people excited. He was a celebrity as much as he was a political candidate. He doesn’t have
that anymore.”
IT’S JUST SO COOL
Obama does have one thing that
might provoke enough enthusiasm to extend his presidency: an
extraordinary ability to connect
with his audience; an ability that
sometimes seems to eclipse setpiece battles over issues. This is
something the campaign intends
to draw on in sending Obama to
campuses far and wide.
On issues alone, Joseph Terrell personifies why Obama may
be in danger. Terrell grew up in
High Point, N.C., the childhood
home of jazz legend John Coltrane. He plays guitar in a folkbluegrass band called the Mipso
Trio. Clean-cut, confident and
intelligent, he seems like the sort
of guy with whom almost anyone
might plausibly be friends. In
2008, Terrell took time off from
school to go work for the Democratic party. He was supposed to
begin his freshman year at UNCChapel Hill, but getting Obama
elected took precedence.
“I felt the same excitement
everyone else did,” he says. “I
was blown away by him.”
Once Obama took office, Terrell began to see him as a clas-
sic politician for whom political
expedience dictates all.
“I don’t think Obama’s stuck
to his guns on important issues,” he says, rattling off a list —
Guantanamo, same-sex marriage,
foregoing public financing of his
campaign so he can raise unlimited cash. “He’s compromised
not as a means, but as an end.”
Terrell is not planning to volunteer this time. When he looks
back on his role in the last campaign, he feels used.
“It seemed like he wanted
to win in 2008 by energizing
young voters, but now he wants
to win by not disappointing
older white voters,” he says. “I
feel taken for granted.”
As North Carolina’s primary
approached in early May, Terrell was besieged by e-mails from
the Obama campaign reminding
him to vote, though Obama was
the only name on the Democratic
ballot. Terrell and his friends
were focused on a different part
of the ballot: a constitutional
amendment