Stumper

Notes from the Struggle for Republican National Party Leadership

2008-11-13T23:04:25Z

By Catharine Skipp

As the Republican Party struggles to find its footing and craft a message it is in search of new national leader. Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer is considering making a bit for that role along with jockeying from Republican Party chairs Saul Anuzis of Michigan and South Carolina's Katon Dawson. Michael Steele, a self-described Lincoln Republican and the first African-American to hold statewide office in Maryland as Lt. Gov., is also believed to be in the running; he is said to be announcing as early as today.

The choice of RNC head will signal whether the party's emphasis is going to be conservative, following the lead of stars like South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford or Sarah Palin, moderate in the image of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist or Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty or somewhere in between, like Louisiana’s Gov. Bobby Jindal. “We need to discuss within the party who will be the RNC chair and where the philosophy will come from--the North or South, Conservative or Moderate,” Greer says “and what the party should push over the next four years as a message. Someone like Katon believes that the message needs to be more focused on social issues as much as with government issues.” Greer and Gov. Crist are more moderate “live and let live” voices. Greer believes that for the party to grow it needs to nod to the values issues and then move on. “We need to say ‘yes’ loud on pro-life and faith and family issues but then move on and focus on important American issues. No one is sitting at home talking about abortion or the gay movement. We have to be about employment opportunity, economic issues and challenges, the education of our children and retirement. My position is you can’t go either direction [moderate or conservative] without responding to the other group first. You cannot build a house with a weak foundation.”

Palin Steals GOP Show

2008-11-13T21:30:22Z

By Catharine Skipp

Gone were the ruby red lips and matching peekaboo pumps; the big wink served up with red meat. There was no updo. The look was sedate, save for a maverick-y black leather jacket. The famous accent was toned down; there was nary a “You betcha” to be heard. But Sarah Palin made her mark, nonetheless. With 11 somewhat somber fellow governors at her back at this week’s Republican Governors Association Conference in Miami, Sarah Palin was introduced by Texas Gov. Rick Perry with a hearty, “She is just getting started!”

Palin sought to stay on message, as the governors pull together to remind the party faithful that the GOP power base has shifted to the state level, now that the White House is gone and their standing on Capitol Hill is diminished. She also sought to brush aside speculation about her own political future. "Let the pundits go on with their idle talk about the next election, what happens in 2012," Palin said. "Our concern should be about our state's next great reform, our next budget, our next opportunity to progress in the states that we serve." During the Q&A session afterward, it was clear she hadn’t persuaded the press to ignore 2012. “The campaign is over,” when asked why she was giving a press conference now. “I don’t want to talk about strategy within a campaign that is over. Just suffice it say that I, like every other governor, understands that it is very important that we are speaking to constituents, we are speaking to the people whom we are serving and you have to do that through the media so happy to do that today.”

And at a session dubbed “Looking Towards the Future: The GOP in Transition,” Palin, the pitbull of 2008, offered nothing but praise for the incoming president. “If he governs with the skill and the grace and the greatness of which he is capable, we’re gonna be just fine. And as he prepares to fill the office of Washington and Lincoln, know that this is a shining moment in American history."

But she showed she hadn’t lost the spunky sense of humor that helped make her such a sensation this fall. Talking to the governors in the plenary session, she gave them a thumbnail sketch of what she’d been up to since last they’d met. “It hasn’t been that long I think since we all gathered, but I don’t know about you, but I managed to fill up the time,” she quipped. “Let’s see, I had a baby, I did some traveling. I very briefly expanded my wardrobe. I made a few speeches, met a few VIPs, including those who really impact society like Tina Fey. Aside from that, it was pretty much same old, same old.”

Stumper Signs Off--For Now

2008-11-07T14:13:23Z

Charles Ommanney / Getty Images for Newsweek.

Thank you.

When Stumper started a little over a year ago, I'd never covered a presidential campaign--or maintained a blog, for that matter. The thought of writing four or five times a day on a single subject seemed somewhat, well, daunting. Now, 13 months, 18 states, 21 debates, 1,672 posts, 35,416 comments and countless Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches later, it's the thought of not writing four of five times a day that's making me uneasy.

But alas: the stumping has ended, and so will Stumper.

It's been an incredible year--jamming with Mike Huckabee, pulling an allnighter with John Edwards, following Rudy Giuliani across South Florida, meeting John McCain in a tiny Iowa diner, sitting in section 139 of Mile High Stadium as Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination. But without you guys, the readers, it would've been pointless. So I'd like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude--for the tips, the ideas, the comments, the kudos and, most of all, the criticisms. I've striven to keep Stumper opinionated but impartial--"equal-opportunity skepticism," as I put it last October. If I've at all succeeded it's because you were always telling me when, in your view, I was wrong. From you, I heard every side of every story. Thanks for keeping me honest.

In the weeks and months ahead, I'll be returning to writing for the dead-tree magazine--about politics first and foremost, but also about crime, culture and (hopefully) food. More reporting, less punditry. I'll also be contributing to our (shhh!) forthcoming politics mega-blog alongside such NEWSWEEK luminaries as Holly Bailey, Richard Wolffe, Howard Fineman and Michael Isikoff. If Stumper withdrawal has you itching for a quicker fix, I'd heartily recommend "Powering Up," our new blog about President-elect Obama's ongoing transition process. I'll be popping in there from time to time as well. And I'm even considering posting the occasional column in this space. Stay tuned.

