Believer: My Forty Years in Politics (42 page)

When we spoke later, Barack was genuinely mystified by McCain’s gaffe. “Why would he say that?” he asked. I suspected that McCain had been hoping to offer reassurance to an anxious country, but it had proven to be a serious mistake. For days after, McCain tried to clean up his mess, but only succeeded in making it worse. He initially opposed then later endorsed an emergency plan announced by the Federal Reserve to shore up American International Group, a firm that insured many financial institutions against wholesale losses and that now found itself in danger of collapse. Also, he said that if he were president he would “fire” the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, something the president lacks the authority to do, as the media quickly pointed out.

As McCain flailed, Barack kept up his attacks on the Bush-McCain economic policies, while taking care not to shoot down potential emergency steps that might be necessary to avert an even larger disaster. He spoke several times with an informal group of top economic advisers, including former treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers and former Fed chairman Paul Volcker. While there were plenty of political points to be scored in resisting any rescue plan for the bankers, Barack feared the crisis might take down the entire economy. So, true to his word to Paulson, he refrained from any criticism—beyond opposing any blank check for the banks.

All this took place as we prepared for the first of three presidential debates, scheduled for the following week. The debates, like the convention and the VP choice, were among the standard tests any nominee had to pass—or at least not fail. This first head-to-head contest, however, would take on added meaning in the midst of a national crisis.

I knew the informal debate prep process that I had led in the primaries wouldn’t cut it in the fall. This time it would require singular focus and a well-organized effort to prepare the candidate adequately. To lead that process, I had recruited two seasoned pros, Ron Klain and Tom Donilon, who between them had decades of experience preparing Democratic candidates for national debates.

Three days before the first debate, we headed to a Tampa area resort for “boot camp.” As we drilled inside a darkened, cloistered, makeshift auditorium, we knew all hell was breaking loose in Washington. Desperate to keep the subprime mortgage contagion from toppling the financial sector, Paulson and Bush had proposed providing up to seven hundred billion dollars to buy the bad mortgage debt that was weighing down the banks’ balance sheets. The stakes for the economy were huge, but six weeks before a national election, they were asking members of Congress to perform an unnatural act: to risk their careers to bail out a bunch of Wall Street bankers from their own misbegotten schemes. Even with cooperation from Democrats now in charge of Congress, it wasn’t clear that any rescue plan could get the necessary votes.

Our fear was that McCain might opt for a Hail Mary by breaking with Bush to oppose the plan. It would be risky, not to mention totally irresponsible, but a grand populist gesture might help him restore his independent and iconoclastic image of bygone days. On the flight to Tampa, Obama told us that he had received a call from Oklahoma’s Republican senator Tom Coburn, the friend with whom he had collaborated on government reform legislation. Coburn proposed that Obama call McCain to suggest a joint statement of principles regarding the crisis. If they held hands on the solution, he reasoned, neither would suffer the fallout—or at least they would share the brunt of it. After mulling it over for a day, Obama placed the call.

We had set up our debate camp in Tampa, a pivotal market in the largest battleground state, so that Obama could do a little campaigning between prep sessions. When McCain finally returned the call, he caught Barack in the car on the way back from one of these events. As soon as their conversation ended, Barack called to report that McCain had proposed a suspension of the campaign so that the candidates could return to Washington to work on a solution. “I told him that the last thing they probably needed right now was a couple of presidential candidates tromping around Washington in the middle of all this,” Obama said.

Obama thought they had agreed to reflect on the options, but within minutes, McCain announced that he was suspending his campaign to join the negotiations in Washington. It was another bizarre twist in McCain’s herky-jerky approach to the crisis. The good news for us, and for the country, was that he wasn’t torching the idea of a bailout, but his announcement also meant that the first debate, just two days off, was now in limbo.

As Barack told McCain and, later, the reporters who were waiting at the hotel for his reaction, he saw no point in a suspension and now viewed the debate as more important than ever. “It is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once . . . it’s more important than ever that we present ourselves to the American people and try to describe where we want to take the country and where we want to take the economy.”

