Game Change_ Obama And The Clintons, McCain And Palin, And The Race Of A Lifetime Part 7

FOR JOHN EDWARDS, the narrow escape should have been hair-raising, his wife's humiliation chastening. But instead of being tossed into turmoil or depression, Edwards seemed as resolved and optimistic as ever about his prospects. To his way of thinking, he was as plausible a nominee in October 2007 as he had been ten months earlier-and the outside world agreed.

He had much less money than Clinton or Obama, that was true. But he had enough to hold his own in Iowa, and that was all he needed. He was consistently rated in the top tier alongside Clinton and Obama, the rest of the field dismissed as a jumble of interchangeable long shots. The press corps credited his Iowa-only strategy and saw him as having a decent chance there. Obama's poor standing in the national polls seemed to confirm Edwards's long-held view that the upstart was a pa.s.sing fad.

How to get past Hillary was the question. At the urging of Trippi, Edwards had recently adopted a harsher tone with the front-runner, attacking her for being too close to corporate power and tainted by the special-interest corruption in Was.h.i.+ngton. At a debate in Chicago sponsored by the AFL-CIO, Edwards fired a populist broadside at a recent appearance of Clinton on the cover of a national publication-with her smiling face above the headline "Business Loves Hillary!"

"I want everyone here to hear my voice on this," Edwards declared. "The one thing you can count on is you will never see a picture of me on the front of Fortune Fortune magazine saying, 'I am the candidate that big corporate America is betting on.' That will never happen. That's one thing you can take to the bank." magazine saying, 'I am the candidate that big corporate America is betting on.' That will never happen. That's one thing you can take to the bank."

To Edwards's eye, his punches seemed to be landing on the mark. When he ran into Clinton backstage at the event, her hostility was evident-which delighted him. "She won't look at me," Edwards told his aides triumphantly. "I'm getting under her skin."

But Edwards knew that even if he beat Clinton in Iowa, she would be a resilient foe. He began to ponder the possibility of a novel, and radical, anti-Hillary strategy: teaming up with Obama to run on a joint ticket against Clinton after the caucuses. He raised the idea with Hickman early that fall.

"Who's going to be number one and number two?" the pollster asked. Edwards replied, "He would be my running mate."

The idea was far out, certainly, but no less odd than pretty much everything about Edwards's situation as he hurtled into the Iowa homestretch. Rielle Hunter was hanging over his head. His wife was apparently on the verge of a breakdown. But Edwards was undaunted. All he needed was a little help. If he could just get Obama to lend him a hand, everything in the end might, just might, turn out golden.

Chapter Eight.

The Turning Point.

THEY TOOK THE STAGE in the auditorium at Drexel University just before 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 30: Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Obama, Richardson, and Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich. The candidates in various combinations had appeared at more than a dozen previous debates or forums. Their interchanges had been informative (on occasion), entertaining (less often), and almost entirely free of impact on the basic contours of the race. Clinton was the comfortable front-runner, Edwards and Obama her obtrusive challengers, and the rest irrelevant also-rans.

But the debate at Drexel would be different. Looking back on it later, the candidates and their advisers would all agree: what happened that night in Philadelphia changed everything.

Dominating debate after debate had bred a certain complacency in Clinton-and a distinct disdain for Obama. After many of them, Hillary would privately lambaste Obama for comparing his meager record to hers and Dodd's and Biden's. (Every now and then onstage, the three of them would share furtive eye-rolls over Obama's self-regard.) "What an a.s.shole," Clinton, employing her favorite profanity, grumbled to her aides. "Am I the only one who sees the arrogance? Does that not bother people?"

Hillary knew that Obama intended to play offense at Drexel. The Sunday before the debate, The New York Times The New York Times had run a front-page story based on the table-setting interview that Obama and his team had planned weeks earlier. In it, Obama claimed Clinton was being less than truthful about her positions. That she was acting like a Republican on foreign policy. That she was too divisive to win a general election or unify the country. "We have to make these distinctions clearer," he said. "And I will not shy away from doing that." had run a front-page story based on the table-setting interview that Obama and his team had planned weeks earlier. In it, Obama claimed Clinton was being less than truthful about her positions. That she was acting like a Republican on foreign policy. That she was too divisive to win a general election or unify the country. "We have to make these distinctions clearer," he said. "And I will not shy away from doing that."

