Game Change (9 page)

It was an extraordinary statement, the kind that few standard-issue pols would think to make when planning a long-shot adventure with their advisers. What gave him such an assured posture was his experience of the past two years—an experience that was without precedent in modern American politics. In his brief time on the national scene, Obama had compiled a staggering succession of big-stage triumphs that took the breath away. The convention speech. The Africa trip. The book tour. Appearances on
Oprah
and on the covers of
Time
and
Newsweek.
The reception he’d received from the media had been uniformly glowing, and that fed Obama’s sense that he could somehow transcend the horror show. Maybe that was insanely naive. Maybe it was incandescently mature. But at that moment, he had no reason to believe that it was anything but perfectly sound.

OBAMA FLEW TO ORANGE COUNTY, California, on December 1 to take part in an event at the Saddleback megachurch run by Rick Warren, the bestselling author of
The Purpose Driven Life.
It was World AIDS Day, and Warren had invited Obama to appear alongside Republican senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. Brownback, speaking first, remarked to Obama, “Welcome to my house,” prompting peals from the crowd. When Obama’s turn came, he remarked, “There is one thing I’ve gotta say, Sam, though: This is my house, too. This is God’s house.” He quoted Corinthians and advocated the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV. At the end, the huge crowd of conservative Evangelicals awarded him a standing ovation.

Saddleback was the start of a feverish two-week sprint before Obama would fly off on his family’s annual holiday in Hawaii, where he planned to make his final decision about running. On December 4, he traveled to New York for a meeting in the offices of billionaire financier George Soros with a dozen of New York’s heaviest Democratic fund-raisers. From there he proceeded to Washington and sought the counsel of a pair of the capital’s proverbial wise men, one a Republican and one a Democrat, one a stranger and one a friend.

The Republican was General Colin Powell, who met with Obama at his office in Alexandria, Virginia. Obama wanted to know about Powell’s flirtation with running for the presidency in 1995. Why had he decided against it?

“It was pretty easy,” Powell said. “I’m not a politician.”

For the next hour, Obama quizzed Powell about foreign policy—and also about race. Did the general think the country was ready for an African American president? I think it might have been ready when I was thinking about running, Powell told Obama. It’s definitely more ready now.

Powell had his own set of questions for Obama, but the main one was: Why now? You don’t have much of an experience base, Powell pointed out. You’re new to the Senate, you have an interesting but limited resume from before that. So, again, why now?

I think I might have what the country needs today, not four or eight years down the line, Obama responded. I think it might be my time.

The second wise man was Daschle. Like Bill Daley, Daschle knew the Clintons well and wasn’t afraid of them. Didn’t much like them, either. He considered Hillary an icy prima donna; her husband (who after exiting the White House often called Daschle, imploring him for help in burnishing his legacy), a narcissist on an epic scale; the dynamic between the couple, bizarre; their treatment of their friends, unforgivably manipulative and disloyal. For Daschle, Clinton fatigue wasn’t simply a political analysis. It was personal. He was bone-weary of the duo and thought that Obama could and should take them on.

Daschle met Obama at one of his favorite restaurants, an Italian place downtown near his Washington office. The owner set up a table for them in the kitchen so their privacy would be preserved. For three hours they sat drinking red wine and talking, Obama asking question after question: about money, about the microscope he’d be under if he ran, about how great a liability his threadbare CV might be. Daschle reflected on his own contemplation of a White House bid in 2004; he’d decided against it, certain he’d have another chance to run; but now, having lost his Senate seat, that option seemed foreclosed.

Don’t assume that you’ll get a second window, Daschle told Obama. And don’t minimize the salience of being “un-Washington”—or ignore the fact that if you wait, the next time around you won’t be un-Washington anymore.

At the end of the meal, the two men embraced, and then Daschle headed home. His wife, Linda, asked if Tom was planning to endorse Obama if he ran. Daschle said, “What the hell—yeah, I am.”

