America2008 are among the most significant of the many journalistic accounts reflecting on the 2008Presidential campaign. Irrespective of their different approaches to, and framing of, the presi-dential election, both Balz/Johnson and Ifill provide those critical elements scholars writing in avariety of qualitative traditions seek to provide most: thick description, context, perspective,insight, and ultimately a sense of meaning about the phenomenon being investigated.

Balz/Johnson and Ifill organize their narrative accounts of Obama’s rise to prominenceand eventual election in ways that differently highlight the complex terrain of today’s racialpolitics in the U.S. Balz/Johnson frame the election through the traditional eyes of aWashington insider; The “Battle,” accurately reflects this dominant narrative structure. Priorto delving into the book’s “main event”—the Obama campaign and its rise to dominance—the book begins providing an overview of the major players in both the Democratic andRepublican Party primaries. In this brief prelude, entitled Take Off, the authors frame eachcandidate in relation to their respective opponents and to the battle itself. Obama, the calm,cool, observer; and McCain, the warrior, walking with the self-assured swagger of a battle-tested general. The third player briefly described in the book’s opening scene is, curiously,not Hillary Clinton, but George W. Bush. In Balz/Johnson’s view, Bush and his failedpolicies were what each of the candidates ran against.

After this initial prelude comes a first set of three chapters, titled, “They’re Off.” Eachchapter chronicles how the candidates arrived at a position where they were poised tocompete for the American Presidency. Obama’s progress is portrayed as quick, influencedby a series of revelations about his presidential potential: an uncompetitive 2004 Senate

Qual Sociol (2012) 35:229–235DOI 10.1007/s11133-012-9221-9

C. McIlwain (*)Media, Culture & Communication, New York University, New York, NY, USAe-mail: cdm1@nyu.edu

contest; an unexpected call to keynote that year’s Democratic National Convention; his trip“home” to Africa in 2006; a public convinced the country was heading in the wrongdirection; and his historic February, 2007 announcement, delivered in Lincoln’s symbolicshadow. Juxtaposed against Obama’s almost “accidental” decision to pursue the presidency,Balz/Johnson describe John McCain’s steps towards his 2008 presidential run as moredeliberate, especially given his run for the Republican nomination in 2000.

Balz/Johnson characterize Hillary Clinton as the ultimate insider—having not onlyoccupied a place in the Senate, but also having been an outspoken First Lady during herhusband’s tenure as President. In what Balz and Johnson point out was part of her gender-based stigma, Clinton had long been seen as calculating—plotting her run for the presidencyat least as far back as her initial run for the New York Senate seat, if not before.

At this point in The Battle, Balz/Johnson frame the contest as a competition between threeWashington insiders, all of whom promised “change.” As the authors note, two of thecandidates’ visible bodies suggested a set of distinctions that, if the candidates werenominated and/or elected, would shift the historical image of the American presidency. Inshort, no one knew how Obama’s race, Clinton’s gender and (to a lesser degree) McCain’smisfit with the Republican base would ultimately play out.

In chapter four Balz/Johnson take a brief detour from the respective presidential candi-dates to focus on key segments of the voting public during the nine months leading up to thefirst presidential primaries. Drawing on a series of focus groups, Balz/Johnson provide asynopsis of American public opinion about the state of the country and their view of thecandidates. Both Republicans and Democrats agreed: The country was on the wrong track,Iraq was the most important issue, and Bush’s war policy (among others) was a failure.

It is here that Balz/Johnson first highlight the public’s initial fascination with BarackObama. Ours was a racial fascination. White voters expressed their racial curiosities aboutObama in ostensibly race-neutral language. Common sentiment was that “his fresh newface” (62) was Obama’s appeal. African Americans were similarly intrigued by Obama butvery explicit about their race-based doubts. More than race, however, another set ofresponses seemed to draw the authors’ attention and these responses had everything to dowith the electorate’s demand for change. As one woman quoted in the book notes, “It alreadywas different,” referring to the generational difference between now and the sixties. “Ev-erywhere we traveled, from beginning to end of the long campaign, the way Obamaappealed to young voters remains an indelible memory (63),” they conclude.

