Barack's 'Hood

Having made hay of Barack Obama's relative youth and his foreign-sounding name, his opponents are now homing in on his neighborhood.For his critics, the presumptive Democratic nominee's home turf offers a tempting opportunity to paint him as an elitist and, perhaps more damaging, an egghead.The Weekly Standard, gospel to neoconservatives, described Obama's neighbors as "looking like NPR announcers" with "wispy beards and wire rims."

One day in 1995, Barack Obama went to see his alderman, an influential politician named Toni Preckwinkle, on Chicago’s South Side, where politics had been upended by scandal. Mel Reynolds, a local congressman, was facing charges of sexual assault of a sixteen-year-old campaign volunteer. (He eventually resigned his seat.) The looming vacancy set off a fury of ambition and hustle; several politicians, including a state senator named Alice Palmer, an education expert of modest political skills, prepared to enter the congressional race. Palmer represented Hyde Park—Obama’s neighborhood, a racially...

For quite a while now, reporters and political opponents have been dissecting Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s career—analyzing exactly what made his meteoric rise possible. People have picked through his voting records, who he selected as political mentors, which law firm he chose to work for. Today, we take a look at one of the first and most basic decisions Obama made to get his start—which Chicago neighborhood to move to. Many Chicagoans know his neighborhood of Hyde Park has a special niche in the city, its history, and its politics. In some ways Hyde Park helped make Obama.