SENATOR BARACK OBAMA ON “THIS WEEK WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS” from ABC News... MAY 13, 2007

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STEPHANOPOULOS: When we sat down in Des Moines, I asked Obama where he got that confidence.

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OBAMA: Well, you know, I think it comes from the set of experiences that I brought with me to this race.

As somebody who worked as a community organizer in Chicago, not knowing anybody when I arrived and being able to pull people together around the issues that folks were facing after they'd gotten laid off of work; the work that I've done as a civil rights lawyer and a constitutional law professor.

And then in the state senate, being able to get Democrats and Republicans together around tough issues like reforming the death penalty or expanding health insurance for kids -- those skills seem to have translated in Washington.

...Did Someone Say 3AM?...

STEPHANOPOULOS: What's the most difficult crisis you've had to manage in your public life?

OBAMA: Well, you know, the truth is, in my public life as a legislator, most of the difficult tasks have been to build consensus around hard problems.

And what I think the country needs more than anything right now is somebody who has the capacity to identify areas of common interest, common good, build a consensus around it and get things done.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That is part of the job. There's no question about it.

OBAMA: Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you know a big part of the job of a president is what you do in a crisis...

OBAMA: Right.

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... the crisis you didn't expect.

OBAMA: Right.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And you never really ever had to deal with something like that, right?

OBAMA: Well, what I think is absolutely legitimate is that my political career has been on the legislative side and not in the executive branch.

Now, that's true for a lot of my colleagues, you know, who aren't governors.

And one of the things that I hope over the course of this campaign I show, is the capacity to manage this pretty unwieldy process of a political race. And one of the great things about the press is that they're going to be watching very carefully...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Every move you make.

OBAMA: ... every move you make, and to make sure that people have a sense of how I deal with adversity, how I deal with mistakes, who do I have around me to make sure that we're executing on the things that need to get done.

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STEPHANOPOULOS: One of your heroes is Abe Lincoln. He was ruthless when he had to be. Can you be ruthless?

OBAMA: You know, I think that somebody who has arrived where I am out of Chicago politics has to have a little bit of steel in him.


I have not made a promise -- and I won't make a promise -- that I'm going to be able to perfectly balance the budget immediately.

What I can say is that we're going to pay as you go; that if I start a new program, I'll find a way to pay for it; if I want tax cuts, then I'm going to find a way to pay for them; and that, over the long term, we get a stable budget that is not simply running up the credit card on our children.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You've also said that with Social Security, everything should be on the table.

OBAMA: Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Raising the retirement age?

OBAMA: Everything should be on the table.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Raising payroll taxes?

OBAMA: Everything should be on the table. I think we should approach it the same way Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan did back in 1983. They came together. I don't want to lay out my preferences beforehand, but what I know is that Social Security is solvable. It is not as difficult a problem as we're going to have with Medicaid and Medicare.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Partial privatization?

OBAMA: Privatization is not something that I would consider, and the reason is this: Social Security, I think, is -- that's the floor. That's the baseline. Social Security is that safety net that can't be frayed, and we shouldn't put at risk.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Your candidacy brings the issue of race right to the top...

OBAMA: Right.

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... of the national conversation. You've been a strong supporter of affirmative action...

OBAMA: Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... and you're a constitutional law professor, so let's go back in the classroom. I'm your student, I say, "Professor, you and your wife went to Harvard Law School. You've got plenty of money. You're running for president. Why should your daughters, when they go to college, get affirmative action?"

OBAMA: Well, first of all, I think that my daughters should probably be treated by any admissions officer as folks who are pretty advantaged, and I think that there's nothing wrong with us taking that into account as we consider admissions policies at universities.

I think that we should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and have grown up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed.

So I don't think those concepts are mutually exclusive. I think what we can say is that in our society, race and class still intersect, that there are a lot of African-American kids who are still struggling, that even those who are in the middle class may be first generation as opposed to fifth or sixth generation college attendees, and that we all have an interest in bringing as many people together to help build this country.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that in 25 years, affirmative action may no longer be necessary. Is she right?

OBAMA: I would like to think that if we make good decisions and we invest in early childhood education, improve K-12, if we have done what needs to be done to ensure that kids who are qualified to go to college can afford it, that affirmative action becomes a diminishing tool for us to achieve racial equality in this society.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You have a very cool style when you're doing those town meetings, when you're out on the campaign trail. And I wonder, how much of that is tied to your race?

OBAMA: That's interesting.

STEPHANOPOULOS: One of your friends told the New Yorker Magazine that "the mainstream is just not ready for a fire-breathing black man." Did you turn down the temperature on purpose?

OBAMA: You know, I don't think it has to do with race. I think it has to do with when I'm campaigning, I'm in a conversation. And what I don't do when I'm campaigning is to try to press a lot of hot buttons and use a lot of cheap applause lines, because I want people to get a sense of how I think about this process.

