The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory

by David Plouffe

  As well as the campaign was going, I was ready for it to be over. Everyone was. We were dog-tired and sick of the fight with Hillary Clinton. We had been in the trenches for over a year now, with virtually no respite. It was all but impossible to see light at the end of the tunnel.

  One Sunday night during this period as I paced around our tiny Chicago apartment on the phone, my wife intercepted me at the conclusion of a conference call and suggested we sit together for a few minutes of companionship and a pep talk. Smiling, she presented me with a small bag filled with tissue-wrapped gifts. “No matter how this all ends,” she said, “you have a wonderful life waiting for you. Here are some reminders of what you have to look forward to.”

  First out was a car air freshener in the shape of a palm tree. It smelled like the beach. Next came a bookmark; it had been a long time since I’d spent an evening with a good book. I unwrapped a wiffle ball, a promise of afternoons at the park with my son. Finally, a white plastic stick, which confused me at first. Slowly I realized I was holding a pregnancy test—and in the little window was a big pink plus sign.

  “Wow. Seriously?” I asked. Her smile had grown and a few tears ran down her cheek. “When are we due?”

  “We won’t know for sure till I see the OB,” she said, “but I think we’re in the clear.” She had already done the math, matching our due date to the election calendar.

  She was almost right. Our baby was due November 2. Two days before the general election. I was over the moon. Win or lose, a baby would assure a quick return to reality and our family life.

  Our first head-to-head debate with Clinton—a much-anticipated encounter—had occurred back at the end of January in California, at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, where the Oscars are held. Obama had done quite well; as expected, his style was better suited to fewer combatants. Each candidate spoke for about two minutes at a time, and the rhythm was steady: punch, counterpunch. He gained a lot of confidence after that first debate; “Now I know I can hang with her for ninety minutes,” he told me.

  In the run-up to the March 4 primaries, Clinton and Obama had two more head-to-head debates, one in each major state. By this point it felt like we’d been going through the same exchanges since the dawn of time. Barack could give Hillary’s answers and vice versa. On a conference call shortly before the Texas debate, he gave voice to what we all were feeling. “More than winning, the thing I’m most looking forward to is having no more Democratic primary debates,” he said, prompting a rousing chorus of assent. “We’ve now been debating for a year. And I bet the voters feel the same way we do—they’re sick and tired of us.” Given this malaise, we simply wanted to survive the encounters with no self-inflicted wounds and get on with the ground campaign.

  There were two notable moments in these debates, one in each. In the first debate in Texas, Clinton offered a comment that was immediately read by the press as valedictory and wistful, suggesting that perhaps the end was near.

  “No matter what happens in this contest,” she told the crowd and the audience watching at home, “I am honored to be here with Barack Obama. I am absolutely honored.”

  We thought it was quite meaningful ourselves; it was unlike Clinton to display any sort of political weakness, and this seemed to be a window into her personal thinking. Obama also reported that their stage interactions were friendlier than usual, and he thought perhaps she was coming to grips with the reality of the race. But the Clinton camp pushed back hard; they insisted she was simply being polite and that this was yet another example of the press trying to shove her out of the race.

  Any illusion that Clinton was preparing a graceful exit went out the window at the Ohio debate, which was moderated by Brian Williams with Tim Russert, who would die a few months later. Throughout the proceedings, Clinton seemed determined to show she was not going anywhere. She made frequent attacks but saved her most meaningful jab for something that played off a Saturday Night Live skit.

  The previous weekend’s show had included a sketch lampooning the media as gaga over Obama, picking up on a message the Clinton camp had been pushing. The skit featured a mock debate at which the faux moderator leads with a pampering question to candidate Obama: “Senator Obama, are you comfortable? Is there anything we can get for you?”

  At the outset of the Ohio debate, Clinton was asked the first few questions. Clearly using some rehearsed lines, she tried to make the media’s supposed treatment of Obama the story, asking rhetorically why she always seemed to get the first question in debates (which she hadn’t). Then she referred to the SNL skit, saying, “Maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow.”

  The press ate it up. For the next twenty-four hours Hillary’s answer and the skit played nonstop in the coverage.