Later, as we continued debate preparations, Josh Bolten, the president’s chief of staff, called Plouffe to give him a heads-up that McCain had asked for a White House meeting the next day with Bush, Obama, Paulson, and congressional leaders. Bush called Obama a few hours later and was almost apologetic. While the president wasn’t convinced of the utility of a White House confab, he felt he had no choice but to comply with McCain’s request. “And we don’t have any choice but to go,” Barack concluded.

I stayed with the debate team in Tampa while Barack returned to DC. When he reported in after the meeting, he painted a surreal picture of what happened inside that room. As he recounted it, the discussion started off fine, with Paulson detailing the state of the financial market. Then the meeting took a bizarre turn when, in a portent of things to come, John Boehner informed the group that his caucus wasn’t on board. Obama, who had been designated by the Democrats to speak for them, had offered qualified support for the Bush-Paulson plan. Now, taken aback by Boehner’s reticence, he said, “Well, I guess if you have another plan, we could start over.” At that point, Bush, aware that the clock was ticking on this fiscal time bomb, chimed in: “We’re not starting over.” Almost as shocking was that McCain, who had called for the meeting, came up almost empty. “He spoke for maybe sixty seconds,” Barack recalled. “It was
his
meeting, and he didn’t have anything to say!” When the parties adjourned, Paulson was on one knee, begging Nancy Pelosi not to walk away from his plan. “Guys, I’m just telling you,” Barack said without a trace of humor, “based on what I just saw, we’d better win this election or this country is screwed.”

Rather than return to Florida, Barack met us the next day in Oxford, Mississippi, where, with or without McCain, he would appear on national TV. While McCain was still unwilling to commit to the debate, we promised the organizers that Obama would show up regardless and would be happy to chat with Jim Lehrer, the moderator, for the prescribed time. Still, we were eager for a debate.

It wasn’t until hours before the debate that McCain signaled he would show up. His uncertain posturing only added to the impression that he was behaving erratically throughout the crisis. Barack was confident and, despite the truncated boot camp, felt prepared. For all McCain’s supposed mastery of foreign policy—which was to be the focus of the entire evening until the financial meltdown demanded attention, as well—Barack was eager to challenge him over the costly decision to invade Iraq, for which McCain had been an unrepentant cheerleader. The banking crisis provided an opening to attack the Bush economic policies to which McCain had attached himself.

Through all my years in politics, I have never enjoyed the minutes just before debates. As we waited alone in the hold for this one to begin, the air felt particularly heavy, almost suffocating. I was slightly nauseated, and presumably looked it. “How do
you
feel?” I asked the man who momentarily would have to stand and deliver in front of fifty-three million Americans? “Just give me the ball,” Barack said, taking an imaginary shot at a basket.

As expected, the first question was about the proposed bank bailout—and as planned, Barack laid out his principles for a rescue plan that would help distressed homeowners, protect taxpayers, and ensure that their tax dollars didn’t line the pockets of the bank CEOs. Then he made the broader argument for a new direction.

“We also have to recognize that this is a final verdict on eight years of failed economic policies promoted by George Bush, supported by Senator McCain, a theory that basically says that we can shred regulations and consumer protections and give more and more to the most, and somehow prosperity will trickle down. It hasn’t worked. And I think that the fundamentals of the economy have to be measured by whether or not the middle class is getting a fair shake.”

Everyone on our debate team had heard the “final verdict” line so many times in prep sessions that we could have recited it in unison with Obama. When he delivered the opening answer just as he had practiced it, we all breathed easier. Barack was doing everything we had hoped for and more. He was relaxed and confident, in command of his arguments and the facts.

It wasn’t that McCain performed poorly in the debate. He seemed honest and generally candid, and while his shots at Barack were occasionally off-key, he also showed flashes of the disarming, self-effacing humor that had once charmed Americans. When, in a bit of awkward direction, Lehrer insisted that Obama turn and face McCain with his criticism, the snow-haired senator interrupted, “Are you afraid I couldn’t hear him?” Yet at this late date, charm and humor could take him only so far. McCain was playing a bad hand, forced to defend policies in which the American people had long since lost faith.

