The Battle for America 2008
Page 52
Vilsack, Christie
Vilsack, Tom
Virginia
Voles, Lorraine
voters:
attitudes of
Clinton as viewed by
female
McCain as viewed by
Obama as viewed by
older
Palin as viewed by
rating of, in campaigns
registration and turnout of
white working-class
young
see also African-American voters; Democratic voters; Independent voters; Republican voters
Voting Rights Act
Walker, Robert S.
Wallace, Chris
Wallace, George
Wallace, Nicolle
Wall Street Journal
Warner, Mark
Warren, Rick
Washington
Washington, Booker T.
Washington, George
Washington Post
Weather Underground
Weaver, John
Weber, Vin
Weekly Standard
Weingarten, Gene
Wellesley College
Wendt, Greg
Wesley, John
West
West Point
West Virginia
Whitaker, Eric
White, Bob
White, Davis
White, Theodore H.
Whitman, Meg
Whouley, Michael
Wicker, Bob
Wilentz, Sean
Williams, Brian
Williams, Maggie
Winfrey, Oprah
Winterhof, JoDee
Wisconsin
WMUR
Wolfowitz, Paul
Wolfson, Howard
women:
African-American
gender barrier and
in New Hampshire electorate
role in society
voters
Wonder, Stevie
Woodstock Concert Museum
World Bank
Wright, Jeremiah, Jr.
Wurzelbacher, Samuel Joseph (Joe the Plumber)
YearlyKos convention
Yeilding, Tom
Yepsen, David
Young, Don
YouTube
Zarqawi, Abu Musab al-
Zeleny, Jeff
Zoellick, Robert G.
Zwick, Spencer
About the Authors
Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson for many years were colleagues on the Washington Post, Balz as national political correspondent, Johnson as a national correspondent, columnist, and assistant managing editor before assuming the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of Maryland. For decades they have chronicled presidential elections. Balz, a native of Freeport, Illinois, received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Illinois and also served three years in the U.S. Army. On the Post, he has been the paper’s national editor, political editor, White House correspondent, and Southwest bureau chief based in Austin, Texas, before becoming chief political writer. He has won the American Political Association’s Carey McWilliams award for his coverage of politics and shared the Gerald R. Ford Award for coverage of the presidency. He is the co-author, with Ronald Brownstein, of Storming the Gates: Protest, Politics and the Republican Revival. Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize winner for his coverage of the civil rights crisis in Selma, Alabama, is the author of fourteen books, five of them national best sellers. Johnson, a native of New York, the son of Pulitzer Prize winner Malcolm Johnson, whose articles “Crime on the Waterfront” became the basis for the film On the Waterfront, served three years in the Army during the Korean War, then earned a master’s degree in American history from the University of Wisconsin. He has covered events at home and abroad and the activities of every president since Eisenhower. In addition to the Knight Chair at Maryland, he has held academic appointments at Princ eton, Berkeley, Duke, the University of Pennsylvania, George Washington University, and the Brookings Institution. For years, both authors have appeared regularly on national television programs.
1
Co-author Dan Balz, who covered Bush’s gubernatorial and presidential campaigns for the Washington Post, conducted this interview on the plane as part of a Post political team series on the aftermath of the 2000 election, later published as Deadlock: The Inside Story of America’s Closest Election.
2
By contrast, Truman, Nixon, Carter, and G. H. W. Bush all had sunk to approval rates in the 20s before leaving office, while Johnson’s rating at the end of his presidency was at 49 percent, Ford’s at 53 percent, and Eisenhower and Reagan recorded 59 percent and 64 percent, respectively.
3
Two others sought the Democratic nomination: Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska senator Mike Gravel. As the most liberal candidates in the race, neither had a significant impact on the outcome.
4
Long after he won the nomination, Obama recalled that moment: “I was never comfortable about being coy about my intentions,” he told us. “When I had been on his show after getting elected [to the Senate], I was absolutely convinced that I would not be running. I was telling the truth then. By the time I was on that show in the fall of ’06, I was thinking about it. And for me to say no—particularly given that two months later I might have already announced—I didn’t think it made too much sense.”
5
In a curious coincidence, both Obama’s father and John McCain’s, an admiral, were alcoholics.
6
McCain’s wife, Cindy, had brought back to the United States a three-month-old abandoned girl from a Bangladeshi orphanage run by Mother Teresa. They adopted her and named her Bridget.
7
One census statistic underscores the extraordinary nature of American mobility: In that 300 million population, 237 million cars were registered, with 198.1 million people licensed to drive them over the networks of highways and interstate freeways binding together the nation.
8
John Edwards voted for the war in 2002 but soon after the 2004 campaign recanted in a Washington Post op-ed. “I was wrong,” he said of his vote.
9
The YearlyKos audience, reflecting the views of the progressive blogosphere, was hostile to Clinton. As the candidates took their debate places, Edwards said a man in the front row opened a placard reading, “Stop Lying, Hillary.” Edwards recalled, “He held that thing up the entire debate, never put it down.”
10
During the summer of 2008, after the Enquirer published additional details and long after he had quit the race, Edwards confessed to the affair but denied that he was the father of the infant born to the woman.
11
Douglass’s actual words were: “If there is no struggle there is no progress…. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
12
Solis Doyle later joined Obama’s team for the general election.
13
Tim Russert died of a heart attack on June 13, 2008.
