IT’S BEEN ALMOST ten years since I first ran for political office. I was thirty-five atthe time, four years out of law school, recently married, and generally impatient withlife. A seat in the Illinois legislature had opened up, and several friends suggested that Irun, thinking that my work as a civil rights lawyer, and contacts from my days as acommunity organizer, would make me a viable candidate. After discussing it with mywife, I entered the race and proceeded to do what every first-time candidate does: Italked to anyone who would listen. I went to block club meetings and church socials,beauty shops and barbershops. If two guys were standing on a corner, I would cross thestreet to hand them campaign literature. And everywhere I went, I’d get some version ofthe same two questions.

　　“Where’d you get that funny name?”

　　And then: “You seem like a nice enough guy. Why do you want to go into somethingdirty and nasty like politics?”

　　I was familiar with the question, a variant on the questions asked of me years earlier,when I’d first arrived in Chicago to work in low-income neighborhoods. It signaled acynicism not simply with politics but with the very notion of a public life, a cynicismthat—at least in the South Side neighborhoods I sought to represent—had beennourished by a generation of broken promises. In response, I would usually smile andnod and say that I understood the skepticism, but that there was—and always hadbeen—another tradition to politics, a tradition that stretched from the days of thecountry’s founding to the glory of the civil rights movement, a tradition based on thesimple idea that we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together isgreater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of thatproposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can getsomething meaningful done.

　　It was a pretty convincing speech, I thought. And although I’m not sure that the peoplewho heard me deliver it were similarly impressed, enough of them appreciated myearnestness and youthful swagger that I made it to the Illinois legislature.

　　SIX YEARS LATER, when I decided to run for the United States Senate, I wasn’t sosure of myself.

　　By all appearances, my choice of careers seemed to have worked out. After two termsduring which I labored in the minority, Democrats had gained control of the statesenate, and I had subsequently passed a slew of bills, from reforms of the Illinois deathpenalty system to an expansion of the state’s health program for kids. I had continued toteach at the University of Chicago Law School, a job I enjoyed, and was frequentlyinvited to speak around town. I had preserved my independence, my good name, andmy marriage, all of which, statistically speaking, had been placed at risk the moment Iset foot in the state capital.

　　But the years had also taken their toll. Some of it was just a function of my gettingolder, I suppose, for if you are paying attention, each successive year will make youmore intimately acquainted with all of your flaws—the blind spots, the recurring habitsof thought that may be genetic or may be environmental, but that will almost certainlyworsen with time, as surely as the hitch in your walk turns to pain in your hip. In me,one of those flaws had proven to be a chronic restlessness; an inability to appreciate, nomatter how well things were going, those blessings that were right there in front of me.

　　It’s a flaw that is endemic to modern life, I think—endemic, too, in the Americancharacter—and one that is nowhere more evident than in the field of politics. Whetherpolitics actually encourages the trait or simply attracts those who possess it is unclear.

　　Someone once said that every man is trying to either live up to his father’s expectationsor make up for his father’s mistakes, and I suppose that may explain my particularmalady as well as anything else.

　　In any event, it was as a consequence of that restlessness that I decided to challenge asitting Democratic incumbent for his congressional seat in the 2000 election cycle. Itwas an ill-considered race, and I lost badly—the sort of drubbing that awakens you tothe fact that life is not obliged to work out as you’d planned. A year and a half later, thescars of that loss sufficiently healed, I had lunch with a media consultant who had beenencouraging me for some time to run for statewide office. As it happened, the lunch wasscheduled for late September 2001.

　　“You realize, don’t you, that the political dynamics have changed,” he said as he pickedat his salad.

　　“What do you mean?” I asked, knowing full well what he meant. We both looked downat the newspaper beside him. There, on the front page, was Osama bin Laden.

　　“Hell of a thing, isn’t it?” he said, shaking his head. “Really bad luck. You can’t changeyour name, of course. Voters are suspicious of that kind of thing. Maybe if you were atthe start of your career, you know, you could use a nickname or something. But now…”

　　His voice trailed off and he shrugged apologetically before signaling the waiter to bringus the check.

