Believer: My Forty Years in Politics (29 page)

“Hell,” said a middle-aged man from Indiana who was captured by one of my cameras after the speech. “I’d crawl to Iowa to work for this guy.”

This, I thought, was politics as it should be.

P
RESIDENTIAL
CAMPAIGNS
ARE
a little like stage productions.
T
raditionally, they begin in semi-obscurity in remote hamlets, as candidates work through their lines and get a feel for their roles.
I
f the play is well received in places such as
K
eokuk,
I
owa, and
B
erlin,
N
ew
H
ampshire, then, and only then, do the critics take notice.

For Obama and our team, there was no time to take his show on the road. No trial and error in small venues. No discreet rehearsals away from the scrutiny of Washington players and pundits. His production opened on Broadway, under the brightest lights—and with the full battery of critics in attendance, eager to see if he could live up to his inflated advance billing.

The opening scene, the announcement in Springfield, was pronounced an absolute triumph. The launch, with its inspirational speech and large, buoyant crowd, had demonstrated the power and potential of an Obama candidacy. Nobody there could miss the fact that, despite the polar conditions, Obama had drawn not only a large crowd, but a diverse one. We would discover that it included many folks who had never been involved in politics before. Some came because they, like Obama, opposed the war in Iraq. Others were voicing their support for health care reform or new climate change policies. Many others were there because they were feeling the increasing financial squeeze on the middle class.

Beyond any one issue, however, they were drawn to that frozen square by something else as well. They were drawn there by hope, the audacious idea that, against the odds, we, the people, could push back against the bitter, atomizing politics of our time and join together as one American community. Obama was both a trumpet
for
and a living symbol
of
that hope. He was a natural leading man for those fed up with the cynical, divisive, small-bore politics of Washington, seeking something better for our country.

Once the euphoria of that uplifting moment had passed, we faced the daunting challenge of maintaining its promise against the grinding realities of presidential politics. As with any epic drama, the hero would be tested, as would the idealism that brought so many to Springfield that day. And the journey would begin in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation contest, where the fundamental proposition underlying the campaign would either take root or wither and die.

Shortly after the announcement, we boarded a chartered 757 jet from Springfield to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with fifty-seven members of the news media in tow. Both the hulking airliner and the media mob were bigger than any upstart challenger might reasonably expect on his first official campaign foray. Yet it was clear from the get-go that Obama was not just
any
upstart.

Early-stage presidential politics in Iowa are usually conducted through “living room conversations.” This particular “living room” at Obama’s first event, in Cedar Rapids, was a packed high school gymnasium. While many there seemed intrigued by Obama, this was just the beginning of an intense, year-long courtship. Iowans take their outsize role in the nominating process very seriously. They have a rare opportunity not just to
see
all the candidates for president—often several times—but actually to get to
know
them. Iowans are accustomed to being courted by presidential candidates one by one, just as if they were sizing up candidates for the town board. Still, twenty-five hundred Iowans turned out to take their first up-close look at Obama, an unprecedented number for a campaign event eleven months before the caucuses.

Barack gave a shorter, informal version of his announcement speech, and then endured a laborious interview onstage conducted by a prominent local citizen who seemed far more interested in his own questions than Obama’s answers. Patience is more than a virtue in a presidential campaign. It’s an absolute necessity. When the floor was finally opened up for queries from the audience, Barack got a taste of Iowa politics, and Iowans got a taste of Obama, with (beyond the big applause lines) all the nuances contained in his political views.

Obama received tumultuous applause when he reminded the crowd that he had opposed the Iraq War from the start, but when he told a questioner that he could not promise an immediate bounty for domestic programs once the war ended, because of other, pressing defense needs, he was met with stony silence. He was warmly received when he said teachers deserved much higher pay, but when he added that the increased pay should be tied to greater accountability and higher standards, many in the pro-union audience sat on their hands and rustled uncomfortably in their chairs.

Barack’s bet, and ours, was that in 2008, candor was better than pander. While he wasn’t above the pleasing line, he understood that you could not wage war against conventional politics by acting conventionally. Also, if we tried the tired game of promising everybody everything they wanted, we would quickly deflate the high hopes his candidacy had stirred.

As Obama was being put through his paces, I was standing near David Yepsen, the rumpled, curmudgeonly, longtime political editor of the
Des Moines Register
. I had known Yepsen for decades. Every four years, during the caucuses, he emerged as the most sought-after expert in American politics. After decades of dealing with an endless parade of aspiring presidents, Yepsen wasn’t easily stirred, but on first blush, he seemed impressed with Obama. Barack seemed willing to silence the crowd with unwelcome truths rather than just bring them to their feet with words they longed to hear. “I don’t know if this will work,” Yepsen said, “but it sure is interesting.”

In Ames the next day, five thousand people turned out for Obama at Iowa State University. The sheer size of the crowd was inspiring, and spoke to a hunger for something better and more hopeful than could be found in Washington. Yet the event in Ames brought another glimpse of realities we could not escape: the unrelenting scrutiny of the news media that skewed toward the critical.

In a riff touting his opposition to the Iraq War, Barack ad-libbed a line that caused me to wince. “We have . . . seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted,” he said.
Wasted
. While mostly everyone in that arena felt the war was a mistake, few veterans or their families wanted to hear that the lives of the dead and wounded had been wasted. They had done their duty. They had served and sacrificed for their country. That was not a waste, but heroism.

It was a small yet significant gaffe, the sort that caught the finely tuned ears of reporters and sent them scurrying to Gibbs for further explanation. When we took it to Barack, he was irritated with himself. “I never use that word,” he told us. “I just screwed up. It was sloppy.” Minutes after the speech, we set up a quick interview with the
Register
to clean up the remark by explaining that it was a regrettable slip of the tongue. We would point any reporter who brought it up to the newspaper transcript, but the offhand comment followed the candidate to New Hampshire the next evening, where he was forced to elaborate on his apology.

