The Battle for America 2008

by Haynes Johnson

  On Monday, Hillary Clinton was at Café Espresso in Portsmouth. Her New Hampshire press secretary, Kathleen Strand, was in the back, distracted, when a reporter tapped her on the shoulder. I think your candidate just made national news, the reporter said. Strand saw cameras flashing and a commotion. Hillary had just started to cry, someone else told her. Strand’s first thought was that after tangling with her opponents in Saturday’s debate, Clinton was now in tears. “Dear God!” Strand thought, then immediately got in touch with Clemons and the New Hampshire headquarters. “I think we have a problem,” she reported.

  Strand’s instincts were wrong; not having seen the moment, she could not understand its impact. What they really had was an opportunity, a break in Clinton’s steely exterior that let a glimmer of her humanity peek through for all of New Hampshire, and the world, to see. She was seated at a table with a group of sixteen voters, mostly women, taking questions, when suddenly she lost her composure. A freelance photographer wondered how she managed to handle all the pressures of a fierce campaign and keep going in the face of defeat, then asked, “How do you do it?”

  Clinton tried to sound lighthearted about challenges but was quickly overcome with emotion. “It’s not easy, and I couldn’t do it if I didn’t just passionately believe it was the right thing to do,” she said. She paused and leaned her chin on her left hand. “You know, I have so many opportunities from this country. I just don’t want to see us fall backwards.” At that point her voice began to waver and her eyes grew moist. The audience applauded. She seemed to recover, switched her microphone to her other hand, and started in again. “You know, this is very personal for me. It’s not just political. It’s not just public. I see what’s happening.” Then her voice began to crack again. “And we have to reverse it. And some people think elections are a game. They think it’s about who’s up or who’s down.” By now she was regaining her composure and the determined politician side of her took over: “Some of us put ourselves out there and do this against some pretty difficult odds. And we do it, each one of us, because we care about our country. But some of us are right and some of us are wrong. Some of us are ready and some of us are not. Some of us know what we will do on day one and some of us haven’t really thought that through enough. . . . This is one of the most important elections America’s ever faced. So as tired as I am—and I am—and as difficult as it is to kind of keep up what I try to do on the road, like occasionally exercise and try to eat right. It’s tough when the easiest food is pizza. I just believe so strongly in who we are as a nation. So I’m going to do everything I can to make my case, and then the voters get to decide.”

  The entire incident lasted just two minutes, but it dominated the news of the last full day of the primary campaign. It was all anyone was talking about on cable TV; the clip of her “breakdown,” or “crying,” was played over and over. A hot debate ensued. Was this episode genuine or concocted, a true flash of emotion by a vulnerable candidate with her back to the wall or a calculated Clinton moment designed to curry sympathy with voters who saw her as cold and aloof? Throughout New Hampshire—throughout the country!—the word spread instantly that something big had happened in Portsmouth.

  Obama was on his bus when someone got an e-mail alerting his campaign. By then a clip was already online. There was some chortling on the bus by staffers who made fun of Clinton. Then Obama spoke up. “He said, ‘You know, guys, this isn’t easy,’” Axelrod recalled. “ ‘She’s out there busting her ass and I know what it’s like, so ease up a little.’”

  When asked that afternoon, Edwards claimed he hadn’t seen it, but he seemed to belittle Clinton. “Presidential campaigns are a tough business, but being president of the United States is also a very tough business,” he said. When Obama’s team heard about Edwards’s comment, they winced. After what had happened at the debate, they feared it would look like more piling on—and they believed that when Clinton was portrayed as a victim, she would benefit.

  Back at Clinton’s headquarters, Chuck Campion was parked in Clemons’s office. Campion had run New Hampshire for Walter Mondale in 1984 and knew how quickly fortunes can change there. He had come in to lend a hand to Clemons for the final days. When Strand’s call came in, he spent most of the rest of the day monitoring the coverage, watching the TV clip and the reaction to it. Hours later, Clemons came back into his office and saw Campion finally turning off the television. “I think this is going to be good for us,” Campion said.

  Obama closed out his New Hampshire campaign the way he began it, with a display of energy, jubilation, and powerful rhetoric. The scene that awaited him at Concord High School had become almost commonplace during the primary’s final days: long lines of people waiting expectantly for the doors to the gymnasium to open, traffic lining side streets, cars parked illegally. When the doors opened around 10 p.m., his supporters did not just stream into the gymnasium, they hopped and danced and chanted, exchanging high-fives and hugs and kisses, swept along by the pounding music on the public address system and a dizzying sense of anticipation.

  Obama did not arrive until after 11 p.m., just in time to make the late newscasts, his voice by now hoarse. Still, he spoke for forty minutes, interrupted constantly by applause and cheers and the beating of drums and chants of O-Bam-A! O-Bam-A! Near midnight, he introduced new language into his stump speech. “People are confused about why we are generating this energy,” he said, “And it has exactly to do with this, the notion that somehow we have been locked in these constraints. People telling us what we cannot do. . . . There is a moment in the life of every generation, if it’s to make its mark on history, when that spirit has to shine through, spirit that says we are casting aside our fears and our doubts and our cynicism . . . when we embrace the difficult, daunting task of remaking a nation.”