  I found preposterous the notion that Obama was being carried across the finish line by the press. We were winning the race, and generally candidates who are winning receive more positive coverage. In the fall of 2007 when we were given up for dead, was the Clinton campaign complaining about our coverage? Or after we lost New Hampshire? Of course not.

  In fact, if anything, the press seemed to be giving her a much more important pass. The most damaging media scrutiny when it comes to campaigns is of the investigative variety. And from Day One, reporters had been putting us through those paces, examining every episode and era of Obama’s life.

  Odd though it seems, Clinton had gone through little such scrutiny. We asked reporters and their bosses why they didn’t pursue investigative pieces on her. The answers were variations on a theme. “All that’s old news,” we were told. “It was covered in the ‘90s.” This sounded almost irresponsible. In our view, all the issues from the 1980s and ’90s—the travel office, the Rose law firm, and so forth—merited fresh attention, even if only as a bearing to gauge her electability; certainly the GOP would use these episodes against her. And what about the seven years since the Clintons had left the White House?

  Personally, I thought many of the Clintons’ travails were irrelevant when the Republicans and press went after them in the ‘90s. But fair is fair. What burned me the most was the Clinton campaign’s insistence that Obama was a risky nominee because he had not been adequately vetted. Surely the Republicans would push every possible attack on Clinton in a general election, at which point each node of controversy would once again be newsworthy because it was “new,” having not been raised in the primary.

  There wasn’t much we could do about this—Obama forbade our pushing these kinds of stories after Punjabgate—but I found it frustrating nonetheless.

  Our polling in Texas and Ohio improved dramatically over the first ten days of the two-week period. We were essentially tied in Texas and narrowly behind in Ohio. Maybe the eternal primary campaign would finally be over.

  Just as we prepared to exhale, the Clinton effort to work the referees in the media began to have an effect. Relentlessly, day after day, they pushed the idea that the press was taking it easy on us. At the start they whispered it in private conversations with reporters but eventually they started openly asserting it in conference calls with the media. Over and over they charged that we were not receiving the kind of scrutiny and challenging coverage befitting a frontrunner.

  Two gifts materialized for the Clinton campaign, one a self-inflicted wound, the other a mistake from the past coming back to haunt us. These hits caused us to limp, if not bleed, into the crucial voting on March 4.

  Austan Goolsbee, an economist who had helped Obama in his 2004 Senate race, was on leave from the University of Chicago and part of the campaign’s economic policy team. He was not on payroll and was not quite a staff member, but he was deeply involved in some of our policy development, and Obama trusted him. He was an affable guy but like most college professors, naive to the ways of hardball politics.

  Shortly before primary day, one of our press staff got a call from a reporter who said he understood Goolsbee had held “secret discussions” with the Ca
nadian government to assure them that our rhetoric on trade was just that—political talk, not principled beliefs.

  Obama had been campaigning vigorously in Ohio against unfair trade deals, promising that as president he would renegotiate NAFTA to make it fairer to workers and protect the environment. Manufacturing jobs fleeing to countries like Mexico and China had decimated Ohio, and Obama believed that NAFTA was a flawed trade deal. But he also believed strongly in trade and had supported trade deals in the Senate that included labor and environmental protections.

  The campaign’s message on trade at this point was admittedly simplistic; a witness to the Ohio campaign might have been left with the impression that our position was no different than that of Dennis Kucinich, an ardent anti-trader. Our message lacked nuance; our TV ads and mail pieces were stridently critical of NAFTA and offered little evidence of Obama’s more complex take on trade.

  Meanwhile, Hillary was shortcutting her own trade record, trying to suggest that although NAFTA passed in her husband’s first term, she had been neutral in its passage and now was an avowed opponent of such trade deals. This claim was soon shown to be preposterous. Several quotes emerged capturing her in full-throated support of NAFTA, and we quickly disseminated the relevant passages to mailboxes and answering machines. As the mini-debate over NAFTA positions swirled, participants from a 1993 White House meeting on the trade agreement came forward and recalled her as offering strong support for the deal.

