Two David’s, One Nucleus
One of the key elements of any great endeavor is that the people at the top are passionate, smart, organized and have the ability to delegate and inspire a team. While the candidate himself was in charge of winning over the hearts and minds of the American people, it was dual combination of David’s that were the heads of the campaign machine: David Plouffe and David Axelrod. Together, they made the organizational nucleus of Obama’s campaign structure. Although he was a very different person and politician than George Bush, he “followed the Bush model in one area. Obama was running to be a national antidote to George Bush, but he had read enough and studied enough about recent presidential elections to know that the Bush people did one thing very well: they had a tight circle involved in key decisions and none of those people talked out of school. Obama wanted the same along with a clear chain of command.” (14) The David’s were at the top of that chain and they shouldered most of the responsibility when it came to the day-to-day operations of the campaign and media messaging.
Axelrod and Obama first met in 1992. Axelrod recalls how they were introduced to him in an NPR interview: “Betty Lou Saltzman, who's kind of a doyen of liberal politics in Chicago, called me in 1992, and she said, I just met the most extraordinary young man, and I think you ought to meet him. And I said, well, I'm happy to meet anybody you want me to meet, Betty Lou, but why do you think I should meet this particular person? And she said, honestly, I think he could be the first African-American president of the United States. This was in 1992. I always joke that when I go to the track now, I take Betty Lou with me because she obviously has a gift for spotting the winners early.” (15) Even though he believed in Obama, Axelrod explained in a 2008 Washington Post article that he eventually decided on joining Obama because as he put it, “I thought that if I could help Obama get into Washington then I would have accomplished something great in my life.” (16) Axelrod, by title, was the campaign’s “Chief Strategist.” “Axelrod was considered the mind behind Obama’s phenomenon.” (17) Before coming to work on the Obama campaign, he had worked on several other political campaigns, helping “Deval Patrick become governor of Massachusetts, Hillary Clinton become a senator from New York, and Anthony Williams become mayor of Washington.” (18) David had also worked on Senator Edwards campaign and helped advise Chris Dodd as well. (19) It was his responsibility to compose and keep a consistent but fresh message that couldn’t be duplicated or claimed by other candidates. Obama had to be more than just a politician, he had to connect with the American people in ways that were different than any other candidate before him.
In terms of consistency, Axelrod explained that the message had to be consistent with the first one presented when he introduced himself in 2008. He explains that Obama presented the issues with government as the "the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics -- the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.” (20)
Some would say it was Axelrod who was Obama’s first real political ally and it was his pedigree, experience and sincere belief in the impossible that attracted others to Obama’s campaign team. In David Plouffe’s memoir, “The Audacity to Win,” Plouffe recalls how Axelrod was able to win him and a few others over to Obama’s team. When a person asked, “let me get this straight. We should work for a candidate with no chance, no money, and the funny name?” (21) And yet still, Axelrod was undeterred, his confidence never wavering in the candidate he endorsed. Simply put, “Obama was a different guy.” (22)
Recruiting David Plouffe to the team was probably the most genius thing that Axelrod ever did. Plouffe was young for such a position and still didn’t have the same experience as other candidates for the job. Axelrod told Plouffe that he was that right man for the job, that “I am going to tell him you are the only and best choice. We’ll be in this boat together, even if it goes down. I had faith even when Plouffe didn’t have it in himself, and Obama agreed with Axelrod.” (23)
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