　　I suspected he was right, and that realization ate away at me. For the first time in mycareer, I began to experience the envy of seeing younger politicians succeed where I hadfailed, moving into higher offices, getting more things done. The pleasures of politics—the adrenaline of debate, the animal warmth of shaking hands and plunging into acrowd—began to pale against the meaner tasks of the job: the begging for money, thelong drives home after the banquet had run two hours longer than scheduled, the badfood and stale air and clipped phone conversations with a wife who had stuck by me sofar but was pretty fed up with raising our children alone and was beginning to questionmy priorities. Even the legislative work, the policy making that had gotten me to run inthe first place, began to feel too incremental, too removed from the larger battles—overtaxes, security, health care, and jobs—that were being waged on a national stage. Ibegan to harbor doubts about the path I had chosen; I began feeling the way I imaginean actor or athlete must feel when, after years of commitment to a particular dream,after years of waiting tables between auditions or scratching out hits in the minorleagues, he realizes that he’s gone just about as far as talent or fortune will take him.

　　The dream will not happen, and he now faces the choice of accepting this fact like agrownup and moving on to more sensible pursuits, or refusing the truth and ending upbitter, quarrelsome, and slightly pathetic.

　　DENIAL, ANGER, bargaining, despair—I’m not sure I went through all the stagesprescribed by the experts. At some point, though, I arrived at acceptance—of my limits,and, in a way, my mortality. I refocused on my work in the state senate and tooksatisfaction from the reforms and initiatives that my position afforded. I spent more timeat home, and watched my daughters grow, and properly cherished my wife, and thoughtabout my long-term financial obligations. I exercised, and read novels, and came toappreciate how the earth rotated around the sun and the seasons came and went withoutany particular exertions on my part.

　　And it was this acceptance, I think, that allowed me to come up with the thoroughlycockeyed idea of running for the United States Senate. An up-or-out strategy was how Idescribed it to my wife, one last shot to test out my ideas before I settled into a calmer,more stable, and better-paying existence. And she—perhaps more out of pity thanconviction—agreed to this one last race, though she also suggested that given theorderly life she preferred for our family, I shouldn’t necessarily count on her vote.

　　I let her take comfort in the long odds against me. The Republican incumbent, PeterFitzgerald, had spent $19 million of his personal wealth to unseat the previous senator,Carol Moseley Braun. He wasn’t widely popular; in fact he didn’t really seem to enjoypolitics all that much. But he still had unlimited money in his family, as well as agenuine integrity that had earned him grudging respect from the voters.

　　For a time Carol Moseley Braun reappeared, back from an ambassadorship in NewZealand and with thoughts of trying to reclaim her old seat; her possible candidacy putmy own plans on hold. When she decided to run for the presidency instead, everyoneelse started looking at the Senate race. By the time Fitzgerald announced he would notseek reelection, I was staring at six primary opponents, including the sitting statecomptroller; a businessman worth hundreds of millions of dollars; Chicago MayorRichard Daley’s former chief of staff; and a black, female health-care professional whothe smart money assumed would split the black vote and doom whatever slim chancesI’d had in the first place.

　　I didn’t care. Freed from worry by low expectations, my credibility bolstered by severalhelpful endorsements, I threw myself into the race with an energy and joy that I’dthought I had lost. I hired four staffers, all of them smart, in their twenties or earlythirties, and suitably cheap. We found a small office, printed letterhead, installed phonelines and several computers. Four or five hours a day, I called major Democratic donorsand tried to get my calls returned. I held press conferences to which nobody came. Wesigned up for the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade and were assigned the parade’s verylast slot, so my ten volunteers and I found ourselves marching just a few paces ahead ofthe city’s sanitation trucks, waving to the few stragglers who remained on the routewhile workers swept up garbage and peeled green shamrock stickers off the lampposts.

