Gwen Ifill went from writing about politics for The New York Times and Washington Post to chief political correspondent for NBC News before becoming PBS's moderator and managing editor of "Washington Week" and senior correspondent for "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." Her first book, "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama," had some pundits questioning whether she should moderate the presidential debate last year. Republican Sen. John McCain, however, said he had complete confidence in her professionalism as do her many viewers.

Why do you think Jesse Jackson and other civil rights leaders of that era were unable to break through [in national politics] the way Barack Obama did?

I would actually argue they did break through, they just broke through at a different time in a different way. People forget that Jesse Jackson in 1988 won 13 contests. He didn't just win black voters, he actually broke through in a much more significant way than he had when he ran four years before.

---

PG audio

Hear more of this interview with Gwen Ifill.

---

What caused the friction between the civil rights-era politicians and leaders and the Obama-age politicians?

Friction is power changing hands. It's more unique when you see it happening among members of a minority group, who only recently got power, but it's not so different from the kind of friction you saw when the Irish took over the power control from the Brahmin in Boston or in countless cities around the country where you now see Latinos rising in power in unlikely places like North Carolina. The only reason it's surprising within the black community is people, for years, have assumed that all black people think the same, vote the same and agree with each other on everything, which, of course, is so far from the truth.

Could Colin Powell have won the presidency if he had decided to run?

Well, it was 1995. He didn't think so. He told me he was urged by a lot of his friends to run, but he kept thinking, 'Is America really ready?' He ultimately concluded that it wasn't. In addition to that, his wife concluded that it wasn't safe for a black man to run for president yet. She worried about his personal safety. It just wasn't worth it to him. Politics, as he said, was just not a fire in his belly.

What did Michelle Obama say about her husband's safety when you spoke to her?

She had enough of those concerns that she was happy when they gave him the earliest Secret Service protection in history. She also said something interesting to me. She said, "Sure, there are risks, but what our parents sacrificed for is that we be able to take these risks. Who else is going to take these risks if not us?" That was her way of answering the question about personal risk but also about political risk. It had to be a serious conversation. Every presidential candidate has to have it, but I have reason to believe that they had more threats than most presidential candidates.

The phrase "black enough" came up a lot in the campaign referring to President Obama. Is that a double-edged sword?

You know, it's interesting because I kept hearing people ask whether he was black enough early on, and I thought it was silly. Black folk are always asking this question of other black folk, "Are you black enough?" White folk were asking "Are you too black?" I realized they were asking the same question: "Are you going to speak for me?" Race obviously adds a little volatile something to the mix, but when it comes right down to it and you strip race out of it, that's really all it's about: "Are you speaking for me?"

You said President Obama showed more Kansas than Kenyan during the campaign. Might it be that he is more Kansas being raised by the white side of his family, or do you think that was a way to say, "Look, I am like you"?

I think the answer is in his first book ["Dreams From My Father"]. Barack Obama gave a lot more thought to racial identity than most of us ever had to. He sat there and he wrestled with it. He came to the conclusion "I am an African-American man." He didn't say, "I'm a biracial man." He didn't say, "I'm a white guy from Kansas." This is how he self-identifies. It is not a denial about who his mother was or his grandparents. He obviously loves, adores and respects them. It is a question of how he chose to be or what choice he felt he had. You know, I don't think he was rejecting anything. I think he was embracing all of who he is, not just one part.

You did an interesting interview with the late historian John Hope Franklin. He talked about the "cult of personality" and how our dependence on a person is going to betray us.

Yes. Well, John Hope Franklin was very concerned about this idea that we anoint single leaders and that if that leader goes away we throw our hands up and say, "Oh, well, that's it." That somehow if that person (Martin Luther King, Malcolm X or Bobby Kennedy) is suddenly and violently removed from the scene, our disappointment is such that we give up on all the issues they represented. He was able to see before he died that even though Barack Obama was someone a lot of people wanted to put up on a pedestal, President Obama resisted that. As I was writing this book so many people assumed it was only about Barack Obama. I couldn't say it enough that this was about a broader topic, because he is representative but not even the leading edge of this change.

You talk about how some people didn't really know what your book was about, and they caused some of the issues and criticism of you when you moderated the debate during the campaign.

Well, they didn't want to know what the book was about. I was able to distinguish between people who were really interested in the subject and people who were just trying to make a political point.

Do you count yourself as a breakthrough journalist?

You know, I've never thought of myself that way, maybe because it takes other people to think of you that way. But I do, in one sense, embrace that. I like the idea, that just by simply doing my job seriously, every day young girls can think, "I can do that, too," and that the possibilities are there for them. It's not about glamour and being on TV. It's about having the opportunity and the privilege to ask questions that you hope people will answer.