The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory

by David Plouffe

  At that first meeting we talked through every Democratic governor and senator, some House members, prominent mayors, business leaders, and some military leaders; we cast a wide net. Our initial list included about twenty people—a mix of state, local, and federal elected officials; some former elected officials; and a former military person or two.

  Hillary Clinton was on the list from the start. During the meeting, Obama filled our vetting team in on what Ax and I already knew from their conversation at Feinstein’s house. Clinton said she only wanted to endure the full, formal vetting process if it was a near certainty she would be picked. Because we had already researched her so thoroughly, this was not a big problem. We were light-years ahead in our vetting of her than of anyone else.

  What surprised me at this meeting was that Obama was clearly thinking more seriously about picking her than Ax or I had realized. He said if his central criterion measured who could be the best VP, she had to be included in that list. She was competent, could help in Congress, would have international bona fides, and had been through this before, albeit in a different role. He wanted to continue discussing her as we moved forward.

  The vetters had their marching orders. They needed their teams to start digging into this initial list-and fast. No one else in the campaign was involved in these discussions, for two reasons: First, we didn’t want people spending an inordinate amount of time on it in the early going. We had a general-election campaign to mount and wage, and were late to the ballgame. Second, we did not want to risk any loose lips, even in as tight a campaign as we had. The circle had to be tiny. Ax and I decided to refrain even from offering too many leading opinions. This was the most important, and personal, decision Obama would make. The choice needed to be his alone.

  We met again a couple of weeks later in mid-June, at Eric Holder’s office, and winnowed the list down to about ten names. Obama and I had been talking daily about this, so I had a sense of his general direction, and there was no dissent from the group.

  I came to realize during this process that perhaps he was even better suited to the presidency than to the campaign. Only two months remained before our convention, the drop-dead date for having a VP nominee, and rather than agonize about the quick pace and all our lost time, Obama was methodical, calm, and purposeful. Were he to win, I could envision this behavior and approach translating very well to the Oval Office, where steadiness and rigorous thought and questioning would serve him and the country well.

  Even still, the process offered its fair share of frustration. Innumerable times, he said to me, “Plouffe, did you find our magic bullet candidate yet? Can we get a Constitutional exception, and not pick anyone?” He joked, but he had a point. None of the potential nominees would make the election much easier, if at all. And we would have to incorporate a new person, team, and set of challenges into our operation in the last weeks of a hotly competitive presidential race.

  This dynamic of incorporating vice presidential nominees has received little analysis, but it’s a fairly big deal. Sure, the VP lets you cover more ground on the trail and can help on media and fund-raising. But it is an enormous burden to have a major player dropped suddenly into your campaign, often in need of a lot of remedial work, with no time for basic training. The bullets are flying and the nominee needs to take the battlefield right away. As we looked at it, a VP, any VP, could be as much headache as help.

  Our process went from the backroom to the front pages when our press staff sent word that the Wall Street Journal was about to break a story claiming that Jim Johnson had received what was called a “friends of Angelo” mortgage from Countrywide Financial, a firm he had previously regulated. “Angelo” refers to Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide’s CEO. This news produced an immediate Grade-A shitstorm.

  We had not vetted Johnson extensively, any more than we had vetted other people playing advisory roles throughout the campaign. Because he was a volunteer, and never officially hired by the campaign, we failed to register that the importance of his role would naturally elicit intense scrutiny. Jim was a Washington insider for sure, one of the reasons we added Kennedy and Holder to the team, but it never occurred to us that his business dealings would be something we would have to own or that they could cause turbulence in the campaign.

  But own them we did. The issue quickly started blowing back at us. The day the story broke, we discussed on our nightly call with Obama whether we needed to ask Jim to step down; Barack wanted to think about it overnight. He almost never made rash decisions and didn’t want to start doing so now. Most political figures react and make decisions based on someone else’s timeline—the media’s or their opponents‘. Obama had the composure and fortitude to set his own clock. That day, the press had asked him about the Johnson controversy, and he said, “I didn’t hire a vetter to vet the vetter,” suggesting that the story was perhaps a tempest in a teapot.

  By morning, though, it was clear we could be consumed by the Johnson distraction. The press coverage had grown louder and more critical, and raised legitimate questions about our judgment in selecting someone to conduct such an important task without a thorough scrub of their connections. I told Barack we had to do something. He said that as much as he hated to give Johnson up to the mob, we needed to do it.

  I made the call to Jim, who handled it like a pro. For someone who had encountered little turbulence in a Washington career that spanned decades, it had to be painful, but he was gracious and understanding. Jim’s son also worked for our campaign and turned out to be one of our more talented field organizers. I was glad Jim could still have that connection to the campaign.

  At our next meeting, again in Holder’s nondescript conference room, we narrowed the list down to six. There were no huge surprises. Barack continued to be intrigued by Hillary. “I still think Hillary has a lot of what I am looking for in a VP,” he said to us. “Smarts, discipline, steadfastness. I think Bill may be too big a complication. If I picked her, my concern is that there would be more than two of us in the relationship.”