For now, though, it's curtains. I'm always reachable at aromano@newsweek.com; email me whenever. And yes, marriage proposals are still being accepted.

Thanks again for the best year of my life.
Andrew

Progress

2008-11-07T13:42:56Z

Patrick Moberg sees the big picture.

McCain's YouTube Moments

2008-11-07T09:30:47Z

2/23/2007  Government Reform

Significance: McCain's YouTube journey begins with a simple but effective conversation

  4/19/2007  Bomb, Bomb Iran

Significance: John McCain's signature "gotcha" moment of the 2008 Election 

12/09/2007  McCain Strategy Briefing: Path to Victory

Significance: An innovative concept by the campaign. They are the  first team to upload a strategy briefings straight to YouTube

 2/11/2008  John He Is

 Significance: A parody of the Obama “Yes We Can” mash-up. Art starts to imitate art on YouTube

3/14/2008  McCain Girls: Raining McCain  

Significance: So popular that even McCain himself saw it and  complimented it. This spoof ad turned out to be from some Obama  supporters who were making fun of their McCain counterparts

   7/30/2008  Celeb

Significance: McCain's first YouTube hit; this ad becomes the most-viewed  video on YouTube and in conjunction with "The One" it turns McCain's channel into the watch on the site for a few days

   8/27/2008  Dear Mr. Obama  

 Significance: The most-viewed video for the campaign created outside its control by a McCain supporter

9/25/2008  Palin On Foreign Policy

Significance: Katie Couric questions Palin about foreign policy. Palin's fumbling response haunts her for weeks

  10/23/2008  I am Joe 

 Significance: Capitalizing on the popularity of the "Joe the Plumber"  theme, this is the first time the McCain campaign successfully  calls on YouTube users to contribute video content to their campaign.

11/04/2008  McCain Concedes Election to Obama

Significance: The video marks the end of the McCain campaign's election run. No version of the speech appears on McCain's YouTube channel.

Obama's YouTube Moments

2008-11-07T09:29:19Z

1/16/2007  Barack Obama: My Plans for 2008

Significance: Obama becomes one of seven candidates who announce their presidential campaign plans on YouTube.

3/5/2007  Vote Different

Significance: The first user-generated political commercial to go viral in the presidential campaign. “Vote Different” starts a trend by people who create ads in support of Obama outside the control of the campaign.  

6/13/2007  I Got a Crush on…Obama

Significance: Obama Girl becomes one of the most-viewed political videos of the season, kicking off the pop-culture edition of the election.

2/2/2008  Yes We Can

 Significance: The most popular mash-up of the 2008 election is born. Although it was created of the Obama camp, it’s featured on the camp homepage for several weeks—showing that a campaign can benefit from the best of supporter-generated content.

  3/14/2008  Obama Denounces Controversial Remarks 

Significance: Determined not to be swift-boated, Obama uploads this made-for-YouTube response to the Rev. Wright controversy four days before his larger speech on race. He tells his online supporters to "forward this video on."  

3/18/2008  Obama Speech: ‘A More Perfect Union’ 

Significance: The most-viewed video ever uploaded by a presidential campaign to YouTube. This clips demonstrates there's an audience for longer content on YouTube, and that more people can see events at a time of their choosing than ever before.

   5/11/2008  Obamacan—Winner, Obama in 30 seconds  

Significance: A political commercial contest by Moveon.org, generates significant mainstream media attention for the Obama campaign.

   6/7/2008  Barack Speaks To HQ Staff & Volunteers

Significance: The camp offers YouTubers a behind the scenes look shortly after the primary. A staple of videos like these made viewers at home feel like they had an all-access pass to the campaign.

6/19/2008  An Important Campaign Announcement from Barack Obama

Significance: Obama announces via a YouTube video that he plans to  forgo public financing for the general election, continuing his trend of speaking to his core online audience first.

11/04/2008  President-Elect Barack Obama in Chicago

Significance: Obama is elected the 44th President of the United States. His speech is uploaded to his YouTube channel. The Obama Channel is YouTube's most popular channel that week.

The Senate’s New Power Players

2008-11-06T16:43:53Z

By Eleanor Clift

Of the five new Democratic senators elected so far (three races are still unresolved), it’s fair to say each one of them has the potential to be a force in their party and in the governing majority Barack Obama is assembling on Capitol Hill. A quick look at some of the new faces who may soon become the men–and women–to see.

First among equals is Virginia’s Mark Warner. A popular former governor, he’s a young moderate with a gangly Jimmy Stewart-goes-to-Washington look. He made a fortune in the cell-phone business, and likes to say that when others find a ringing cell phone a disturbance, he hears ka-ching. As a self-made businessman–he didn’t come up through partisan horse-trading–he’s someone who can help Obama steer a centrist course. He’s also a likely future presidential candidate.