The episode was a bracing reminder that every word Barack spoke now would face heightened scrutiny. Being relatively unknown, he would find his every misstep reported and probed to see if it revealed some heretofore hidden attitude or flaw. Obama’s rapid ascension from promising prospect to declared candidate meant that he now was aloft on the high wire, in full public view. Reporters and opposing campaigns would seize every opportunity to trip up this unproven talent who had, without paying his dues, commanded such extraordinary attention.

For Obama, who had lived a mostly charmed political life, this ratcheting up of the scrutiny was new and disconcerting. We didn’t want to curb Barack’s candor or spontaneity, or undermine his authenticity, but the slip in Ames underscored the need for discretion and discipline.

Welcome to the NBA, I thought.

 • • • 

This was the story for much of 2007, as Barack and the rest of us grappled with the sudden g-force that comes with being shot from a cannon. No matter how many campaigns you’ve worked on, it is still an unsettling experience. We also wrestled with the inherent tension between the spirit of change that had propelled us forward and the conventional, frequently grinding demands of a campaign.

That spirit continued to show itself in the enthusiasm of the crowds and the avalanche of small donations and volunteers that came in the wake of Barack’s announcement.

Buoyed by more than one hundred thousand donors, half of whom contributed online, we raised an eye-popping twenty-five million dollars in the first quarter of 2007. This far exceeded our goals and shocked the Clinton world, which routinely listed fund-raising as one of its insurmountable advantages over all its rivals. Always seeking an edge, Plouffe stubbornly withheld the news of our haul until the last minute. He wanted to allow the Clinton campaign to turn over its card first, which they did with predictable braggadocio. Just as Plouffe hoped, allowing them their moment made our matching card more dramatic and unsettling for our opponents.

Rail thin from predawn runs, his piercing, blue eyes habitually framed in red due to lack of sleep, Plouffe never stopped thinking about how to gain an edge. He made himself the hub to which every department reported and, as a result, was the sole person with a grasp of the full scope of the campaign’s activities. Though he most often kept his own counsel, when David did speak, he was remarkably direct, holding forth without unnecessary melodrama or unwanted guile. Even though he had spent a great deal of his adult life working in Washington, David burned with a healthy contempt for the myopic politics of the town. Yet he was no gauzy idealist. He was a hard-nosed competitor.

My role was Keeper of the Message and, I believed, the idealistic flame. I had been in my share of political scraps and wasn’t averse to throwing a jab (or even a haymaker) when it was required, as I had demonstrated many times. Yet I believed that Barack had a unique chance to lift the country and bring people together by appealing to their common hopes and aspirations. Moreover, he would imperil our campaign if he resorted to conventional political warfare by mining their differences and fears. I also believed, at this moment in history, that America was hungry for that different kind of leader. “Let’s never forget that it’s not just about winning, it’s about why,” I would tell my team. “
That’s
our edge. We lose that, we
can’t
win.”

I came to believe that Plouffe and I represented the yin and yang of Barack’s personality: the fierce, pragmatic competitor, determined to win; and the genuine idealist, who saw public service as a calling and politics as a means of helping people. As bright and capable as he is, I knew that Barack would never have gotten this far with just one of those qualities—and we, as a campaign, could never succeed without both.

Meanwhile, new recruits were swarming our headquarters in downtown Chicago. They had given up jobs, taken leaves from school, and left behind family and friends to join our cause—often with no promise of pay. The place began to pulsate with a shared sense of mission as well as a healthy injection of youthful mischief. That proved to be one of the benefits of basing the campaign in Chicago rather than Washington: indeed, the chief rationale for that decision was to isolate the staff from the reflexive and numbing cynicism of the chattering class that is inescapable in the capital of conventional political thinking.

The early expressions of interest and support came from not just kids, but from iconic figures like Steve Jobs, the brooding genius of Apple. Obama visited with Jobs at his Cupertino, California, headquarters during an early West Coast swing, which led to one of the strangest interactions I would experience during the course of the campaign.

“He showed me this new phone they’re going to be rolling out in June,” Barack told me, after their meeting. “If it were legal, I would buy a boatload of Apple stock. This thing is going to be really big. He wants to talk with you about the campaign. Give him a call.”

Jobs was not just the visionary developer of trailblazing products, but a marketing wizard, the brains behind the quirky, clever campaigns that turned those products into phenomena. Since we, too, were committed to “think different,” I was looking forward to the conversation, but when I called to follow up, it became instantly clear that Jobs was less interested in talking
with
me than he was in talking
at
me.

“What is it that you
do
?” he demanded, with unmistakable edge.

I explained that I was the senator’s media consultant, with overall responsibility for the message and advertising of the campaign.

“Yeah, well, I think what your industry does, if you call it an industry, is bullshit,” he said. “You guys don’t know anything about communication.”

In addition to his well-deserved laurels for revolutionizing the way the world worked and communicated, Jobs had a reputation for rudeness and arrogance, which plainly was not unwarranted. I gently pushed back.

“Well, Steve, marketing a candidate for president of the United States is a little different than selling computers,” I said.

“That’s bullshit,” he snarled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s your communications plan?”

Twenty seconds into my answer, my brush with greatness came to an abrupt end.

“I don’t have time for this crap. I’ll call you back later,” Jobs said. Before I could respond, he was gone. I wouldn’t hear from him again until the general election, when his tone was decidedly friendlier.

Jobs’s dismissive putdown notwithstanding, Barack was drawing increased support from the grass roots, the Netroots, and even from some tough-minded billionaires, an encouraging sign of early strength. Still, the candidate and the campaign were feeling the full weight of hoisting this ambitious start-up.