The next twelve chapters take up almost half the book and focus on the Democraticprimary. Here, the real battle begins. For the political junkie who revels in the presidentialhorse race, battle or brawl, this is the part of the book that absolutely captivates. Chapter fivepresents a dominating Hillary Clinton. In speeches across the country, nationally televiseddebates, talks to Democratic organizations and interviews with local, state and nationalmedia, Clinton delivers a consistent set of punches to Obama, demonstrating that perhaps heis not quite ready to be in the same ring. Suffering from physical, mental and emotionalfatigue and buoyed only by a hefty war chest, Obama limped into the ring in what was billedas kind of a “fight of the century.” In an MSNBC debate, Clinton dropped her guard,exposing herself by fumbling an answer to a question about her position on New YorkGovernor Elliot Spitzer’s driver’s license policy for illegal immigrants. The authors cite thismoment, and the media’s relentlessly negative coverage of it following the debate, as beingthe opportunity Obama needed to gain ground. Like Rocky recognizing what might be hislast chance to score before throwing in the towel, Obama landed a punch that left anindelible mark on how the media spun Clinton’s debate debacle. It diminished the advantageshe had built over Obama, and lead to the momentary demise of the Clinton camp.

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Chapters seven and eight chronicle the “epic battle”: Iowa. As the writers put it,“Obama’s campaign saw the national nomination through the prism of Iowa; Clinton’s teamsaw Iowa through the prism of a national campaign” (104). These two chapters chronicleObama’s strategic, grassroots mastery of the Iowa Caucus system that enabled him to exploitits potential. By contrast, they recount the manifold failures of a Clinton team too ignorant ofthe system to run anything more than a status quo campaign, too obstinate to hire the righthelp, and ultimately too late to stop Obama’s winning coalition. After countless hours andhundreds of thousands of dollars spent by both sides on polls and counter polls, focus-group-tested messages, television ads and dueling endorsements, Obama stood with gloves raisedhigh, delivering a victory speech that would energize his followers, fans, supporters andcurious bystanders, almost as much as winning the actual caucus had. Clinton lay on the mat,stunned.

Next came New Hampshire: round two. Clinton proved too resilient for an Obama teamthat was tired and too overconfident to invest the kind of strategic brain strength that wentinto devising and carrying out the successful Iowa strategy. Despite the tied match, Balz/Johnson abundantly clear what the casual observer could not see: The Clinton team was inshambles, shuffling leadership as it quickly headed towards disintegration.

Following Obama’s defeat in New Hampshire came what the authors describe as the“Uncivil War.” In a nod to the underlying issues that prompted the civil war, the chapter titlesums up its focus on the bitterly racial skirmishes that began to develop in the run up to theSouth Carolina primary. Barack andMichelle Obama entered the battlefield to a crowded frenzyof mostly African Americans, their hopes and pride amped up by another icon of BlackAmerican struggle and success—Oprah Winfrey. Channeling Martin Luther King, Winfreyimpressed on the troops that this was the time to forge ahead, not retreat. The polling numbersthat Balz/Johnson rely on to tell their story of the moment reveal that Winfrey’s message wasright on target, allaying black doubts that white voters could pull the lever for a black man.Black women seemed especially in need of such assurances. Some doubted whites would votefor Obama. Others were torn between their racial and gender-based allegiances, fueled, in part,by sentiment that that Obama’s election would continue to strengthen, rather than underminemale, and black male patriarchy. But it was Clinton primarily, the former President, that got thejob done for Obama. South Carolina proved to be pivotal regarding the role race would play inthe presidential election. But Balz/Johnson’s description of the moment is equally significant.“Most critical,” they write, “South Carolina was where the Clintons lost the allegiance of muchof the Democratic establishment, both black and white” (156).

