IN MY SHOES: Barack Obama As V I Warshawski
Sara Paretsky, author of the V I Warshawski crime novels, writes an op-ed for The Washington Post comparing Barack Obama to her famous female fictional detective:
The idealism that brought me to Chicago in 1966 has been replaced by too much understanding of the world of the real, but off and on since 1971, I've considered running for public office. In Illinois, however, to be a player in Democratic politics, you really need the support of at least one key power broker. These days, those brokers include Chicago's mayor, the president of the Cook County board, the speaker of the Illinois House and the president of the Illinois Senate. Each time I've thought about running, I've decided that for me, the bar is too high: The quid pro quo that's required, in any city, any state, would be hard for someone with my uncompromising disposition - and my propensity to shoot from the hip. In time, I turned my quest for justice over to my fictional detective, V I Warshawski. Her integrity is a frequent obstacle as she navigates Chicago's mean streets, but her toughness guarantees at least a small measure of justice for the people she helps.
Like me, Barack Obama arrived in Chicago with high ideals and a passion for social justice. Unlike me, he found that his road does lead through electoral politics. One of my novels, "Burn Marks," shows how an idealistic person can be squeezed by the political process. In that book, my fictional president of the county board, Boots Meagher, gets involved in an arson-for-hire scheme that leads to murder and almost gets V I Warshawski killed when she investigates. At the end of the novel, after V I gets too close a look at the lengths to which some people will go to keep the right friends friendly, she gets a key reminder from an old pal: "This is Chicago, sweetheart, not Minneapolis." …
I met him when I was serving as a member of the advisory board of an organization that serves the mentally ill homeless. He had come to advise us on how to change state policy on Medicaid reimbursement for advanced-practice nurses, something we had been struggling to do. He made no promises that he couldn't keep; he made no offers of help in exchange for money, votes, jobs or any other commodity. But he told us what we had to do, whom we had to speak with to start the process. The senator has come of political age in one of the roughest states in the nation. He belongs to the generation after mine; he didn't have his view of race and politics shaped by the riots of 1966. I think he knows how to do what neither V I Warshawski nor I can manage: stay honest and get the job done in the world of the real.
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