That weekend, Obama went on to New Hampshire, his feet making contact with Granite State soil for the first time in his life—an incredible fact for a man on the verge of entering a presidential race. The crowds that met him in Portsmouth and Manchester were, as usual, large and loud and lusty, listening eagerly as he invoked Martin Luther King, Jr., and his longtime pastor in Chicago, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. But more remarkable was the 150-strong flock of reporters, including many national big feet and thumb-suckers, credentialed for the festivities.

Obama returned to Chicago from New Hampshire, but he wasn’t quite finished with his hyperdrive round of buzz-building. He’d begun his sprint at Saddleback with an act of outreach to one religious constituency and now he ended with a play for another: the nation’s pro-football fanatics, who were greeted with the sight of Obama at the start of the December 11 ABC broadcast of
Monday Night Football.
Besuited, looking solemn, seated behind a desk, an American flag to his left, Obama began, “Good evening. I’m Senator Barack Obama. I’m here tonight to answer some questions about a very important contest that’s been weighing on the minds of the American people. This is a contest about the future. A contest between two very different philosophies. A contest that will ultimately be decided in America’s heartland . . . Tonight, I’d like to put all the doubts to rest. I’d like to announce to my hometown of Chicago and all of America that I am ready.” With that, Obama placed a Chicago Bears hat on his head and continued, “For the Bears to go all the way, baby!” Then, with a mile-wide grin across his face punctuating a performance of unchecked charisma, he chanted the descending opening bars—“Dah, dah, dah, DAH!”—of the
Monday Night Football
theme.

TO MANY, ESPECIALLY THOSE in the Clinton camp, Obama’s early-December itinerary was proof positive that he was running. But for all the outward signs to the contrary, Obama was still undecided. In Washington, he’d met with a group of his old friends from Harvard. They chewed over the prospect for a while, weighing the various points and possibilities. Eventually, someone observed, We’ve been in this room for two hours talking about why you should run, and no one has mentioned that you’re black.

While it was true that Obama had rarely considered, or let himself consider, his skin pigmentation as a possible impediment to his running (or winning), race was never really absent from his thinking. Now, spontaneously, and quite unexpectedly, he found himself speaking passionately about what it would mean to women in black churches who had worked so long and so hard to see their kids grow up safe and have big dreams in inner-city communities.

He returned to that motif on December 13, when he and his advisers gathered again in Axelrod’s conference room for a final meeting before the Obamas took off for Hawaii. “What exactly do you think you can accomplish by getting the presidency?” Michelle asked him pointedly.

“Well,” Obama said, “there are a lot of things I think I can accomplish, but two things I know. The first is, when I raise my hand and take that oath of office, there are millions of kids around this country who don’t believe that it would ever be possible for them to be president of the United States. And for them, the world would change on that day. And the second thing is, I think the world would look at us differently the day I got elected, because it would be a reaffirmation of what America is, about the constant perfecting of who we are. I think I can help repair the damage that’s been done.”

Like Obama, his nascent campaign brain trust rarely brought up the subject of race during the deliberations over whether he should run. In part, that was because of a combination of discomfort, confidence, and hope: discomfort in that almost all of them were white and felt presumptuous addressing the issue; confidence in Axelrod, who had a well-earned reputation for steering black candidates across the country to victory with significant white support; and hope that the post-racial appeal that Obama already exhibited would prove to be durable, even transcendent.

Yet the near-silence on the topic also owed something to Obama’s combination of optimism and fatalism about it: either the country was ready now for an African American president, he said, or it wouldn’t be in his lifetime.

Obama’s advisers had entered the room still dubious that he would run. But now it was clear that the probabilities had shifted. For one thing, Michelle’s opposition had eased; that much was obvious. At one point, when Barack went outside to have a smoke, someone brought up again the issue of his personal safety. “Well, I’ve already gone out and increased our life insurance on him,” Michelle said drolly, with a sly smile. “You just can’t be too careful!”

In Hawaii, Barack and Michelle took long walks on Waikiki Beach, hammering out the final items on her questionnaire. (He gave in on everything.) One night close to New Year’s Eve, he called Jarrett and told her that his decision, in effect, was made. “This is pretty much done,” he said.

