Chicago Tribune reporter David Mendell's book on Barack Obama, "From Promise to Power," describes how the Democratic presidential candidate as a younger man dutifully recorded observations about his life and surroundings. These notes, reports Mendell, later became the basis for Obama's best-selling memoir "Dreams From My Father."
Obama, 46, is quite simply a gifted writer with a journalist's eye and sense of people and place. As much as anything, it's the source of his soaring rhetoric. It's been well-chronicled that the U.S. senator from Illinois considered a career as a writer - and with two best-selling books to his name, "Dreams," and "The Audacity of Hope" he is technically a highly successful pro with the pen.
So I was curious. While we judge Obama's positions, watch his moves, parse his words, as he campaigns in our state, is Obama, the instinctive observer, taking measure of us, seeing things beyond the usual clichés we get every four years about how Iowans are good hat-wearing, God-fearing folks who check out a lot of library books? In other words, is Obama taking notes on us?
"You know I have not been keeping a journal right now just because I am too tired when I get home to write one," Obama told the Carroll Daily Times Herald. "What I see in Iowa are a lot the qualities I love in Illinois. I think there's a truth to the idea that there's a Midwestern sensibility and that people don't like a lot of fuss, don't like a lot of pretense, and I think are much more likely to think about things pragmatically and how do you get the job done as opposed to having a lot of ideology driving decision-making. And I think that's what America needs right now."
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It's a fundamental question of government and one more presidential candidates should be pressed to answer.
Will they keep a firm grip on executive powers many believe George W. Bush and Company usurped from Congress and the courts, or return the process of government to something more in line with the separation of powers the founders envisioned?
On Tuesday, the Carroll Daily Times Herald put the question in person to U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., the Harvard-trained lawyer who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School.
Obama flashed a wide smile, laughed at the obvious potential irony, before he answered whether he would keep the power he believes George W. Bush is abusing with executive signing statements that allow the president to massage or even manhandle the will of Congress (read the people)?
"I believe in checks and balances," Obama said. "And I think one of the big problems with this administration has been that it has diminished that sense of civil liberties."
He added, "I want an administration that is upholding the Constitution, that is including Congress in decision-making, that has an attorney general who feels a loyalty to the Constitution and not to the president."
It is an issue Obama raised himself during a stump speech in Carroll before the interview.
"Over the last six years we've seen the Constitution of the United States treated as if it was a nuisance to be avoided as opposed to the foundation of our democracy," Obama told a Carroll crowd.
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The most impressive part of the Obama Carroll appearance may not be anything the candidate said.
It might be the speed with which his Iowa press secretary Tommy Vietor could type on a BlackBerry, the popular handheld devices with wireless Internet access.
As I stood next to Vietor during an Obama small-group session with local supporters in the Rec Center arts and crafts room, the press aide seemed to be setting some land-to-wireless speed records in hammering out text on his BlackBerry. He could probably write Obama's inaugural speech on the BlackBerry in the time it takes me to ask a friend for directions to a restaurant on mine.
The Iowa press secretary's digital dexterity is such that if his boss falls short of the White House, Vietor may very well have a lucrative career ahead of him in professional video gaming. I'm sure he'd take a small office in the West Wing instead, though.
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Sandy Altman, 57, a Coon Rapids Democrat, who brought a few friends with her to the Obama Carroll event, said she is sensing that former U.S. Sen. John Edwards is "fading" - and that Obama (her candidate) may be the beneficiary.
Besides being bright and giving speeches that "make sense," Obama's real strength rests with his early opposition to the war in Iraq, Altman said.
"He had the vision early on to say we shouldn't be in Iraq," Altman said.