The Udall cousins: Mark Udall in Colorado and Tom Udall in New Mexico. Their last name is synonymous with progressive politics and the protection of natural resources–values they wove together in their respective campaigns to champion a new green-energy economy for the West. Mo Udall (Mark’s father) was the liberal alternative to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 primaries; Stuart Udall (Tom’s father) was Secretary of the Interior in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Kay Hagan in North Carolina defeated Republican icon, Elizabeth Dole because of huge support from women. Emily’s List, a pro-choice group that backed Hagan, found the two candidates split male voters 47-47 percent, but women preferred Hagan over Dole 55 percent to 45 percent. Dole’s last-ditch ad suggesting Hagan was godless backfired big-time. Hagan is no novice; she served five terms in the North Carolina Senate where she earned a reputation for effectiveness. She’ll move quickly to establish a more aggressive profile, on behalf of the state, than the genteel Dole, whose infrequent visits home became a campaign issue.

Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire. This was a rematch for Shaheen, who lost to Republican John Sununu in a bitter race six years ago. Shaheen benefited from the changed mood in the state (Democrats control the governor’s office and the legislature) along with a double-digit gender gap. Women are still underrepresented in the U.S. Senate with only 17 women out of 100 senators in the new Congress. Because of their small number, they stick together, often across party lines. Shaheen kept her political preference in the Democratic primary to herself, but her husband was an early co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and Shaheen will be a major Hillary ally.

The Best of NEWSWEEK's Top-Secret Election Project, Vols. II, III and IV

2008-11-06T15:13:48Z

The first four chapters of the "The Project" are finally live on NEWSWEEK.com--and, as expected, they're packed with exclusive reporting and fascinating details. You can read my favorite tidbits from Chapter One here.

Now for the highlights from Chapters Two, Three and Four:

Bill's Bile: In the days after his wife's back- from-the-brink victory in New Hampshire, Bill Clinton was full of righteous indignation. The former president had amassed an 81-page list of all the unfair and nasty things the Obama campaign had said, or was alleged to have said, about Hillary Clinton. The press was still in love with Obama, or so it seemed to Clinton, who complained to pretty much anyone who would listen. If the press wouldn't go after Obama, then Hillary's campaign would have to do the job, the ex-president urged. On Sunday, Jan. 13, Clinton got worked up in a phone conversation with Donna Brazile, a direct, strong-willed African-American woman who had been Al Gore's campaign manager and advised the Clintons from time to time. "If Barack Obama is nominated, it will be the worst denigration of public service," he told her, ranting on for much of an hour. Brazile kept asking him, "Why are you so angry?"

Obama's Appetites--or Lack Thereof: Obama was abstemious. Indeed, to the reporters following him, he appeared very nearly anorexic. Most candidates gain the Campaign 10 (or 15). Hillary was struggling with her waistline, as she gamely knocked back shots and beers in working-class bars and gobbled the obligatory sausage sandwiches thrust at her in greasy spoons along the Trail of the White Working-Class Voter. Obama, by contrast, lost weight. He regularly ate the same dinner of salmon, rice and broccoli. At Schoop's Hamburgers, a diner in Portage, Ind., he munched a single french fry and ordered four hamburgers—to go. At the Copper Dome Restaurant, a pancake house in St. Paul, Minn., he ordered pancakes—to go. (An AP reporter wondered: who gets pancakes for the road?) A waiter reeled off a long list of richly topped flapjacks, but Obama went for the plain buttermilk, saying, "I'm kind of traditionalist." Reporters joked that if he ate a single bite of burger or pancake once the doors of his dark-tinted SUV closed, they'd eat their BlackBerrys.

The 'Psychotic Fireman': Staffers were trying to work, sort of, and ignore the sounds coming from the office of communications director Howard Wolfson. "He's going to ruin this f–––ing campaign!" shouted Phil Singer, Wolfson's deputy. No one was quite sure who "he" was, but most assumed it was Penn, the chief strategist who was in more or less constant conflict with Hillary's other top advisers. Wolfson said something indistinct in response, and Singer cut loose, "F––– you, Howard," and stormed out of his office. Policy director Neera Tanden had the misfortune of standing in his path. "F––– you, too!" screamed Singer. "F––– you," Tanden started. "And the whole f–––ing cabal," Singer, now standing on a chair, shouted loudly enough to be heard by the entire war room. "I'm done." Within a week or two Singer was back, still steaming and swearing. "If the house is on fire, would you rather have a psychotic fireman or no fireman at all?" Wolfson explained to Williams.

The Slogans I Know: Shortly after Williams took over, she called a major meeting for senior staff. Penn was given the floor, and he began to walk through all the iterations of Hillary slogans: "Solutions for America," "Ready for Change, Ready to Lead," "Big Challenges, Real Solutions: Time to Pick a President …" Penn marched down the long list. But then he seemed to get a little lost. "Um, uh, 'Working for Change, Working for You' …" There was silence, then ***, as Penn tried to remember all the bumper stickers, which, run together, sounded absurd and indistinguishable. "Ehhh … 'The Hillary I Know' …" Penn trailed off, and the meeting moved on.

In My Day: Given the way delegates were apportioned, Obama had amassed a nearly insurmountable lead by the time of the Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4. At one meeting around the time of Super Tuesday, Ickes tried—for the umpteenth time, it seemed—to explain the mechanics of proportional representation. When President Clinton said, "Oh, hell, we didn't have this stuff in 1992," Ickes nearly "fell off his chair," as he later put it, because the system had been essentially the same back then.

