Penn's new book, "Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes," is aimed at businesses trying to sell to tiny but lucrative markets, like left-handers, couples who treat their pets as children, Christian Jew-lovers and people who hate the sun. But it reflects the Clinton campaign's larger (or smaller) view. "This book is about the niching of America," Penn writes. "How there is no One America anymore, or Two or Three or Eight. In fact, there are hundreds of Americas, hundreds of new niches made up of people drawn together by common interests."

Not exactly an Obama man.

Penn's lack of feel for the emotions of politics nearly got him demoted after Iowa. (In the meantime, he had trashed the professionalism of The Des Moines Register's precaucus pollster who called the race almost perfectly.) But after New Hampshire, his much-maligned pre-primary claim that the Iowa "bounce" was nonexistent turned out to be uncannily accurate.

I met Axelrod when we were both covering Gary Hart's 1984 presidential campaign. I was a NEWSWEEK cub, he an exceptionally perceptive reporter for the Chicago Tribune. A transplanted New Yorker whose father had committed suicide, Axelrod has a slightly tragic air about him, compounded by his daughter's long struggle with debilitating epilepsy. In one of those painful twists that are common in the tight world of Democratic politics, Hillary Clinton has over the years been his stalwart ally in raising money to fight the disease.

Axelrod was once described by a local magazine as an "exotic rodent," but he's more like a sad-eyed mutt—a cross between a sophisticated Daley operative (who counts Rahm Emanuel as a close friend) and a dogged liberal committed to racial healing. For a hired gun who has made his share of negative ads both in Illinois and elsewhere, he's a decent and idealistic guy.

Besides helping to run the late senator Paul Simon's 1988 presidential bid, Axelrod's only experience in national politics came in 2004 when Elizabeth Edwards pushed him out of her husband's campaign because he wouldn't make ads her way. He prefers man-on-the-street ads that look almost like newscasts and touch on character.

Although he doesn't operate out of the campaign headquarters in downtown Chicago (he prefers his own office, filled with valuable political memorabilia, on Orleans Street), Axelrod is more dominant in Obama's campaign than Penn is in Hillary's. He hand-picked the campaign manager, David Plouffe, and is second only to Michelle Obama in enjoying the candidate's trust. For a time, decisions were too centralized with him, but he has loosened up in recent months.