DAKAR, Senegal — Barack Obama had been a United States senator for just weeks in early 2005 when Oprah Winfrey offered to carry a message for him to Nelson Mandela, the iconic South African leader.
Mr. Obama disappeared into a back room in Ms. Winfrey’s television studio to write the note, but he was gone so long that his spokesman, Robert Gibbs, popped his head in after half an hour.
“You’ve got to give me some time here,” Mr. Obama, pen in hand, told Mr. Gibbs, who recalled the moment recently. “I can’t just wing a note to Nelson Mandela.”
Mr. Obama had been hoping to have his first face-to-face meeting as president with the ailing 94-year-old leader during a three-country, weeklong trip to Africa that began on Wednesday. But Mr. Mandela was hospitalized on June 8 for a chronic lung infection, and on Thursday he remained in critical but stable condition.
A meeting between Mr. Mandela and Mr. Obama would have been rich with symbolism and symmetry for people on both continents: two men from different generations who made history as the first black presidents of nations with deep racial divides. Both embraced a cool pragmatism in their attempt to be post-racial leaders, and both have inspired as well as disappointed many supporters.
Mr. Mandela has long been a beacon for Mr. Obama, who recounted again on Thursday how the revolution unleashed by Mr. Mandela a world away had inspired his own activisim. Friends of Mr. Obama say that for him and many of his contemporaries, the fight against apartheid was the equivalent of the civil rights movement of an earlier generation.
“My first act of political activism was when I was at Occidental College,'’ Mr. Obama said at Thursday at a news conference here in Dakar, referring to a brief speech he gave at the time. “I got involved in the anti-apartheid movement, back in 1979-80 because I was inspired by what was taking place in South Africa.”
Recalling Mr. Mandela's long imprisonment, Mr. Obama said that "I didn’t necessarily imagine that Nelson Mandela might be released.”
Mr. Obama rarely dwells on his own strides against racial barriers and has for the most part steered away from invoking Mr. Mandela’s struggles in public or in private. Aides say he considers it presumptuous to compare his own life with that of Mr. Mandela, who was imprisoned for 27 years, part of that time in a tiny cell on Robben Island, before forging an end to apartheid and becoming South Africa’s first black leader.
But Mr. Obama’s closest advisers say people do not realize how much Mr. Mandela has been an inspiration to Mr. Obama in some of the president’s most difficult moments. Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser and close friend of Mr. Obama’s, said that Mr. Mandela had given Mr. Obama “the strength to perservere.'’
In the foreword that Mr. Obama wrote to Mr. Mandela’s 2010 book, “Conversations With Myself,” he describes the early impact that Mr. Mandela’s struggle had on his life and his entry into politics.
“His sacrifice was so great that it called upon people everywhere to do what they could on behalf of human progress,” Mr. Obama wrote. “In the most modest of ways, I was one of those people who tried to answer his call.”
Mr. Obama hinted in the foreword at what mightbe his most important lesson from Mr. Mandela’s struggles, the need to be stubborn in the face of obstacles. Like Mr. Mandela, who angered some black South Africans who wanted a more radical reordering of the country’s wealth, Mr. Obama has sometimes disillusioned his most ardent supporters.
Mr. Obama’s embrace of some of his predecessor’s antiterrorism policies has frustrated liberals. Revelations about secret surveillance programs haves prompted concerns about privacy. And frequent budget clashes with Congress have left those who expected a new tone in Washington disillusioned.
“All of us face days when it can seem like change is hard — days when our opposition and our own imperfections may tempt us to take an easier path that avoids our responsibilities to one another,” Mr. Obama wrote in the foreword. “But even when little sunlight shined into that Robben Island cell, he could see a better future — one worthy of sacrifice.”
In 2006, Mr. Obama stood inside that cell during a visit to South Africa as a senator. After the tour, Mr. Gibbs remembered Mr. Obama as quiet and somber.
Lydia Polgreen contributed reporting from Johannesburg.
Mr. Obama disappeared into a back room in Ms. Winfrey’s television studio to write the note, but he was gone so long that his spokesman, Robert Gibbs, popped his head in after half an hour.
“You’ve got to give me some time here,” Mr. Obama, pen in hand, told Mr. Gibbs, who recalled the moment recently. “I can’t just wing a note to Nelson Mandela.”
Mr. Obama had been hoping to have his first face-to-face meeting as president with the ailing 94-year-old leader during a three-country, weeklong trip to Africa that began on Wednesday. But Mr. Mandela was hospitalized on June 8 for a chronic lung infection, and on Thursday he remained in critical but stable condition.
A meeting between Mr. Mandela and Mr. Obama would have been rich with symbolism and symmetry for people on both continents: two men from different generations who made history as the first black presidents of nations with deep racial divides. Both embraced a cool pragmatism in their attempt to be post-racial leaders, and both have inspired as well as disappointed many supporters.
Mr. Mandela has long been a beacon for Mr. Obama, who recounted again on Thursday how the revolution unleashed by Mr. Mandela a world away had inspired his own activisim. Friends of Mr. Obama say that for him and many of his contemporaries, the fight against apartheid was the equivalent of the civil rights movement of an earlier generation.
“My first act of political activism was when I was at Occidental College,'’ Mr. Obama said at Thursday at a news conference here in Dakar, referring to a brief speech he gave at the time. “I got involved in the anti-apartheid movement, back in 1979-80 because I was inspired by what was taking place in South Africa.”
Recalling Mr. Mandela's long imprisonment, Mr. Obama said that "I didn’t necessarily imagine that Nelson Mandela might be released.”
Mr. Obama rarely dwells on his own strides against racial barriers and has for the most part steered away from invoking Mr. Mandela’s struggles in public or in private. Aides say he considers it presumptuous to compare his own life with that of Mr. Mandela, who was imprisoned for 27 years, part of that time in a tiny cell on Robben Island, before forging an end to apartheid and becoming South Africa’s first black leader.
But Mr. Obama’s closest advisers say people do not realize how much Mr. Mandela has been an inspiration to Mr. Obama in some of the president’s most difficult moments. Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser and close friend of Mr. Obama’s, said that Mr. Mandela had given Mr. Obama “the strength to perservere.'’
In the foreword that Mr. Obama wrote to Mr. Mandela’s 2010 book, “Conversations With Myself,” he describes the early impact that Mr. Mandela’s struggle had on his life and his entry into politics.
“His sacrifice was so great that it called upon people everywhere to do what they could on behalf of human progress,” Mr. Obama wrote. “In the most modest of ways, I was one of those people who tried to answer his call.”
Mr. Obama hinted in the foreword at what mightbe his most important lesson from Mr. Mandela’s struggles, the need to be stubborn in the face of obstacles. Like Mr. Mandela, who angered some black South Africans who wanted a more radical reordering of the country’s wealth, Mr. Obama has sometimes disillusioned his most ardent supporters.
Mr. Obama’s embrace of some of his predecessor’s antiterrorism policies has frustrated liberals. Revelations about secret surveillance programs haves prompted concerns about privacy. And frequent budget clashes with Congress have left those who expected a new tone in Washington disillusioned.
“All of us face days when it can seem like change is hard — days when our opposition and our own imperfections may tempt us to take an easier path that avoids our responsibilities to one another,” Mr. Obama wrote in the foreword. “But even when little sunlight shined into that Robben Island cell, he could see a better future — one worthy of sacrifice.”
In 2006, Mr. Obama stood inside that cell during a visit to South Africa as a senator. After the tour, Mr. Gibbs remembered Mr. Obama as quiet and somber.
Lydia Polgreen contributed reporting from Johannesburg.