Believer: My Forty Years in Politics

by David Axelrod

  Our team reconvened in my office in mid-December to review where things stood and to see if Barack had moved closer to a decision. The most memorable and significant moment of that meeting was provoked by a question Michelle asked of him. Fiercely independent and protective of the kids, she was clearly working her way through her own distinct process. She believed in him and shared his convictions, and she recognized that this might be a watershed moment in his career. Yet career advancement alone wasn’t a sufficiently good reason to turn their lives upside down.

  “Barack, it kind of comes down to this. There are a lot of good, capable people running for president,” she said. “What do you think you could contribute that the others couldn’t?”

  Barack responded quickly. He had plainly reflected on the same question.

  “There are a lot of ways to answer that. But here’s one thing I know for sure: the day I raise my hand to take that oath of office as president of the United States,” he said, lifting his right hand, “the world will look at us differently, and millions of kids—black kids, Hispanic kids—will look at themselves differently.”

  The room was quiet after he spoke. In all our ruminations, we had talked about the practical challenges that race posed to our ability to win. Yet until that moment, no one had spoken out loud about what his winning would mean. In the eyes of the world, the election of a black man named Barack Obama to the presidency would be an affirmation of America’s promise—and to those millions of American kids of whom Barack spoke, it would open up possibilities they could scarcely imagine.

  Obama’s simple, eloquent point was brought home to me a short time later, when I got a call from a young man named Brad Parker, an inner-city Chicago public school teacher who had grown up with my son Michael. Brad told me about one recent day when he was teaching a section on American presidents.

  “One kid raised his hand and asked, ‘Why are all these dudes white?’” Brad said. “So we had a discussion about it. And then I told them, ‘But, you know, the next president could be our own senator, Barack Obama. And he would change that.’”

  Brad said the reaction of these mostly poor, minority kids from the West Side of Chicago was kinetic. “Their eyes were like saucers, they were so excited. The idea that a person of color could be president—they couldn’t believe it.”

  Despite his compelling answer to Michelle’s question, Barack said they still had soul-searching to do. He promised to make a decision over Christmas, during his annual family vacation in Hawaii. Still, before he left, Barack asked Plouffe to manage the campaign, were it to move forward. Meanwhile, Michelle and Valerie asked me to dinner at Coco Pazzo, an Italian restaurant near my office, to discuss another and quite sensitive personnel matter.

  “We have concerns about Robert,” Valerie said. “We don’t think he should be a part of the campaign.”

  That floored me. There was no doubt that Gibbs had some hard bark on him. He wasn’t naturally trusting, particularly after his negative experience in Kerry’s campaign. While he was ferocious in pursuit of Barack’s interests, he was often the bearer of bad news—or the architect of it—for example, when dates were added to Barack’s schedule that tugged him away from home. Barack was undoubtedly fine with letting Gibbs take the blame for some of Michelle’s unhappiness and frustration, which might have contributed to her doubts about him.

  I wondered if either Michelle or Valerie had broached the subject with Barack, who clearly valued Robert. He was an absolutely essential player. Brilliant, incisive, quick-witted, and experienced, he was as good as we could get in the spokesman’s role. More than anyone, his hidden hand in shrewd, day-to-day political calls in the Senate office had been crucial in creating the opportunity for Barack. He’d proven an indispensable presence on the road, his loyalty was beyond question, and he had forged a palpable bond with Obama. I couldn’t imagine Obama wanting it any other way.

  “Look, if Barack runs, it’s going to be a war, and Robert is a warrior,” I explained. “We cannot do this without him.” Michelle and Valerie relented, and I never heard any more about it.

  Over the holidays, Susan and I had a chance to talk about the prospect of Barack’s candidacy. She was bullish, both for him and for me. Susan had great appreciation for Hillary, who had been the patron saint of CURE and a source of encouragement when Susan was battling cancer. Still, like many, Susan was virulently antiwar, disgusted by the antics in Washington, and excited by the prospect of Barack as president. I had missed two opportunities to work on presidential campaigns in the ’90s because of our family circumstances—she discounted the Edwards experience, having opposed my involvement in that campaign from the beginning—but now, with our kids grown and Lauren’s epilepsy stabilized, she felt that this was my time, and perhaps my final chance.

  “I always thought if you could have helped Gore, you could have made a difference,” she said, ascribing powers to me as only a loving wife could. “It sounds stupid, but I thought that if I didn’t have cancer, and you could have helped him in that election, he would have won, and maybe there wouldn’t have been an Iraq War. Barack will make a big difference and you know you can make a big difference for him.”

  On January 2, I was working in the small study off my office when Obama strode in unannounced, wearing blue jeans, a black zip-up jacket that seemed too light for the weather, and the ratty old Chicago White Sox cap he prized. He and the family had just come back from Hawaii, and it was time to fish or cut bait.

  Everything was pointing to a run, and he seemed to be leaning toward it. The times were urgent. He had gone through real soul-searching about whether he was ready to be president, and he knew he could offer a profile and perspective others would not. He had come to believe that, though the odds were long, we could put together a competitive campaign.

