That’s what allowed him to say “damn the torpedoes” and dive fearlessly into health care reform, despite the obvious political risks. It is why he was able to make many other tough calls when the prevailing political wisdom would have had him punt and wait for another chance with the ball.
Yet there is the flip side to that courage and commitment.
Obama has limited patience or understanding for officeholders whose concerns are more parochial—which would include most of Congress and many world leaders. “What are they so afraid of?” he asked after addressing the Senate Democrats on health reform, though the answer seemed readily apparent: losing their jobs in the next election! He has aggravated more than one experienced politician by telling them why acting boldly not only was their duty but also served their political needs. Whether it’s John Boehner or Bibi Netanyahu, few practiced politicians appreciate being lectured on where their political self-interest lies. That hint of moral superiority and disdain for politicians who put elections first has hurt Obama as negotiator, and it’s why Biden, a politician’s politician, has often had better luck.
While Obama has been willing—if only grudgingly—to surrender to the demands of a campaign, with its focus on one central issue and its occasional need for theatricality, he refuses to be scripted in the critical arena of governance. Yet the truth is, governing requires some of the same discipline, and the ability to make progress often rests every bit as much on performance as policy.
During the 2012 campaign, we focused relentlessly on economic values and the plight of the middle class, which is one big reason we were able to survive a difficult election. For Obama, the case was entirely genuine. Given who he is and the life he’s led, no one I know believes more strongly in an America where everyone gets a chance, and where anyone who works hard can get ahead. More than once, he’s told me that he sees extreme economic polarization and the decades-long assault on economic mobility as the most pressing challenges of our time.
When the polls closed, however, Obama turned back to his entire punch list of priorities: climate change, immigration reform, a sharper focus on poverty and discrimination. As with health reform, he also sees these as issues of transcendent importance, moral imperatives, and he wasn’t going to leave office without doing as much as he possibly could to meet them—even if they didn’t rise to the top of the polls as immediate public concerns. The steady demands of an uncertain world, rather than the economic challenges of everyday Americans, also claimed a great deal of the president’s time on the public stage after the election. Putin’s aggressive territorial plays, and the convulsive politics of the Middle East, frustrated Obama’s vision of a more peaceful and cooperative world and forced him to reengage on the dusty battlefield of Iraq.
Obama would return to economic issues at times and continue to work on an array of solutions. Yet, without the persistent, passionate, and almost singular focus of the campaign, few Americans would identify the daunting economic issues they face as the president’s driving concern.
I deeply admire the president’s determination to defy the small, poll-driven politics of our day to tackle big things. However, the gap between the singular focus of the campaign and his varied and ambitious agenda afterward undoubtedly sapped some of his political strength, leaving Americans wondering if he was truly focused on their concerns. You can’t take politics entirely out of the process.
I don’t speak with the president as much anymore. With the campaigns over, our once-frequent conversations have slowed to a trickle. I miss them. And when I hear the thundering hooves of the Washington pundits and pols on a stampede to run him down, I feel for him. Hell, I bleed for him. The brutal midterm election of 2014 was another painful rebuke. Yet I know this:
There are people who are alive today because of the health coverage he made possible. There are soldiers home with their families instead of halfway across the world. There are hundreds of thousands of autoworkers on the assembly line who would have been idled but for him, and the overall economy is in better shape than it has been in years. There are folks who are getting improved deals from their banks and mortgage lenders thanks to new rules in place and a new cop on the beat. There are gay and lesbian Americans who are, for the first time, free to defend their country without having to lie about who they are. There are women who have greater legal recourse when they’re paid less than the man doing the exact same job alongside them. There are families who can afford to send their kids to college because there is more aid available.
Oh, and yes . . . just as he predicted in my conference room back in those wonderful, heady days when we first considered an audacious run for the presidency, millions of kids in our country today can dream bigger dreams because Barack Obama has blazed the trail for them.
Elections matter. He’s proven that.
Yes, I deeply regret that we couldn’t change the rancid politics of Washington. It’s a bitter irony that the election of a president on a mandate for that change touched off such a ferocious counterreaction that it wound up only exacerbating the problem. Obama couldn’t bridge that divide; now divided government seems to be our fate for the foreseeable future. Will Americans tolerate ever-escalating partisan warfare or will they demand something better?
For it’s not just the politicians who bear responsibility for the current climate, but a passive citizenry that, in its disgust, has walked away from politics altogether. When just 10 or 20 percent of eligible voters turn out for party primaries, leaving them to the most strident forces and self-interested oligarchs who bankroll campaigns, the 80 or 90 percent who stay away share some of the blame for the results.
I spend a lot of time with young people now, bright, public-spirited kids from across the political spectrum who give me hope for the future. They treat each other respectfully, even when they don’t agree. They care deeply about the community, the country, and the world around them. They want to have an impact, but they’re not sure that politics is a viable path on which to do that.
