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Inside Obama’s Dream Machine

 

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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.

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  • Posted By: paulte @ 12/23/2008 10:53:02 AM

    As anyone who watched the debates knows, there ain't a whole lot of grey matter in either Obama or McCain. Obama is slightly ahead of McCain on that score and whatever grey matter he has most probably comes form his white mother. Would America have elected a man who was 100% black or mostly black? The answer is clearly no but America has elected a man who is half black, a mulatto in traditional parlance. In reality America has elected it's first mulatto, not a true black man except by American standards which considers a person who is 1/8 black to be black. If Obama had been born in South Africa back in Apartheid days, he would have been classified as a Colored, not as a Black or an African. So much for Obama's blackness!

    If we examine him closely, we can see what is usually called an Oreo cookie, black on the outside, white inside. He may come from the Hood and tried some drugs but he really belongs to the Harvard crowd, fairly bright, arrogant & liberal, not very decent or moral, greedy white people. I don't think I ever heard him say a word about urban renewal in the entire campaign. His wife is described by a phrase my mother used to use, "an uppity one." Everyone in the clan knew what that meant!

    How did this congenial black fellow get to be President? Well, things just seemed to play out for him. He tossed his hat into the ring, having two whole years in the Senate at the same time that the wicked witch of the West , Miss Hillary (Daisy) tossed her broomstick into the ring. 95% white Iowa decided to vote for a black man for some reason in the caucuses. Was this the death knell of white racism? No, this was a way to quash Hillary. And there you have the tale, Obama was a vehicle to quash Hillary. The rest is history. The wicked witch of the west was actually vanquished by this guy.

    I had a lot of respect for him back then. The thought of even voting for him in November and sending him money entered my mind like some wild illicit temptation. Coolness of mind quickly returned but I still retained a soft spot for this guy who ultimately vanquised the wicked witch of the west. He didn't even put her on the ticket. But then he makes her Secretary of State and now I see in the news that she wants more power for the state. Power is her vice just like sex is her husband's vice.

    You made a big mistake Barry! I always felt you would self-destruct. I admit I thought and hoped that it would happen before you got elected but it is inevitable. You've sown the seeds of your own destruction by tarrying with the witch Hillary. She will destroy you! Remember, Macbeth, King Lear & Hamlet. You're about to join them! "Double, double, toil and trouble.....

  • Posted By: Nins @ 09/19/2008 12:47:51 PM

    Trazer, you don't seem to know that Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama for President, despite the fact that Powell is a Repblican. Perhaps you are not aware that Colin Powell resigned as Secretary of State, saying that he could not do an effective job as a diplomat under a President (Bush) who refused all forms of negotiation and undercut the country's diplomatic efforts. You also may not know that Obama holds a degree (with highest honors) in International Relations from Columbia University, the most prestigious foreign affairs school in America. Futhermore, Obama has been on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for four years, and his running mate, Senator Joe Biden, has been Chairman of that committee for a couple of decades, and is widely seen as the Senate's best and most experienced foreign relations hand.

    Maybe you should research a little more before you write your blogs.

  • Posted By: Nins @ 09/19/2008 12:41:13 PM

    Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, AIG and the rest of the failed institutions have failed primarily because of former Senator Phil Gramm. The Gramm-Leach-Biley Act stripped away the regulations separating banking from investment companies, insurance companies and mortgage guaranty companies. Those regulations were added after the Great Depression when it became obvious that allowing banks to be in bed with the stock market was a sure way to rig the system to collapse, as it did in 1929.

    Lo an behold, a few years after the regulations were removed, the sh!t has hit the fan, and the inter-related investment, insurance, mortgage and banking industries are now starting to collapse, and guess what, you, the taxpayer will have to pay to clean it up.

    Phil Gramm is the Senator who brought you the "Enron Loophole" that de-regulated futures trading, causing the prices of oil, gas and food to spiral out of control.

    Senator Phil Gramm was McCain's top economic advisor until recently, when he was forced to step down after he said that there is no problem with our economy other than a "mental recession" on the part of a "nation of whiners." Phil Gramm is the man who McCain said he wants to name Secretary of the Treasury if he becomes President. You have to believe John McCain when he says that he knows little about the economy -- so little that he doesn't even know who to choose as an advisor.

    Barack Obama addressed the Enron Loophole, futures trading, short-selling and Wall Street de-regulation months ago in his economic position papers, which are available on his website. Obama has been saying all along that he is going to put in strict regulations and clean up Wall Street.

    McCain just started saying that he favors regulation in the past couple of weeks. How is it that McCain is going to put in new regulations, when he plans to appoint Phil Gramm, the man who authored the de-regulation, as Secretary of the Treasury? McCain says he would fire Christopher Cox, the SEC Chairman, to solve the problem. However, the problem is caused by lack of regulations on the legislative level, regulations that were removed before Cox was appointed. The SEC can only enforce regulations that actually exist, so making a scapegoat of Cox solves nothing. I would suggest that McCain is guilty of saying what's politically expedient, that he does not actually intend to regulate the banking industry. McCain knows that most Americans are unaware of the details.

    I am a middle-aged white conservative Republican who loves America. I am voting for Barack Obama.

    http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/15050.html
    http://www.newsweek.com/id/145011/page/1
    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6007788.html
    http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E0D81038F934A25752C0A9649C8B63
    http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stateupdates/gG5Rzb

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