  By then, within Obama’s campaign there was no doubt about Tuesday’s outcome, nor within Clinton’s or among the hundreds of reporters trailing the two candidates. Everyone was preparing the stories for the next night and the day after, shrewd analyses of how Clinton had lost, where it had gone wrong, how Obama had demolished the Clinton machine, and whether she was truly finished. When Obama’s rally ended, with the Brooks & Dunn anthem “Only in America” playing in the background, reporters crowded around Axelrod, seeking a snippet to add to the string they were gathering for their final Clinton campaign obituaries. “If you win big tomorrow, do you think that will secure you the nomination?” one reporter asked. Cautiously, Axelrod responded, “I expect that we’re going to be contesting this for some weeks to come and we’re prepared to do that. . . . We’re ready to deal with whatever comes.” What’s a measure of success tomorrow? another reporter asked. “Winning is a success.” Did he see any likelihood that an Obama win would force Clinton out of the race? “No,” he replied. “I think she’s a strong and formidable candidate. As I said, they’re the greatest political franchise of our generation. We’re settled in for a long contest.”

  Backstage, Obama had asked his pollster, Joel Benenson, how it looked. Benenson had stopped polling on Sunday night, but had no doubt about the trend lines. “I said, look, I think it’s tightened up,” he recalled. “I said I think if everything goes right you could win by ten or eleven but I said I still think we win by eight.” On the next morning’s conference call, others recall Benenson’s virtually guaranteeing victory.

  Obama had a light schedule on election day: a late start, a big rally at Dartmouth, quiet time until the returns came in, finally the victory speech that was already in good shape. It was a beautiful day, sunny and unseasonably warm, a welcome break after a harshly cold and snowy December in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Valerie Jarrett remembered the almost idyllic drive with Obama’s entourage back from Hanover after the rally. “I will never forget,” she said. “David Axelrod said we should enjoy this moment, because in every campaign there are ups and there are downs and there are downs in our future so let’s enjoy this victory in New Hampshire. . . . I
had no idea it would be so soon.”

  We once asked Ann Lewis, Hillary Clinton’s friend and adviser, to describe Clinton’s political philosophy. She pointed to the words of John Wesley: “Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can.” By that, Lewis sought to explain Clinton’s devotion to issues like health care, children’s well-being, and education. In New Hampshire that John Wesley credo defined her entire candidacy. She would wrest every opportunity out of every minute of every day until the polls had closed and she could no longer affect the outcome.

  Clinton was up before dawn on primary morning, carrying coffee to the polling places, chatting with poll workers, voters, volunteers, and supporters. She hit five precincts that morning. Her image on New Hampshire television screens throughout the day was of an embattled Hillary Clinton fighting hard for every vote. Bill Clinton called in from the precinct where he had been sent that morning. Cecil recalled his saying, “I’m telling you guys, something is happening. There are lots of people that come to this thing saying they were undecided.”

  Late in the afternoon, Hillary was resting at her hotel in Concord when her New Hampshire team got wind of preliminary exit polls showing Obama ahead by nine points. Linda Tocci, who was directing Clinton’s get-out-the-vote operations, barely blinked. We can cut that in half, she boasted. Let’s get back out there. Let’s put everybody we’ve got on the streets. That not only meant volunteers and paid staff, it also meant the candidate—if they could cajole her into one more appearance. They put in a call to Huma Abedin, Clinton’s personal aide, and begged her to urge Clinton to come to Manchester and stage an event aimed at getting coverage on WMUR’s early evening newscasts, which would blanket much of the state. How are you able to guarantee coverage? Abedin asked. The event would be held outside WMUR’s studios, she was told. Soon, Clinton and about fifty supporters were in front of the cameras with the message that the race was close, every vote counted, and that she still needed help to prevent Obama from winning.

  Exit polls showed a race far different from the one everyone had expected. Yellow lights flashed in every newsroom in America, putting on hold the long-planned stories of what a double loss would mean for Clinton’s candidacy—and for Obama’s. In the Clinton and Obama boiler rooms, the first returns painted a similarly surprising picture. Clinton won three wards in Portsmouth—far better news than they had anticipated. They knew they were looking at a close race now, although still likely a narrow loss.

  In Obama’s boiler room, state director Matt Rodriguez seemed to know with the first batch of real votes that the worst was coming. Precincts he had expected to win were going for Clinton. He told Leslie Miller, the New Hampshire communications director, “We’re going to lose.” Meanwhile, Clemons was sending Bill Clinton the raw data flowing into the boiler room and the former president was crunching the numbers himself at his hotel. He was upbeat. At one point when he called in, someone shoved a piece of paper in front of Clemons: “Lower his expectations,” it read. By 10 p.m., Bill Clinton was urging the New Hampshire team to declare victory. Still they hesitated. Finally, the Associated Press declared her the winner, and only then did her advisers accept the reality of what she had accomplished.

