By David Nather, CQ Staff

Late in the afternoon of Jan. 10, as the nation waited for President Bush to announce that he was sending more troops to Iraq, Barack Obama somehow managed to find a quiet spot outside the Senate chamber where he could make a cell phone call all by himself — and think about ways to overcome an obstacle to passage of a congressional ethics bill.

The pre-eminent rising star in Democratic politics was also one of the main champions of a package of proposed additions to the measure, one of which would make senators pay the full charter rate, rather than first-class airfare, for rides in corporate jets. That provision was facing vocal opposition from some powerful lawmakers, including Republican Ted Stevens of Alaska, who says his state is so vast that corporate planes are often the only way to get around. Paying the charter rate, Stevens said, would eat up his limited travel budget in no time.

SURROUNDED BY ATTENTION: Obama in the Chicago suburbs on Martin Luther King Day, a day before announcing his presidential exploratory committee. (GETTY IMAGES / SCOTT OLSON)

So, was the junior senator from Illinois — who says he’s on a mission to break old political stalemates and find common ground — trying to talk peace with the opponents of the corporate-jet language?

Obama sounded a little exasperated. He had tried that approach last year, and it hadn’t worked. But standing in the hall, he soon started thinking out loud about ways to try again with people such as Stevens. “There may be some way we can come to an accommodation,” he said. “Maybe an increase in their travel budgets — something that would solve the problem without compromising the principle.”

It may or may not have been a realistic idea, and ultimately it wasn’t necessary, since the amendment was adopted easily and the Senate went on to pass the ethics bill last week with only two dissenting votes. But it was a glimpse of how Obama thinks through the problems lawmakers face as they negotiate bills.

It may be too late, however, to put his deal-making skills to a fair test. On Jan. 16, Obama announced through an e-mail to supporters that he was forming a presidential exploratory committee — effectively making himself the hottest new entry in the race for the 2008 Democratic nomination.

As someone who has been in Washington barely two years, Obama has been more or less written off by his detractors as a novice who hasn’t been in the Senate long enough to do anything. That’s sure to be the line of attack from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who stands the best chance at this early stage in the race to become his principal rival for the nomination, and he’s already facing a wave of questions about whether he really has the seasoning for the presidency.

“Some people will assert that the learning curve is just going to be too steep for him,” said Bruce Buchanan, an expert on the presidency at the University of Texas at Austin. “Right now he’s a darling and a hero, but the press can tear down what it builds up.”

Sticking With the Party

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that there’s nothing to be learned about Obama from his two years in the Senate.

In that time, Obama has earned a reputation as a good listener, a hard worker and a creative thinker. The issues on which he’s chosen to spend his time are a fair reflection of the values he describes in his best-selling new book, “The Audacity of Hope” — a preference for “good government solutions that make the country better without setting off partisan squabbles,” according to Cass R. Sunstein, a friend who is a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, where Obama once taught constitutional law.

Obama’s voting record doesn’t reflect that nonpartisan streak. In his first two years, he sided with his party on 97 percent of the votes that pitted most of his caucus against most Republicans — a party unity score higher than all but five other Senate Democrats in the 109th Congress, and higher than those of any of the other likely Democratic presidential candidates now in the Senate, including Clinton.

In his legislative work, however, Obama has formed partnerships with Republicans — including Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, one of the Senate’s most conservative members — that have led to legislative successes. And he made a notable break with his party two weeks ago, when he was one of nine Democrats who voted against a leadership effort to kill a proposal by Republican Jim DeMint of South Carolina, another of Obama’s occasional legislative partners, for broader disclosure of federal funding earmarks.

But if two years is enough to show that Obama’s approach mostly matches the image he wants to show the public, it’s not enough to provide a fair test of his legislative effectiveness, according to outside groups that have watched him. For himself, Obama says that’s a fair way to assess his record. Some proposals that have earned him the best reviews, such as a bill to reward school districts with extra federal help in exchange for deep systemic changes, have languished. But because they were introduced when he was still a newcomer in the minority party, he’s not faulted for the lack of action.

“Come on — junior senator, minority party, not on the committee. Give him a break,” said Amy Wilkins, a top official at the Education Trust, which works to improve student achievement. The main lesson the group drew from his education proposal, she said, was that he has the “ability to think systemically,” rather than just saying, “Here’s another program for you, and you don’t have to do anything to get the money.”

In a way, then, Obama the presidential candidate could face the best of all possible worlds: just enough Senate work to show potential as a legislator, but not enough to have his ideas or his effectiveness truly tested in a way that could provide ammunition for his opponents.

“Potential can be more useful than a record,” said Samuel L. Popkin, a professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego and an expert on presidential campaigns. “Records nail you to messy details that get in the way of looking forward and building coalitions.”