  Neither Ax nor I were fans of the Hillary option. We saw her obvious strengths, but we thought there were too many complications, both pre-election and post-election, should we be so fortunate as to win. Still, we were very careful not to object too forcefully. This needed to be his call.

  Kennedy and Holder also tread carefully, but they raised all the obvious questions we’d have to ask—and that the press would ask—if we got very serious about picking her. Her campaign donor records, Bill’s financial information, records from her legal life—these would need to be not just reviewed but most likely released publicly, given our focus on bringing added transparency to government. The vetting team also thought choosing her would look like a very political decision (which was somewhat irrelevant, as Obama was viewing her through the prism of capability in the office), and that many of our supporters would be discouraged by the selection.

  We had initially received a lot of advice from many of her supporters to pick her, though this “advice” was perhaps more accurately described as subtle pressure. The constant drumbeat from her donors and political supporters said that the best way to achieve party unity and put forward the strongest ticket in November would be to pair the two primary combatants. Their fervor was abating a bit every day, though, helped by Hillary’s comments that this was Obama’s decision and that he should be left to make it.

  As the vetting continued, we began the difficult task of bringing together Obama and the finalists without revealing the meetings themselves or the identities of the contenders. At this point I brought Alyssa into the loop and gave her the names of the people we needed to meet. Alyssa, though only thirty, was a grizzled veteran of this type of cloak-and-dagger mission, having played a similar role in the Kerry ‘04 race, with Obama in the Senate. She is the type of person you want on your side in a tough environment—when I asked her to do something, I had no doubt that it would get done, thoroughly and discreetly, without too many extraneous qu
estions. I told her she was the only person outside of Ax and me who knew this list or even that the meetings would take place, so she would need to handle everything herself—making contact with the candidates, arranging the meetings, and bringing in a handful of staff only at the end to facilitate the meetings at the selected locations. Even most of our road show would not know these meetings were taking place, much less who was attending.

  The meetings all took place on the road, at hotels Barack happened to be in for the night. The “targets,” as we called the VP contenders, were flown in very early, squired to the hotel before Obama and the road show arrived, secreted in through back and basement entrances, bunkered in a room they could not leave, and then furtively evacuated after the meeting through an alternate exit so no press would see them on their way out. We never had a close call—the press made not a single solid inquiry about a meeting taking place on a certain day with a certain person.

  Before Obama was scheduled to leave for Hawaii in early August, he narrowed his list down to three names: Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, and Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia. Hillary did not make the last cut. At the end of the day, Obama decided that there were just too many complications outweighing the potential strengths. But I gave him a lot of credit for so seriously thinking about his fierce former rival. Some in the Clinton orbit thought we gave Hillary short shrift. My view is that any serious consideration was somewhat surprising given all the complications and the toxicity during the primary campaign.

  All three of the finalists had much to recommend them as well as their share of warning flares. Biden had loads of foreign policy experience, which could be helpful both in the campaign and, more important, in the vice presidency. He also had some blue-collar appeal as a middle-class kid from Scranton, Pennsylvania, which could be of some value as he campaigned in the fall. His personal story was compelling: Biden lost his wife and infant daughter in car crash at the age of twenty-nine, when he had just been elected to the Senate, and showed immense character both in pulling through that period and raising terrific children with his second wife, Jill. And legislators on both sides of the aisle thought highly of Biden, giving him the ability to potentially transact meaningful business in Congress as VP.

  On the cloudy side, Biden had been dogged by plagiarism charges when he ran for president in 1988; these would of course be rehashed. He was also known to test even the Senate’s standard for windiness, taking an hour to say something that required ten minutes. He also was prone to making gaffes; it was in his DNA and we couldn’t expect that to change. In fact, on Biden’s first day as a candidate in 2008, he caused an uproar by praising Obama as, among other things, “clean” and “articulate,” leaving the impression that other African Americans were not. Barack took no offense and thought none was intended. But it was clear that if we picked him, we would suffer a few self-inflicted wounds.

  Overall, though, we liked what we saw. During the Iowa campaign, we got to watch him fairly carefully, and through our many shared debates we thought he comported himself quite well. Based on his primary-debate performances, I thought he would hold his own in the one VP debate, which is the most critical campaign moment for VP nominees.

  Tim Kaine had been elected Virginia governor in 2005, having previously served as the mayor of Richmond and as the state’s lieutenant governor. He was the first major elected official outside of Illinois to endorse us, and he and Obama had a great rapport. The two men shared a background and many interests. Kaine’s family was from Kansas, as was Obama’s mother’s family, and Kaine’s Catholic faith had shaped the contours of his life, including his missionary work in Honduras. He and Obama also talked often about their shared belief in extreme pragmatism. Of the three finalists, Kaine would clearly present the best initial working relationship and would also allow us to double down on our message of change by enlisting an outsider.

