Campaign Inc.: How Leadership and Organization Propelled Barack Obama to the White House

Introduction

1| Introduction Checkout On March 1, 2011, I determined it was time for me to begin making plans to leave the White House. This triggered a series of meetings in the West Wing later that day in an effort to ensure there would be enough time to accommodate a transition of my responsibilities. While I’d logged over two years of service to the president as his deputy assistant for management and administration, the day also marked my four-year anniversary with Barack and Michelle Obama, dating back to the beginnings of his presidential campaign. Serving as the 2008 chief operating officer at Obama for America and then as a senior aide in the Obama White House was the professional experience of a lifetime. And my family was blessed with many precious memories. Now, it was time for me to spend more time with my wife and two young children. On my last day at the White House four months later, I meandered through the vast complex as I began the lengthy checkout process, which involved getting signatures from different department representatives in exchange for government assets and documents. It was all very surreal . You could always tell when it was someone’s last day. Like others before me, I wandered the halls holding the checklist at arm’s length in front of me, as if it was a map that offered clues to the next stop on a treasure hunt. It occurred to me as I searched for signatures to complete my offboarding that I had actually spent more time in the administration than the twenty-two months I’d devoted to the president’s historic election campaign. The nation had long since moved on from the 2008 election, just as I was moving on with my life. The political climate and national mood was noticeably different from when Barack Obama had been sworn in over two years earlier. Despite a dizzying two-plus years that featured the appointments of two women to the Supreme Court, the 2 | introduction end of Osama bin Laden’s reign of terror, and major legislative achievements —saving the American auto industry from extinction, pulling the economy from the brink of a depression, reforming financial industry regulations, and expanding access to affordable health care among them—there was widespread speculation that the president’s back was against the wall. While his accomplishments were indisputable, it is also fair to say that some of his policies were controversial. Adding to the turbulence, unemployment remained locked at just over 9 percent and the economy could only be generously characterized as anemic. Voters were weary of war and wary of the nation’s growing debt. Most importantly, the administration was still regrouping after the results of the midterm elections that ushered in a Republican majority in the House of Representatives and paved the way for contentious battles over national priorities. Uncertainty surrounded the president’s future as his approval ratings dipped to 45 percent, down from 85 percent in the days just before his inauguration. A dominant narrative steadily surfacing in the media probed the possibility that his would be a oneterm presidency. What a difference just a couple of years had made. At the beginning of 2011, the national press corps had already been in speculative overdrive about the prospects for the 2012 presidential elections. Familiar names from our race in 2008 were surfacing early. The media seemed obsessed with the intentions of Sarah Palin. Other names—Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Tim Pawlenty, for example—were being bandied about as potential Republican presidential contenders. On the Democratic side, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continued to knock back questions about whether she was planning a run against President Obama in the Democratic primaries. At the same time, top aides David Axelrod and Jim Messina were preparing to leave for Chicago to lead the reelection campaign. In their wake, 2008 Campaign Manager David Plouffe came in to take up a position as a senior advisor in the West Wing. This was the backdrop against which I prepared my own exit. 3 introduction | My Story I got the call that changed my life on the day after Christmas 2006. My wife and I were shopping at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in San Luis Obispo, California, enjoying our outing with the extended family we were visiting at the time. The call was unexpected. I had no contacts at...