This wasn't it but it contains some other things, plus his philosophy about listening and learning- something I really agree with!@
swamppolitics.com
As a junior senator with three years having passed since he took his oath of office, and the Senate being controlled by Republicans two of those years, Obama couldn't be expected to have many legislative achievements.
But he does have some notable ones. My colleague Christi Parsons wrote this in a piece that ran in the Chicago Tribune on June 12, 2007.
"My job was to work and learn the institution," Obama said. "I'm somebody who generally thinks that listening and learning before you start talking is a pretty good strategy. It's like any other social setting -- a new job, a new school, a new town. People appreciate it if you spend a little time getting to know them before you announce that you are looking for attention."
One colleague who took note was the powerful then-chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, who later invited Obama on a trip through the former Soviet Union, inspecting projects to decommission Cold War-era weapons. The two ultimately worked together to pass legislation to control the spread of weapons.
"I like him, and I appreciate working with him," Lugar said. "It seems to me that he was adept in finding partners and coalitions and actually was able to achieve results."
In addition to a legislative accomplishment teaming with Lugar, the partnership gave Obama the added credibility he sought in an association across party lines. A former presidential candidate who has seen many fellow senators launch White House bids during his 30-year Senate career, Lugar offers unusually strong praise for Obama.
"He does have a sense of idealism and principled leadership, a vision of the future," Lugar said. "At certain points in history, certain people are the ones that are most likely to have the vision or imagination or be able to identify talent and to manage other people's ideas. And I think he does this well."
Within his own party, Obama gained the confidence of the leadership and soon took on a role as the Democrats' spokesman on ethics reform. A package that included many of the provisions he championed ultimately passed the Senate.
So Watson could've citied at least two things from Obama's three year Senate career, anti-weapons proliferation legislation and ethics reform which would have probably been enough for Matthews.
If you go back to Obama's eight-year career in the Illinois Senate, there's ample evidence of his being an engaged lawmaker who authored and pushed numerous pieces of legislation.
Here are some passages from an Oct. 8, 2004 article by Chicago Tribune reporter David Mendell who covered Obama's Senate race and later wrote a book about the senator.
In the last two years, he has sponsored more than 780 bills, of which Gov. Rod Blagojevich has signed more than 280 into law. Often, those bills gained Obama considerable attention or won favor with key Democratic constituencies, such as organized labor, that he would call upon in his campaign for federal office.
In the spring, for example, Obama sponsored legislation blocking overtime restrictions instituted by the Bush administration, a move that buffeted the wages of union workers in Illinois. He also sponsored a law that extended the reach of the Earned Income Tax Credit to the working poor…
Especially during his U.S. Senate campaign, Obama has shown a willingness to soften controversial legislation in the face of fierce criticism. He sponsored an ambitious act that called for the state to study ways to provide universal health care to all residents.
When GOP critics accused Obama of trying to implement a single-payer health care system run by state government, he rewrote the legislation to call only for expanding existing programs. ..
"I think if you look at my eight years in the Senate, my reputation in the Senate consistently has been that I work both sides of the aisle," Obama said. "If you look at my signature legislation, whether it was helping craft welfare reform, helping to shape the state Earned Income Tax Credit, death penalty reform, expanding KidCare, all those pieces of legislation are the bills that I am most proud of."
Here's a lengthy passage from a recent Washinton Post op-ed piece in which Charles Peters, founding editor of the Washington Monthly, seeks to bring attention to what he believes is Obama's overlooked Illinois legislative record.
Consider a bill into which Obama clearly put his heart and soul. The problem he wanted to address was that too many confessions, rather than being voluntary, were coerced -- by beating the daylights out of the accused.
Obama proposed requiring that interrogations and confessions be videotaped.
This seemed likely to stop the beatings, but the bill itself aroused immediate opposition. There were Republicans who were automatically tough on crime and Democrats who feared being thought soft on crime. There were death penalty abolitionists, some of whom worried that Obama's bill, by preventing the execution of innocents, would deprive them of their best argument. Vigorous opposition came from the police, too many of whom had become accustomed to using muscle to "solve" crimes. And the incoming governor, Rod Blagojevich, announced that he was against it.
Obama had his work cut out for him.
He responded with an all-out campaign of cajolery. It had not been easy for a Harvard man to become a regular guy to his colleagues. Obama had managed to do so by playing basketball and poker with them and, most of all, by listening to their concerns. Even Republicans came to respect him. One Republican state senator, Kirk Dillard, has said that "Barack had a way both intellectually and in demeanor that defused skeptics."
The police proved to be Obama's toughest opponent. Legislators tend to quail when cops say things like, "This means we won't be able to protect your children." The police tried to limit the videotaping to confessions, but Obama, knowing that the beatings were most likely to occur during questioning, fought -- successfully -- to keep interrogations included in the required videotaping.
By showing officers that he shared many of their concerns, even going so far as to help pass other legislation they wanted, he was able to quiet the fears of many.
Obama proved persuasive enough that the bill passed both houses of the legislature, the Senate by an incredible 35 to 0. Then he talked Blagojevich into signing the bill, making Illinois the first state to require such videotaping.
So there is a legislative record. The Obama campaign just has to make sure its surrogates care enough to learn it. |