The Obama plan worked. The initial question of the debate was directed at him by moderator Brian Williams; the topic was the Times Times story. But Obama bobbled the ball, backing away from his charges. "I think some of this stuff gets overhyped," he said. story. But Obama bobbled the ball, backing away from his charges. "I think some of this stuff gets overhyped," he said.

In the opening segment of the debate, Edwards's attacks on Clinton were repeated and razor-sharp, while Obama reverted fully into his pa.s.sive, prolix, professorial mode. Edwards wondered what the h.e.l.l was wrong with him. Puncturing Clinton was their mutual objective, with time running out, but only Edwards was wielding the blade. During the first intermission, he pulled Obama aside and stared him in the eyes. "Barack, you need to focus!" Edwards implored. "Focus! Focus! Focus!"

The next segment opened with Hillary answering a question about her electability and appropriating a phrase of Obama's about the need to "turn the page" (she applied it to Bush and Cheney). Obama thought, She stole my line! She stole my line! And was mocking him in the process! That did it. He finally pounced. And was mocking him in the process! That did it. He finally pounced.

"I'm glad that Hillary took the phrase 'turn the page,'" he said sarcastically. "It's a good one." After smacking her for refusing to release records of her time as First Lady held by the National Archives, he went on: "Part of the reason that Republicans, I think, are obsessed with you, Hillary, is that's a fight they're very comfortable having. It is the fight that we've been through since the nineties. And part of the job of the next president is to break the gridlock and get Democrats and independents and Republicans to start working together to solve these big problems, like health care or climate change or energy. And what we don't need is another eight years of bickering."

What ensued then was one of the more extraordinary group a.s.saults in the history of presidential debates. It was seven on one-five candidates (Kucinich refrained) and two moderators pounding on Clinton mercilessly.

With just eight minutes left on the clock, Clinton had withstood the fusillade-at least she was still standing. Then, the other moderator, Tim Russert, asked her if she supported the idea of giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, as New York's Democratic governor Eliot Spitzer had proposed.

Clinton ducked Russert's query, saying she sympathized with Spitzer, then pivoted to stress the need for comprehensive immigration reform. But when Dodd declared his opposition to the plan, Clinton jumped back in: "I did not say that it should be done, but I certainly recognize why Governor Spitzer is trying to do it."

"Wait a minute!" interjected Dodd. The senator from Connecticut considered Hillary a friend; all year long he had held back from going after her, against the advice of many of his advisers, who were virulently anti-Clinton. But this rigmarole that she was spouting struck him as absurd. "You said yes, you thought it made sense to do it."

"No, I didn't, Chris," Clinton replied, and started squabbling with Dodd. Voices escalated. Eyebrows arched. The back-and-forth got heated. Finally, Russert stepped in and asked Clinton to clarify her position: Did she support Spitzer's plan or not?

"You know, Tim, this is where everybody plays gotcha," Clinton said, gesticulating with both hands. "What is the governor supposed to do? He is dealing with a serious problem. We have failed and George Bush has failed. Do I think this is the right thing for any governor to do? No. But do I understand the sense of real desperation, trying to get a handle on this? . . . He's making an honest effort to do it."

Watching the exchange on TV in the staff room, Clinton's aides felt as if they were witnessing a car crash in slow motion. Grunwald pleaded with Hillary's pixelated image on the screen as if she were trying to advise her candidate telepathically. Okay, that's enough, she cried. No! No! No! Stop!

But it was too late. Williams tried to segue to a new topic, but Edwards wouldn't let go. "Unless I missed something, Senator Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes," he noted, "and I think this is a real issue for the country." Obama nodded vigorously and Williams asked him why. "I was confused on Senator Clinton's answer," Obama said with a smirk. "I can't tell whether she was for it or against it."

Clinton exited the stage both bloodied and bowed. Of the sixty-two questions at Drexel that weren't part of a "lightning round" in which all the candidates were asked the same thing, more than half were either directed to her or elicited answers that ended up being attacks on her. Only five times did any candidate go after someone besides her. Among the questions put to Obama: Did he believe in life on other planets? What would he do to fix air travel? And what would he dress as for Halloween?

On the flight home to Was.h.i.+ngton, Clinton asked her aides, How bad was that? Grunwald tried to be gentle but candid about the driver's license c.o.c.kup: It wasn't great. We're gonna catch some c.r.a.p. We're gonna need to clean it up.

