The Barack I Knew

By Carol Platt Liebau
Monday, March 5, 2007

There is something profoundly surreal about having known someone like
Barack Obama, whose political career has seen a meteoric rise that is
the stuff of political fairytales. To turn on the television and see a
once-familiar face grown slightly more mature, hear the same vocal
intonations and note many of same personal characteristics - now all
presented as elements of a "rock star" persona - is a strange
experience.

Of course, with public acclaim of the kind Obama now enjoys comes a
host of hangers-on, many eager to claim some "special relationship"
with a famous person. Certainly, Barack and I were hardly best
friends; he was a year ahead of me at Harvard Law School (and six
years older) when we met the summer that I became a newly-minted
editor of the Harvard Law Review. But we did work together for some
time, and he reached out to advise me when I became the first female
Managing Editor in the Review's history.