WASHINGTON — The phones weren't working right. The fax machine wasn't hooked up. And the walls were bare, except for a giant map of Illinois propped on its end, waiting to be hung.
But even before the makeshift office was up and running in the basement of a Senate building, even before he raised his hand Tuesday to take the oath of office as the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama was already a political rock star and a celebrated new face in Congress.
"Congratulations, man!" a cabdriver exulted, recognizing the 43-year-old senator and joyfully leaning on his horn.
"Welcome to Washington!" a jogger bellowed as Obama, the self-described "skinny kid with a funny name," walked the streets outside the Capitol on the way to a reception where well-wishers were lined up out the door.
The nation first met him six months ago in Boston during a keynote speech that held the audience breathless at the Democratic National Convention. He went on to win his race handily, becoming the Senate's only African American member and the third elected since Reconstruction.
He arrived Tuesday, his first official day in the Capitol, with star power reserved for the likes of former Sen. John Glenn and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Democrats see him as one of the few bright lights to come out of the drubbing they took at the polls in November. Republicans are dropping his name and admirers are already speculating about when he might run for president.
But unlike the government-issued desk, stature within the Senate's marbled halls does not come with the job. Influence must be earned, and Obama starts out 99th in seniority, the shining star in a party that is out of power throughout Washington, a would-be bridge-builder in a bitterly partisan Senate.
In the circles he runs in now, celebrity status is checked at the cloakroom door.
"He's enormously attractive, a good speaker and all of that, but he starts just as anybody else," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a 12-year veteran. "He is going to see that you sit at the end of the aisle and you wait your turn to ask questions. You have to develop alliances and credibility and trust on both sides to be able to get anything done. That's even more difficult now, because Democrats don't control anything."