But it wasn’t. On January 2, just back from Hawaii, Obama showed up unannounced in Axelrod’s office, wearing blue jeans and a White Sox cap, having come right from the gym—and expressing renewed ambivalence about undertaking the race. “Being Barack Obama isn’t a bad gig,” Obama said. I don’t need this to validate myself; I get plenty of validation as it is; and I can do some great things from where I am. I like being with my friends, I like being able to watch a ball game, and you guys have made it very clear what the cost of this is going to be.

“I know there are a lot of people who want you to do this,” Axelrod replied, “but you don’t have to do this.” Having been acquainted with his share of presidential candidates, Axelrod knew that the ones who fared well were those who were psychically compelled to be president immediately.

“I think you have ambition, but not that kind of pathological drive,” Axelrod went on. “I’ve worked with Hillary; I know she’ll drive herself as hard as is physically possible, because she has to be president, she wants to be, she needs it. I don’t sense that in you.”

Obama didn’t really sense it, either. But he rejected the notion that running for president was a task suited only to the borderline mentally ill. What he knew about himself was that, at his core, he was competitive enough to find the requisite motivation. He trusted the logic that had led him to this point, his perception of where the country was and the work that needed doing. He had come too far to turn back now. The talk with Axelrod constituted his final gut check. And although his insides remained queasy, his head was free of doubt—and in the Obama interior chain of command, the head always outranked the gut.

Obama had one other thing to check. A few days later, he and Michelle secretly flew down to Nashville to have lunch with Al and Tipper Gore. Obama admired Gore immensely. He hoped that down the line he could secure the former vice president’s endorsement. But he also knew that the one thing that could kill his candidacy in the crib was an unexpected entry into the race by Gore—which more than a few Democratic insiders in January 2007 still considered a live possibility.

So while the two couples engaged in a general discussion about how to shield a candidate’s children from the sharp glare of a presidential race, Obama asked Gore a more pointed question: Is there any chance you’ll run?

Not a chance, Gore made clear. And Tipper was equally emphatic: her family, and her husband, would not be making this race.

Obama and Michelle finished up their lunch and flew back to Chicago. The next Monday, Obama said to his team, “All right. Let’s do it. What’s next?”

HE FORMALLY LAUNCHED HIS campaign six weeks later, on February 10, 2007, on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois. Seventeen thousand people packed into the town square on one of those Midwestern winter days so frigid—the high was seven degrees—that every color seems brighter and the horizon line so sharp it could cut glass. Michelle suggested moving the event indoors so that families wouldn’t risk frostbite for their kids. But the alternative venue, the Prairie Capital Convention Center, was a sterile, hulking vault, and Axelrod was intent on creating a magical moment and capturing the pretty pictures for use in future ads. Twenty thousand hand warmers were secured and a heater installed in the lectern to keep Obama toasty enough to function.

The speech he delivered laid out all of the themes that would carry him through 2007 and beyond. “I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness in this, a certain audacity to this announcement,” Obama proclaimed. “I know that I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.” And: “There are those who don’t believe in talking about hope: they say, well, we want specifics, we want details, we want white papers, we want plans. We’ve had a lot of plans, Democrats. What we’ve had is a shortage of hope.” And: “That is why this campaign can’t only be about me. It must be about us. It must be about what we can do together.” And: “It’s time to turn the page.”

Obama’s performance was nearly flawless, but the launch didn’t go quite as planned. Obama’s minister, Reverend Wright, had been scheduled to deliver an invocation at the announcement. But the day before, Obama’s team got hold of a story that had just been published in
Rolling Stone
, which included a wildly inflammatory passage concerning the reverend’s oratorical style and substance.

“Wright takes the pulpit here one Sunday and solemnly, sonorously declares that he will recite ten essential facts about the United States,” the
Rolling Stone
piece said.” ‘Fact number one: We’ve got more black men in prison than there are in college,’ he intones. ‘Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!’ There is thumping applause; Wright has a cadence and power that make Obama sound like John Kerry. Now the reverend begins to preach. ‘We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!’ The crowd whoops and amens as Wright builds to his climax: ‘And. And. And! GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS SHIT!’”