Barack Obama, The Primaries

OBAMA FOR USA. It was Michelle Obama who kept questioning a run for the presidency. She worried about the disruption of their family life and about her husband's safety. Over a Christmas vacation in Hawaii in 2006, the couple visited his grandmother, Toot, and took long walks to talk about Barack's political future. Finally, a decision had to be made and the couple holed up in the office of Mr. Axelrod, a sad-eyed former newspaper reporter, with a few of Mr. Obama's lieutenants and trusted friends like Valerie Jarrett.

Michelle wanted assurances on a number of points. Were the Clintons really vulnerable? Would the money be there for a national contest that would drag on for 21 months? And then, after hearing the pros and cons from their six closest political advisers and trusted friends, she turned to her husband.

"You need to ask yourself, Why do you want to do this? What are you hoping to uniquely accomplish, Barack?"

Her husband sat quietly for a moment and then responded: "This I know: When I raise my hand and take that oath of office, I think the world will look at us differently. And millions of kids across this country will look at themselves differently."

The nucleus of the campaign was a group of Chicago political professionals, Axelrod and one of his younger partners, David Plouffe, who would manage the campaign. Neither man had ever worked on a winning presidential campaign. The core team also included those closest to the Obamas, like Michelle's brother, Craig, a nationally respected basketball coach.

The initial campaign plan aimed at dealing Hillary Rodham Clinton, the frontrunner, a devastating blow in the Iowa caucuses in early January. Positioning Clinton as a consummate Washington insider, the plan called for harnessing the newest technology to build grassroots enthusiasm, raise record sums of money and build an organization of volunteers across the state. The core theme, from which the campaign never wavered, was change.

An announcement was set for Feb. 10, 2007, a day so frigid that Obama was forced to wear an overcoat and scarf against the cold. He stood before the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., where Abraham Lincoln began his political career, and invoked Lincoln's famous words, "a house divided against itself cannot stand."

In Obama's words, it was the poisoned atmosphere in Washington, a government hobbled by cynicism, petty corruption and "a smallness of our politics," that now divided the nation. "The time for that politics is over," he said "It is through. It's time to turn the page. "

After an initial burst of interest and enthusiasm following the Springfield announcement, the campaign floundered. In October 2007, Obama told his aides, "Right now we are losing, and we have 90 days to turn it around."

Plouffe made good on his pledge to build a first-rate field organization on the ground and opened 37 offices in Iowa. The money came in. Using the Internet to draw in new donors, the campaign hauled in an impressive $24 million during the first quarter of 2007, just behind the Clinton money machine. Then, using his oratorical talents and story-telling ability to the hilt, Obama brought the house down at the annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Des Moines.

One striking anecdote from the speech quickly became a YouTube sensation. In it he recalled a lonely campaign rally in Greenwood, S.C., on a miserable day. Edith Childs, a single voice in the meager crowd, began shouting encouragement. "Fired up! Ready to go." Soon she had everyone else chanting, too.

Then, pacing back and forth as if marching to the chant, Obama, his voice raised to a spirited shout, asked the crowd, "Are you fired up? Are you ready to go? Fired up! Ready to go!"

The audience was electrified and some had tears in their eyes as Obama left the stage saying, "Let's go change the world."

Hillary Clinton said his liberal message was naïve, his Senate record too scant. He seemed cowed, especially when at one early debate he was waiting to shake her hand and say hello and she turned her back. But it turned out that Iowa Democrats were fired up and ready to go and Hillary had a disappointing third-place finish. It was on to New Hampshire.

Addressing voters in a Manchester theater the Sunday before the primary, Obama was unmistakably a candidate tasting victory. "In two days time," he intoned, they would be making history. Back-to-back wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, two overwhelmingly white states, would put to rest questions over whether a black candidate could be nominated. But a casual debate put-down, in which Obama muttered to Clinton that she was "likable enough," backfired. Clinton, meanwhile, was able to shed her icy frontrunner persona and even shed tears at a New Hampshire coffee shop, or came close enough. She seemed to find her voice as the heroine of the struggling working class and New Hampshire responded. Obama came in second.

"I guess this is going to go on for awhile," Obama said when aides delivered the disappointing results.

With North Carolina's John Edwards a perpetual also-ran, Obama and Clinton split states on Super Tuesday. Despite the millions it had raised, the Clinton campaign had not really planned to fight beyond that lollapalooza of primaries. Money was running out and there was internal squabbling among top staffers, problems that bedeviled the campaign through June. Axelrod and Plouffe, by contrast, had created a "Feb. 5 and Beyond Room," where money and organization were meticulously allotted to most of the primary and caucus states. Even as Clinton regained momentum in some big states, winning Ohio and Texas, Obama kept pulling out victories in red states and smaller caucus sates, building up a steady count in delegates. Money kept flowing in ever-larger streams from the Internet.

Obama and Clinton went out of their way to point out their foreign policy differences, with Clinton portraying herself as a hawkish Democrat and defending her decision to vote in favor of the 2002 resolution that President Bush later considered an authorization to use military force against Saddam Hussein. (Later, she said she fully expected Bush to use diplomacy first — and was shocked that he did not.)

On domestic issues, both candidates advocated turning the government onto roughly the same course — shifting resources to help low-income and middle-class Americans, and broadening health coverage dramatically. Clinton criticized Obama's health care plan for not covering all Americans, though her own plan had become less grandiose than the infamous Hillarycare maze of government-paid coverage she had proposed during her husband's first term. She now favored allowing citizens to choose their plans.

Many voters were impressed by Clinton's résumé and her depth of knowledge about America's biggest problems. But Obama built an exciting campaign around the theme of change. There were some missteps. Obama was caught by a blogger describing some white, working-class voters as "bitter. " And the Rev. Jeremiah Wright 's more outrageous sermons almost upended his candidacy (see below.)

But the numbers were the numbers. Although Clinton kept winning primaries to the end, Obama's early delegate lead proved insurmountable. It was a long slog, but going toe to toe with Clinton on so many battlegrounds actually toughened Obama and made him a better candidate. She had previewed all of the arguments the Republicans would launch: he was too eager to deal with rogue dictators; his stands on the issues offered too little substance; most of all, he lacked experience. But he had stood up to her and won.

On June 3, the final day of the long primary season, he secured the delegates necessary to be the presumptive nominee. Almost immediately, talk centered on whether he would choose Clinton as his running mate. She played coy. Although a Clinton restoration was no longer possible, the great Barack-Hillary soap opera would continue through Inauguration Day.