The Wright Stuff: Obama was miffed when he saw Wright's comments, but decided not to break with him then and there. "He was retiring; I had a strong commitment to the church community … My instinct was to let him stay out of the limelight and not make a bigger deal out of it," Obama recalled to the reporter. However, Obama said that he had told his staff: "Let's pull every single sermon that Wright made, because it could be an issue, and it could be attributed to me, and let's at least know what we're dealing with." He added: "That never got done." The normally careful Obama team dropped the ball. Axelrod told the NEWSWEEK reporter, "I had been asking" for a "readout of all his sermons," but "I didn't get it." (He blamed himself for not following up.)

Nerd Factor: On May 20, the night of the primaries in Oregon (a satisfying win in a liberal state) and Kentucky (another discouraging blowout in Appalachia; he had lost West Virginia the week before by 41 points), [Obama] stood off-stage at the Des Moines Historical Society Museum in Iowa. He had wanted to go back to the state of his first great triumph to give a speech unofficially kicking off the fall campaign, even though Clinton officially was still in the race. "That's an interesting belt buckle," he said to Michelle, mischievously. She feigned offense and said, "I am interesting, next to you. Surprise, surprise, a blue suit, a white shirt and a tie." Obama grinned and bent down until he was almost at eye level with her waist. He jabbed a playful finger toward her belt buckle, and let loose his inner nerd. "The lithium crystals! Beam me up, Scotty!" Obama squeaked, laughing at his own lame joke as Michelle rolled her eyes.

Subversive Streak: [McCain's] aides had trouble coaching him because the very act of telling him what to do could incite a rebellion. When distracted or restless, a not infrequent occasion, McCain could be tempted to play the high-school prankster. Once at a press availability in Kentucky he spotted a large woman, who was wearing a black T shirt embroidered with two bedazzling martini glasses, standing behind the photographers. He asked her to stand by him at the podium, where she might have a better view. "Is this OK?" he asked. "This is fi-ine!" the lady replied, but as she saw a sea of cameras and smirking reporters, she looked stunned and slightly embarrassed. She started to sidle away, and McCain asked, with mock forlornness, "You leaving me?"

Schmidt Agonistes: Schmidt resented being called a disciple of Rove by the press. He did not regard himself as a fearmonger or a practitioner of the dark arts, and indeed he had a sweet, playful side. He told funny stories about being scared of snakes at his California home, and he desperately missed his wife, son and daughter, with whom he had memorized the songs from the Disney fairy-tale movie "Enchanted." After he had been portrayed as a calculating political-machine man in the 2004 NEWSWEEK special election issue, a crestfallen Schmidt asked his friend Nicolle Wallace, Bush's communications director, "Is that really how people see me? The big, bald, mean guy?" Schmidt could be mock-tough. "I'm OK with a reign of terror starting now," he sternly told Salter when the campaign's logistical incompetence was becoming all too apparent to the press late in the spring of 2008. Then he turned to a NEWSWEEK reporter and choked up with laughter. But he could also be severe and grimly focused. Whenever McCain had a rough day in the press, or Schmidt was running on a few hours' sleep after a late night at the bar with Salter, he would declare, throughout the day, "Fun Steve is dead."

Losing His 'Base': McCain was nonplused about the end of his honeymoon with the press... McCain would want to head back to the reporters' section of the plane, and Davis would pull him back. "No, no, no, I want them around me," McCain would say, referring to the reporters. "No, no, no, they're screwing you," Davis would retort. At McCain's insistence, his new campaign plane this past summer had been fitted with a large bench-style couch, to re-create the space on the Straight Talk Express bus, where the candidate had spent hours jawing on the record with reporters, half a dozen or so at a time. But reporters were never asked to sit there. McCain did not look happy about being kept on a tight leash, as least as far as reporters could tell from a distance. ("It was like withdrawal," Lindsey Graham conceded to a NEWSWEEK reporter.) Around reporters, McCain sometimes looked like a sheepish teenager who has been told by his parents that he has to stop seeing a girl. At a stop in Wisconsin, reporters watched while McCain drank coffee with a delegate. The candidate looked up and made eye contact with the reporters. "How are you guys today?" he said, smiling. Before anyone could say anything, campaign aides swooped in and began ushering reporters from the room. When one reporter tried to talk to McCain, he looked up expectantly and seemed about to say something. "Senator, can I …" the reporter began. An advance man stepped in. "Thank you, let's go," the staffer said.

Cash Flow: The power of the Obama operation could be measured: doubling the turnout at the Iowa caucuses, raising twice as much money as any other candidate in history, organizing volunteers by the millions. (In Florida alone: 65 offices, paid staff of 350, active e-mail list of 650,000, 25,000 volunteers on any weekend day.) The ultimate test would come Nov. 4. In the meantime, there were indications of a great storm brewing. At the end of August, as Hurricane Gustav threatened the coast of Texas, the Obama campaign called the Red Cross to say it would be routing donations to it via the Red Cross home page. Get your servers ready—our guys can be pretty nuts, Team Obama said. Sure, sure, whatever, the Red Cross responded. We've been through 9/11, Katrina, we can handle it. The surge of Obama dollars crashed the Red Cross Web site in less than 15 minutes.

A 21st Century President?

2008-11-05T22:17:23Z

(Peter Dejong / AP)

On Jan. 3, 2008, I arrived at the apartment of Paul Tewes, Barack Obama's Iowa state director, as the icy streets of downtown Des Moines filled with young Obamaniacs hugging and cheering, "We did it!" Upstairs, scruffy postcollegiate staffers squeezed between couches and credenzas to celebrate the senator's surprise victory in that night's Iowa caucuses. Cans of Bud Light covered every surface. Youth turnout, I was told, was up 135 percent from 2004, and the under-25 set alone gave Obama 17,000 votes--nearly his entire margin of victory. The next morning, a 25-year-old Obama supporter sent me an ecstatic email. "This," he wrote, "is our next president."

