Obama has proven himself a genius when it comes to negotiating elite social networks and cultivating strategic relationships. Recent miscalculations aside, his political career has benefitted from some very fancy footwork, with plenty of lessons for the LittleSis community.
We have, at times, gotten an inside peek at Obama’s negotiations of various power circles. Case in point, this passage from a Vanity Affair article in March 2008, which describes a meeting between Obama and Emil Jones, the State Senate President:
“After I was elected president, in 2003, he came to see me, a couple months later,” Jones recalled, relishing the tale. “And he said to me, he said, ‘You’re the senate president now, and with that, you have a lot of pow-er.’ ” Jones stretched out the word, as if savoring the pleasure of it, and his voice became very quiet as he continued: “And I told Barack, ‘You think I got a lot of pow-er now?,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, you got a lot of pow-er.’ And I said, ‘What kind of pow-er do I have?’ He said, ‘You have the pow-er to make a United States sen-a-tor!’ ” Jones let out a soft, smoky laugh. “I said to Barack, I said, ‘That sounds good!’ I said, ‘I haven’t even thought of that.’ I said, ‘Do you have someone in mind you think I could make?,’ and he said, ‘Yeah. Me.’ ”
This isn’t Blago territory, and we don’t have a transcript, but…kinda creepy.
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