　　Mostly, though, I just traveled, often driving alone, first from ward to ward in Chicago,then from county to county and town to town, eventually up and down the state, pastmiles and miles of cornfields and beanfields and train tracks and silos. It wasn’t anefficient process. Without the machinery of the state’s Democratic Party organization,without any real mailing list or Internet operation, I had to rely on friends oracquaintances to open their houses to whoever might come, or to arrange for my visit totheir church, union hall, bridge group, or Rotary Club. Sometimes, after several hours ofdriving, I would find just two or three people waiting for me around a kitchen table. Iwould have to assure the hosts that the turnout was fine and compliment them on therefreshments they’d prepared. Sometimes I would sit through a church service and thepastor would forget to recognize me, or the head of the union local would let me speakto his members just before announcing that the union had decided to endorse someoneelse.

　　But whether I was meeting with two people or fifty, whether I was in one of the well-shaded, stately homes of the North Shore, a walk-up apartment on the West Side, or afarmhouse outside Bloomington, whether people were friendly, indifferent, oroccasionally hostile, I tried my best to keep my mouth shut and hear what they had tosay. I listened to people talk about their jobs, their businesses, the local school; theiranger at Bush and their anger at Democrats; their dogs, their back pain, their warservice, and the things they remembered from childhood. Some had well-developedtheories to explain the loss of manufacturing jobs or the high cost of health care. Somerecited what they had heard on Rush Limbaugh or NPR. But most of them were toobusy with work or their kids to pay much attention to politics, and they spoke instead ofwhat they saw before them: a plant closed, a promotion, a high heating bill, a parent in anursing home, a child’s first step.

　　No blinding insights emerged from these months of conversation. If anything, whatstruck me was just how modest people’s hopes were, and how much of what theybelieved seemed to hold constant across race, region, religion, and class. Most of themthought that anybody willing to work should be able to find a job that paid a livingwage. They figured that people shouldn’t have to file for bankruptcy because they gotsick. They believed that every child should have a genuinely good education—that itshouldn’t just be a bunch of talk—and that those same children should be able to go tocollege even if their parents weren’t rich. They wanted to be safe, from criminals andfrom terrorists; they wanted clean air, clean water, and time with their kids. And whenthey got old, they wanted to be able to retire with some dignity and respect.

　　That was about it. It wasn’t much. And although they understood that how they did inlife depended mostly on their own efforts—although they didn’t expect government tosolve all their problems, and certainly didn’t like seeing their tax dollars wasted—theyfigured that government should help.

　　I told them that they were right: government couldn’t solve all their problems. But witha slight change in priorities we could make sure every child had a decent shot at life andmeet the challenges we faced as a nation. More often than not, folks would nod inagreement and ask how they could get involved. And by the time I was back on theroad, with a map on the passenger’s seat, on my way to my next stop, I knew once againjust why I’d gone into politics.

　　I felt like working harder than I’d ever worked in my life.

　　THIS BOOK GROWS directly out of those conversations on the campaign trail. Notonly did my encounters with voters confirm the fundamental decency of the Americanpeople, they also reminded me that at the core of the American experience are a set ofideals that continue to stir our collective conscience; a common set of values that bindus together despite our differences; a running thread of hope that makes our improbableexperiment in democracy work. These values and ideals find expression not just in themarble slabs of monuments or in the recitation of history books. They remain alive inthe hearts and minds of most Americans—and can inspire us to pride, duty, andsacrifice.

　　I recognize the risks of talking this way. In an era of globalization and dizzyingtechnological change, cutthroat politics and unremitting culture wars, we don’t evenseem to possess a shared language with which to discuss our ideals, much less the toolsto arrive at some rough consensus about how, as a nation, we might work together tobring those ideals about. Most of us are wise to the ways of admen, pollsters,speechwriters, and pundits. We know how high-flying words can be deployed in theservice of cynical aims, and how the noblest sentiments can be subverted in the name ofpower, expedience, greed, or intolerance. Even the standard high school historytextbook notes the degree to which, from its very inception, the reality of American lifehas strayed from its myths. In such a climate, any assertion of shared ideals or commonvalues might seem hopelessly na.ve, if not downright dangerous—an attempt to glossover serious differences in policy and performance or, worse, a means of muffling thecomplaints of those who feel ill served by our current institutional arrangements.