They point to what appears to be a sentimental sea change throughout the ranks of theDemocratic Party, a party that—like its Republican counterparts—has for decades allowedracial prejudice to keep them from electing many blacks to office outside of majority-blackor minority districts. The party’s repudiation of the kind of racial politics initiated by theClintons in South Carolina speaks volumes and in hindsight had to be prophetic for theremainder of the campaign. On the other hand, it speaks to the contemporary complexitiesand pitfalls of mobilizing race in a new era of heightened awareness and sensitivity. 2008presented a new landscape, an electoral terrain wherein the black presidential candidate wasnot just an amusing and colorful racial caricature. Leaving South Carolina shamed, Clintoncame face to face with the reality that Obama was not the typical black presidentialcandidate. Super Tuesday came and went: one Obama victory after another Clinton defeat.By chapter fourteen, Balz/Johnson take stock of the numbers: Obama was winning thecaucuses with 80% of the delegate count.

Balz/Johnson’s “horse race” narrative frames race as part, rather than as the central,component of the presidential contest. They view race as just another cog in the larger

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strategic campaign machinery, race is foreshadowed at the beginning of the book to highlightits strategic potential, only to later be emphasized in those moments when one or the otherClinton, one of their staff, surrogates or supporters wielded it as a weapon to inflict damageto Obama’s campaign. However, Balz/Johnson show that as much as Bill Clinton wasHillary’s racial Achilles’ heel in South Carolina and beyond, it would be one of Obama’sown whose racial rhetoric cut deepest. In their chapter titled “Politics in Black and White,”the specter of race enters the Balz/Johnson narrative amidst the controversy of ReverendWright’s race-baiting rhetoric. Clinton seized the opportunity to redefine Obama in Wright’simage, incorporating Wright’s “militancy” into her message strategy. To the voters in thefinal primary states: Vote for me because unlike Obama, I am (white) like you. To the partysuper delegates: Nominate me; White voters love me (and they don’t think Obama is reallylike “us”). The section of the book chronicling the Democratic primary ends with the firsthistoric moment in the 2008 campaign—Obama’s nomination.

For all the momentum Balz/Johnson build, their account essentially ends with Obama’shistoric primary victory. The next section of the book—a mere fifty pages—tells thelackluster story of the Republican primary: a tale of constant lead changes, candidateimplosions and the eventual rise of John McCain—in the chapter “Phoenix Rising”—fromthe ashes of his own early incineration to lead the Republican pack. Quickly turning to thegeneral election, McCain’s curious and unpredictable choice of Vice Presidential runningmate Sarah Palin is the crescendo to a campaign that Balz/Johnson insinuate never really had achance against a towering Obama, whose image—because of his historic primary election—had already come to signify “change.”

Picking up Ifill’s Breakthrough after reading Balz/Johnson’s Battle for America caninitially feel like you’ve reached the bottom of the last dip on a lightening-speed rollercoaster. Compared to Balz/Johnson, Ifill goes light on the horse-race details, but readingthem in this order provides a complementary set of narratives about the election in general,and race in particular.

Where Battle is narrow and specific, Breakthrough is broad in scope. No doubt, Obama isthe central focus of Breakthrough. His personal and political accomplishments, momentaryfailures, consistent challenges and presidential potential are all framed through the lens of agathering host of like-skinned, and more or less likeminded group of emerging politicianswhose fates are to some extent intertwined. Breakthrough is a fitting metaphor because Ifill’sframing of race, as the groundwork laid by Obama and the “new wave” of black electedofficials and political hopefuls began long before 2008. The opening of the first chapterclearly and concisely describe Ifill’s narrative trajectory. She begins by recounting themoment of awaiting Obama’s historic speech and watching Jesse Jackson amidst the crowd,recalling his failed presidential run two decades ago. She sees Jesse Jackson, Jr. “holdingcourt” in a separate corner from his father, along with Cory Booker, Deval Patrick, ArturDavis and Benjamin Jealous: “It was a rare, lightening-stroke moment that finally illumi-nated the dramatic shift in tone, message and leadership that has forced a redefinition ofBlack politics and of Black politicians” (15).

