Bill Burton, son-in-law of Representative Lois Capps and, oh yeah, one of the nation’s most-respected communications strategists, recalls the first time he met Barack Obama.
It was January 2007 when he was ushered in to interview with then-senator Obama for a spot in the future president’s nascent campaign. The 29-year-old son of an African-American father and Polish-American mother, Burton knew of Obama’s biracial parents, so he contrived an ice breaker he imagined segueing into a cozy chat about similar backgrounds.
However, “When I broached the subject of our shared biracial ethnicity,” Burton remembers, “he was more interested in whether I thought we were going to win Iowa.