60 Minutes, Transcript

Barack Obama: Road to the White House

December 28, 2008

(CBS) 60 Minutes and correspondent Steve Kroft began chronicling

President-elect Barack Obama's road to the White House nearly two years
ago, as the candidate declared his candidacy.

Over the course of the campaign, Kroft interviewed the long-shot

candidate, his family and his closest advisors, for what turn out to be
perhaps the biggest story in American political history.

See the candidate making sandwiches for his young daughters, the rising
political superstar on the campaign trail, the confident candidate poised for
victory, and the president-elect with his future first lady reflecting publicly for
the first time on the fact that they will be the first African-American couple to
occupy the White House.

First Steps

When 60 Minutes went to Illinois in February 2007 to do a story on the

young, charismatic senator, it wasn't because we thought he was going to
be elected the 44th President of the United States.

Nobody thought that, but he was becoming a political phenomenon and

there had never been a presidential candidate quite like him - his last name
rhymed with Osama, his middle name was Hussein; racially he was half
white and half black, and politically he was green.

It would have been easy to dismiss him if it were not for the fact that he
was running second in the polls behind Hillary Clinton for the Democratic
presidential nomination. Watch/Read
 The Primaries

After an enthusiastic beginning, the Obama campaign seemed to hit a wall.

Eight months after he announced his candidacy in Springfield and on the
eve of the primaries, Obama still trailed Hillary Clinton by nearly 20 points
in the national polls, and people were still predicting that she could wrap up
the nomination by the middle of February.

Obama's performance in the early Democratic debates, in the fall of 2007,

lacked inspiration. He seemed flat, professorial, and wonkish. Watch/Read

Victory

When Barack Obama went to the Democratic convention assured of the

nomination, he was about to make history as the first African-American
presidential nominee of a major political party.

The question was, would the American people elect him? Hillary Clinton
had helped heal Democratic divisions after a bitter primary fight. But
Obama entered the convention locked in a dead heat with Republican
opponent John McCain. Watch/Read

Looking Ahead

After the victory celebration in Chicago's Grant Park, President-elect

Obama disappeared for a few days to rest, spend some time with his family
and begin organizing the transition.

But he emerged the following week with his wife Michelle and joined 60
Minutes in a Chicago hotel suite for their first post-election interview.
Watch/Read

Video of 60 Minutes, December 28, 2008