At the time, there was no way of knowing what would happen eleven months later. But I had my suspicions. It was clear to me that night in Iowa that Obama had begun to build the first 21st century campaign--a campaign with the potential, I imagined, to propel him to a 21st century victory in November. On Tuesday, we learned that both of these premonitions had, in fact, come to pass. The question now is whether Obama will fulfill his promise and pursue a 21st century presidency.

The litany of Obama's idiosyncrasies and innovations--as both campaigner and candidate--is nearly as long as it is familiar. For starters, he's black. (In case you missed it.) Less than 150 years ago, many Americans would've treated Obama as property. Now he's our president. That's progress--incredible, awe-inspiring progress. Similarly, Obama represents a new generation of American leadership--in both age and attitude. A mere 47, he urged voters from the start to reject the false dichotomies and "with-us-or-against-us" partisanship of baby-boomer politics--and defeated a Clinton and a Bush (at least symbolically) along the way.

Obama's innovations were technological as well. As you've probably heard, the Internet contributed to his stunning success. But he didn't just log on and let rip, like Howard Dean in 2004. Instead, Obama demonstrated how disciplined online activity can facilitate favorable offline outcomes. The Web enabled him to raise more than $630 million, which enabled to him forgo public financing, which enabled him to invest in an ambitious electoral map, which he then redrew mostly through the efforts of volunteers recruited and organized (you guessed it) online. A cratering economy and unpopular incumbent may have put the wind in Obama's sails. But these strategies were the sails themselves.

Fittingly, the results last night reflected the modernity of Obama's campaign. The Illinois senator not only overcame John McCain in states that had bedeviled Democrats for years (Florida, Ohio) or decades (Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada). He did it by running up the score across a diverse spectrum of growing demographic groups--and, as a result, building a Democratic coalition that looks a lot like the future of America.

Moderates, for example, now outnumber both liberals and conservatives; Obama won them by 21 points. He captured first-time voters by nearly 40 points. Today, more Americans are graduating from college than ever before; Obama transformed Bush's six-point advantage among alums into an six-point advantage of his own. In 2004, John Kerry won Latinos--the nation's fastest-growing ethnic group--by nine points. Obama won them by 36--enough to flip Florida, Colorado and New Mexico. The Democrat also inspired similar shifts among under-30 voters (from nine points to 34 points) and African-Americans (from 77 points to 91 points). Even the nation's fastest growing region--the West--went from a tie in 2004 to a 17-point Obama rout. "It's been a long time coming," the president-elect said last night in Chicago, quoting Sam Cooke. "But tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America." Exhibit A? His voters. Thirty years ago, increasing the margins and turnout among blacks, Latinos, young people, college grads and Westerners wouldn't have made much of difference. This year, it made Obama president.

The question now is, "What's next?" Over the coming weeks, months and years, I'll be watching to see whether Obama pursues a truly 21st century presidency--that is, a presidency that prizes transparency, practices bipartisanship, privileges innovation over ideology, avoids the politics of demonization and calls on Americans to sacrifice for the greater good.

Over the last 21 months, the campaign has sent out mixed messages on this front. Early on, Obama refused to accept lobbyist donations and proposed numerous measures to increase government transparency--including a searchable online database of lobbying reports, congressional ethics records and campaign-finance filings. But Obama's secretive, corporate campaign obsessively controlled the media's access to friends, family and documents, often for no discernible reason, and declined (unlike McCain) to release the names of donors who contributed less than $200 to his cause.

In his speech last night, Obama revived a line first deployed at the 2004 Democratic Convention: "We have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States." But while he's crossed party lines on a few consensus issues in Senate--ethics reform, loose nukes, etc.--the president-elect has no real record of bipartisanship on thorny problems like immigration, campaign finance, global warming or earmarks (again, unlike McCain). On the stump, Obama floated above the fray, but he was perfectly content to unleash harsh ads under the MSM radar--including some thinly-veiled swipes at McCain's septuagenarian status. Despite making moderate noises on education and affirmative action, Obama has rarely voted against Democratic orthodoxy. At the debates, he was unwilling to ask Americans to give up anything greater than energy-inefficient light bulbs.

Am I saying that Obama should've run a different campaign? Hardly. In a presidential race, winning is the one and only goal--and Obama won big and brilliantly. But the fact is, political pressures--the incentives to conceal, or attack, or stubbornly adhere to Democratic doctrine--don't suddenly dissolve the moment the campaigning stops and the governing begins. In many ways, they grow stronger--especially in the midst of a crippling financial crisis. Last night, Obama asked us to believe that as president he would resist the same urges he periodically succumbed to on the trail. "This victory alone is not the change we seek," he said. "It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were." It'll be interesting to see how he plans to avoid backsliding. Maybe he'll mobilize online supporters to lobby for legislation, or appoint Republicans to his cabinet, or air health-care hearings live on C-SPAN. But to believe that politics ends on Nov. 5 is naive.