For Ifill, the story of Obama’s breakthrough is a story about the kind of intra-racialfriction that precedes and necessitates the kinds of questions black Americans/politiciansgrapple with as America’s political landscape changes. Through the perspective of recent,relatively unknown, and unsuccessful black candidates as well as more prominent one—such as the former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele—Ifill begins bydescribing the contours of the new political landscape. Amidst an increasingly diverse anddivided understanding of what black America’s political interests are, Ifill argues that thisterrain has forced black America to interrogate the practical efficacy of today’s strategies for

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pursuing black interests; how different they may be from the interests of whites, and the roleblack politicians should play in securing them.

Ifill continues to pursue this path of racial and political change by highlighting thefissures that continue to erupt along generational fault lines, exemplified by Obama’s Jay-Z-filled iPod. Ifill delves into this generational divide through discussions with first-wavecivil rights-era activists and elected officials like Ron Dellums and the Reverend JosephLowery, to second wave figures still working within the strategic framework of the civilrights tradition—Jesse Jackson, Sr., Andrew Young, and others. Ifill contrasts their view-points about the growing generational differences within the Black public sphere with thoseof a host of both black and white contemporary Democratic and Republican party activistsand political strategists. The disparate perspectives are laid bare as each in their respectiveway reflects and comments on not only black America’s political past, but more specificallyon Obama, our contemporary political moment and what the future might hold for blackpolitics as we knew it. Ifill also recounts the moments where Obama reflected on andacknowledged himself as a product of the civil rights struggle and those who served on itsfront lines, even as he charted new territory.

It’s here that Ifill gives us a glimpse of something that I think is an important contributionthat Obama, and the cast of characters that exemplify the changing political and ideologicallandscape, provide—a renewed sense of freedom and autonomy of black political actorsfrom the historically dominant white political machinery. Ifill implies that Obama and newwave black politicians are significant for the critical mass they have formed, connecting bothwhite and black America on either side, and Asian Americans and Latinos in between(though interracial alliances beyond the Black-White dynamic are generally glossed over inthe book). This critical mass has provided the new wave greater freedom to operate andmake political decisions. Ifill sums this point up in a poignant retelling of a statement byDonna Brazille: “You assumed that the traditional black organizers and the black leaderswere going to be for you because you birthed us,” Ifill recounts Brazille saying to herClinton friends, “And I wanted off that plantation” (40). In sum, Ifill describes an emergingcollection of black leaders who did not feel beholden to either their black predecessors orwhite mentors. By building a new set of interracial coalitions, they felt free to cut the chainsand chart a new course for themselves and their new generation of political ideas.

Chapter three focuses squarely on Obama. Here her expanded scope and racial focusshape her story differently than Balz/Johnson’s. Race is just part of the horse race for Balz/Johnson; for Ifill, race—the black political sphere—is the track. Ifill narrates Obama’s story,highlighting the barriers and obstacles Obama’s race presented. From doubts about his racialauthenticity, to strategic decisions he had to make about how much, how little and in whatway to frame his Blackness, Ifill details the racial tightrope that Obama walked to maintain astrategic racial balance. Obama had to assure white voters that he was “one of them.” He didhis part well, but Ifill recounts the lengths others went to paint Obama as the consummateoutsider. She retells the litany of cartoons, products, billboard images and ads that depictedObama as everything from a caricatured black ape to a doe-eyed, watermelon and friedchicken-eating simpleton. Then there is again, of course, Jeremiah Wright. Ifill also addssome discussion about the role Michelle Obama played in this regard, echoing argumentsthat Michelle’s strength as a black woman at times helped Obama solidify his racial bonafides with blacks, while at other times others framed her gendered strength as a racial affrontagainst white America.

The title of Ifill’s book focuses on that moment of breakthrough. In the narrative thatfollows, she accomplishes this in a chronological focus—beginning from past and leadingup to the moment of change, then on to the present with Obama’s breakthrough. Chapter