There were thirty-nine days until Election Day, and the rest of the campaign would have its twists, turns, and moments of high anxiety. The financial storm provided a real-life test of the candidates’ presidential mettle, and, looking back, I believe the outcome might have been sealed during the eleven-day period that began with Lehman’s collapse and ended with this first debate in Oxford, Mississippi.

How fitting that this watershed moment would come on the Ole Miss campus, where nearly a half century earlier, deadly riots had erupted when the first black student arrived to enroll.

With his solid debate performance and his steady, measured handling of the Lehman crisis, Barack had passed an important audition with voters who, while predisposed his way, had fretted about his lack of experience. When we had met in my office the day before Lehman’s collapse, the race was essentially tied. Now Obama had moved into a six-point lead, a deficit McCain would be hard pressed to close.

O
BAMA
’
S
HUNCH
WAS
RIGHT
.

When McCain named Sarah Palin as his running mate, he had hoped her quirky
Northern Exposure
charms would cover his exposed Right flank—and for the first weeks they had. Yet the magic was short-lived.

Palin would remain a star to the conservative Republican base that saw her as a feisty truth teller, standing up for traditional values against an approaching liberal apocalypse. Her stumbling performance in interviews, though, had fueled a larger discussion about her qualifications for higher office—and McCain’s dubious judgment in choosing her.

She had exceeded expectations in her one televised debate with Biden, with a warm, winking performance that might have amused the harrumphing elites but played well with the average American.

As McCain’s prospects faded, however, the charming, disarming Palin of the debate stage would give way to a candidate with an unmistakable edge. Palin ramped up the ferocity of her attacks, to the delight of the angry throngs who streamed out to greet her.

We didn’t realize it then, but those edgy supporters were a portent of the future. Some chanted vile epithets about Obama, and they all seemed to share an enmity toward a government they viewed as overweening, wasteful, and corrupt. They resented taxes, reviled gun control, and eagerly parroted right-wing tripe questioning whether Obama was even a citizen eligible for the presidency much less a loyal American. If Obama’s ascent was a source of pride to many Americans, to these Americans he was an alien symbol of unwelcome and frightening change. Later, they would form the core of what would come to be known as the Tea Party movement, an uncompromising force that would make consensus in Washington that much harder to achieve.

Even McCain, who would tangle with these very forces in the years after the election, seemed at times caught off guard by the vehemence of the crowds at his own rallies.

“We’re scared,” a middle-aged white man told McCain at a rally in Minnesota. “We’re scared of an Obama presidency.”

McCain vigorously shook his head in response. “I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared as President of the United States,” McCain responded, to a hail of boos and catcalls from his own crowd.

When I read about the dustup, my first thought was that McCain’s team knew that the personal tone of their attacks was driving up his negatives. We were polling almost daily now, and that trend was obvious. When I saw the video, however, I viewed his reaction as more heartfelt than tactical.

“And we want a fight, and I will fight. But we will be respectful. I admire Senator Obama and his accomplishments. I will respect him,” he said, shouting over the objections of his supporters. “I want everyone to be respectful and let’s make sure we are because that’s the way politics should be conducted in America.”

In subsequent days, McCain would denounce Obama as a crypto-Socialist and accuse him of plotting to turn the IRS into a “giant welfare agency,” but this one moment, when he stood up to the ugliness instead of feeding it, would be McCain’s finest of the campaign.

 • • • 

Everything was now breaking our way. We were as well fortified as any campaign had been in a long time, with a huge edge in money and the grassroots foundation we had built over a nearly two-year, fifty-state primary battle. Plouffe had done an extraordinary job of managing this massive effort. We had marshaled a historic voter registration drive, adding more than a million Americans to the rolls, the majority of whom were young or minorities (or both), many situated in the handful of battleground states that would decide the election. The huge and active community we had built through e-mail and Facebook was the source of more than cash (although that benefit was substantial); it was a font of volunteers and an invaluable tool for viral, friend-to-friend persuasion and mobilization.

