But consider the parallels of those heady days, and compare them to now:
Ideological battles raged at the law school. Students clashed over faculty diversity and political correctness. Some even booed and hissed one another in class.
Obama, though liberal, was elected with help from conservatives. He prompted criticism from more liberal classmates by putting conservatives in key editorial positions. Some of his toughest critics were black students who complained that he didn't appoint more African Americans to top posts.
“That was the first time I had to deal with something that I suspect I'll have to deal with in the future, which is balancing a broader constituency with the specific expectations of being an African American in a position of influence,” he would later tell biographer David Mendell. “As for the criticism, I'm not sure there was anything all that surprising about that.”
The controversy mirrors the backlash from liberals today who fault some of his early appointments as well as his choice of evangelical pastor Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation.
“He struck me as moderate in the context of campus politics,” says classmate Adam Charnes, a Republican who would work in the Bush Justice Department and now practices in Winston-Salem. “His cabinet appointments are consistent with the Barack that I knew, someone who doesn't take a hard and fast ideological position on things.”
But as an editorial point, remember this story for future days...
[Sarah] Higgins [one of the lead interview subjects of the McClatchy Story] recalls Obama walking in during another argument.
He summoned one editor to a meeting and began climbing the stairs to his cramped second-floor office. The editor made no move to follow and kept arguing. Obama paused.
“Upstairs, now,” he said firmly. He kept walking. The editor sheepishly followed.
When he's ready to strike, he will strike.