14
Talk that Obama could not win white working-class voters prompted John Edwards to endorse Obama. He called Obama the night of West Virginia to give him the news. Obama wanted to do it immediately. Edwards asked for time to put his thoughts together. He said Obama offered to get him talking points. The endorsement went ahead the next day. Edwards tried to call Hillary. She later told Elizabeth Edwards she was so upset she couldn’t bring herself to call him back.
15
Part of the confusion stemmed from the way caucus states reported results. Four states with caucuses did not release official popular vote totals. Real Clear Politics made estimates of the popular vote in those states, but also calculated that if those four states were not included, Obama’s lead would have been a mere 41,662, or one-tenth of one percent. If the results from Michigan’s disputed primary—where Obama’s name was not on the ballot but Clinton’s was—we
re included, Clinton had a margin of 176,465 over Obama, according to Real Clear Politics estimates.
16
They were former governors Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, James Gilmore of Virginia, Senators John McCain and Sam Brownback, former senator Fred Thompson, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Representatives Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul, and Tom Tancredo. A twelfth, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, had not formally ruled out running at that time.
17
Shays narrowly won reelection in 2006 but was defeated in 2008.
18
The interview was conducted by co-author Dan Balz and Shailagh Murray of the Washington Post.
19
Thompson’s campaign team was angrily denying a report that he was about to drop out of the race and endorse McCain.
20
Culvahouse’s team found one potentially serious problem with a Lieberman pick for vice president. Laws in some states prohibited a candidate from running for office from one party or another unless they had been registered with that party for a specified period of time. No one really wanted another Bush v. Gore to sully the 2008 election.
21
These questions, asked of the final contenders, included whether she was prepared to use nuclear weapons to defend the United States and whether, if told that Osama bin Laden had been located, she would authorize taking him out even though that would result in civilian casualties.
22
The Washington Post’s Michael D. Shear had two confirmations early that morning, but reporters and editors were still skeptical that Palin was the choice and delayed posting the news on the Web.
23
Obama also ordered the campaign not to air a new commercial timed for McCain’s seventy-second birthday that day, believing it was a cheap shot about his age.
24
Obama’s campaign also took note of Hurricane Gustav and decided to encourage those on their extensive e-mail list to contribute to the Red Cross. Jim Messina contacted the Red Cross and asked if they could handle a potential crush of online donations. The Red Cross representative assured him they had plenty of capacity and not to worry. “We crashed their Web site in twenty-three minutes after we sent the e-mail to our people,” Messina told us later. “Our people just went out and shut down the Red Cross Web site.”
25
This was not the end of AIG’s problems. In a confidential draft for government officials on February 26, 2009, it asked for more help from the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve to prevent “potentially catastrophic unforeseen consequences,” warning that without more funds an AIG failure would cause a “chain reaction of enormous proportions.” Days later, AIG got $30 billion more in bailout funds. At the same time it posted the largest loss in U.S. corporate history, $61.7 billion. Not long after, the revelation that AIG used public bailout money to pay bonuses to top employees ignited a national firestorm of outrage. Bonuses totaling $33.6 million were paid to 418 employees, including fifty-two who had left the firm. Bonuses of more than $1 million each went to seventy-three people, nearly all in the unit responsible for AIG’s near collapse.
26
A month after the election, in a December 3 “exit interview,” Bush told ABC’s Charles Gibson that hearing Bernanke and Paulson say “we could be in a depression greater than the Great Depression” was an ‘uh-oh moment.’” Two weeks later, on December 18th, in a speech before the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., he recalled having “quipped” while at his Texas ranch that “Wall Street got drunk and we got a hangover.”
27
The Senate ethics committee cleared McCain of any wrongdoing but criticized him for poor judgment for meeting with federal regulators at Keating’s behest.
28
At 7:35 the next evening Obama retook his oath of office from Roberts in the White House Map Room. After the chief justice asked Obama whether he was ready, the new president replied, “I am, and we’re going to do it very slowly.”
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
TAKEOFF
Waiting
The Warrior
The Uniter
At the Gate
BOOK ONE - THEY’RE OFF
CHAPTER ONE - Obama
CHAPTER TWO - Johnnie Boy
CHAPTER THREE - Hillary
BOOK TWO - THE PEOPLE
CHAPTER FOUR - “Very Scary Times”
BOOK THREE - THE DEMOCRATS
CHAPTER FIVE - Hillary for President
CHAPTER SIX - The Unraveling
CHAPTER SEVEN - Iowa: Round One
CHAPTER EIGHT - Iowa: Round Two
CHAPTER NINE - Five Days in New Hampshire
CHAPTER TEN - Disintegration
CHAPTER ELEVEN - An Uncivil War
CHAPTER TWELVE - Clash of Dynasties
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - King Caucus
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - The Fighter
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Politics in Black and White
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Over the Top
BOOK FOUR - THE REPUBLICANS
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Looking for Reagan
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Prisoner of War
CHAPTER NINETEEN - The Implosion
CHAPTER TWENTY - No Surrender
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - Can Anybody Play This Game?
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - Phoenix Rising
BOOK FIVE - THE ELECTION
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - America: Decision Time
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - Citizen of the World
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - Mile High in Denver
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - Palinmania
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - Collapse
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - Endgame
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - President-elect
CHAPTER THIRTY - Interlude
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgements
Notes and Sources
Index
About the Authors