Plouffe Says Campaign Had Little Chance At Start

He may have beaten her, but Obama '08 manager David Plouffe couldn't help taking a shot at ex-AK Gov. Sarah Palin.

"It's such a big crowd tonight, for a moment there, I thought I'd wandered into a Sarah Palin event," Plouffe joked at a DC stop on his nat'l tour promoting his new book, "The Audacity To Win."

"But then again," Plouffe quipped, "I wrote a book of non-fiction."

Taking the stage at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue for the Politics and Prose-sponsored event, Plouffe wove the story of Obama '08 -- a campaign whose chances of success were "close to zero" in the beginning, he said -- speaking for 35 minutes, followed by 25 minutes of questions.

Plouffe described Sec/State Hillary Clinton as "the strongest frontrunner in the party's history." He touched on some of the highs and lows of the campaign, from the loss of the NH primary to Obama's race speech in Philadelphia.

But the most revealing aspects of the event were the larger themes that have seemed to emerge in Plouffe's retelling of the campaign one year later.

Plouffe took aim at the media, with some particularly sharp jabs at the cable nets. He said that during the campaign, "we built our own television network" -- only better, he noted in a Palinesque touch, because doing so allowed the campaign to communicate directly with voters, without the "snarky media filter."

Plouffe also said that Organizing For America, the campaign's continuing grassroots effort, is able to reach "well over" 10M supporters with a single email. That's more people, he noted, than "on most nights watch NBC Nightly News and all the cables combined -- including Fox."

He noted that ultimately, the campaign was about the "big stakes stuff," as opposed to "the material that a bunch of clowns on CNN are arguing about."

Plouffe's depiction of Obama, too, had changed from the campaign, from that of a tried and tested candidate to one that actually was largely untested.

(FELICIA SONMEZ)

He described Obama as a candidate "two years out of the Illinois state Senate," someone who'd "never had a negative ad run against him -- and never had the proctological exam done to him by the press that you get [in a tough campaign]."

"Of course, I think that this election made history," Plouffe continued. "But I'm less interested in that, quite frankly, than the fact that I think he's the president the country and the world need desperately right now."

Plouffe agreed with those who criticize the electoral process as "flawed," too long, too expensive, and often focused on coverage that's "too banal."

"I would subscribe to that too," Plouffe said. "But it's very transparent."

Plouffe offered his three must-read books for campaign managers: Richard Ben Cramer's "What It Takes," Ted White's "The Making Of The President," and -- "just because I don't think it should all be serious" -- Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail."