The Final Days

That morning, Obama talked by phone to Michelle in Chicago and learned that his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, had died. He had broken off the campaign the week before to fly to her bedside in Honolulu, and he was glad to have had the chance to say goodbye to the woman he called "Toot" (after Tutu, the Hawaiian word for grandmother). Late in the afternoon, standing before 25,000 people in Charlotte, N.C., he mentioned his grandmother's passing. "She has gone home," he said. His voice grew hoarse, and he called his grandmother a "quiet hero," one of many quiet heroes who toil in obscurity to create better lives for their families. Unlike Presidents Reagan, Clinton and both Bushes—who all readily choked up or shed tears—Obama rarely showed any emotion. But now he reached into a pocket, pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed his face, wet with tears.

On election morning, Obama voted at home in Chicago and flew to Indiana. He made a surprise stop at a union hall serving as an Election Day canvassing center and phone bank. "Hey, guys!" he said brightly as he entered the room. The candidate began taking the phone from the hands of phone-bank callers and catching several voters on the other end of the line by surprise. Then it was off to the gym for his ritual basketball game.

At Obama headquarters at 233 North Michigan Avenue, there was the usual profusion of pizza boxes and harried-looking staffers. But the finance bullpen was empty. The mighty Obama money machine was finally silent; its staff had been sent to the states to work the polls. In the boiler room on the 19th floor (bare concrete floors and swatches of industrial carpet duct-taped to the floor over bundles of wires and cables snaking underneath some 20 tables), special desks had been set up for every battleground state—ready to respond to a low turnout or unleash a flood of robo-calls. But at 3 p.m. on Election Day, with polls open across the country, a spot check revealed no burgeoning crises, no surprises, only minor problems swiftly dealt with. If anything, the staff, primed for trouble on every front, was pleasantly surprised to find little of it. The "boiler room" seemed like a misnomer. The bloodless, businesslike atmosphere had the feel of a corporate office on a slow Tuesday, not a political war room on decision day.

At the very end, the Reverend Wright did make an appearance. An independent expenditure group called the National Republican Trust PAC ran an ad on "Saturday Night Live's" prime-time election special. The ad attacking Obama's former pastor was slick, with much better production values than the crude Reverend Wright videos running on the Internet. But it was too little, too late. When a NEWSWEEK reporter e-mailed a top Obama adviser for reaction, a reply came back reading simply: ZZZZZ.

McCain insisted on a final town hall in New Hampshire. His aides wanted a brief rally near the airport in Manchester (New Hampshire has only four electoral votes, and the campaign wanted to move on to bigger states), but McCain insisted on the long bus ride to Peterborough, a rustic town like the many where McCain had—twice, in 1999 and 2007—created political momentum from nothing. On the ride, he joked with New Hampshire friends and Joe Lieberman about the fun times in New Hampshire—dragging voters to town halls when he stood at zero in the polls. New Hampshire adviser Mike Dennehy later said that McCain's town-hall event in Peterborough was his "best event in New Hampshire, probably ever." Afterward, when McCain boarded the plane, he turned to Dennehy and said, "How many are we down by?" Dennehy looked at him for a second. "Let's not talk about that tonight," Dennehy said.

On the last flight home to Arizona, McCain came back to say goodbye to the reporters he had long since virtually stopped speaking to, still stunned by what he viewed as personal betrayal by friends in the press corps. "Feelin' good, feelin' confident about the way things have turned out," the candidate said, delivering the necessary white lie. "We've spent a lot of time together … We've had a great time. I wish all of you every success and look forward to being with you in the future." Behind him, Cindy McCain did not disguise her feelings. She teared up and looked drained. So did McCain's traveling buddies Lieberman and Lindsey Graham.