David Geffen told Barack Obama to run for president way back in 2004
Victory, as John F. Kennedy famously said, has a thousand fathers.
Now Hollywood mogul David Geffen is one of those making a paternal claim on Barack Obama's big win, The Times' Patrick Goldstein reports.
Geffen tells Goldstein that he knew that Obama was a "remarkable guy" the very first time he laid eyes on him, way back in 2004. After watching Obama deliver the keynote speech at that year's Democratic National Convention, Geffen says he immediately pressed the Illinois politician to run for the White House.
“After I heard him give that speech, I called him up and said, ‘You’re going to run for president and I’m going to support you.’” Geffen said.
When Obama decided to run two years later, he called up Geffen. Geffen says Obama told the media mogul: "‘David, I guess you’re right. I am running for president and I’d like your support.’"
Geffen's backing would prove crucial for Obama. In February 2007, the New York Times' Maureen Dowd ran a column in which Geffen slammed Hillary Rodham Clinton (who at that point appeared to have all but clinched the Democratic nomination) as overly ambitious and "incredibly polarizing."
It was a moment that Goldstein says changed the trajectory of Obama's presidential campaign.
-- Kate Linthicum
Photo Credit: Paul Hawthorne / Associated Press
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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Posted by: Austin Chukwumereije | November 07, 2008 at 08:51 AM
david geffen is a genius... is there anyone more prescient on the scene? no wonder he has all of god's money... he's smarter.
Posted by: spencer | November 13, 2008 at 01:00 AM