The O Brain
Good article in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine.
On the June evening in St. Paul when he captured the Democratic nomination, in between shout-outs to his daughters and his grandmother, Barack Obama paid tribute to a political operative most Americans have never heard of. “Thank you to our campaign manager, David Plouffe,” Obama said, “who never gets any credit but has built the best political organization in the country.”
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Obama’s top advisers outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton’s organization with no leaks, no nasty infighting and virtually no public credit for their efforts. By all rights, Plouffe and the other chief architects of Obama’s machine should be household names on par with James Carville and Karl Rove. And yet, with the exception of chief strategist David Axelrod, who has emerged as an affably low-key spokesman for the campaign, Obama’s brain trust works in near anonymity from the campaign’s headquarters on the 11th floor of a smoked-glass skyscraper two blocks south of the Chicago River.
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That obscurity is by design ... As senior adviser Valerie Jarrett puts it, “We aim for you to not know about the inner workings of the campaign because there’s not much to know other than: It works.”
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The drama-free approach proved to be in sharp contrast to the Clinton campaign, which was beset by leaks and infighting among factions of overbearing strategists (Mark Penn), know-it-all advisers (Harold Ickes), egotistical flacks (Howard Wolfson) and self-important campaign managers (Patti Solis Doyle) who battled noisily — and publicly — over message, budget, access to the candidate and prestige.
The article describes how the numbers man Plouffe crafted a successful turning point after the set back in New Hampshire and reveals how Obama’s leadership style allowed Plouffe’s engineering to work. Quite a contrast to what was going on in the opponent’s camp.
Posted by poputonian on 07/06/08 at 08:18 AM • Permalink
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