Obama adviser admits affair after billboards appear Charles Phillips, a member of Obama's economic recovery advisory board, confessed after giant posters appeared of him with his lover. The corner of 52nd St. and Broadway in New York Photo: AP A millionaire businessman who advises Barack Obama on economic policy has been forced to admit an affair after a series of giant billboards showing him with his long-time mistress appeared across America. The photos of Charles Phillips, 50, and YaVaughnie Wilkins, 41, were shown on posters three-storeys high, with the line "You are my soulmate forever – cep" – thought to be a reference to Charles E. Phillips. The poster also advertises a website which featured love notes and pictures dating back from 2001 of the couple on holiday in Sydney and China. The website has now been shut down, and some of the billboards taken down. Mr Phillips, president of business software firm Oracle and a member of Obama's economic recovery advisory board, said: "I had an eight and a half year serious relationship with YaVaughnie Wilkins. "My divorce proceedings began in 2008. "The relationship with Ms Wilkins has since ended and we both wish each other well." Mr Phillips and his wife Karen have one son together. Reports suggested that the billboards – three in New York, one in Atlanta and one in San Francisco – could have cost £150,000 to produce. Ms Wilkins, a California-based actress and writer, was not available for comment.    

  Obama the human beingSince his election Barack Obama has emerged as a thoughtful leader, struggling against perceptions of radicalismDan Kennedy guardian.co.uk, US protesters demonstrate against healthcare reform. Photograph: John Moore/Getty ImagesToday is a day to wallow in symbolism – to marvel at the fact that this race-haunted country has not just elected a black president, but has given him a mandate the likes of which no Democratic president-elect has received since Lyndon Johnson in 1964My apologies for distorting Samuel Johnson's original meaning, but the election of Barack Obama a year ago represented the triumph of hope over experience. The symbolism of Obama was so overwhelming – the first African-American to be chosen as president in our race-benighted society, the end of the war- and torture-drenched insanity of the Bush-Cheney years – that Obama the human being was scarcely visible. Now, 12 months since his victory and some nine months into his presidency, I think we know what we've got: a pragmatic and thoughtful liberal, sometimes cautious to a fault, struggling to overcome the media-enabled perception that he's a radical leftwinger simply because he responded to the worst economic crisis since the 1930s with the alacrity that it deserved. You would have to be a fool, or a Fox News talking head (not to be redundant), to believe that Obama entered office rubbing his hands with socialist glee at the prospect of pushing through a $787bn stimulus, taking over two car manufacturing companies, reining in Wall Street and presiding over trillion-dollar-plus budget deficits as far as the eye can see. He did it because the consequences of inaction would likely have proven catastrophic. And indeed, if you listen to the few pundits who actually know what they're talking about, such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate in economics, there remains a danger that Obama still hasn't done enough to forestall another Great Depression.Since summer, Obama has been dogged by what Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo calls "Confederacy buff who bellowed "You lie!" at the president during his address to Congress on healthcare reform. For all that, Obama's favourability and job-approval ratings have held up rather well, and it seems likely that Congress will give him a decent healthcare bill in the near future. To be sure, on civil liberties, open government and his approach to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama's caution has led him to be a disappointment. His slightly embarrassing Nobel peace prize seems like a leftover trinket from election night, highlighting symbolism over accomplishment. But, overall, Obama has been a serious, mature, deeply intelligent presence on the national and international scenes. After eight long year of an earlier, far more dangerous form of the crazy emanating from the White House itself, it's a change that was long overdue.To read the rest of the Cif America series looking back on Obama's 2008 election victory, click here   

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