OBAMA: I want them to have some ability to walk through with me the difficult choices that we face.

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OBAMA: We're spending $275 million a day, a day, in Iraq.

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OBAMA: And I think that one of the problems with political speeches is that we all know what folks want to hear. We know who the
conventional, stereotypical enemies are on any given issue, and we have a tendency, I think, to play up to that. And I actually think that we're in this moment in history right now where honesty, admitting complexity is a good thing.

STEPHANOPOULOS: How about passion? How about anger? I mean, you've written about how you dealt with issues of anger. Don't you think sometimes voters need to see that too?

OBAMA: Oh, absolutely, and I think they do see it. Listen, the one thing that I don't think people are going to be able to accuse me of is not being able to give a fiery speech. I came onto the national scene after getting folks fired up pretty good.

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OBAMA: There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America. There's the United States of America.

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OBAMA: But keep in mind, I'm not interested in bringing people together just for the sake of bringing people together. I'm not naive enough to think that if we all hold hands and sing "Kumbaya" that somehow health care gets solved or, you know, education gets solved. Right now, what we need to make significant progress on these problems is to be able to build enough bridges to get things done.

So, I'm furious about the young men that I see standing on corners on the South Side of Chicago without hope, without opportunity, without prospects for the future. I am furious about the mothers I meet here in Iowa who are giving me hugs and telling me about their son who died in a war and asking, did their son die for a mistake? It breaks my heart. But what I know is that the only way we're going to solve the problem is not to assign blame. It's to say, "Here's a vision for the future that we can do something about."

STEPHANOPOULOS: You've had to ask for Secret Service protection awful early in this campaign. Were you reluctant?

OBAMA: Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Why?

OBAMA: I'm not an entourage guy. You know, up until recently, I was still, you know, taking my wife Michelle's grocery list and going
to the grocery store once in awhile. And so obviously it's constrained, but I'm obviously appreciate of their efforts. They're extraordinarily professional.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Durbin, your friend, who talked to the review board, said a lot of the threats that were coming in are racially motivated. How serious are they? How much are you told? How much do you worry about it?

OBAMA: You know, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it or considering the details of this. But just to broaden the issue, are there people who would be troubled with an African-American president? Yes. Are there folks who might not vote for me because I'm African-American? No doubt.

What I'm confident about, though, as I travel around the country, is that people are decent at their core in America. The vast majority of folks want to do the right thing.

If I don't win, it's not going to be because of my race. It's going to be because I didn't project a vision of leadership that gave people confidence. It's going to be because of something I didn't do as opposed to because I'm African-American.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You've been thinking about running for president a long time. Your brother-in-law says he talked to you about it in the early '90s.

OBAMA: He might have brought it up. I'm not sure.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you dispute that?

(LAUGHTER)

OBAMA: You know, what's wonderful about this whole process is that everybody has -- everybody looks at me now through the lens of where I am now. You know, I had my high school teacher saying what a wonderful, studious guy he was. And I was goofing off the whole time, and they were calling up the principal. I think there's a lot of self-correction that takes place (inaudible).

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, but there's one more. Valerie Jarrett, a good friend of the family says, you told her in your Senate race, "I just think I have some special qualities, and wouldn't it be a shame to waste them."

OBAMA: That, I think I probably did say.

STEPHANOPOULOS: What are they?

OBAMA: I think that I have the capacity to get people to recognize themselves in each other. I think that I have the ability to make people get beyond some of the divisions that plague our society and to focus on common sense and reason.

OBAMA: And that's been in short supply over the last several years.

You know, I'm not an ideologue. Never have been. Even during my younger days when I was tempted by sort of more radical or left-wing politics, there was a part of me that always was a little bit conservative in that sense, that believes that you make progress by sitting down, listening to people, recognizing everybody's concerns, seeing other people's points of views, and them making decisions.

STEPHANOPOULOS: One final question. Everyone is going to be watching this on Mother's Day, and a lot of America is going to get to know a lot about you over the next year, but they're never going to know your mom. She passed away a little more than 10 years ago. What's the most important lesson she taught you?

OBAMA: She was the sweetest soul I've ever known, and I think that quality that I just talked about, the capacity to see the world through somebody else's eyes or to stand in their shoes, is what she gave to me in great abundance. And I think that capacity is what's needed right now in this moment.

There have been other moments in history where maybe some other skills were needed, but I think bringing the country together -- and, by the way, bringing the world together -- so that there's that sense of mutual recognition is something that I get directly from my mother. And I think her spirit acts powerfully on me throughout the course of this campaign.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator, thanks very much.

OBAMA: Thank you so much, George. I appreciate it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The roundtable is next with George Will, Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson. And later, Brooke Shields.


Transcript exerpts from - Lynn Sweet, Chicago Sun-Times. The scoop from Washington May 31, 2007


George Stephanopoulos: "You have a very cool style . . . How much of that is tied to your race?"