My suspicion is that Obama recognizes his 21st-century responsibility and will strive to govern accordingly--just as he recognized how to reach the voters of Iowa and, eventually, 52 percent of the electorate. Right now, all we have to go on is hope. But every improbable journey has to start somewhere.

'I've Got One for Either Party'

2008-11-05T19:29:09Z

'Really Reach Out to the Other Side'

2008-11-05T19:27:40Z

Bush on Obama: 'A Triumph of the American Story'

2008-11-05T17:02:55Z

Speaking just now from the White House's Rose Garden, President George W. Bush invoked the memory--and words--of Martin Luther King, Jr.--in describing Barack Obama's historic achievement. "It will be a stirring sight to see President Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their beautiful girls step through the doors of the White House," he said. "I know millions of Americans will be overcome with pride at this inspiring moment that so many have waited so long."

The current era of partisan comity will soon come to end, I'm sure. But that doesn't make it any less refreshing--or any less of an opportunity for Obama, should he choose to seize it. Here's hoping...

The Results (So Far): 364 for Obama, 173 for McCain

2008-11-05T16:50:22Z

Obama, 364: Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Iowa, California, Oregon, Washington, Virginia, Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Hawaii, Washington, D.C., Indiana, North Carolina

McCain, 173: Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, Wyoming, North Dakota, West Virginia, Kansas, Utah, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Idaho, Arizona, Alaska, Montana, Missouri

Popular Vote: 52 percent Obama, 46 percent McCain

Senate: Democrats 56, Republicans 40

House: Democrats 258, Republicans 177

The Best of NEWSWEEK's Top-Secret Election Project, Vol. I

2008-11-05T16:09:02Z

Every four years, NEWSWEEK detaches a team of reporters to follow the presidential candidates from announcement speech to Election Day. The deal is simple. The "Project" staffers won't report what they learn until Nov. 5; in exchange, the campaigns give us unprecedented behind-the-scenes access. The information is so hush-hush, in fact, that no one who works on the weekly magazine--including yours truly--is permitted to read the finished product until a winner is officially declared. Which meant I was up until 4:00 a.m., reading away.

Today, the first chapter of "The Project" goes live on NEWSWEEK.com--and, as expected, it's packed with exclusive reporting and fascinating details. Since this is a blog--and not the Library of Congress--I won't post the whole (long) thing here. But I will highlight my favorite tidbits below. You ADD-types can thank me later.

(The NEWSWEEK Election Project was written by Evan Thomas with reporting from Peter Goldman, Eleanor Clift, Daren Briscoe, Nick Summers, Katie Connolly and Michael Hastings; Holly Bailey and Jonathan Darman also contributed intel.)

I. Obama's 'Certain Ambivalence'

Obama was something unusual in a politician: genuinely self-aware. In late May 2007, he had stumbled through a couple of early debates and was feeling uncertain about what he called his "uneven" performance. "Part of it is psychological," he told his aides. "I'm still wrapping my head around doing this in a way that I think the other candidates just aren't. There's a certain ambivalence in my character that I like about myself. It's part of what makes me a good writer, you know? It's not necessarily useful in a presidential campaign."

These candid remarks were taped at a debate-prep session at a law firm in Washington. The tape of Obama's back-and-forth with his advisers, provided to NEWSWEEK by an attendee, is a remarkably frank and revealing record of what the candidate was really thinking when he took the stage with his opponents.

On the tape, after Obama's rueful remark about the mixed blessings of his detached nature, there is cross talk and laughter, and then Axelrod cracks, "You can save that for your next memoir."

Obama continues: "When you have to be cheerful all the time and try to perform and act like [the tape is unclear; Obama appears to be poking fun at his opponents], I'm sure that some of it has to do with nerves or anxiety and not having done this before, I'm sure. And in my own head, you know, there's—I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. When you're going into something thinking, 'This is not my best …' I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' Instead of being appropriately [the tape is garbled]. So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f–––ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

II. Cool Customer

A newcomer to the campaign in September 2007, Betsy Myers—sister of former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers and a former Clinton White House staffer herself—hoped that Obama, in town overnight, might come to headquarters to cheer the staff. "But he didn't," she recalled later that fall. "He went to the gym instead." She paused as she recollected. "He hasn't been in the headquarters in months. A lot of these people are young and really look up to him, and it would have meant a lot to them if he'd stopped by." Another pause. "Nobody would have had to tell Bill Clinton to stop by if he was just a couple of blocks away. You would have had to physically drag Bill Clinton out of there."

III. Hillary's House

On a cold midmorning in January 2007, Hillary sat in the sunny living room of her house on Whitehaven Street in Washington, a well-to-do enclave off Embassy Row where she lived with her mother and, on occasion, her husband. She was finishing a last round of policy prep with her aides before getting on a plane to Iowa for her first big campaign swing. In a moment of quiet, she looked around the living room and said, to no one in particular, "I so love this house. Why am I doing this?"

Her policy director, Neera Tanden, and her advertising director, Mandy Grunwald, laughed, a little too lightheartedly. Clinton went on. "I'm so comfortable here. Why am I doing this?"

Tanden spoke up. "The White House isn't so bad," she said.

"I've been there," said Clinton.

