Obama attracts big-bucks fund-raiser

Superstar.

If you want to be president of the United States, he is the one you want to call before you even talk it over with your own mother.

Louis Susman is his name. He lives in Chicago. And at this moment, he is ready to do whatever Illinois Sen. Barack Obama needs him to do to take the White House in 2008. If Obama is running (and he is), then Susman will be pivotal to raising the cash.

Susman says he's not crazy about talking to reporters, but he agreed to have lunch last week. (Bunless cheeseburger with onions for him, broiled whitefish for me. His lunch looked better.) We met at the Chicago Club, one of those walnut-paneled, hushed places where all the portraits on the wall are of old white guys who don't smile, where the brass is so sparkling you practically squint, and where polite people have the decency to go behind closed doors to use their cell phones.

That is not to say Susman, 69, is a snob. There's no sign of it. He's a straightforward investment banker-attorney who makes things happen. In his case, that means making a fortune as a lawyer for Anheuser-Busch and vice chairman of Citigroup Global Markets.

But it's not his business that's fascinating. It's his politics.

Susman was a 29-year-old lawyer in St. Louis, Mo., when he was captivated by a young Democrat named Thomas Eagleton running for the United States Senate. It was 1968. Volunteering for the campaign, Susman remembers telling Eagleton, "Give me your worst job."

It was fund-raising.

Eagleton won that race but just four years later was forced to suddenly withdraw as George McGovern's vice presidential running mate because of revelations he'd had shock treatments for depression.

Presidential politics, Susman learned long ago, is chartering a small boat onto a dangerous sea.

Stuff happens.

Susman has tried mightily to get Democrats elected president and raised prodigious amounts of money for them. He was Richard Gephardt's finance chairman in 1988, Bill Bradley's in 2000 and John Kerry's national finance director in 2004.

The Kerry campaign nearly killed him.

''I was with Kerry for 2½ years, gained 30 pounds, and my blood pressure shot up to 187,'' said Susman, who has since dropped the weight, lowered his heart rate and was trying with limited success not to eat the French fries he hadn't ordered but the waiter brought anyway.

How much money did Susman raise for Kerry? A bundle: $247 million.

A vacuum cleaner was how someone once described him for a 2005 Tribune article, saying Susman was able to ''Hoover'' money from ''deep pockets.''

Another described him as that ''rare successful businessman who has the heart of a political operative.''

There is a big part of his heart that belongs to former Gov. Tom Vilsack (D-Iowa), a dear friend, who is already in the running for president in 2008. But Susman has told Vilsack (and every other presidential hopeful who's asked . . . he won't specify whom) that he is giving his whole political heart to Obama. He calls the Illinois senator ''extraordinary,'' and marvels at his trip to New Hampshire late last year. ''It's unheard of what happened in New Hampshire, unheard of that people were scalping tickets to see Obama.''

George W. Bush, as far as he's concerned, is a disaster.

''I thought the second term of Bush would be bad,'' he said, ''but not this bad.''

''A lot is at stake,'' Susman believes, ''including women's rights and who gets on the Supreme Court.''

What about Hillary Clinton or John Edwards?

The answer comes back: ''Obama.''

Money alone, Susman knows, won't deliver a victory. ''If money only was going to win it, then [former Texas governor] John Connelly and [forsenator] Phil Gramm would have been president.''

But money sure doesn't hurt. Today, the Iowa caucuses are exactly one year away. ''For someone to be competitive prior to Iowa,'' he said, ''they will need at least $25 million'' going in.

What else?

No fatal mistakes.

There is always a defining moment.

For John Kerry, it was at the edge of the Grand Canyon when he began the descent into his contorted ''for it before I was against it'' Iraq war flip-flop. ''For Howard Dean,'' says Susman, ''it was that scream.''

So Obama can provide the talent.

And Susman can round up the cash even as Bill and Hillary Clinton right now are reportedly working overtime to muscle the donor market.

But there is at least one other, elusive component.

''Luck,'' says Susman. ''You need luck.''

With Louis Susman on board, some big-time luck has landed on Obama's horizon.