  Kaine brought no foreign policy experience to the campaign trail or the VP’s office, and his relationships with Congress were tangential at best. We thought he presented perhaps the biggest initial downside but was also probably the candidate with the biggest growth potential, both before November 4 and after. And as a result of his early support and frequent campaigning for us, Barack was closer to him than he was to the others. Through e-mail and conference calls over the course of the campaign, Kaine had often shared his strategic and tactical thoughts, and they were usually dead-on, frequently unconventional, and focused on people, not pundits. He got who we were; his selection would have made for the most comfortable and seamless transition.

  Evan Bayh had been on this list before. He had almost run for president in 2008 but ended up campaigning hard for Hillary Clinton in the primaries, which was of little concern to us; it potentially presented a political boost. Bayh was known in the Senate as a cautious moderate, building on his years as a young governor in Indiana, where he led as a centrist and pragmatist. These qualities appealed to Obama, as did his steadiness. One of the raps on Bayh was that he was boring, but in an enterprise like ours, that was no scarlet letter. Both the Obama campaign and a potential Obama administration would welcome Bayh’s discipline.

  In our view, Bayh was the safest pick. He and Obama had not always voted the same way (which might cause some angst with our base), and he also remained hawkish on Iraq long after most Democrats who had supported the war morphed into critics. We would have to navigate this, but it also wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to demonstrate through our VP pick that Obama was truly committed to governing for results, not by rigid ideology. Dunn and Pfeiffer were both close to Bayh, having worked for him in the past, and confirmed that he could be trusted to stay on message and not make any big mistakes.

  Shortly before he took off for Hawaii and his much-needed vacation, Obama asked Axelrod and me to meet with the three finalists. He was going to spend a lot of time thinking about the choices and hoped to have a decision before he came back or soon thereafter; the convention was looming.

  I told Katie and Alyssa that Ax and I needed to meet quietly with these three and ideally we’d see them all in one day to cut down on time out of the office. They pieced together a schedule that had us departing Chicago at 5:30 a.m. for Wilmington, Delaware, to meet with Biden; then on to West Virginia, where Bayh was vacationing with his family; and then to Virginia to meet with Kaine.

  We boarded a small private plane before the sun was up and were met in Wilmington by Jill and Beau Biden, Joe’s oldest son and Delaware’s attorney general. They drove us to Biden’s sister’s place in a small, out-of-the-way area over the state line in Pennsylvania. We met outside, by the pool. Comically, the meeting started with Biden launching into a nearly twenty-minute soliloquy that ranged from the strength of our campaign in Iowa (“I literally wouldn’t have run if I knew the steamroller you guys would put together”); to his evolving views of Obama (“I wasn’t sure about him in the beginning of the campaign, but I am now”); why he didn’t want to be VP (“The last thing I should do is VP, after thirty-six years of being the top dog, it will be hard to be number two”); why he was a good choice (“But I would be a good soldier and could provide real value, domestically and internationally”); and everything else under the sun. Ax and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

  It confirmed what we suspected: this dog could not be taught new tricks. But the conversation also confirmed our positive assumptions: his firm grasp of issues, his blue-collar sensibilities, and the fact that while he would readily accept the VP slot if offered, he was not pining for it.

  He also said a couple of things that made an impact with us. First, we asked him how he would answer questions about differences in views or voting record with Obama. We used a bankruptcy bill, where, put simply, Biden had taken the position of the banks, and Obama, of the consumers. Delaware was the state with the largest number of financial corporations, so this was not a small matter in terms of how Biden would approach it.

  “I wo
uld say Barack was right about that,” he said simply. “I was wrong, and his position is the one I will be advocating for as his vice president.” It was a surprisingly concise and effective answer.

  He also talked at length about John McCain, with whom he was personally quite close; he had actually been present the day McCain met his second wife, Cindy. Biden’s insight into McCain—particularly his belief that McCain valued unpredictability above just about everything and that this could affect his decision making—would be useful if he were in the bunker with us.

  Biden was driving us back to the airport in his pickup, baseball hat pulled low. Suddenly, Ax startled us with a shout. “Shit!” he said. “I think I left my computer bag at your sister’s house.” I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit as we turned around to retrieve yet another misplaced possession of Ax’s. It was a quintessential Ax move: incisively assessing a potential vice president but having trouble remembering a bag. The phones, BlackBerrys, and other equipment he had lost in the years I had known him would fill the back of Biden’s pickup. Ax was like a brain surgeon but a little absentminded, so you needed to make sure he was on time for surgery and double-check that he knew where to drill the hole. Once inside, though, he was without peer with a scalpel.

  Our meeting with Bayh was also largely confirmatory. We met in his hotel room; his wife and kids were out. He had just showered after playing tennis with his kids and was dressed in a polo shirt and shorts. Despite the laid-back setting, Bayh never really relaxed. His answers to our questions were substantively close to perfect, if cautiously so. This of course is very common in politics, and we thought it would make for headache-free days on the trail—we knew he would hit his marks. Seeing Bayh right after Biden provided some interesting contrasts and comparisons.