IV. Obama's Tears

Obama was not given to shows of emotion. But at the last debate he was asked an innocuous question about his New Year's resolution, and he launched into standard-issue boilerplate about being "a better father, better husband. And I want to remind myself constantly that this is not about me, ah, what I'm doing today. It's an enormous strain on the family … a-a-a-nd …" He paused, and for the briefest moment there was a hitch in his voice before he continued, "Y'know, yesterday I went and bought a Christmas tree with my girls, and we had about two hours before I had to fly back to Washington to vote …" Valerie Jarrett, the family friend who had become one of his closest political advisers, thought Obama was going to tear up. She had seen it before, at a book party for "The Audacity of Hope" in 2006, when Obama had started to say he was sorry to have been away from his family so much during his campaign for the Senate, and began crying so hard he couldn't go on. Obama was remarkably self-contained, but he was also palpably emotionally attached to his family. Jarrett knew that he had not been able to keep his promises to Michelle about getting home to see her and the kids, and that the strain was starting to show.

V. The Iowa Surprise

The Clintonites had vastly underestimated the turnout. Penn had originally figured 90,000 Iowans would turn out on a snowy night (the pollster/strategist later boosted the number to 150,000). On the night of Jan. 3, 250,000 came to stand around in crowded gyms and be herded into preference groups for one candidate or another. Some 22 percent were under the age of 25, an unusually high percentage from an age group not known for voting. Hillary won just 5 percent of their votes.

An aide approached McAuliffe and said the president wanted to see him. McAuliffe was escorted to the Clintons' suite by a Secret Service agent. He found Bill Clinton watching a bowl game on TV. The ex-president seemed perfectly relaxed and jovial. "Sir," said McAuliffe, "have you heard the news?" "What news?" Clinton asked. "We're going to get killed," said McAuliffe.

"What!" exclaimed Clinton, who then called out in a loud voice, "Hillary!"

Hillary emerged from the bedroom. McAuliffe recalled: "Nobody had told them. He thought he was going to have a beer with me and watch the game." Suddenly there was pandemonium.

VI. Hillary's Tears

In the bus afterward, she ranted at one of her aides, "We never should have gone to Iowa. I knew it. I knew we never should have gone." Now she fretted that she had doomed herself with a "Muskie moment," referring to the late Ed Muskie, the once front-running senator from Maine who had doomed his 1972 presidential campaign by welling up at a campaign event in New Hampshire. Penn had warned her not to show vulnerability. "I've been so wound up in doing the commander-in-chief thing," she said. Later that afternoon she stopped in at her Manchester campaign headquarters, where staffers were buzzing about how she had become choked up at a coffee shop. It played well, they assured her. Hillary thanked them. "Don't expect that too often," she said dryly.

READ THE REST HERE.

The Filter: Nov. 5, 2008... President Obama Edition

2008-11-05T12:56:49Z

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

OBAMA ELECTED PRESIDENT AS RACIAL BARRIER FALLS
(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)
Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday, sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease as the country chose him as its first black chief executive. The election of Mr. Obama amounted to a national catharsis — a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies, and an embrace of Mr. Obama’s call for a change in the direction and the tone of the country. But it was just as much a strikingly symbolic moment in the evolution of the nation’s fraught racial history, a breakthrough that would have seemed unthinkable just two years ago... To the very end, Mr. McCain’s campaign was eclipsed by an opponent who was nothing short of a phenomenon, drawing huge crowds epitomized by the tens of thousands of people who turned out to hear Mr. Obama’s victory speech in Grant Park in Chicago. Mr. McCain also fought the headwinds of a relentlessly hostile political environment, weighted down with the baggage left to him by President Bush and an economic collapse that took place in the middle of the general election campaign.

A NEW WORLD ORDER
(John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei, Politico)
Nov. 4, 2008, was the day when American politics shifted on its axis. The ascent of an African-American to the presidency — a victory by a 47-year-old man who was born when segregation was still the law of the land across much of this nation — is a moment so powerful and so obvious that its symbolism needs no commentary. But it was the reality of power, not the symbolism, that changed Tuesday night in ways more profound than meet the eye. The rout of the Republican Party, and the accompanying gains by Democrats in Congress, mean that Barack Obama will assume office with vastly more influence in the nation’s capital than most of his recent predecessors have wielded. The only exceptions suggest the magnitude of the moment. Power flowed in unprecedented ways to George W. Bush in the year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It flowed likewise to Lyndon B. Johnson after his landslide in 1964. Beyond those fleeting moments, every president for more than two generations has confronted divided government or hobbling internal divisions within his own party.

OBAMA'S TRANSCENDENCE BEYOND RACE
(Ron Fournier, Associated Press)
The elevation of Barack Obama to the White House is a transcendent moment, for what this election says about a nation where blacks were once considered property. And that might be the least of it. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event. At odd intervals — 1800, 1860, 1932, 1980 — the nation reaches a "pivot point," an election that draws the line between the past and the future. And 2008 appears to be just such a line in the shifting sands of our convulsive times. Reagan-style conservative supremacy? Over. The era of baby boomer leadership? Waning. And maybe, just maybe, something new has arrived: a post-partisan approach to governing, founded on the Obama Coalition, fueled by young and minority voters, powered by the 21st century technologies that helped turn a first-term senator from Illinois into a historic lodestone. From the beginning, Obama had his sights on something bigger than the "50 percent plus one" approach championed by Karl Rove. He wanted a larger statement.