　　My argument, however, is that we have no choice. You don’t need a poll to know thatthe vast majority of Americans—Republican, Democrat, and independent—are wearyof the dead zone that politics has become, in which narrow interests vie for advantageand ideological minorities seek to impose their own versions of absolute truth. Whetherwe’re from red states or blue states, we feel in our gut the lack of honesty, rigor, andcommon sense in our policy debates, and dislike what appears to be a continuous menuof false or cramped choices. Religious or secular, black, white, or brown, we sense—correctly—that the nation’s most significant challenges are being ignored, and that if wedon’t change course soon, we may be the first generation in a very long time that leavesbehind a weaker and more fractured America than the one we inherited. Perhaps morethan any other time in our recent history, we need a new kind of politics, one that canexcavate and build upon those shared understandings that pull us together as Americans.

　　That’s the topic of this book: how we might begin the process of changing our politicsand our civic life. This isn’t to say that I know exactly how to do it. I don’t. Although Idiscuss in each chapter a number of our most pressing policy challenges, and suggest inbroad strokes the path I believe we should follow, my treatment of the issues is oftenpartial and incomplete. I offer no unifying theory of American government, nor do thesepages provide a manifesto for action, complete with charts and graphs, timetables andten-point plans.

　　Instead what I offer is something more modest: personal reflections on those values andideals that have led me to public life, some thoughts on the ways that our currentpolitical discourse unnecessarily divides us, and my own best assessment—based on myexperience as a senator and lawyer, husband and father, Christian and skeptic—of theways we can ground our politics in the notion of a common good.

　　Let me be more specific about how the book is organized. Chapter One takes stock ofour recent political history and tries to explain some of the sources for today’s bitterpartisanship. In Chapter Two, I discuss those common values that might serve as thefoundation for a new political consensus. Chapter Three explores the Constitution notjust as a source of individual rights, but also as a means of organizing a democraticconversation around our collective future. In Chapter Four, I try to convey some of theinstitutional forces—money, media, interest groups, and the legislative process—thatstifle even the best-intentioned politician. And in the remaining five chapters, I suggesthow we might move beyond our divisions to effectively tackle concrete problems: thegrowing economic insecurity of many American families, the racial and religioustensions within the body politic, and the transnational threats—from terrorism topandemic—that gather beyond our shores.

　　I suspect that some readers may find my presentation of these issues to be insufficientlybalanced. To this accusation, I stand guilty as charged. I am a Democrat, after all; myviews on most topics correspond more closely to the editorial pages of the New YorkTimes than those of the Wall Street Journal. I am angry about policies that consistentlyfavor the wealthy and powerful over average Americans, and insist that government hasan important role in opening up opportunity to all. I believe in evolution, scientificinquiry, and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct orpolitically incorrect, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody’sreligious beliefs—including my own—on nonbelievers. Furthermore, I am a prisoner ofmy own biography: I can’t help but view the American experience through the lens of ablack man of mixed heritage, forever mindful of how generations of people who lookedlike me were subjugated and stigmatized, and the subtle and not so subtle ways that raceand class continue to shape our lives.

　　But that is not all that I am. I also think my party can be smug, detached, and dogmaticat times. I believe in the free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think nosmall number of government programs don’t work as advertised. I wish the country hadfewer lawyers and more engineers. I think America has more often been a force forgood than for ill in the world; I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere thecourage and competence of our military. I reject a politics that is based solely on racialidentity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or victimhood generally. I think much ofwhat ails the inner city involves a breakdown in culture that will not be cured by moneyalone, and that our values and spiritual life matter at least as much as our GDP.

　　Undoubtedly, some of these views will get me in trouble. I am new enough on thenational political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly differentpolitical stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if notall, of them. Which perhaps indicates a second, more intimate theme to this book—namely, how I, or anybody in public office, can avoid the pitfalls of fame, the hunger toplease, the fear of loss, and thereby retain that kernel of truth, that singular voice withineach of us that reminds us of our deepest commitments.

　　Recently, one of the reporters covering Capitol Hill stopped me on the way to my officeand mentioned that she had enjoyed reading my first book. “I wonder,” she said, “if youcan be that interesting in the next one you write.” By which she meant, I wonder if youcan be honest now that you are a U.S. senator.

　　I wonder, too, sometimes. I hope writing this book helps me answer the question.