Everywhere Obama went, he was greeted by enormous, adoring crowds. The “celebrity” rap was no longer threatening, and, indeed, I felt as if I were traveling with a rock star. Having done so much TV on Obama’s behalf, Gibbs and I now were widely recognized as members of the band. Basking in Obama’s reflected glow, I found it surreal when folks chanted
our
names; demanded hugs, pictures, and autographs; and thanked us for the roles we played.

The outpouring of hope and idealism that greeted Obama wherever we traveled, and the millions who sent dollars or signed up to help, was deeply inspiring. We had taken on the cynics and we were winning. But there was a troubling aspect to it, as well.

At every rally, Obama would look out on a sea of people, many of whom held posters or wore T-shirts bearing his stenciled, stylized portrait, under which appeared the words “Hope” and “Change.” The heroic image, drawn by a street artist named Shepard Fairey, had become almost as ubiquitous as our sunrise logo. The posters, T-shirts, and other items bearing it had become bestsellers in Plouffe’s online souvenir store, which would earn the campaign millions of dollars. They also lent a cult-of-personality quality to these events. While it was inspiring, in an era of such cynicism, that so many were willing to invest such hope in Obama, it also made me uncomfortable.

Obama must have felt that way, too. As we approached one of the enormous rallies that greeted us in the final weeks, Barack looked out the window of the RV and surveyed the sea of humanity. “You know,” he said, “we may be the victims of our own success. The expectations are so high. It’s going to be really hard to meet them.”

For as our fortunes soared, the economy was sinking.

In the first weeks of October, the stock market plunged, in part because Washington had dithered, but principally because the massive scope of the financial crisis was becoming clear. Mortgage foreclosures were epidemic. The September employment report recorded 159,000 jobs lost, the largest drop in five years, and every indication was that October would be even worse. The need for change was more obvious than ever. So the exultation greeting Obama at every stop was leavened by the growing realization of what winning actually would mean. On one flight, Barack peeked over the top of the
Wall Street Journal
and said, mostly in jest, “Are we sure we
want
to win this thing?”

As Barack crossed the nation, Biden did the same. He was an ebullient, effective campaigner, with a disarming, and occasionally disconcerting, penchant for speaking his mind. It was one of those disconcerting moments that provided the campaign with what was one of its last little bumps on a long, rugged campaign trail. Speaking at a fund-raising event in Seattle in late October, Biden appeared intent on making McCain’s case about Obama’s lack of experience when he warned supporters to “gird their loins” for an international crisis early in the Obama administration. “Mark my words, mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy,” Biden predicted. “The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said: watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.” The McCain team, desperate for any small edge, jumped all over Biden’s ominous prediction.

Barack was livid. “Why the hell would Joe say that?” he fumed. “It plays right into their argument. It was sloppy.” Obama delivered that message personally to Biden, who later made it clear that he was not thrilled with the private chastening. “It’s not as if he never makes mistakes,” Biden told me, his feelings obviously ruffled. For Biden, a proud and accomplished pol who was used to charting his own course, the role of supporting actor required a major adjustment.

One sad note disrupted our exhilarating march. In late October, Barack got word that his grandmother, battling cancer, was slipping away. Toot, as the family called her, was the only parental figure Barack had left. He had planned to see her after the election. Now, less than two weeks from winning the presidency, Barack would break away from the campaign and return to Hawaii to say good-bye to the woman who provided the ballast in his tumultuous early years.

When Barack returned to the campaign after a thirty-six-hour absence, he was stoic about what had to be a profoundly sad journey. As moving and evocative as Obama could be in giving voice to the struggles of others, he was reserved and reticent about revealing his own emotions. “I’m glad I got a chance to see her,” he said quietly. I remarked that it was sad she might not see him elected president. “She knew, but she wasn’t terribly impressed by all that,” he responded. “She honestly cared more about what kind of husband and father I am.”

Gibbs, who had accompanied him on the trip, said that Barack went for a solitary walk in the neighborhood where he had grown up, but had shared little on the flight home. “I felt like he was not just saying good-bye to her but to the life he knew that was about to change forever,” Robert said.