The next day, however, Clinton's people didn't clean it up at all-they made an even bigger mess. A statement was issued that simply reformulated her muddled position from the night before. Then her press shop clarified the clarification, saying Clinton backed "the basic concept" of giving driver's licenses to illegals absent immigration reform. At the same time, the campaign posted on the Web a thirty-second video t.i.tled "The Politics of Pile-On," with intercut images of the other candidates a.s.sailing Hillary at the debate, set to music from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. Marriage of Figaro. The day after that, in a speech at her alma mater, Wellesley College, Clinton noted that the school had "prepared me to compete in the all-boys' club of presidential politics." The day after that, in a speech at her alma mater, Wellesley College, Clinton noted that the school had "prepared me to compete in the all-boys' club of presidential politics."

The combination of Clinton's debate performance and the suggestion that s.e.xism was at work unleashed a torrent of scorn from the media. And her opponents were no less scathing. The Edwards campaign produced a Web video of its own, highlighting Clinton's obfuscations at the debate, called "The Politics of Parsing." The Obama campaign made a video, too, featuring unflattering shots of Clinton against a soundtrack of "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?" Obama personally vetoed the video as too mean. But he did go on the Today Today show and characterize Clinton as a whiner: "One of the things that she has suggested why she should be elected is because she's been playing in this rough-and-tumble stage. So it doesn't make sense for her after having run that way for eight months, the first time that people start challenging her point of view, that suddenly, she backs off and says: Don't pick on me." show and characterize Clinton as a whiner: "One of the things that she has suggested why she should be elected is because she's been playing in this rough-and-tumble stage. So it doesn't make sense for her after having run that way for eight months, the first time that people start challenging her point of view, that suddenly, she backs off and says: Don't pick on me."

The scale and intensity of the backlash stunned Hillary. "We need to stop talking about gender," she instructed her staff. All year long she had s.h.i.+ed away from putting her femaleness front and center, out of fear that it would undercut the tough-as-nails image she required to clear the commander-in-chief threshold. She had approved the piling-on video, but thought it had nothing to do with s.e.xism-and was furious at her campaign for letting it be cast that way. But her deeper anger was directed at the media. Obama had been bad in so many debates and been given a free pa.s.s, she thought. And yet here she was, batting a thousand until then, getting pilloried for whiffing once by a press corps lying in wait for the first excuse to nail her. She found the unfairness of it galling.

The dynamics that drove the coverage were both more complex and simpler than that, of course. The press always wants a race. The press always loves conflict. Driver's licenses for illegals was a hot topic. Clinton stumbling was a man-bites-dog story-and the way she stumbled reinforced an existing stereotype of her, to which the media was certainly receptive. Nor was Clinton's campaign blameless in fomenting some of the ill will toward her. Its approach to the Fourth Estate, reflecting the candidate's disposition, had fluctuated throughout the contest between heavy handed and outright hostile.

But whatever the confluence of causes and effects, the damage to the front-runner from the Drexel debate and its aftermath was more severe than anyone in Hillaryland knew. The inevitable candidate was suddenly revealed as vulnerable. The flawless campaign looked fallible. The Clinton juggernaut had a hole in its hull-and the water was rus.h.i.+ng in.

HILLARY LOOKED DOWN AT the text of her speech and felt ill. She'd picked up a rotten cold on the road and was struggling to shake it, but that wasn't the only reason for the dull throbbing in her skull. It was Friday, November 9, ten days after what had turned out to be the most important debate of 2007 and one day before what was expected to be her most important address of the year. In a little more than twenty-four hours, she would be standing on a stage in Des Moines at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, holding forth without notes or the aid of a TelePrompTer, in the round, before nine thousand Democrats. And yet here she was, sitting with her aides at Whitehaven, laying eyes on her speech text for the very first time-and saying, No, let's change this.

The internal debates over what Clinton should say at the J-J had dragged on for weeks and arrived at no place good. In the past months, Obama had developed a fiery call-and-response that had become a trademark flourish: "Fired up! Ready to go!" For the J-J, Clinton would have an incantation of her own: "Turn up the heat!" (On the Republicans.) n.o.body in Hillaryland liked it except Penn, who claimed it tested well in his polling and would reinforce Clinton's image as a fighter against the GOP-in contrast to the weak and plat.i.tudinous Obama.