HARD CHOICES AND CHALLENGES FOLLOW TRIUMPH
(Dan Balz, Washington Post)
After a victory of historic significance, Barack Obama will inherit problems of historic proportions. Not since Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated at the depths of the Great Depression in 1933 has a new president been confronted with the challenges Obama will face as he starts his presidency. At home, Obama must revive an economy experiencing some of the worst shocks in more than half a century. Abroad, he has pledged to end the war in Iraq and defeat al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. He ran on a platform to change the country and its politics. Now he must begin to spell out exactly how. Obama's winning percentage appears likely to be the largest of any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide and makes him the first since Jimmy Carter in 1976 to garner more than 50.1 percent. Like Johnson, he will govern with sizable congressional majorities... But with those advantages come hard choices. Among them will be deciding how much he owes his victory to a popular rejection of President Bush and the Republicans and how much it represents an embrace of Democratic governance. Interpreting his mandate will be only one of several critical decisions Obama must make as he prepares to assume the presidency. Others include transforming his campaign promises on taxes, health care, energy and education into a set of legislative priorities for his first two years in office.

NOW WHAT?
(John Dickerson, Slate)
Barack Obama has said he wants to change the political system. Now that he is president-elect, we'll see what that actually means. As he works to remove the troops from Iraq, reform the nation's health care system, and promote American energy independence, we'll see how well he keeps his promise to reach out to others with different ideas. He once promised that negotiations about his health care plan would be shown live on C-SPAN. Is he really going to be that transparent? It may take some time before we know these answers. But some indications of Obama's new kind of politics could come before he starts making policy decisions. In his acceptance speech, Obama plans to offer some symbolic gestures, such as reaching out to Republicans and not appearing overly celebratory. This is a good start, but there's more he could do. Here are a few suggestions.

THE MOST UNLIKELY PRESIDENT
(Ezra Klein, American Prospect)
Barack Hussein Obama was, arguably, the country's most unlikely candidate for highest office. He embodied, or at least invoked, much of what America feared. His color recalled our racist past. His name was a reminder of our anxious present. His spiritual mentor displayed a streak of radical Afro-nationalism. He knew domestic terrorists and had lived in predominantly Muslim countries. There was hardly a specter lurking in the American subconscious that he did not call forth. And that was his great strength. He robbed fear of its ability to work through quiet insinuation. He forced America to confront its own subconscious. Obama actually is black. His middle name actually is "Hussein." He actually does know William Ayers. He actually was married by Jeremiah Wright. He actually had lived in Indonesia. These were not smears, though they were often used as such. They were facts. And this election was fundamentally about what happened when fear collided with fact.

CONGRATULATIONS, PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA
(Ross Douthat, The Atlantic)
Unlike previous Democratic nominees, Obama was operating in an environment where his side had the upper hand on almost every issue, and there was actually more risk than reward involved in straying too far off the liberal reservation. And the campaign he ran reflected that reality, rather than living up to its initial promise to transcend the left-right divide. So I was disappointed in Barack Obama, but I also realize that his campaign wasn't addressed to me: It was addressed to the constituents of a potential center-left majority, and that's the majority he won tonight. Whether this majority holds together will depend on how he governs, but for the moment he has achieved something that no Democratic politician has achieved in a generation: He's carved out a mandate to take America at least some distance in a leftward direction, and he has left the conservative opposition demoralized, disorganized, and arguably self-destructing. Obviously, this achievement was made possible by the blunders of his predecessor, the floundering of the McCain campaign, and the good fortune of running against the incumbent party during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. But great politicians are almost always lucky politicians, and Obama's good fortune does not diminish the magnitude of his triumph tonight, and the credit that he and his campaign deserve for the race they've run.

HEAD-SPINNING STUFF
(Gerard Baker, Times of London)
The country regarded loftily by many Europeans as hopelessly racist and irredeemably right wing has voted to be ruled by a black man, at the head of a party committed to economic redistribution and a foreign policy rooted in peaceful diplomatic engagement... The country faces challenges on a scale no incoming president has had to tackle since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. The economy is in a recession likely to be as deep as the deepest in the last 50 years. Recently, wild financial market mayhem and unprecedented government remedies have fostered doubt in the efficacy of America’s system of economic organisation. The country’s standing in the world has been compromised by foreign policy failures, the public relations disasters of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and more recently a perceived lack of leadership in the global crisis. All the while these failings have taken place against a backdrop of steadily mounting fear that the US may be eclipsed within a generation by the emerging powers in Asia. Remedying any one of these ills would be a tall order for a new president. Trying to cure them all at the same time looks positively Herculean.

IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID--KINDA
(Noam Scheiber, New Republic)
It didn’t take long for the GOP to settle on a narrative once the numbers started heading south last night: John McCain was running even or slightly ahead of Obama until the economy cratered in September. If not for the financial crisis, McCain would have stood a pretty good chance of winning... [But] the economy is hardly an illegitimate issue, some arbitrary external event that has no business deciding an election. A big chunk of what you ‘re doing when you vote for president is choosing a manager of the economy. Having said that, there’s no denying that the economic crisis strongly affected the size of Obama’s victory. Over the last several decades, the country has seen two swing groups move in opposite directions: Working-class whites exiting the Democratic Party, and more affluent, educated voters leaving the GOP. For either side, the key to winning a presidential election has been to hold onto its own swing voters while consolidating gains among the other guy’s. Thanks to the economy, Barack Obama more than accomplished that last night.