  At Obama’s hotel, long before the race had been called, Plouffe and Axelrod and Gibbs walked upstairs to Obama’s room. He came out into the hallway. They told him it looked as if he would fall a couple points short. According to one person there, Obama said, “You know, it was that crying thing, wasn’t it?” He added, “We were a little too cocky, weren’t we?” He leaned up against the wall and then, with a smile of resignation, “This is going to go on for a while, isn’t it?”

  Michelle Obama’s view, according to those present that night, was that this was a test not only for Barack and the campaign but also for his supporters. How solid are they, she asked rhetorically, because it’s not going to be easy.

  In the holding room before he went out to concede the election, Obama came up to Jarrett and put his hands on her shoulders. “Are you okay?” he asked. “If you’re okay, I’m okay,” she replied. “I take my cue from you.” “He said, ‘Would I have liked to have won? Yes,’” she recalled. “ ‘You know how competitive I am. But I’m fine.’”

  For all the calm he seemed to exude that night, Obama understood the blow he had just taken. His campaign had once hoped he could finish second in Iowa and ride that win to a victory in New Hampshire. The opposite had happened. He knew how much more precarious the road ahead now appeared, knew that having let Clinton come back, he faced an even more daunting test of character, resolve, and organization. “New Hampshire was a gut check,” he told us later. “In New Hampshire, all our momentum from Iowa had been broken and we’re looking at a bunch of contests, including February 5th, where suddenly Hillary’s national name recognition was very valuable. You know, we could have lost after New Hampshire.”

  He explained what happened. “What our pollsters told me was, every undecided woman swung to Hillary that last three days,” he said. “All of them. Which just doesn’t usually happen. I think the combination of her choking up, an inartful comment by me during the debate that wasn’t intended in any way the way it came out, but I understood it came out as sort of dismissive, John Edwards doing a weird thing and kind of ganging up on her, despite the fact that I had won [Iowa]. . . . And I just think the sense that, gosh, you know, we shouldn’t just hand it to this guy, and she’s really fighting for this thing and has paid her dues, I think all those things just converged for people to say to themselves, let’s keep this going a little bit.”

  The New Hampshire loss revealed characteristics in Obama that served him well through the long campaign—his facility to stay calm under pressure, his capacity for self-reflection, his willingness to take corrective action, his determination to keep his team focused. He described the campaign’s reaction to the New Hampshire loss as one of his proudest moments of the campaign. “I think I came out of that thing not pleased, but telling my staff and my supporters it probably shouldn’t be this easy for me to win, that we probably do need to earn this thing, because we’re going to have a tough time, should we get the nomination, against Republicans and we need to have one of these under our belts. First of all, to not want it to happen again, but to also understand that we’re going to have to earn this thing.”

  The day before the primary, when they were all anticipating victory, Obama had told speechwriter Favreau that one thing he wanted to get across in his victory speech was that he didn’t want it to seem that winning the nomination was going to be too easy. He did not want his campaign, or his followers, to get too cocky. After the primary results, that was no longer any problem. Now they needed to bolster their spirits.

  Favreau and Ben Rhodes, another Obama speechwriter, had little time to turn the victory speech into a concession, and in fact there were very few changes made in the original, save for the congratulations to Clinton.

  The speech became a rallying cry to dispirited followers and a show of determination in the face of a shattering defeat. “We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change,” Obama said. “We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks to come. We’ve been asked to pause for a reality check. We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds, when we’ve been told that we’re not ready, or that we shouldn’t try, or that we can’t, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people.”

  He finished with an uplifting note:

  “Yes, we can. . . . And so tomorrow, as we take this campaign
south and west; as we learn that the struggles of the textile worker in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas; that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A.; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation, and together we will begin the next great chapter in America’s story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea—Yes. We. Can.”

  The next day, at a private fund-raiser in Boston, Obama told donors his campaign had been “like Icarus flying too close to the sun.” One person in the room recalled him saying, “We’re trying to effect real change and real change doesn’t come this easily. We know that they’re going to fight back and they’re going to fight back hard and it’s going to be a long, hard struggle.” In a strange way, he said, it feels right that he didn’t win. He had put it more starkly the night before as he was talking with his advisers in the hotel. Matt Rodriguez said he would never forget the candidate’s words at that moment. “This reminds me of a Frederick Douglass line,” Obama said. “Power concedes nothing without a struggle.”11

  On primary night, there was a sense of crushing disappointment around Obama. Favreau sat in the holding room, his head down, as Obama called Clinton to congratulate her. Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts and a close friend of Obama’s, came over to Favreau. Patrick did not know the young speechwriter. “Keep your head up,” he told him. “We’re going to win this thing.” By the end of the night, spirits began to revive. After his concession speech, Obama went back to his hotel for a birthday celebration for his sister. Everyone sang “Happy Birthday” and talked about the road ahead. Plouffe organized a conference call for the entire staff, which became a defiant call to arms and a challenge to all of those who had spent a year in the trenches only to slam into a wall in New Hampshire. He closed the call with a memorable exhortation: “Now let’s go out and win this fucking thing!”