• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
 
 
MSNBC.com
Todd, Gawiser: ‘How Barack Obama Won’
Chuck Todd, Sheldon Gawiser analyze the election in their new book
updated 11:36 a.m. ET, Sat., Jan. 17, 2009
In their new book, NBC News political director Chuck Todd and NBC News elections director Sheldon Gawiser  provide a state-by-state guide to how Obama achieved his victory, as well as a toolbox for understanding the political implications of the 2008 presidential election. Here is an excerpt:
INTRODUCTIONOnce in a Generation?
 So how does one sum up the 2008 presidential campaign in just 12,000 words? Who is arrogantenough to think he or she can capture precisely the historical nature of this campaign and election, at atime when the nation seems vulnerable on so many fronts?It’s possible a historian 50 years from now might be able truly to understand what happened and whythe country was ready to break through the color barrier, particularly if said historian looks at the 2008election through the prism of post–Cold War America.Since 1992, the country has witnessed nearly two decades of political tumult of a kind it hasexperienced only once or twice a century. Right now, the country is so enamored with the fact thatwe’ve broken the political color barrier of the American presidency that we haven’t stepped back andappreciated just what a wild political ride our country has been on.Since the Cold War ended and America lost its most significant enemy, the Soviet Union, the country hasbeen looking for its political center. Consider the upheaval we’ve experienced as a nation since 1992.First, we had a three-way presidential election in which the third-party candidate was the front-runnerfor a good part of the campaign. Then, in 1994, we saw the House of Representatives switch control forthe first time in 40 years. Next, in 1996, the winning presidential candidate failed to secure 50% of thevote for the second straight election, something that hadn’t happened before in two straightpresidential elections in 80 years. Then, in 1998, the nation watched as a tabloid presidential soapopera became a Constitutional crisis, and Congress impeached a president for only the second time inthis nation’s history. In 2000, the nation’s civics lesson on the Constitution continued, thanks to the firstpresidential election in over 100 years in which the winner of the Electoral College failed to win thepopular vote, followed by the Supreme Court ruling, which eventually ended the protracted vote countcontroversy in Florida. In 2001, this nation was the victim of the worst terrorist attack in our history.Then, in 2004, a president won reelection by the smallest margin of any successfully reelected presidentin modern times. Finally, in 2006, control of Congress flipped after what, historically, was a fairly shortstint for the Republicans. All of which brings us to 2008 and what for many Americans is the campaigncommonly referred to as “the election of our lifetimes.” Is this the election that ends a 20-year period of political chaos? The serious problems this country isfacing may be the reason that 2008 puts the exclamation point on the country’s post–Cold War searchfor its political center.
Nine Years in the Making
The 2008 election got started early, before the first candidate, Tom Vilsack, officially announced inNovember 2006. The campaign began in 1999, when word first leaked that then first lady Hillary Clintonwas seriously contemplating a run for U.S. senator from New York. Her election in 2000 set off theanticipation for what would be a historic first: the potential election of this country’s first womanpresident.There was some scuttlebutt that Clinton would run for president in 2004, but ultimately she decided tokeep her eye on the 2008 ball. That was when she’d be into her second term as senator and when thefield would be cleared of an incumbent president. This country rarely fires presidents after one term. It’shappened just three times in the last 100 years.The long march of the Hillary Clinton candidacy shaped much of the presidential fields for both parties.
1/18/2009Todd, Gawiser: ‘How Barack Obama W…www.msnbc.msn.com/id/…/1098/1/22
 
The Republicans who announced in 2008 all made their cases within the framework of challengingHillary. In fact, it was Hillary’s presence on the Democratic side that gave Rudy Giuliani the opportunityto be taken seriously by Republicans as a 2008 presidential candidate. As for the Democrats, considerthat many an analyst and media critic like to talk about how wrong so-called conventional wisdom wasduring the 2008 campaign. But much of it was right. One early piece of such wisdom was that theDemocratic primary campaign would be a primary within the primary between all the Democrats notnamed Clinton to establish an alternative to Hillary.This sub-Democratic primary, which started in earnest after the 2004 presidential election, looked as if itwas going to be a campaign between a lot of white guys and Washington insiders looking for their lastchance at the brass ring. Familiar faces like Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, and Bill Richardsonmust have thought to themselves,
If I could only get into a one-on-one with Hillary, I could beat her.
