In the News Obama Moments

January 14, 2009

“You could tell he had the magic.”
Pete Rouse, Chief of Staff to Sen. Obama

This week on FRONTLINE: Dreams of Obama, a telling portrait of the new man on Pennsylvania Avenue. For those who may want to see the program online, it's available, in its entirety, with a trove of supporting materials, on our program Web site.

For a quick sampling of the hour, we've carved out four brief excerpts, each the story of an important and revealing moment in the new president's life. To see them on this page, just click on the arrow. The four excerpts will play straight through, or you can use the chapter headings to skip around.

Here's what you'll see (techies take note -- all four segments are embeddable):

1) 2004: An unknown state senator from Illinois addresses the Democratic National Convention, and is unknown no more. MORE

2) On his way to the White House, the new president lost only one election -- a run for Congress against former Black Panther Bobby Rush. MORE

3) As of 1991, the super-prestigious Harvard Law Review had never had a black president. Then along came a young community organizer, fresh of the streets of Chicago. MORE

4) As a rule, it takes a long time to get anywhere in the U.S. Senate, but the new junior senator from Illinois had a very different experience. MORE