NYT: For Obama, a Melancholy Biography Tour
By JEFF ZELENY
Published: October 24, 2008
HONOLULU — For the last 21 months, she has followed the odyssey of his presidential campaign like a spectator in a faraway balcony. She underwent a corneal transplant to see him on television. She reluctantly agreed to film a political ad when he needed to urgently reassure the voters about his distinctive American roots. She told him during one of their frequent telephone conversations that it might not hurt if he smiled a bit more.
And on Friday, Senator Barack Obama spent the day saying goodbye.
Mr. Obama came to the Punahou Circle Apartments here, a place of his own childhood, where his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, lay gravely ill. For weeks, he has talked to doctors and tracked her condition. After she was released from the hospital last week, he received word that he should not wait until after the election to make what he believes could be his last visit.
It was an unusual departure from the tug-of-war of a presidential campaign, particularly with 11 days remaining in the race. But it was a trip that his advisers said he told them was not negotiable. He missed his mother’s death here in 1995, a mistake he said he did not intend to repeat with his grandmother, who has been a stalwart force in his life.
His first visit to Mrs. Dunham, whose 86th birthday is Sunday, lasted about 70 minutes on Thursday evening. He returned on Friday to the 10th floor apartment — the place Mr. Obama lived between the ages of 10 and 18 — which was flooded with flowers and well wishes from strangers who got to know her from Mr. Obama’s first book, “Dreams From My Father.”
Mr. Obama has reached the closing days of his run for the White House without ever holding a formal biographical tour. (In a candidacy built on biography, and criticized for its celebrity, his advisers believed that sticking to substance, as well as an overseas trip in July, was a wiser course.) But suddenly a biographical tour unfolded around him, as he made the brief visit here to see the woman who was a guiding force in his life and played a supporting role in his candidacy, from the Iowa caucuses to his marquee speech on race in Philadelphia and to his general election effort to win over voters in red states....
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In only one commercial can Mrs. Dunham be heard speaking. It was taped before the Iowa caucuses, but also replayed during the Pennsylvania primary, as Mr. Obama sought validation for his appeal to older women voters. Her osteoporosis was advanced, and she hunched over so severely that it was difficult for filmmakers to capture her spirit and words of support for her grandson. Only a few seconds of tape was used in the ad.
In August, as Mr. Obama prepared to accept the Democratic nomination, he delivered a long-distance message to his grandmother in a televised speech. “Thank you to my grandmother, who helped raise me and is sitting in Hawaii somewhere right now because she can’t travel, but who poured everything she had into me and who helped to make me the man I am today,” Mr. Obama said. “Tonight is for her.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/us/politics/24cnd-obama.html?hp
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