  On a personal note, he and Michelle both felt that a campaign now, when the kids were young, might be easier for them than later. “You know, they have their own lives right now—dance and stuff—and they’re pretty much oblivious to all of this stuff. Later, it would be harder.” And, he noted, if he won and served two terms, he would be just fifty-five when he left office. “There would still be a lot of life ahead of us,” he said.

  The arguments for doing it were pretty clear, but as a friend, I had to raise one last issue.

  “My main concern is that you’re not obsessive enough to run for president,” I told him. “I’ve worked with Hillary. I’ve worked with Edwards. They will drag their asses out of bed at four in the morning day after day after day—even if they’re deathly ill—because they have to be president. They’re driven to be president. I don’t sense that in you. You’re ambitious, but you don’t need to be president in that way. You like to hang with your family. You like to play hoops and watch ESPN. You may be too normal to run for president.”

  Barack smiled. “Well, you’re right, I don’t need to be president. It turns out that being Barack Obama is a pretty good gig in and of itself. If I run, I am going to have to find my motivation in the people and the ideas we’re fighting for. But I’ll tell you this. I am pretty damned competitive, and if I get in, I’m not getting in to lose. I’m going to do what’s necessary.”

  After two hours of conversation, Barack went on his way. In the lobby of my office, he ran into Forrest Claypool, who inquired about the senator’s latest thinking on the presidential race.

  “It may not be exactly the time I would pick,” Barack told him, “but sometimes the times pick you.”

  He patted Forrest on the shoulder and walked out the door.

  FOURTEEN

  IN LINCOLN’S SHADOW

  THROUGHOUT DEVAL PATRICK’S improbable march to the governorship, it seemed as if his upstart campaign were destiny’s child. Yet on the day he took office, it became absolutely clear that some higher power was at work on his behalf.

  Deval had rejected the customary invitation-
only inauguration in the Massachusetts House chambers, opting instead to hold his swearing in on the steps of the statehouse. He wanted to signify a new openness and share the moment with the many volunteers who had helped elect him. “They’re my VIPs,” he said.

  Normally, early January in Boston is cold and gray, with temperatures topping out in the midthirties. But on January 4, 2007, the weather abruptly changed and the city was bathed in sun and springlike temperatures. Apparently, the Almighty wanted to signal his blessing on what was most assuredly a new day in the old commonwealth.

  Susan and I had come prepared for winter, but we were delighted to unbutton our coats as we sat on the platform behind the podium looking out at the gleeful architects of this seismic political change. I had attended many such ceremonies, all of them happy occasions. Yet this felt very different. Like Barack, Deval had defied conventional politics by appealing to the best in people and trusting them with the truth. His election was deeply affirming, and his inaugural represented much more than the routine transfer of power. It was a joyous, hopeful celebration of community.

  Deval understood this, and had labored on his speech throughout the night and into the morning, right up until the final moments before he and his family departed for the statehouse.

  “For a very long time now, we have been told that government is bad, that it exists only to serve the powerful and well-connected, that its job is not important enough to be done by anybody competent, let alone committed, and that all of us are on our own,” Governor Patrick told the crowd. “Today, we join together in common cause to lay that fallacy to rest, and to extend a great movement based on shared responsibility from the corner office to the corner of your block and back again.”

  As I took in this sublime scene, I thought about Barack and the weighty decision he would be making within days. What if we could replicate this moment for the whole country? What if we could overcome America’s dispiriting politics and rekindle a sense of community and hope? Imagine how sweet it would be to sit on the platform of the U.S. Capitol two years from now and celebrate that victory!

  Maybe it was an outrageous fantasy. Yet Barack’s race for the U.S. Senate had been almost as unlikely. And what about Deval? A year earlier, the Beacon Hill crowd had called his candidacy a joke. Now they were calling him Governor. Each of these compelling men had mobilized grassroots movements that the political establishment could not foresee, even when they were right in front of their eyes. It was exciting to imagine that we might replicate this campaign for hope and change to a much grander scale.

  I soon learned—in a decidedly ungrandiose call from Obama—that we would get the chance.

  “Axe, I just called Plouffe and told him it’s a go,” Barack said a few days later. “Michelle and I have talked about it and we decided this may be as good a time as any for our family. And this may be a unique moment in time when someone like me could have an opportunity to make a difference. So let’s get to work and see what happens. We have a lot of ground to make up.”

  When we gathered in Washington the following week, the ground we had to make up seemed most apparent. We had a senior staff of ten, and a whole lot of unmined potential that we needed to tap quickly. The Clinton world would soon shift from a position of bemused dismissal to one of active subversion, working to dry up money from donors and to chill potential supporters who might be willing to support Obama publicly. A news media that had been smitten with Obama would now assume their self-styled role of official hazers.

