The weeks following Barack Obama's election and his ascent to the status of president-elect have been filled with excitement and speculation regarding the development of his administration. To make some sense of this past election and the first term of an Obama White House, the Quality of Student Life Committee (QSLC) invited New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny to campus on Tuesday as a part of its Be Current Lecture Series.
Zeleny is a correspondent in the Washington Bureau of The Times, and he has been covering Obama since 2001 when the two first met. Zeleny reported on Obama's 2004 Senate bid with the Chicago Tribune and then wrote about Obama's subsequent presidential campaign from the time he announced his candidacy in Springfield, Ill., in February 2007 up to his victory speech in Grant Park just a few weeks ago. "Talk about a front seat to history," Zeleny said, "even though I was often sitting about 30 rows behind him on a plane looking at the back of his head."
Zeleny noted that although presidential campaigns are often driven, and sometimes commandeered, by the mainstream media, "this campaign was really about the voters and their issues." Concerns about the economy and foreign policy, rather than scandals and negative advertising, fueled both stump speeches and debates. Even though both candidates addressed these issues, Obama won the election with an outstanding majority of electoral votes.
Zeleny attributed this to three factors: that Obama was able to capture the enthusiasm of supporters - something that became apparent after his first quarter fundraising report, that he ran a better and more organized campaign than McCain, and that it was just a tough year to be a candidate in the Republican Party.
Obama's victory, however, was never a foregone conclusion. In fact, Zeleny noted that he did not believe Obama would be running for president, even in 2005 when the two men visited Boston College for Obama's keynote address at the First Year Convocation.
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