Inside Obama’s Dream Machine

An obsessive details man when he was a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, Obama and his crew of more than 700 paid staffers are now trying to apply the same low-tech, word-of-mouth methods to the entire country. In Iowa, 17-year-olds who would turn 18 before the November elections were allowed to participate in the caucuses; Obama field organizers recruited high-school students to form Obama '08 clubs to persuade friends to get over their apathy and vote. In South Carolina—considered a critical primary for Obama, especially if he does not win or come in a close second in this week's New Hampshire primary—campaign workers have spent months recruiting barbers and hairdressers to preach the candidate's virtues to their customers.

Obama says the low turnover on his staff—other campaigns have churned through operatives—says a lot about his leadership skills. "I've said from the outset that starting from scratch, starting from zero, we've built the best political organization in the field," Obama told NEWSWEEK. "And I think that [Iowa] confirms it. I have managed this operation without any drama. My staff is famous for being courteous and treating people with respect."

Obama doesn't leave all the manual labor to the grunts. Late last month Angela Hagerty, a young stay-at-home mom from Ankeny, Iowa, says she was playing Sorry! with her kids when the phone rang. "Hello, Angela?" the caller said. "This is Barack Obama." She was stunned. Two days earlier Hagerty, who was undecided, had stopped by an Obama house party. She left still unsure whom to vote for. The next day an Obama canvasser showed up in her driveway. She still refused to commit to the candidate. The following day Obama called. "I hear you're undecided," he said. Within a week Hagerty had signed on as an Obama precinct captain.

After the decisive Iowa win, it might be tempting for Obama and his team to portray his campaign as a smooth operation that took its cues from the top. But for months leading up to the caucuses, Obama's staff continually argued with him over his approach. Those who grudgingly admired his no-attack decree still thought him hopelessly unrealistic about what it takes to beat Clinton and John Edwards. At the very least, his aides urged him to hone sharper responses to questions in the debates and to confront Clinton directly. Although Obama's debate performances improved over time, his aides moaned whenever he gave long, discursive answers to simple questions instead of sticking to pithy sound bites that voters would remember. Sometimes in attempting to appear above politics he can come off as ponderous and unprepared instead. "He always tries to answer the question," says one senior aide, who declined to be named when talking about internal strategy. "He doesn't see the question like the others do, as an opportunity to talk about what he wants." By the late summer and early fall, Obama was coming under more-intense pressure from donors and fund-raisers, who feared the campaign had lost all momentum in the polls and the press.

On Oct. 28, Obama met with a group of nine close advisers, many of them old pros in Washington's political wars, for dinner in a high-rise apartment on Chicago's affluent Lake Shore Drive. Over a dinner of prime rib and red wine, they talked with Obama about tactics. They, too, pressed him to hit back hard against Clinton, who was portraying him as inexperienced. Obama's advisers respected that he was trying to create a different kind of politics that placed hope over fear, substance over slash-and-burn. But at the same time, the novice candidate was up against a formidable opponent. Some of them spoke up to say that Obama could not afford to turn the other cheek forever.

One suggested raising doubts about Hillary by going after her personally. Obama had always been willing to sharpen his tone, and to raise contrasts with his opponents. He and Clinton had traded petty insults—she mocked him for suggesting his years of living abroad as a child counted as foreign-policy experience; he fired back, saying all her supposed experience didn't keep her from voting for the Iraq War.