Somenew names were also seriously considering a run, like Virginia Governor Mark Warner and IowaGovernor Tom Vilsack. None of these potential candidates scared the Clinton camp, because they allwere just conventional enough that Hillary’s ability to put together a base of women and African-Americans would be sufficient to achieve the Democratic nomination.But there was one potential candidate whose name was being talked about by activists and theblogosphere who did have the Clinton crowd nervous: the freshman senator from Illinois, BarackObama. The factor that kept the Clintons confident about their 2008 chances was the notion that therewas just no way, despite his popularity with the Democratic activist base, that a guy who, until 2004,was in the Illinois state senate would somehow have the audacity to run for president so soon. TheClintons were very familiar with the strategy of figuring out the timing of when best to run. They knew1988 was too soon for Bill, and they took the advice of many and waited until 1992, and they knew that2004 was too soon for Hillary, and she took the advice of many and waited. Surely, the Clintons musthave thought, Obama would follow the same advice.
The most remarkable primary campaign no one seemed to care about
While the Democrats were positioning themselves, the Republicans were in the midst of their ownturmoil. This turned out to be a hard-fought primary that few cared about, as the country becameobsessed with the most amazing Democratic primary campaign in a generation.The Republican nomination was seen as completely wide open, mostly because the outgoing incumbentRepublican president had not identified an heir apparent. President Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney,had lost his presidential ambition long ago, and the only other potential Bush heir, his brother Jeb,decided that trying to immediately succeed his brother was probably not the wisest move.But Republicans love order, or so their presidential nomination contests in the past have indicated.What does order mean for the GOP? If there’s no incumbent president or sitting vice president in thefield, then the runner-up from the last contested nominating fight would be deemed the de facto front-runner. In this case it was John McCain since he was the runner-up to George W. Bush in the 2000primary. Of course, McCain ended up with the nomination, but to this day, it’s a miracle that he was ableto win it.McCain initially portrayed himself as the inevitable nominee, creating a behemoth campaignorganization, participating in endorsement buy-offs with his deep-pocketed competitor, Mitt Romney,and trying to enhance his image as a maverick while making nice with various conservatives, includingthe late Jerry Falwell and evangelist Pat Robertson.Still, many activists were searching for an alternative to McCain. As a result, McCain struggled mightily toraise money in the first six months of his campaign. His fund-raising was further hampered when hebecame the highest profile Republican other than George W. Bush to push for comprehensiveimmigration reform. This legislation, cosponsored by conservative bogeyman Massachusetts SenatorTed Kennedy, fired up the conservative talk radio base and McCain got scorched, drying up his fund-raising and putting him on the brink of having to end his campaign before Labor Day 2007.But instead of dropping out, McCain essentially filed for Chapter 11 and did a massive reorganization.He drastically reduced his staff to a small band of campaign operatives determined to win thenomination one early primary state at a time. There was one great illustrative moment in the summer of 2007 of this new campaign, postreorganization, when McCain carried his own bags in an airport whiletraveling alone to a campaign event in New Hampshire.During McCain’s apparent demise, there was a massive effort by the other Republicans to fill the
1/18/2009Todd, Gawiser: ‘How Barack Obama W…www.msnbc.msn.com/id/…/1098/2/22
 
