VI. Grabbing a Senate Seat with a Little Help from his Trilateral Friends 225Christopher Drew, “Pragmatic Politics, Forged on the South Side,” New York Times, May 11,
2008)
Even the fabled October 2002 Chicago antiwar speech came equipped with a series of escape
hatches and emergency exits which the candidate could use to climb back on the warmonger
bandwagon if that seemed to be politic:
Even moments that supporters see as his boldest are tempered by his political caution. The
forceful speech he delivered in 2002 against the impending Iraq invasion — a speech that has
helped define him nationally — was threaded with an unusual mantra for a 1960s-style antiwar
rally: “I’m not opposed to all wars.” It was a refrain Mr. Obama had tested on his political
advisers, and it was a display of his ability to speak to the audience before him while keeping in
mind the broader audience to come. (Jo Becker and Christopher Drew, “Pragmatic Politics,
Forged on the South Side,” New York Times, May 11, 2008)AN SDS PRODUCTION STARRING CRYPTO-WEATHERMAN OBAMA
We have seen in a previous chapter that Obama’s speech against the Iraq war was in fact an
opportunity delivered to him by his friends among the SDS veterans who seem to flock to his
support at every critical juncture, as if by Trilateral magic. A key figure in organizing this
performance was
Marilyn Katz, who gave him entry into another activist network: the foot soldiers of the white
student and black power movements that helped define Chicago in the 1960s. As a leader of
Students for a Democratic Society then, Ms. Katz organized Vietnam War protests, throwing
nails in the street to thwart the police. But like many from that era, Ms. Katz had gone on to
become a politically active member of the Chicago establishment, playing in a regular poker
game with Mr. Miner while working as a consultant to his nemesis, Mayor Daley. “For better or
worse, this is Chicago,” said Ms. Katz, who has held fund-raisers for Mr. Obama at her home.
“Everyone is connected to everyone.” (Jo Becker and Christopher Drew, “Pragmatic Politics,
Forged on the South Side,” New York Times, May 11, 2008.)COURTESY OF AN OLD CARTER NETWORK
Obama’s antiwar speech, however, could hardly have taken place without crucial input from the
limousine liberals of Chicago’s Lakeshore Drive, North of the loop.
Betty Lu Saltzman, a Democratic doyenne from Chicago’s lakefront liberal crowd, convened a
small group of activists, including Ms. Katz, in her living room to organize a rally to protest the
United States’ impending invasion of Iraq. It was late September 2002, and Mr. Obama was on
the top of Ms. Saltzman’s list of desired speakers. She first met him when he ran the black voter
registration drive in the 1992 election, and was so impressed that she immediately took him
under her wing, introducing him to wealthy donors and talking him up to friends like Mr.
Axelrod. But with just a few days to go before the rally, Ms. Saltzman was having trouble
reaching Mr. Obama. Finally, she said she left word with his wife. But before Mr. Obama called
her back, he dialed up some advice. With his possible run for the United States Senate, he
wanted to speak with Mr. Axelrod and others about the ramifications of broadcasting his
reservations about a war the public was fast getting behind. An antiwar speech would play to
his Chicago liberal base, and could help him in what was expected to be a hotly contested
primary, they told him, but it also could hurt him in the general election. “This was a call to