Sokol on Obama as Teacher

Posted by Jeff Lipshaw

Danny Sokol (Florida, left), over at Antitrust and Competition Policy Blog (A Member of the Law Professor Blogs Network), provides additional detail (he was also quoted in the New York Times story) on his experience with Barack Obama while Danny was a student at the University of Chicago Law School.  His account confirms other stories I've heard about Obama's genuineness.  When I was helping out (somewhat) back in the early primary season, some of the people who were working up in New Hampshire told me about the Senator coming out of a building and throwing snowballs at the volunteers, leaving them in something of a quandary - "do we throw snowballs back?  are the Secret Service agents going to object if we do?"

It's also interesting to see peers and acquaintances go from being private figures to public figures in full view, particularly when, as Danny points out, part of your appeal and, indeed, charisma, is your individual attention to people.  I've experienced the "looking beyond me to the next person" sense in talking to a number of politicians, and in fairness, the number of people who make demands on a mayor's or governor's or senator's or candidate's time simply forecloses the possibility of that now public person being everybody's friend.