vacuum. Mitt Romney was vying to be the conservative alternative to McCain early on, which meant hehad to tack back on a number of positions he took when he ran for office in liberal Massachusetts. Buteven with McCain apparently out of the mix, Romney decided not to fill the center but still aimed tobecome the front-runner by appeasing conservatives. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani wasalso in the race but was running on a different plane. He was certainly taken seriously by his opponentsbecause he raised decent money, and his name identification as the mayor of New York on 9/11 meanthe led in just about every national poll during the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. But there was alwayssomething about his candidacy that seemed like a house of cards. It really wasn’t a matter of if hiscandidacy would collapse, but when. The collapse began in December 2007, when the New York tabloidpress just unloaded, well, everything from Giuliani’s past, from his secretive courtship of his third wife tohis relationship with his now disgraced former police chief, Bernard Kerik. Giuliani’s personal problemsturned out to be as debilitating as many analysts had predicted. Adding to this politics of self-destruction, Giuliani’s team had crafted a nonsensical campaign strategy that banked on Giulianiskipping Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Michigan, while focusing solely on the Floridaprimary to launch his candidacy. Giuliani joins a long list of presidential wannabes who have attemptedand failed to get the nomination by bypassing both Iowa and New Hampshire. While every campaignrule of presidential politics is bound to be broken, this one has yet to be, at least since 1976 whenJimmy Carter used a win in Iowa to catapult himself to the Democratic nomination.There were two other major players in the Republican contest: on-again, off-again actor and formerSenator Fred Thompson and former Baptist preacher and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.Thompson’s rise ended on the day he actually announced his candidacy. The idea of a Thompsoncandidacy began to develop in the conservative blogosphere and Washington salons in the spring of 2007, and when McCain’s campaign nearly collapsed, the idea quickly gathered speed. Essentially, hewas one of the best noncandidates in the history of presidential politics. But then he got in the race andhis prospects began to deteriorate. The minute he announced, he became ordinary and quickly earneda reputation as being lazy and unenergetic. He just seemed to wing it, hoping the lack of interest in therest of the GOP field would consolidate support for his candidacy.If Thompson had a polar opposite when it came to hunger for the nomination, it was Huckabee. Nevermeeting a TV camera he didn’t like, Huckabee quickly became a media darling of the primary campaign.With each passing Republican debate, it was Huckabee who seemed to be creating immeasurable buzz.While he had little campaign cash, he had a devoted support network, comprised of many socialconservatives, including home schooling advocates, who tirelessly put together a very impressive Iowafield organization.As Thompson was fizzling and Giuliani was campaigning in his own world down in Florida, McCain washunkering down in New Hampshire, trying to recapture the 2000 magic. The buzz for McCain was notnearly as intense in the fall of 2007 as it was in the fall of 1999, when he came from behind, nearlytoppling George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential primaries. But there was something about McCain’s2008 candidacy that seemed salvageable.McCain, of course, was helped by the basic fact that none of his other opponents seemed to catch fire.Romney was mired in a fight with Huckabee for the hearts and minds of Iowa conservatives. AndThompson and Giuliani were in free fall. This meant McCain had his opening. The formula was simple: if Huckabee could upset Romney in Iowa, McCain had a good shot to beat Romney in NewHampshire. Thiswould provide McCain a shot of momentum that could carry him through Michigan, South Carolina, andFlorida and bring the nomination fight to a close before Super Tuesday.As it turns out, the nomination fight would end before Super Tuesday, which in 2008 was on February 5.Super Tuesday appeared to be an obvious end date for both primary contests because so many states,more than 20, had decided to move their primary or caucus up to that day.McCain got what he needed in Iowa as Huckabee upset Romney by a considerable margin, leaving theMassachusetts Republican in poor shape. With New Hampshire coming just five days after Iowa, it wasnearly impossible for Romney to turn things around in time. Sure enough, McCain prevailed and got themedia spark he was hoping for. In fact, nothing benefited McCain more than his still strong relationshipwith the national press corps, who seemed eager to write the McCain comeback story out of NewHampshire. When McCain won, the press fell in love with him again for a brief period, just long enoughfor him to sweep the nomination.
1/18/2009Todd, Gawiser: ‘How Barack Obama W…www.msnbc.msn.com/id/…/1098/3/22
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...