With the benefit of my years and what passes for wisdom, I remind them that whatever they may care about—be it national security, the environment, education, or human rights—government will play a leading role for good or bad. Its receptivity to new ideas and innovation will, to a large extent, be determined by decisions that are made in Washington, state capitols, and city halls.
Congress is going to meet with you or without you, I tell them. Don’t turn away in disgust and leave those decisions to someone else. You don’t like politics today? Grab the wheel of history and steer us to a better place. Run for office. Be a strategist or policy aide. Work for a government agency or a nonprofit. Become a thoughtful, probing journalist. Get in the arena. Help shape the world in which you’re going to live. At a minimum, be the engaged citizen a healthy democracy demands.
A lot has happened to our country and the world since I heard JFK’s call to a New Generation of Leadership. It’s noisier, messier, and thus harder today to make this case to the newest generation, but it has to be made because it has never been more important.
I can say this without reservation because, a half century later, I’m still a believer.
My father, Joseph Axelrod, as a boy in Bessarabia, today a part of Ukraine, circa 1918. A few years later, he and his family fled violent anti-Semitism and set sail for America.
They were all smiles here but there weren’t many laughs between my father and mother, Myril, whose marriage broke up when I was a kid.
Driven from the start, my mother found success, first as a journalist and later as a pioneer in the art of focus groups, plumbing the depths of public attitudes.
Twelve days before the 1960 election, John F. Kennedy spoke to a rally in Stuyvesant Town, the New York City housing development where I grew up. For me, it was a life-shaping event.
Already a political junkie at the age of nine, here I am at the 1965 inauguration of
Lyndon B. Johnson with my mom and sister, Joan.
Boy reporter. When I completed a six-month internship at the Villager, my editors at this venerable community weekly in New York City put together a mock front page to mark the occasion.
Two days after college, I began working at the Chicago Tribune. In this reporter scrum, I questioned Jane Byrne, whose improbable election as mayor of Chicago catapulted my career as a political writer.
Tired of merely writing about political actors, I jumped into the action in 1984, managing the upset victory of U.S. senator Paul Simon of Illinois. I was twenty-nine.
I never worked for a more charismatic or entertaining politician than Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago, shown here in a billboard photo I staged for his reelection campaign in 1987.
In 1992, I turned down a job with Bill Clinton that I thought would take too much time from my family. When Clinton came to Chicago in the final weeks of the campaign, he signed a poster for my son Michael.
Devastated by our daughter’s lifelong battle with epilepsy, Susan launched Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy. It’s now the largest private funder of epilepsy research in the world.
In 2004, I helped engineer the election of Barack Obama to the U.S. Senate. Here we were shooting an ad in a closed steel mill near where Barack once worked as a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side.
For inspiration, Obama kept an iconic photo of a triumphant Muhammad Ali on the wall of his tiny campaign office.
By the summer of 2004, Obama was drawing huge crowds, as his then-six-year-old daughter Malia could see through the window of our campaign RV.
On the road. Sitting in the bleachers at a campaign rally in 2008, chatting with Shailagh Murray of the Washington Post.
“Stop the Drama. Vote Obama.” Weary of the marathon battle with Hillary Clinton, communications director Robert Gibbs and I visited reporters in the back of our campaign plane, clad in T-shirts bearing that message.
As the campaign wore on, the “O Team” gained notoriety. This Newsweek cover, late in the primary season, featured Valerie Jarrett and me flanking the soon-to-be nominee.
I was shocked to pick up the New Yorker and find myself alongside Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, peeking around the corner as the president-elect interviewed candidates for White House dog.
Hours after he learned that the grandmother who raised him had passed away, Obama tearfully spoke of her before a huge rally in North Carolina on our final campaign swing.
Capping off inauguration night at the White House, with Susan and the new president. The next morning, we would show up for work to face an economic crisis, two wars, and a determined Republican opposition.
When I was leaving for the White House, Lauren presented me with this picture she had painted of it, with the Chicago skyline reflecting in the North Lawn fountain, to remind me of home. It was the first thing I saw every day when I walked into my office.
Sundays were rarely a day off. Here I joust with former host David Gregory on NBC’s Meet the Press.
With the nation in crisis, we met daily with the president’s economic advisers, led by Larry Summers, a powerful personality at the core of a sometimes fractious team.
Obama’s decision to take on health care reform touched off a titanic year-long struggle. Here I am, making a point in the Oval Office with the president; Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel; our health care point person, Nancy-Ann DeParle; and legislative director Phil Schiliro.
The president drops into my office, adjacent to his, during one of my daily meetings with the White House speechwriters. Those sessions, where we hashed out themes and messaging, were a highlight of my day.
The debate over strategy in Afghanistan would consume much of our first year in the White House. Here I am in Kabul, with Obama; General Stanley McChrystal, the allied commander; and Hamid Karzai, the mercurial Afghan president.