  When we met in the borrowed conference room of a downtown law firm, we didn’t waste any time brooding about the tough road that lay ahead. Collectively, the campaign team around the table represented a century of political experience garnered in some of the toughest campaigns and political venues. We were political warriors, not just a band of airy-headed dreamers. Yet we did share the idea that politics should be more than a game waged for the benefit of its players. We believed that politics, at its best, was the vehicle by which Americans could force meaningful change, change that was desperately needed. The never-ending war, a shifting economy that was yielding tremendous gains for some but shrinking security for many more, a health care system careening toward disaster, a climate issue unaddressed and threatening catastrophe—all were defining problems screaming for action. Winning wasn’t nearly enough.

  Most in the room, including Barack, were too young to remember Bobby Kennedy’s iconoclastic campaign of 1968. RFK challenged a war, but also the conventional politics and stale thinking of the times. The young people who signed on back then sought to do more than simply win one man’s election. They were out to change the world. Now, forty years later, we had a chance to rekindle that kind of idealism. We weren’t daunted by the challenge of taking on the establishment or the prevailing political wisdom in Washington. We were energized by it.

  “I have only three rules for this campaign, but I am going to insist on them,” Barack said, addressing his team for the first time as a candidate for president of the United States.

  The first is that this has to be a grassroots campaign because that’s the kind of politics I believe in and the only way a campaign like this, or a candidate like me, can win. Change always begins from the bottom up.

  Second, we’re going to rise and fall together. When things get tough, and we know they will, I don’t want to see us turning on each other. That means no Washington games. No leaking snarky items on one another. And if anybody violates this, they will no longer be a part of this campaign.

  Finally, let’s have some fun. Running for president is a deadly serious business, but it’s also a great privilege to be out there fighting for people, for big, important things and the kind of world we believe in. There should be joy in that pursuit. So let’s have some fun. Let’s not be timid or afraid.

  His final words of inspiration came from a Chicagoan, but an unlikely one. Paraphrasing Joel Goodsen, the Tom Cruise character from the 1983 teen odyssey Risky Business, Barack added, “I mean, sometimes you just have to say, ‘What the fuck.’”

  • • •

  One of the challenges of being the young black guy without a lot of Washington experience is not having a deep bench of consultants. I had done the media and message work for Obama’s Senate race, Paul Harstad had done the polling and focus groups, and Pete Giangreco had done the mail. Yet a campaign of this magnitude would require a larger cast. So, for me, it became a real-life version of the movie Ocean’s Eleven. Like Danny Ocean, the film’s eponymous central character, I set out to assemble a “dream team” of consultants equal to what promised to be a very complex caper.

  Having weathered the Edwards debacle, I wanted to recruit a talented team that would not only do good work, but also work well together. I wanted folks who believed in Barack and the cause.

  The first call I made was to an old friend, Larry Grisolano. Larry started in campaigns as a teenager in Burlington, Iowa, and had worked for me in the early ’90s before establishing a thriving consultancy on the West Coast. He was an incisive strategic thinker and manager. I asked him to come to Chicago to coordinate the day-to-day media and polling operations of the campaign.

  Polling and voter research were my next calls. I loved Paul Harstad, who was talented, passionate, and loyal, but given the volume of research required, I thought we would need more than his small shop could handle. So I called another old friend, Joel Benenson, in New York City.

  Joel had done a brief stint working for Mark Penn during Clinton’s 1996 presidential campaign, but couldn’t have been less like him. Raised by a single mother in Queens, Joel came to polling in a roundabout way, working first as a beer distributor, then a journalist, and later as a campaign aide to Mario Cuomo. After his apprenticeship with Penn, Joel opened his own polling firm, and we worked together on several campaigns. His numbers were spot-on, his strategic advice sound, and his sensibilities very much those of an outsider.

/>   As my mother’s son, I prized good focus groups, which I had learned could unlock insights that can be difference makers in a campaign. Yet doing them right is the key. So I reached out to David Binder, a researcher from San Francisco whose perceptive focus groups with California voters had helped me work my way through several knotty campaigns. A native of Kewanee, Illinois, David had that quality we call “Midwest nice,” a soothing neutrality that allowed him to put any group of voters he spoke to at ease.

  I also went through some soul-searching about my own role on the ad-making team. I worried about my ability to write ads and still remain focused on the day-to-day strategy of a campaign that would be fought moment to moment. I asked the advice of my old friend Mark McKinnon, who had been the lead media consultant for George W. Bush. “You need to build an ad team,” he said. “You think you’re going to want to be writing spots, but you won’t have time.” I was pondering this on a flight from Chicago to Washington early in 2007, when I turned around and saw, a few seats behind me, the smiling face of Jim Margolis. I first met Jim in 1984 when he was the Illinois state coordinator for Mondale’s presidential campaign. Since then, he had become one the top media strategists and ad makers in Washington. Jim was a great talent without all the cynicism and self-puffery that so often comes along with the package. I grabbed the empty seat next to Margolis and asked him if he would be interested in joining the team.

  There were plenty of talented consultants to draw on, and given Obama’s appeal, we were inundated with offers of help from Hollywood and Madison Avenue, too. We would add other gifted and creative players over time, but Grisolano, Benenson, Binder, and Margolis would become a tight, harmonious strategic core—a devoted Band of Brothers for whom I would be grateful every day.