John Heilemann - Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime

GAME CHANGE

OBAMA AND THE CLINTONS,
MCCAIN AND PALIN, AND
THE RACE OF A LIFETIME

JOHN HEILEMANN
AND MARK HALPERIN

FOR DIANA AND KAREN

Contents

BARACK OBAMA JERKED BOLT upright in bed at three oclock in the morning. Darkness enveloped his low-rent room at the Des Moines Hampton Inn; the airport across the street was quiet in the hours before dawn. It was very late December 2007, a few days ahead of the Iowa caucuses. Obama had been sprinting flat out for president for nearly a year. Through all the nights hed endured in cookie-cutter hotels during the months of uncertainty and angstmonths of lagging by a mile in the national polls, his improbable bid for the White House written off by the Washington smart set, his self-confidence shaken by his uneven performance and the formidability of his archrival, Hillary ClintonObama always slept soundly, like the dead. But now he found himself wide awake, heart pounding, consumed by a thought at once electric and daunting: I might win this thing.

The past months in Iowa had been a blur of high school gyms, union halls, and snow-dusted cornfields. Obama was surging, he could sense itthe crowds swelling, the enthusiasm mounting, his organization clicking, his stump speech catching sparks. His strategy from day one had been crystalline: win Iowa and watch the dominoes fall. If he carried the caucuses, New Hampshire and South Carolina would be his, and so on, and so on. But as Obama sat there in the predawn stillness, the implications of the events he saw unfolding hit him as never before. He didnt feel ecstatic. He didnt feel relieved. He felt like the dog that caught the bus. What was he supposed to do now?

By the morning of the caucuses, Obama was laboring to project his customary aura of calm. Never too high, never too low was how he and everyone else described his temperament. His opponents were still out there running around, squeezing in a few last appearances before the voting started. But Obama had decided to chill. He woke up late, played some basketball, went for a haircut with Marty Nesbitt, a pal of his from Chicago. Lazing around the hotel afterward, he and Nesbitt shot the breeze about sports, their kids, and then more sports. Anything, that is, to avoid talking about the election, the one topic that Obama seemed intent on banishing from his head.

The phone rang. Obama picked it up. Chris Edley was on the line.

The two men had known each other for almost twenty years, since Obama was a student at Harvard Law School and Edley one of his professors. Now the dean of Boalt Hall at Berkeley, Edley was one of the few outsiders in whom Obama had confided all year long, with whom he shared his frustrations and anxieties about his campaign, which were greater than almost anyone knew. But today it was the teacher who was stressing while the pupil played Mr. Cool.

I havent been able to eat in thirty-six hours, Im so nervous, Edley said. How are you doing?

Im serene, Obama said. I just got back from playing basketball.

Youve got to be kidding.

Nope, Obama said. We had a strategy. We stuck to it. We executed it reasonably well. Now its in the hands of the voters.

Obamas advisers took comfort in his serenity, but share it they did not. The Obama brain trustDavid Axelrod, the hangdog chief strategist and self-styled keeper of the message; David Plouffe, the tightly wound campaign manager; Robert Gibbs, the sturdy, sharp-elbowed Alabaman communications director; Steve Hildebrand, the renowned field operative behind the campaigns grassroots effort in Iowawas a worrywartish crew by nature. But their nerves were especially jangly now, and with good reason.

The Obamans had bet everything on Iowa. If their man lost, he was probably toastand certainly so if he placed behind Clinton. By his campaigns own rigorous projections, an Obama victory would require a turnout at least 50 percent higher than the all-time Iowa record. It would require a stampede of the college kids and other first-time caucus-goers they had been recruiting like mad. Would the kids show up? Obamas advisers had high hopes, but no real sense of confidence. Many of them were convinced that John Edwards would wind up in first place. Others fretted that Clinton would win. The campaigns final internal pre-caucus poll had Obama finishing third.

Anxiety among Obamas brain trust rarely seemed to affect the candidate, but as caucus day morphed into night, his faade of nonchalance began to crack. On a visit to a suburban caucus site with Plouffe and Valerie Jarretta tough Chicago businesswoman and politico who was a dear friend to Obama and his wife, Michellehe saw a swarm of voters in Obama T-shirts and got teary-eyed in the car. Outside the restaurant where he planned to have dinner with a couple dozen friends, Obama was fiending for information in a way his aides had seldom seen before. Overhearing Plouffe and another staffer kibitzing about turnout, he doubled back and peppered them with queries: What are you guys talking about? What did you say? What are you hearing? Obama sat down with Michelle in the wood-paneled dining room of Flemings Prime Steakhouse in West Des Moines. Plouffe had warned him to ignore the early returns, which were likely to be skewed against him. But not long into the meal, BlackBerrys around the table buzzed with emails that told a different story. Turnout was massive. Unprecedented. Beyond anyones wildest dreams. Obama was leading in Polk County. He was leading in Cedar Rapids. Then a phone call came from Plouffe. Obama listened, hung up, and apologized to his friends. I think I gotta go get ready to give my victory speech, he said.

As Barack and Michelle walked out of Flemings and headed back to their hotel, the candidate was neither elated nor surprised. He had been too confident the past few days for those emotions now. What Obama felt was something close to certainty: he would be the Democratic nominee. The African American with the middle name Hussein had conquered the nearly all-Caucasian Iowa caucuses. Who could possibly stop him now? Especially given what hed just learned about the fate that had befallen Hillary.

TERRY MCAULIFFE ENTERED THE suite on the tenth floor of the Hotel Fort Des Moines, let in by the Secret Service agent stationed outside the door. Bill Clinton sat alone on the couch, watching the Orange Bowl on TV. McAuliffe had been the chairman of the Democratic National Committee when Clinton was president; now he chaired Hillarys campaign and had just learned the brutal news.

Hey, Mac, how you doing? Clinton said casually. You want a beer?

How we doing? McAuliffe asked, taken aback. Have you not heard anything?

No.

Were gonna get our ass kicked.

What? Clinton exclaimed, jumping to his feet, calling out, Hillary!

Hillary emerged from the bedroom. McAuliffe filled her in. The data jockeys downstairs in the campaigns boiler room had rendered a grim verdict: she was going to finish third, slightly shy of Edwards and a long way behind Obama.

McAuliffes words landed like a roundhouse right on the Clintons collective jaw. Theyd known all along that Iowa was Hillarys weakest state. But she and her team kept pouring time and money into the place, pushing more and more chips into the center of the table. On the eve of the caucuses, the people the Clintons trusted most had assured them the gamble would pay off. First place, Hillary and Bill were told. A close second, at worst. Yet here she was, a far-off thirdand the Clintons were reeling like a pair of Vegas drunks the morning after, struggling to come to grips with the scale of what theyd lost.

The members of Hillarys high command soon began piling into the suite: Mark Penn, her perpetually rumpled chief strategist and pollster; Mandy Grunwald, her ad maker; Howard Wolfson, her combative communications czar; Neera Tanden, her policy director; and Patti Solis Doyle, the quintessential Hillary loyalist, who served as her campaign manager. Though the suite was the best in the hotel, the living room was small, the lighting dim, the furniture shabby. The atmosphere was clammy and claustrophobicand became even more so as the Clintons shock quickly gave way to anger.