The Audacity to Win: How They Did It
In a new memoir, The Audacity to Win, David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama's 2008 race for the White House, provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse inside the campaign. Here's an excerpt:
Agony. Ecstasy.
The [Rev. Jeremiah] Wright story broke on a Wednesday and exploded across the media landscape the next day. We decided Obama had to take questions about [his former pastor's inflammatory sermons] head-on on Friday, in a series of lengthy national cable interviews.
There was one not-so-minor complication. He was already scheduled to do editorial boards that Friday afternoon with both Chicago papers about [real estate developer and political fundraiser] Tony Rezko, two hours each, no holds barred. Given no choice but to address Wright as soon as possible, we decided we would do a round of TV interviews on him directly after the Rezko boards. It shaped into quite a day, like having your legs amputated in the morning and your arms at night. The question was whether we would still have a heartbeat at the end of the day.
It was chaos and, quite frankly, frightening. I felt as if the wheels could easily spin off our whole venture. Still, Obama was the pillar of reassurance. "Don't worry, guys," he told us while making some notes on a stack of pages. "I can do more than one thing at a time. We are taking the trash out today. It won't be fun, but we'll be stronger for it." (See pictures of Barack Obama's convention-week journey.)
Obama handled everything with brilliance. The editorial boards, though grueling, went well. Obama called me after 11 that night, while my wife and son were sleeping. "So we survived. But it feels really unsatisfying — to me and I'm sure to voters ... I think I need to give a speech on race and how Wright fits into that. Whether people will accept it or not, I don't know. But I don't think we can move forward until I try."
Obama had raised giving a race speech back in the fall. At the time, [chief strategist David] Axelrod and I strenuously disagreed, believing that we should not inject into the campaign an issue that for the most part was not on voters' minds. Now we were in a much different situation. I agreed that a traditional political move — the damage-control interviews we had done that night — would not be enough. But a speech was fraught with peril. If it was off-key, it could compound our problems.
He said he was calling Axelrod and that after they spoke, he wanted me to call Ax and then conference him in; the three of us would make a decision. "I don't want a big meeting or conference call on this," he told me. "You and Ax and I will arbitrate this. But know this is what I think I need to do, so I'll need an awfully compelling argument not to give this speech. And I think it needs to be delivered in the early part of next week and I need to write most of it."
Axelrod and I spoke a few minutes later and quickly decided we were in uncharted waters. There was no playbook for how to handle something like this. It had never been done. "He really wants to give this speech," I concluded. "And I don't have a better idea. Do you?"
"Nope," said Ax. He began to fret about the real-world problems of constructing the most important speech of our candidacy largely on the fly, when I interrupted: "Look, let's call him and walk through it," I said. "We'll do the speech, but he has to own the reality of the time constraints." (See TIME's best pictures of Barack Obama.)
We conferenced Barack in. "So?" he asked. "What's the deal?" We told him we agreed with the speech but that it was going to be hard to put it together.
"Tonight is Friday — well, Saturday morning," I said. "We have to give this speech no later than Tuesday. You have a full schedule in Pennsylvania the next three days. It has already been publicized. If we start canceling events, it will fuel the impression that we're panicked and our candidacy is on the rocks."
"From THE AUDACITY TO WIN: THE INSIDE STORY AND LESSONS OF BARACK OBAMA'S HISTORIC VICTORY by David Plouffe. �2009 by Plouffe Strategies, Ltd. To be published by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc."
"No, we can't cancel anything," Obama interjected. "But I already know what I want to say in this speech. I've been thinking about it for almost 30 years. I'll call [lead campaign speechwriter Jon Favreau] in the morning and give him some initial guidance. And I'll work on this during downtime in the hotel room each night. Don't worry. Even if I have to pull all-nighters, I can make this work." We were flying by the seat of our pants. Somehow we had to keep faith that it would come together. (See pictures of Barack Obama's speechwriting team.)
The speech received rave reviews from political commentators and spawned hundreds of positive editorials. More important, voters also responded very well to it. Wright still bothered them — but they respected how Obama dealt with the issue.
As was the case throughout the campaign, most people did not watch the speech on TV. It was delivered on a Tuesday morning, when just about everyone was at work. Instead, people watched it online, most of them on YouTube, either as it was happening or at their leisure later that day or in the days to come. Eventually, tens of millions of voters saw the speech through various outlets.
This marked a fundamental change in political coverage and message consumption, and one that will only continue as technology rolls forward: big moments, political or otherwise, will no longer be remembered by people as times when everyone gathered around TVs to watch a speech, press conference or other event. Increasingly, most of us will recall firing up the computer, searching for a video and watching it at home or at the office — or even on our cell phones.
Filling Out the Ticket
What surprised me at [our first meeting to discuss the vice presidency] was that Obama was clearly thinking more seriously about picking Hillary Clinton than Ax and I had realized. He said if his central criterion measured who could be the best VP, she had to be included in that list. She was competent, could help in Congress, would have international bona fides and had been through this before, albeit in a different role. He wanted to continue discussing her as we moved forward.
We met again a couple of weeks later in mid-June and winnowed the list down to about 10 names.