  She was caught red-handed and we should have had an opening. Instead we were caught in our own bumbling response to Goolsbee’s Canadian adventure. When first questioned about the reporter’s claim, Goolsbee explained he had been invited to the Canadian consulate in Chicago not in his capacity as an Obama adviser but as a University of Chicago professor. He was given a tour of the embassy and engaged in some chitchat but never got into any official or even memorable discussions about Obama’s policies.

  Armed with this information, we forcefully pushed back the notion of back-door discussions. We thought there might be some dirty tricks at play on the part of the conservative government north of the border but brushed it off as a tempest in a teapot.

  Shortly after this I held a press call, trying to set expectations for March 4, and found myself asked repeatedly about the Canada situation. I fully denied any merit to the story, asserting confidently that Goolsbee had not been visiting on behalf of the campaign or even with the campaign’s knowledge. It was truly a social visit, I insisted; certainly we did not offer a wink and a nod to the Canadian government that our trade position was hollow politics.

  Then a memo surfaced, leaked by someone in the Canadian government, and suddenly the NAFTA saga went from burning embers to a full-scale firestorm. The memo was from a Canadian embassy employee in Chicago, reporting to Ottawa on our adviser’s visit and stating flatly that Goolsbee had reassured the Canadian government that their trade rhetoric was just politics and would be softened once we were out of Ohio and had secured the nomination.

  It looked like we had lied about the interaction. The press was in full lather and Clinton struck hard on the campaign trail in Ohio, asserting that workers couldn’t trust Obama because he was not being straight about trade; he was saying one thing to them and another to the Canadians.

  The story was a direct hit on Obama’s character and took an immediate toll. It also dominated the press coverage for a few days, sapping all of our momentum and rolling back the gains we’d made in Ohio. I still maintain that we got sucker punched here; maybe the worst thing our adviser said—and we put him under intense interrogation to get the facts—was that our position was more nuanced than its presentation on the campaign trail. It didn’t matter. Our protests were no match for a leaked memo.

  Still reeling from the trade blow-up, we were further damaged by a bomb from the Clinton campaign. On the Friday before the primary, they released a new Texas ad titled “3 a.m.” Using ominous images of defenseless children sleeping in the dead of night, the ad implied that Obama could not be trusted to keep the country, or its families, safe in a crisis.

  The press nearly soiled themselves from excitement over the ad’s drama and continued to obsess about it throughout the remaining months of primaries. At times it seemed like they wanted more blood on the floor in our race and embraced explosive tactics to produce it.

  Within hours we had a response ad out, making the point that Hillary’s judgment had already been tested on Iraq and proved unsound. On a call with national reporters, I pushed back on the ad.

  “Senator Clinton has already had her red phone moment,” I told them. “It was a decision whether to allow George Bush to invade Iraq, and she answered affirmatively. She didn’t read the national intelligence estimate; she didn’t even do her homework.”

  Our response was largely lost in the shuffle. Reason is no match for blood-lust when it comes to making good TV. The press played her ad over and over, always noting that it came on the heels of our NAFTA blunder. This coverage eventually bled beyond cable punditry to straight reporting and analysis on all three national networks, with heavy local coverage in Ohio and Texas.

  And like that, we were on our heels heading into Tuesday’s crucial primaries. Our field numbers did not suggest a freefall, but we were certainly trending down. Then on Monday, twenty-four hours before the contests that we’d once hoped could end the primary, things got even worse.

  In the last year, Tony Rezko, a real estate investor and deal maker of all kinds, had grown into a persistent problem for Obama. The Obamas had bought a new house in 2005 and the sellers were selling a vacant, developable lot as well as the house and would not sell the house without simultaneously selling the lot. The Obamas were not interested in the lot but mentioned it to Rezko, who was interested.

  The Chicago Tribune broke this story, suggesting that Rezko was doing Obama a favor and pointing out that the lot sold for full price but the house below the asking price. The sellers—who had no connection to Obama—strongly disputed this and said the Obamas’ bid was the highest one they had received. Nonetheless, the suggestion of something shady persisted and the reporting was woefully inaccurate. Reporters stated that “Rezko subsidized the Obama purchase,” “Rezko enabled Obama to get a sweetheart deal.” Flat out false. Obama copped to poor judgment in the initial Tribune story, saying it was a “boneheaded move.”

