BELIEVER
My Forty Years in Politics
David Axelrod
Penguin Press;
509 pages; $35
Would Barack Obama have been elected President without David Axelrod?
That question is less far-fetched than it may seem. To be sure, Mr Obama is a man of prodigious talents - the most magnetic presidential candidate since Jack Kennedy, whip smart, fiercely competitive, burning with passion and ambition even as ice water runs through his veins. He was going places in a hurry long before he had political advisers.
Yet a strong case can be made it was the partnership he formed with Mr Axelrod and then with the campaign staff Mr Axelrod assembled that propelled him to the White House. Mr Axelrod is too self-effacing and loyal to take credit, but his new memoir, Believer: My Forty Years in Politics reinforces the view that leadership is becoming less about a single, heroic individual and increasingly about extraordinary teams.
After a decade-long acquaintance, Mr Obama and Mr Axelrod first joined forces in 2002 when Mr Obama began exploring a run for the United States Senate a couple of years later. At the time, Mr Axelrod was the more accomplished: Since learning the bare-knuckle ways of big-city politics writing for The Chicago Tribune, he had become the guru of Chicago political advisers, running - and usually winning - dozens upon dozens of campaigns.
For all of his early promise on a law school faculty and his seat in the Illinois Senate, Mr Obama in 2002 had no money, no political organisation and a name that rhymed with the world's most famous terrorist. And he had just lost a race for Congress, so that he was one defeat away from political oblivion. Both he and Mr Axelrod knew a Senate race was a Hail Mary.
What yoked them together was more than their desire for an upset: They shared a deep, progressive belief that politics should be a calling, not a business, and that at its best, politics was a means to extend opportunity and dignity to all. Mr Obama at 41 was still green and idealistic; after years of trench warfare, Mr Axelrod at 47 worried he was becoming too cynical and hoped Mr Obama could restore his faith.
Mr Axelrod does not directly address the point, but it surely made a difference in working for Mr Obama that he was schooled in big-city racial politics. He had helped Harold Washington, the first (and legendary) black mayor of Chicago, get reelected, and had run successful mayoralty races in a half-dozen other cities. Experience had taught him how to shape a coalition of blacks, Hispanics and white liberals that would lift a black Democratic candidate to victory and create a more inclusive politics.
That 2004 Senate race built the foundations of Obama's presidential run four years later. Mr Axelrod proved to be a superb strategist and message maestro. He was the one who came up with the tag line for Mr Obama's ads in that race, "Yes We Can!" "I loved the... line," Mr Axelrod writes, "because it gave voters a stake in making change happen. It wasn't just about him. It was about what we all could do together." Mr Obama thought it corny, but his wife, Michelle, disagreed; it stayed in and became the rallying cry then and in future campaigns.
For that Senate race, Mr Axelrod also recruited a partner from his consulting firm, David Plouffe, to help out. That proved a brilliant move. Mr Obama came to believe as strongly in Mr Plouffe's talents as he did in Mr Axelrod's, so that in his presidential run four years later, he made Mr Plouffe his campaign manager and Mr Axelrod continued as strategist and message meister.
As a journalist, Mr Axelrod learned how to write for a mass audience, so he tells stories well from Mr Obama's campaigns and from the first couple of years at the White House, where he was the top political adviser. Some of his tales are familiar, and at 509 pages, it's a long read.
Even so, what emerges is important: a portrait of political campaigning that is more like what we hope than what we fear, that rises above the machinations and muck.
Mr Obama doesn't always walk on water in this account, but he comes close: high-minded, reflective, unruffled. He and Mr Axelrod have occasional blowups in which Mr Obama is condescending and sometimes profane; Mr Obama also keeps an emotional distance. But the two smooth things over quickly and move on. Unlike some other Obama-insider memoirists, Mr Axelrod chooses not to dis.
But there are prices to be paid for writing with devoted loyalty. For one thing, Mr Obama emerges as two-dimensional. He, like most presidents, is an unusually complicated person. But given how consequential his presidency is, one would like to understand him far better than we do.
Mr Axelrod also shies away from the hard questions of why President Obama has fallen short of the dreams inspired by Candidate Obama. Instead, he makes a stout defence - indeed, the best I have read - of the Obama years. He believes Mr Obama inherited the worst mess of any modern president and accomplished more in his first years than anyone since Lyndon Johnson. As for Mr Obama's losing some of his fizz, Mr Axelrod says, that's because governing is tougher than campaigning.
The person who can best answer sits in the Oval Office. Judging from his first book, Mr Obama has the talent to write the best presidential memoir in modern times. It is worth waiting for. But for now, David Axelrod has written a highly readable, uplifting account of the candidate he loves - and, reassuringly, has shown politics can still be a calling, not a business.
© The New York Times News Service 2015