At our next meeting, we narrowed the list down to six. Barack continued to be intrigued by Hillary. "I still think Hillary has a lot of what I am looking for in a VP," he said to us. "Smarts, discipline, steadfastness. I think Bill may be too big a complication. If I picked her, my concern is that there would be more than two of us in the relationship." (See pictures of the last days of Hillary Clinton's campaign.)
Neither Ax nor I were fans of the Hillary option. We saw her obvious strengths, but we thought there were too many complications, both pre-election and postelection, should we be so fortunate as to win. Still, we were very careful not to object too forcefully. This needed to be his call.
We had initially received a lot of advice from many of her supporters to pick her, though this "advice" was perhaps more accurately described as subtle pressure. Their fervor was abating a bit every day, though, helped by Hillary's comments that this was Obama's decision and that he should be left to make it.
In early August, he narrowed his list down to three names: Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana and Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia. Hillary did not make the last cut. At the end of the day, Obama decided that there were just too many complications outweighing the potential strengths. But I gave him a lot of credit for so seriously thinking about his fierce former rival. Some in the Clinton orbit thought we gave Hillary short shrift. My view is that any serious consideration was somewhat surprising given all the complications and the toxicity during the primary campaign.
Shortly before he took off for Hawaii and his much needed vacation, Obama asked Axelrod and me to meet with the three finalists. [We] pieced together a schedule that had us departing Chicago at 5:30 a.m. for Wilmington, Del., to meet with Biden; then on to West Virginia, where Bayh was vacationing with his family; and then to Virginia to meet with Kaine.
With the Palin pick, he had completely undermined his core argument against us. Worse yet for McCain, he would look inherently political in doing so. His strength — and the threat he posed to us — was rooted in the fact that many independent voters believed in his maverick reputation and believed he did not make his decisions by prioritizing politics over what was right. I guessed people would view this choice more as a political stunt than a sound, reasoned call.
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Obama Moderates Tone on Palin
On our 6:00 a.m. conference call, [campaign adviser] Anita Dunn, who had worked against Palin in Alaska in the 2006 governor's race, warned us that she was a formidable political talent — clearly not up to this moment, she assured us, but bound to be a compelling player and a real headliner in the weeks ahead. (Read about where Sarah Palin is going next.)
"All of you on this call should watch video of her debates and speeches," Dunn counseled. "The substance is thin, but she's a very able performer. And her story is out of Hollywood. She'll be a phenomenon for a while."
Our strategy with the other potential picks would've been to start by saying that choice X subscribed to the same failed George Bush policies as John McCain; all they were doing was doubling down on the same out-of-touch economic policies that had hurt American families. We should have gone the same way with Palin. But McCain had been haranguing us for months about experience, and we were incredulous that he had picked someone with zero foreign policy experience who had been a governor for less time than Obama had been a Senator. Galled by the hypocrisy, we moved in a more aggressive direction.
We decided to call McCain on the experience card directly. The value was in making him look political — essentially, calling him full of shit — and we sent out a release making that clear. "Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency," it read. "Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies — that's not the change we need; it's just more of the same."
Our statement immediately received an enormous amount of attention because it went right at her experience. The press clearly sensed heat and was eager to help drive the fight. Seeing the reaction, I began to think perhaps we had misfired. Obama clearly thought so. He called me from the air. "Listen, I just told this to Axelrod and [communications director Robert] Gibbs," he began. "I understand the argument you guys were trying to make. And maybe we should make it someday. But not today. We shouldn't have put out the first part of that statement. I want to put out another statement that simply welcomes her to the race, and I'll call her and congratulate her when I land." (Read a two-minute bio of Robert Gibbs.)
I didn't disagree but thought backtracking would only add to the sense in the press that perhaps Palin was a brilliant game-changing pick that had scrambled the race. Even the famously disciplined Obama campaign can't get its story straight — this would be the blowback. "Look," I told him, "simply say that you're adding your own personal voice, one principal to another." He acknowledged that he understood and would watch his words. "We'll send out a personal statement from you and Biden," I said, "but it's important you not suggest we misfired on the original statement. Don't throw the campaign under the bus."
But when he took a few questions from the press later that day, he proceeded to drive the bus right over us. "I think that, you know, campaigns start getting these hair triggers, and the statement that Joe and I put out reflects our sentiments," he said. Great, I thought, already imagining the heat we'd take on this. But all in all, I felt solid about our instincts. Despite our clumsiness, I still thought we had nailed, in the predawn hours, what this pick would mean over time.
Obama and I had a long talk late that afternoon to evaluate Palin. "I just don't understand how this ends up working out for McCain," he said. "In the long term, I mean. The short term will be good for them. But when voters step back and analyze how he made this decision, I think he's going to be in big trouble. You just can't wing something like this — it's too important."
"I think we just need to sit back and play our game," said Obama. "It actually won't be bad to be off-Broadway for a few days. We should just leave her out of the equation. This is a race between John McCain and me. To the extent we talk about Palin, I think it should be about the differences in our selection processes — it illuminates differences in how we'd make decisions in the White House."