On the runway in Louisiana, where we traveled on Air Force One to survey the damage of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in June 2010. The leak was one of many headaches leading into what would be a disastrous midterm election.
Defying the odds, we were in control of the 2012 election for most of the year, with one glaring exception. Despite multiple debate prep sessions like this one, the president still fell into a trap in his first encounter with Mitt Romney.
On the road to the 2012 Democratic National Convention, September 1, 2012.
“The Davids.” Through two campaigns, David Plouffe and I were strategic partners. A brilliant manager and visionary tactician, Plouffe was the perfect counterpoint to my more instinctive style.
Iowa gave Obama’s campaign life in 2008. Four years later, we would end our campaign where our presidential odyssey began.
The Axelrods. Leaving campaigns was an adjustment. Spending more time with Susan, Lauren, Ethan (left), Michael (right), and his wife, Liz (not pictured), has been a rich payoff.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When I began working on this book, my sage editor, Ann Godoff, was characteristically blunt about the nature of the enterprise. “This is going to be really hard,” she said. Knowing nothing, I shrugged off her admonition. After all, I had written all my life—newspaper and magazine stories; speeches and memos; thirty-second ads. Surely, this couldn’t be that much more difficult?
I thought about that exchange often during the ensuing months, when the task of writing acknowledgments seemed like the distant peak of a very tall and seemingly unscalable mountain. I could not have reached it without the indispensable help of many people.
Ann herself was a rich source of wonderful insights and the firm taskmaster an old journalist needed to make his deadlines. I am grateful to her, Ben Platt, and the skillful folks at Penguin Press for their support, confidence, and patience.
Tim Skoczek was a fine young White House communications aide when I persuaded him to join me in Chicago and act as my all-purpose right-hand man on this project. I’m sure there were many days when he questioned the wisdom of his decision. For almost four years, he spearheaded the voluminous research this book required, read and reread every word, offered valuable advice, and lived through all the anxious moments with me. This book is his as well as mine.
I am grateful to my terrific assistant, Chenault Taylor, for keeping the world at bay while I labored on this project—and for putting up with my “shoot the messenger” moodiness when she occasionally could not.
Conor Reynolds played an integral role in the research and fact-checking that went into this book. Mike Rice, Austin Burke, and Michele Friedman at VR Research did the impressive legwork required to find my family’s historical records.
I appreciate the understanding and support of my colleagues at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago for my frequent absences as I worked on this book, and I am thankful to NBC News for granting me a sabbatical from my chores there to complete it.
Robert Barnett, my attorney, was a helpful and experienced counselor and guide through the world of book publishing, which was new to me.
In the midst of writing, I spent a week in Newton, Massachusetts, where my mother lived and died. During her final days, I reconnected with an old friend who lived nearby. Mark Starr was a mentor of mine at the Chicago Tribune in the 1970s, and best man at my wedding. He took a job as the Boston bureau chief for Newsweek, and we lost touch. When I saw him after my mother died, Mark, now retired, said he had some free time and offered to read my copy, as he had done so many times when I was a kid reporter. His good suggestions and moral support at critical junctures were a great gift.
Others read drafts and offered helpful advice as well. I am grateful to Larry Grisolano, Peter Cunningham, Joel Benenson, Jon Favreau, Shailagh Murray, Sam Smith, Forrest Claypool, David Plouffe, Robert Gibbs, Stephanie Cutter, Tommy Vietor, and Kathy Ruemmler for taking the time to offer their thoughts and, mor
e than that, for their wonderful friendship. Particular thanks to Doris Kearns Goodwin, Governor Deval Patrick, George Stephanopoulos, and Mike Murphy for their kind words.
When I began, Ann suggested that I write everything, without regard to length. “We can always cut,” she said. I am pretty sure she came to regret that direction. Ann was helpful—perhaps even a little desperate—in scaling back my expansive recollections to keep this book on track. Lost in that necessary process of pruning, however, was mention of the many great clients and priceless talented colleagues who deserved recognition in these pages but fell victim to the knife. I hope those folks, too numerous to list here, know how much I love and appreciate them. They, too, are very much a part of my story.
In the final days of running through edits, my staff and I were meeting at my apartment when Susan entered the room. Susan had put many things on hold for me while I finished this project, as she had done so many times in our thirty-five years of marriage. “No one will be happier than my wife when this book is done. She’s borne the brunt of it,” I said. Susan smiled. “I always do. Just read the book!” This project, like almost everything of value I have done in my life, would not have been possible without Susan’s love and support. She held our family together through so many storms, yet still found time to change the world. The foundation she launched at our kitchen table, CURE, is now the largest private funder of epilepsy research. It is impossible to fully express my love, gratitude, and admiration for Susan, or the incredible luck I’ve had to share my life with such a lovely, remarkable woman.
Believer: My Forty Years in Politics Page 61