Excerpts have been released from David Plouffe's book, The Audacity To Win: The Inside Story And Lessons Of Barack Obama's Historic Win.
Here's a taste of the book that I cannot wait to get my hands on.
I'll set the stage:
It's the middle of March, 2008.
The Rev. Wright story has just broken. All the media has one thing in mind and that is, "what does Obama have to say about Rev. Wright?"
Lars Thorwald's diary gives you the facts on the ground at Daily Kos.
Please know, there are scores of diaries that were written here, this one happened to be one of the first and was very concise.
Correct or incorrect, this sentiment threatens to spread like brushfire across the blogosphere, and, more importantly, across the watercooler and kitchen table discussions that will be had for the next six weeks and beyond.
Take the Geraldine Ferraro controversy and think about what putting her comments out there was intended to do: to raise questions about Barack Obama by highlighting his race. To paint him as the "black candidate."
Now multiply it by 1000. This doesn't paint Barack Obama as just a black candidate. It paints him as a militant black condidate, even if only by association.
Hmmm, is all that raw emotion coming back to you now?
http://www.time.com/...
Okay, let's address the Rev. Wright issue...on to the book....
There was one not-so-minor complication. He was already scheduled to do editorial boards that Friday afternoon with both Chicago papers about [real estate developer and political fundraiser] Tony Rezko, two hours each, no holds barred. Given no choice but to address Wright as soon as possible, we decided we would do a round of TV interviews on him directly after the Rezko boards. It shaped into quite a day, like having your legs amputated in the morning and your arms at night. The question was whether we would still have a heartbeat at the end of the day.
It was chaos and, quite frankly, frightening. I felt as if the wheels could easily spin off our whole venture. Still, Obama was the pillar of reassurance. "Don't worry, guys," he told us while making some notes on a stack of pages. "I can do more than one thing at a time. We are taking the trash out today. It won't be fun, but we'll be stronger for it."
Obama handled everything with brilliance. The editorial boards, though grueling, went well. Obama called me after 11 that night, while my wife and son were sleeping. "So we survived. But it feels really unsatisfying — to me and I'm sure to voters ... I think I need to give a speech on race and how Wright fits into that. Whether people will accept it or not, I don't know. But I don't think we can move forward until I try."
The day is Friday. They had a full schedule in Pennsylvania, they could not cancel anything or it would look like they had a campaign in panic mode. When will there be time to write this speech?
"No, we can't cancel anything," Obama interjected. "But I already know what I want to say in this speech. I've been thinking about it for almost 30 years. I'll call [lead campaign speechwriter Jon Favreau] in the morning and give him some initial guidance. And I'll work on this during downtime in the hotel room each night. Don't worry. Even if I have to pull all-nighters, I can make this work." We were flying by the seat of our pants. Somehow we had to keep faith that it would come together.
So, once again we see the strength of Barack Obama. Unflappable to a fault. But of course, all of us knew that already.
David Plouffe will be on Meet The Press on Sunday.
update:
"Meet the Press" exclusive: "President Obama's 2008 presidential campaign manager, David Plouffe, joins us for his first interview since writing his new book, ‘The Audacity to Win.’ We'll get an in-depth look at what went on behind-the-scenes of that historic campaign and how Plouffe led President Obama's team to the White House."