NYT: Near-Flawless Run Is Credited in Victory

[babylonsister]

Near-Flawless Run Is Credited in Victory

By ADAM NAGOURNEY, JIM RUTENBERG and JEFF ZELENY
Published: November 5, 2008


It was the third week of September, and Senator John McCain was speaking to a nearly empty convention center in Jacksonville, Fla. Lehman Brothers had collapsed that day, a harrowing indicator of the coming financial crisis and a reminder that the presidential campaign was turning into a referendum on which candidate could best address the nation’s economic challenges.

A thousand miles away, at Senator Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters in Chicago, the aides who monitored Mr. McCain’s every utterance knew immediately that they had just heard a potential turning point in a race that seemed to be tightening. They rushed out to tell Dan Pfeiffer, Mr. Obama’s communications director, what Mr. McCain, the Republican candidate, had just said, knowing that his words could be used to portray him as out of touch.

“Shut up!” Mr. Pfeiffer said incredulously. “He said what?” Mr. Obama, who had just arrived at a rally in Colorado, hastily inserted the comments into his speech. And by nightfall, the Obama campaign had produced an advertisement that included video of Mr. McCain making the statement that would shadow him for the rest of the campaign.

At the McCain campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va., at almost the same moment that morning, Mr. McCain’s chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, looked stricken when his war room alerted him to the comment. Within 30 minutes, he was headed for a flight to Florida to join Mr. McCain as they began a frantic and ultimately unsuccessful effort to recover.

Mr. McCain’s inartful phrase about the economy that day, and the responses of the two campaigns, fundamentally altered the dynamic of the race. But the episode also highlighted a deeper difference: the McCain campaign team often seemed to make missteps and lurch from moment to moment in search of a consistent strategy and message, while the disciplined and nimble Obama team marched through a presidential contest of historic intensity learning to exploit opponents’ weaknesses and making remarkably few stumbles.

The story of Mr. Obama’s journey to the pinnacle of American politics is the story of a campaign that was, even in the view of many rivals, almost flawless. But Mr. Obama and his aides believed from the outset that it would have to be nothing less than that if he was to overcome obstacles that sometimes in the drama of the year became easy to forget: that this was a black man with an unusual name and exotic past, someone dogged by a stubborn (and inaccurate) belief among some voters that he is a Muslim, who began plotting his presidential run less than two years after moving from the Illinois Legislature to the United States Senate.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/us/politics/05recon.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[SmokingJacket]

1. If he runs the country 1/4 as well as he ran the campaign

We're in good shape.

[babylonsister]

2. Yes, he's been brilliant. I'm all kinds of happy today! nt

[DS1]

3. Hell, I'd donate to a "Send Plouffe to Tahiti for 6 months" fund

Everything about that campaign was excellent. Even down to their website's 404 page.

[JaneQPublic]

4. One mistake: thinking closed-door fundraisers were "private"

Both Obama and Biden got burned speaking to people they believed were loyal supporters, only to learn that someone in the crowd was recording the event for later release to the media. First, it was Obama's "bitter" remarks and then later it was Biden's "tested in the first 6 months" comments.

Let that be a lesson to all candidates: Always assume you're being recorded, photographed, etc.