President Barack Obama opened up about a vulnerable and challenging time in his career that nearly led him to leave politics altogether in a wide-ranging interview with his friend and former senior adviser David Axelrod.
In 2000 — four years before Obama won a seat in the US Senate and rose to the national stage at the 2004 Democratic National Convention — the then-Illinois state senator was reconsidering his career in politics after suffering a bruising loss in the Democratic House primary race against Bobby Rush.
“That was a stage when I was really questioning whether I should continue in politics,” Obama told “The Axe Files” podcast, produced by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN.
A 39-year-old Obama was broke after running a losing campaign, said he felt like “a third wheel” while attending the 2000 Democratic Convention, where, to add insult to injury, his credit card was declined, and was berated for not having the proper credentials to get into DNC after-parties.
But he was willing to give it one last shot.
“I remember when you called me in 2002 to say you were thinking of running for the (US) Senate and you said, ‘You know, I’ve talked to Michelle about this. I’ve got one race left in me, and if I don’t win it …,'” Axelrod recalled before trailing off.
Obama said that even Axelrod had his doubts about whether a candidate with the name “Barack Hussein Obama” could become a US senator, but in November 2004 he ended up winning in a landslide.
“I do always think about the fact that in the 2000 convention, I couldn’t basically get in the hall … Four years later, I’m doing the keynote speech,” Obama said. “And it wasn’t as if I was so much smarter four years later than I had been in 2000. It speaks a little bit to the randomness of politics.”
To hear the full conversation and others with Axelrod, click on http://podcast.cnn.com. To get “The Axe Files” podcast every week, subscribe at http://itunes.com/theaxefiles.