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four stays fairly close to Obama, detailing the race/gender conflict evident in the contestbetween Obama and Clinton. What comes to light more than anything else in this chapter isthe internal conflict among African American women, instigated by the Obama/Clintonclash. Here again Ifill highlights not just the conflict involved in the actual choice to supporteither Obama or Clinton, but what it meant for black women in particular. Ifill’s openingquote by Oprah Winfrey illuminates the broader significance this particular choice to blackwomen, black politics and gender politics more broadly. Winfrey explains, “I’ve been awoman my whole life, and every part of me believes in the empowerment of women—butthe truth is, I’m a free woman. And being free means you get to think for yourself.” Fromhere, Ifill veers off to talk about the new generation of black politicians, chronicling each oftheir own respective breakthroughs. She begins with Artur Davis, whose two-time run forAlabama’s seventh congressional district epitomizes the clash of generations that is such aprominent aspect of Ifill’s narrative. Black interests vs. human interests, the neighborhoodvs. Harvard, light-skin vs. dark; all of these elements and more signified the change brewingin the country, several years before Obama.

Where Davis broke down the door, so to speak, others more or less inherited the politicalreigns of their mothers and fathers—Jesse Jackson, Jr., David Paterson, Harold Ford, Jr.,Lacy Clay, and Kendrick Meeks. Despite the title of the chapter, “Legacy Politics,” chaptersix is not simply about parents passing along the baton to their sons. Ifill is quick to includethese parents’ statements describing that they did everything they could to make sure theirchildren were ready to take over, but also made sure they had to work to get it in the firstplace. For the most part, however, Ifill uses the stories told in this chapter to highlight thediverging ideologies, political strategies and policy positions that exist between politicalparent and their respective offspring.

Next, Ifill moves on to Cory Booker, the Newark, New Jersey Mayor whose two timefight against longtime incumbent Sharpe James mirrored, in almost every way, the clash ofpolitical and racial identities reflected in Artur Davis’ breakthrough congressional race. Ifillreturns briefly again to Obama to talk about the Politics of Race more generally in chaptereight. Where chapters two and three focused on the reasons for the old and new generation’searly primary loyalties, this chapter revolves mostly around the racial recriminations thattook place largely once Obama clinched the nomination—one black poll after anotheroffering their own racial reasoning for either supporting Clinton or remaining neutral.Ultimately, this was the time to close ranks.

Ifill completes her story with another breakthrough governor—Deval Patrick of Massa-chusetts—who, in many ways foreshadowed Obama’s presidential candidacy. Ifill concludesthe main portion of her book talking about the New Wave; not quite the next generation ofblack elected officials, but those whose political stars have just recently begun to shine—from Mayors like Adrian Fenty in D.C., to state legislators such as Bakari Sellers in SouthCarolina, to Georgia’s Attorney General, Thurbert Baker.

It is clear when you reach the end that Ifill’s book is about black Breakthrough(s)—howthey happened, how some prepared the way for and foreshadowed Obama’s signaturevictory, and how they each play a part in redefining, reshaping, and reframing what it meansto be not only a black politician in America, but also what it means to be black, and what itmeans to fight for black interests at a time when the electoral scope of “Black politics” nowextends to every racial and ethnic group in the country. But one cannot help noticesomething is conspicuously absent. For all of Ifill’s deconstruction of the generationaldivide, there is little recognition of, and certainly no sustained discussion about how this“new wave” of black politicians is almost exclusively male. While it is the reality that blackwomen have not pursued public office at similar rates than black men, and certainly have

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been less successful when they have, Ifill’s book fail to broach the subject about what thismeans for the future of black and racial politics in America. In all her optimism about thenext generation, she sidesteps an examination of how the intersections of gender and racecomplicate and problematize this future—something that is both surprising and unfortunate.

One point is made abundantly clear when you look at both Ifill’s and Balz/Johnson’saccount of the 2008 presidential race. Racial issues, questions, concerns and opportunitiespermeated what many scholars interpreted as a relatively race-neutral campaign run by thecandidates. The authors of these two books compliment one another by describing anddissecting how racial realities figured into both the foreground and background of theelection and how it played amongst various aspects of the electoral arena from the candidatesto voters, journalists to consultants, surrogates and new political upstarts who saw Obamaand this election as historic and trailblazing.

Charlton McIlwain is Associate Professor of Media, Culture & Communication at New York University andco-author (with Stephen M. Caliendo) of, Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in U.S. PoliticalCampaigns (Temple, 2011).

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