the point where we’d discuss intimate things. For instance I never heard anything about his family life. Other patients invited me to dinner and their homes, but Obama never did. Obama invited his barber to his inauguration—his barber! But I wasn’t invited. Believe me, that hurt.”
CHAPTER 2
A GHOSTLY PRESENCE
It’s not about charisma and personality, it’s about results…
—Steve Jobs
O ne morning in the spring of 1991, a telephone rang in Gannett House, a white, Greek Revival-style building that serves as the headquarters of the Harvard Law Review , the prestigious student-run journal of legal scholarship. The caller was Douglas Baird, dean of the University of Chicago Law School. He was looking for Barack Obama, who had gained national fame as “the first black president of the Review .”
Actually, Obama was not the first person of color to be president of the Review . That distinction belonged to Raj Marphatia, who was born and raised in Bombay (now known as Mumbai), India, and who had become the Review ’s president four years earlier. But while Marphatia’s presidency went largely unnoticed, Obama’s attracted a great deal of attention in the liberal mainstream media. That publicity, in turn, led to a publishing contract for a book on race relations and several offers of prestigious clerkships and lucrative jobs. The liberal world was already beating a path to Barack Obama’s door.
“I made a cold call to the Harvard Law Review and spoke to Barack,” recalled Baird, who is no longer the dean of the Chicago Law School but is still a member of its faculty. “I asked him, ‘Do you have an interest in teaching law?’ and he said, ‘No. My plan is to write a book on voting rights.’ And I said, ‘Why don’t you write that book here at the University of Chicago. I can give you an office and a word processor and make you a Visiting Law and Government Fellow.’
“He accepted,” Baird continued, “and several months after he arrived, he came to my office and said, ‘Boss’—he called me boss—‘that book I told you about—well, it’s taken a slightly different direction. It’s my autobiography.’ I was astonished. He was all of thirty years old and he was writing his autobiography!”
For the next twelve years, Obama taught at the Law School—first as a Lecturer, then as a Senior Lecturer. He earned about $60,000 a year and was given an office, a secretary, and health benefits. He was, by all accounts, a ghostly presence on the faculty—rarely seen and virtually never heard from.
“You just never saw him at a lunch or at a workshop,” said Richard Epstein, who was made interim dean of the Law School in 2001, while Obama was still there. “I did not see any signs of intellectual curiosity or power. He did not have a way of listening to you that drew you in. But it was rarely the case that you could figure out what he thought. An inaccurate story was published that claimed Obama was given a tenured offer to join the faculty. But it never came to the faculty for approval. How could you make a tenured offer to a man who had never written a scholarly article?
“At the time,” Epstein continued, “Obama saw himself as a serious intellectual, which he definitely was not. His course was very popular and he was an engaging teacher, but not one with a serious academic set of interests. The members of the faculty reserved a round table for ten in the Quadrangle Club, where we had lunch and engaged in an intense intellectual exchange. We had a no-sports and no-politics rule and a single-topic rule. Everybody bashed everybody. You put yourself once more into the breach and prepared to have the guillotine come down on your head.
“But Barack Obama never attended these lunches. I firmly believe that his systematic withdrawal from engagement with other members of the faculty stemmed from his not wanting to put himself at intellectual risk. He was
CHAPTER 2
A GHOSTLY PRESENCE
It’s not about charisma and personality, it’s about results…
—Steve Jobs
O ne morning in the spring of 1991, a telephone rang in Gannett House, a white, Greek Revival-style building that serves as the headquarters of the Harvard Law Review , the prestigious student-run journal of legal scholarship. The caller was Douglas Baird, dean of the University of Chicago Law School. He was looking for Barack Obama, who had gained national fame as “the first black president of the Review .”
Actually, Obama was not the first person of color to be president of the Review . That distinction belonged to Raj Marphatia, who was born and raised in Bombay (now known as Mumbai), India, and who had become the Review ’s president four years earlier. But while Marphatia’s presidency went largely unnoticed, Obama’s attracted a great deal of attention in the liberal mainstream media. That publicity, in turn, led to a publishing contract for a book on race relations and several offers of prestigious clerkships and lucrative jobs. The liberal world was already beating a path to Barack Obama’s door.
“I made a cold call to the Harvard Law Review and spoke to Barack,” recalled Baird, who is no longer the dean of the Chicago Law School but is still a member of its faculty. “I asked him, ‘Do you have an interest in teaching law?’ and he said, ‘No. My plan is to write a book on voting rights.’ And I said, ‘Why don’t you write that book here at the University of Chicago. I can give you an office and a word processor and make you a Visiting Law and Government Fellow.’
“He accepted,” Baird continued, “and several months after he arrived, he came to my office and said, ‘Boss’—he called me boss—‘that book I told you about—well, it’s taken a slightly different direction. It’s my autobiography.’ I was astonished. He was all of thirty years old and he was writing his autobiography!”
For the next twelve years, Obama taught at the Law School—first as a Lecturer, then as a Senior Lecturer. He earned about $60,000 a year and was given an office, a secretary, and health benefits. He was, by all accounts, a ghostly presence on the faculty—rarely seen and virtually never heard from.
“You just never saw him at a lunch or at a workshop,” said Richard Epstein, who was made interim dean of the Law School in 2001, while Obama was still there. “I did not see any signs of intellectual curiosity or power. He did not have a way of listening to you that drew you in. But it was rarely the case that you could figure out what he thought. An inaccurate story was published that claimed Obama was given a tenured offer to join the faculty. But it never came to the faculty for approval. How could you make a tenured offer to a man who had never written a scholarly article?
“At the time,” Epstein continued, “Obama saw himself as a serious intellectual, which he definitely was not. His course was very popular and he was an engaging teacher, but not one with a serious academic set of interests. The members of the faculty reserved a round table for ten in the Quadrangle Club, where we had lunch and engaged in an intense intellectual exchange. We had a no-sports and no-politics rule and a single-topic rule. Everybody bashed everybody. You put yourself once more into the breach and prepared to have the guillotine come down on your head.
“But Barack Obama never attended these lunches. I firmly believe that his systematic withdrawal from engagement with other members of the faculty stemmed from his not wanting to put himself at intellectual risk. He was
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