  Rezko was one of Obama’s key fund-raisers throughout his career. As hard as the press and our opponents looked, we looked harder to find any favors Obama might have done for Rezko. And we found nothing. Zip, zilch, nada. Rezko raised money for Obama but got nothing in return.

  But things grew more complicated in October 2006, when Rezko was indicted and charged with multiple counts of fraud and bribery related to Illinois state government. None of the business involved Obama. Yet in what had to be some of the worst timing ever for our campaign, his trial was set to begin on March 3—the day before the primaries.

  The start of Rezko’s trial offered a perfect chance for the news media—and the Clinton campaign—to revisit him and fully explore his connection to Obama. Rezko was the lead story that night on all three networks, and while they were all careful to say that this was a political problem for Obama and not a legal one, the presumed guilt-by-association did damage enough.

  We decided to have Obama hold a press conference that day in hopes that taking on some of this stuff directly might defuse it. Interestingly, Obama’s instinct was not to talk to the media. This was unusual for him; he generally thought we did not schedule enough full-blown press conferences. But we pushed him because we thought it was important, and he acquiesced. The press coverage was going to be horrible no matter what, we reasoned, so perhaps by standing there and taking questions, he would at least get credit for not ducking this rough period.

  Wrong. The press conference was a disaster. The reporters were hostile, their questions accusatory, and his answers weak. Obama was visibly perturbed to be there. Press reports ev
en kicked him on the way he went out the door, noting that Obama “fled” the press conference after finding himself besieged by a fusillade of tough questions.

  He called me afterward. “Plouffe, you guys threw me to the wolves!” he said. He was laughing, but I could tell he was rattled.

  “We screwed up,” I acknowledged. “Apparently, nothing is going to go right in the close. It’s one shit sandwich after another.”

  We hobbled into voting day about as lamely as possible. Our momentum had not just stalled; it was pretty clear from our data and public polling that it had shifted in Hillary’s favor. That meant Ohio was gone, though we still thought we could keep the delegates close there. In Texas the question was not whether we would win the delegates—we felt very confident about that—but whether our turnout operation could make up for the loss of support with swing voters enough to eke out a popular-vote win.

  The day before the vote, I drafted a memo that attempted to put into proper perspective what we thought would happen the next day. We sent it to the press and to our key supporters, and posted it on our website. The memo reviewed the probable results through the prism of the overall race, not the overheated conclusions we felt sure would be drawn that night. I wrote it assuming we would lose both big states—and that this infernal primary would go on for a long time.

  Fearful that too much significance would be placed on Hillary’s likely wins, we strove to remind the political community where the race stood broadly. The math was still the math. It was called “The Real Meaning of March 4th,” addressed to “Interested Parties.” After reviewing various recent Clinton pronouncements about momentum, I summed up these points.

  By their own clear definition of where they expected and believed they needed to be after Ohio and Texas, the Clinton campaign will fall terribly short on March 4th. The Obama-pledged delegate lead stands at 162. The question for the Clinton campaign if they do not significantly erode that lead on Tuesday is what plausible path they have to even up the pledged delegates in the remaining contests. There are 611 pledged delegates left after March 4th’s contests. They would need to win at least 62 percent of all remaining pledged delegates to get back to even. And while they have often talked about Pennsylvania—where public polls show their lead deteriorating rapidly—the Wyoming caucuses on March 8th and the Mississippi primary on March 11th could potentially result in more pledged delegates netted to the winner than on March 4th. So it is clear that narrow popular vote wins in Texas and Ohio will do very little to improve their nearly impossible path to the nomination—they will be facing almost impossible odds to reverse the delegate math. While the Clinton campaign gamely continues to try to move the goal posts, at some point there has to be a reckoning. It is a very simple question: what is their path to secure the nomination? No amount of spin can change the math. We look forward to their tortured answers on Wednesday morning.