Beyond Ideology

So far, Obama has spent much of his Senate energy on non-ideological issues, reflecting his view that most Americans don’t sort themselves into the same sorts of polarized ideological camps that Washington does. “I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point,” he writes in his new book.

What that means in practice, though, is that many of his signature issues either have no powerful enemies or, if they do, are shielded by a solid base of support in both parties. They include “good government” bills such as his ethics proposals and last year’s laws, both cosponsored with Coburn, to create a database of federal spending and crack down on no-bid contracts in rebuilding the Gulf Coast.

They also include a newly enacted law, which he co-wrote with Republican Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, to fight the spread of weapons such as shoulder-fired missiles, as well as legislation he introduced in 2005 to require federal preparations for an avian flu pandemic.

“He’s very, very good at recognizing challenges and problems” before they become front-burner issues, said David Axelrod, a longtime Chicago friend and political adviser who is expected to be the media consultant for Obama’s presidential campaign. Lugar, who worked on the weapons bill with Obama after they traveled to Russia together in 2005, calls him “a quick study, very substantive.”

But of those issues, the ethics bill is the only one that has truly drawn Obama into the middle of a heated political battle, and has given him his highest-profile legislating role. Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada asked Obama to take the lead on the issue last year, when the Democrats were in the minority, and this year he and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin — a maverick Democrat who recently passed up a presidential race of his own — teamed up at Reid’s request to produce a package that they call the “gold standard” of an ethics overhaul.

“He was someone who had experience working on these kinds of issues in the state legislature,” Reid said of his decision to tap Obama for the role. “He’s a person with a fresh face. He speaks well; he presents himself well; and he has high ethical standards. He has fully met my expectations.”

Obama’s other bills didn’t face significant hurdles. With the database bill, for example, the main obstacles were a disagreement with the House over how much spending it should cover and objections by two top Senate appropriators, Stevens and Democrat Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, that were lifted under intense pressure from bloggers. Most outside groups showered the measure with praise.

Obama has also proposed legislation that, in a more traditionally liberal fashion, tries to champion the causes of the powerless. He proposed cash relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina and new federal evacuation plans for people with special needs, and he called for criminal penalties for deceptive voting practices such as lying about the time or place of federal elections — a tactic that has been used to keep minorities from the polls.

None of those measures went anywhere, but they might provide the best example of what Obama describes as his attempts to inject a stronger sense of empathy into politics. “I find myself returning again and again to my mother’s simple principle — ‘How would that make you feel?’ — as a guidepost for my politics,” he writes in his book.

The Art of Listening

One constant theme that has earned Obama bipartisan praise throughout his legislative career, including his eight years in the Illinois Senate, is his willingness to listen.

Two weeks ago, for example, he broke with the leadership and supported a Republican, DeMint, in his quest to expand the ethics bill’s disclosure rules for earmarks. As DeMint tells it, Obama was presiding over the Senate the day DeMint was trying to persuade Democratic leaders to let him offer his amendment.

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“He was actually listening, which doesn’t happen very often around here,” DeMint said with a laugh. “I think he just made his decision on the merits.” DeMint now speaks highly of Obama: “Whatever he lacks in experience, he makes up for it in intelligence and thoughtfulness.”

Those skills were also on display during negotiations that he still cites as a highlight from his days in Springfield — on a law to require videotaping of interrogations in cases that could lead to the death penalty. “You know how sometimes, in the rush to call meetings, certain people don’t get invited?” asked Kathryn Saltmarsh of the Office of the State Appellate Defender, who was involved in the negotiations. “If he didn’t see the representatives he expected, he would say, ‘Well, where is so and so, and where are they on this?’ He was very determined to get everyone’s point of view.”

That’s the way Obama has been ever since law school, said Spencer A. Overton, a law professor at George Washington University who attended Harvard law school two years behind Obama. “You felt like he was engaged, and you couldn’t just make a blanket statement because he’d ask a follow-up,” Overton said.

The other Obama trait that Overton sees reflected in his Senate work is the effort to strengthen the ethics bill. “That is very consistent with his personality, which is, ‘Let’s not just put on a show. If we’re going to do this, let’s really do it,’ ” said Overton.

With Democrats in power, Obama has a better chance to put that attitude to work in the Senate. Soon, however, he’s going to have to start his campaign for the White House — and the opportunity to prove his legislative skills will disappear fast.

FOR FURTHER READING:

Ethics bill (S 1), pp. 250, 184; Obama as presidential contender, 2006 CQ Weekly, p. 2931; database law (PL 109-282), 2006 CQ Weekly, p. 2469.