Hotline Book "Review": A Total Plouffe Piece
In his new book, "The Audacity to Win" (Viking), Obama '08 mgr. David Plouffe "recounts the amazing story of how the Obama for America campaign developed and executed its sweeping, unprecedented plan." According to the book flap, "this is the ultimate insider story of what many consider the most brilliant campaign ever run, by the man who helped design it and made it happen." Plouffe takes readers "every step of the way, listening in on never-before-revealed discussions" on everything from "forging a brilliant strategy to win the Iowa caucuses" to "mitigating the damage of campaign nightmares like Jeremiah Wright."
Hotline relied on the time-honored practice of using the "excerpt lottery," in which page numbers are chosen based upon various states' winning lottery numbers. In this case, lottery numbers are from 11/3-4. The results:
"[Barack Obama] and the road show often wound up crashing at Super 8s or single-floor motels in small towns throughout Iowa when the schedule took him far afield and it was inconvenient to head back to HQ. Interestingly, we later discovered that when Hillary Clinton was in Iowa she preferred to stay at the Hotel Fort Des Moines, a historic Democratic-owned hotel, and would often insist on returning there as opposed to staying out around the state. This gave us a small but important advantage -- we had less travel time than she did, meaning over the course of the Iowa campaign we were probably able to squeeze in at least a dozen more events because we did not have to fly or drive back to Des Moines" -- p. 087 (TX's "Pick 3 Night," 11/3).
(see more excerpts after the jump).
"I asked Obama on the ride back to our hotel if the 'likable enough' comment had come out the way he hoped. He was annoyed that it was even an issue. I explained what the other side was pushing. 'I was actually trying to be nice there,' he said exasperatedly. 'Maybe not too nice. But nice. Maybe I should have said that it was a ridiculous question. I serve with Hillary, she gets a bum rap for not being likable. But it wasn't my question, so I just said something quickly I thought conveyed that.' He shook his head. 'What a process. A long debate about Iraq, health care, and the economy and this is what they focus on" -- p. 146 (VA's "Pick 3," 11/4).
"For both Obama and the campaign, the South Carolina victory offered a chance to exhale. Had we lost the contest or won it narrowly in a racially polarized vote, it would have left us limping. Instead, the blowout put fresh gas in our tank and galvanized the whole campaign" -- p. 163 (CA's midday "Daily 3," 11/3).
"If he thought you made a reasoned argument, he accepted it, even if he had started from the other side of the fence" -- p. 168 (TN's "Cash 3 Midday," 11/4).
"[The NAFTA/Austan Goolsbee saga] 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" -- p. 195 (IL's "Evening Pick 3," 11/3).
"[After Wright's Nat'l Press Club appearance] Barack was crestfallen. I don't believe he was even thinking about the political damage this would do. Despite their disagreements and the distance that had grown between them over the years, Wright was still his pastor, and, more important, the pastor of a church community Barack loved and respected. In that moment, most of all I think he was hurt. As the speech wrapped up and I went quiet, Barack was as down as I have ever heard him" -- p. 225 (NM's "Pick 3," 11/3).
"All through May we had been discussing where to acknowledge surpassing the delegate threshold. Chicago? Iowa? Florida or Michigan? Steve Hildebrand, our deputy manager, suggested doing it in the city where the GOP would be having their convention; in the same building, in fact, where in three months the GOP would be delivering their own vision for America's future. Bingo, I thought" -- p. 234 (DE's "Play 3," 11/4).
"Between the bizarrely impulsive VP selection process that yielded the Palin pick and now McCain's jumping around -- suspending the campaign, unsuspending the campaign; not going to debate, now going to debate -- a word entered the official lexicon of our campaign dictionary, a word we wanted every voter to think of whenever they thought of our opponent: erratic" -- p. 341 (MD's midday "Pick 3," 11/4).
"'I know you're disappearing for a while to change diapers and play Mr. Dad,' he said to me, 'but just make sure you find time to help figure out how to keep our supporters involved. I don't think we can succeed without them.' As I listened to him, I could hear Candidate Obama morph smoothly into President Obama" -- p. 384 (DC's midday "Lucky Numbers," 11/4).
[MAURA O'BRIEN]