As Obama began the final day of campaigning, his sister, Maya, called to tell him that Toot had died. The campaign would release a statement, but given his grandmother’s central role in his life, the media clearly was going to clamor for more. On the way to an event in Charlotte, I sat down next to Barack. “You know, there is going to be a lot of interest in this and—” Before I could finish, he cut me off. “I know,” he said. “I’m going to talk about her at this event. Don’t worry about it.”

I stood in the back of the crowd at an outdoor rally at UNC-Charlotte, where tens of thousands had gathered to hear him despite a light rain. “Some of you heard that my grandmother who helped raise me passed away early this morning,” he began. “I’m not going to talk about it too long because it’s hard a little to talk about . . . I want everybody to know, though, a little bit about her.”

Occasionally glancing at notes he had scribbled, he spoke of his grandparents and their quintessentially American story: the Depression and war, the GI Bill and the journey west in search of a better life. Then he riffed. “She was somebody who was a very humble person and a very plain-spoken person,” he said. “She was one of those quiet heroes that we have all across America who . . . they’re not famous. Their names aren’t in the newspapers, but each and every day they work hard. They look after their families. They sacrifice for their children and their grandchildren. They aren’t seeking the limelight. All they try to do is just do the right thing. And in this crowd there are a lot of quiet heroes like that—mothers and fathers, grandparents who have worked hard and sacrificed all their lives. And the satisfaction that they get is seeing that their children and maybe their grandchildren or their great-grandchildren live a better life than they did. That’s what America’s about. That’s what we’re fighting for.”

I couldn’t make out Barack’s face from a distance. Only later, when I watched the video, could I see that it was covered with tears. Somehow, a man so restrained in private had found communion in the crowd. Yet after the speech, we hiked up a hill, back to a waiting caravan of vehicles. Head down, hands in his pockets, Barack walked alone.

 • • • 

Election Day was a blur. I cast my vote in the lobby of the huge lakefront high-rise where I lived, which was a precinct unto itself. Turnout was heavy, the election judge told me. “We’re going to run out of ballots at this rate,” she said.

While I had been traveling around the country, Susan and a rotating corps of friends had spent the entire fall at our vacation house in southwest Michigan, working precincts for Obama. When McCain abandoned Michigan in early October, the campaign asked Susan and her team to shift their focus to South Bend, Indiana, a half hour from our home. Yet Susan continued to spend much of her time knocking on doors in Benton Harbor, one of the most down-on-its-luck communities in all of Michigan. Over the years, so many had given up on Benton Harbor, an overwhelmingly black community divided by a narrow river and a shameful class chasm from St. Joseph, the white, solidly middle-class town next door. But Susan refused to turn away. “I’ve never seen such need,” she told me. “I visit these run-down homes, with mattresses on the floor and babies wandering around, and I can imagine Barack walking up those broken steps and caring about these people. I can’t imagine John McCain walking up those steps.”

In the past, voter turnout in Benton Harbor had been abysmal. Every night, when we talked on the phone, Susan related her conversations with people there. “They’re excited about Barack, but they keep asking when the election is and where they have to go to vote. These people aren’t watching the news or reading newspapers. They’re just trying to get by each day. I worry they won’t show up.” A little after noon on Election Day, Susan called from Obama’s tiny storefront field office in the beleaguered town. She was choking up. “They’re doing it, Dave. They’re coming! Benton Harbor cast as many votes by noon as they did the whole election four years ago!”

In the campaign’s Election Day war room, a phalanx of staff manned phone lines and computers, taking in turnout figures and then actual returns, while the analytics kids crunched the numbers and matched them with our projections. The legal team commanded thousands of volunteer lawyers across the nation, directing them to problem spots to protect our vote. The machinery was humming.

Network exit polls, or rumors of them, streamed in throughout the day and early evening. Then we began to get real numbers. I was with Susan, who had raced home from Michigan, when I got word that the Associated Press was calling Ohio in our favor. Ohio was the ball game. Without it, McCain couldn’t win. I wrapped Susan up in my arms, closed my eyes, and hugged her so tightly I worried for a second that she couldn’t breathe. “Now you’ll never have to say you never won the Big One!” she whispered. I put one hand on Susan’s wet, smiling face and, in a straddle that was by now familiar to her, reached with the other for my cell phone to call Barack, who was still at home.