The Clinton campaign's organizational efforts were equally haphazard. The J-J was a fund-raiser for the Iowa Democratic Party. The more tickets you bought, the more supporters you could bring. Teresa Vilmain kept badgering the people at the b.a.l.l.ston headquarters: Gang, either we come up with more money now or we lose out, she said. But the Iowa team had trouble getting the budget for the J-J approved. Its request for cash to hire a band to play outside the hall to rouse the troops was rejected. When the funds for crowd-building finally arrived, it was too late-the Obama campaign had already s.n.a.t.c.hed up the prime seats in the place.

On the night of the event, Clinton and her team arrived late to Veterans Memorial Auditorium and Hillary retreated to a trailer to squeeze in a rushed final read-through or two. She would be the penultimate speaker, followed by Obama. The dinner had been plodding along for more than three hours already by the time she took the stage. Because it was so late, and because her supporters tended to be older, her crowd, which was smaller than Obama's to begin with, had thinned out appreciably. Astonis.h.i.+ngly, Clinton's rendition of her text was letter perfect. Dressed in a black pantsuit with a yellow top, she gamely built toward her signature theme. "I'll tell you what I want to do," Hillary said. "I'm not interested in attacking my opponents. I'm interested in attacking the problems of America and I believe that we should be turning up the heat on the Republicans! They deserve all the heat we can give them!"

Out in the darkness of the hall, Obama's brain trust was incredulous at Clinton's message. She was talking about fighting, rather than uniting, playing right into their hands.

Obama's speech-indeed, the entire Obama operation at the J-J-could not have been more different than the Clinton effort. Steve Hildebrand, Paul Tewes, and the Iowa field team treated the event as if it were a dry run for caucus night, scheduling a concert by John Legend for the foot soldiers beforehand. The Obama ranks were young, energetic, and eardrum-splitting. They went wild when their hero took the stage, as the PA system blasted an introduction by the Chicago Bulls announcer Ray Clay: "And now, from our neighboring state of Illinois, a six-foot-two force for change, Senator Barack Obama!"

Unlike Hillary, Obama had prepared meticulously for his speech. He had road-tested it a week before, in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He'd spent hours in his hotel room over several days memorizing and rehearsing it. As for his message, there was never even the slightest doubt or dithering. His indictment of Hillary-and her husband-was subtle but unmistakable, his takedown of them a deft blend of coded language and clear implication.

"We have a chance to bring the country together in a new majority," Obama declaimed. "That is why the same old Was.h.i.+ngton textbook campaigns just won't do in this election. That's why not answering questions because we are afraid our answers won't be popular just won't do. That's why telling the American people what we think they want to hear instead of telling the American people what they need to hear just won't do. Triangulating and poll-driven positions because we're worried about what Mitt or Rudy might say about us just won't do." And also, "I am not in this race to fulfill some long-held ambitions or because I believe it's somehow owed to me."

The decimation was interwoven with flashes of inspiration: "A nation healed. A world repaired. An America that believes again." The crowd adored it all. When Obama walked offstage to Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered," the ovation was thunderous. His supporters raised the rafters with their cries of "Fired up! Ready to Go!" Backstage, Obama spotted Axelrod, smiled, and said, "That was solid, right?"

That Obama won the night dramatically was apparent even to Clinton's staunch allies. Ohio governor Ted Strickland, who'd accompanied Hillary to the dinner, thought the s.h.i.+ft of momentum to Obama was palpable, almost visible. Penn and Grunwald attempted to spin reporters on the notion that the youth of Obama's supporters was a negative. "Our people look like caucus-goers and his people look like they are eighteen," Grunwald remarked, adding dismissively, "Penn said they look like Facebook." Clinton's chief strategist chimed in, "Only a few of their people look like they could vote in any state."

Hillary's loyalists took pains to praise her at a party afterward, not insincerely. But McAuliffe expressed dismay at Obama's greater show of force in the auditorium, and Vilmain acknowledged that the opposition had more people in the hall.

"Why?" asked Hillary.

They got their money in sooner and they had more of it, Vilmain explained.

"Oh," Clinton said and walked away.

But Hillary wasn't satisfied with Vilmain's answer. She had a lot of questions and a lot of worries-a cascade of concerns that had been growing for a while, but that the J-J unleashed full force. She was worried that Obama seemed to be building some kind of movement in the cornfields. "Movement" was the word she kept hearing from Maggie Williams, who told her it was easy to run against a man, but devilishly hard to run against a cause. "I think there's something going on under the surface here," Clinton said to Penn.

She was worried that Obama's team seemed to be reaching out to a new universe of potential caucus-goers. Vilsack relayed to her that her rival's canva.s.sers were knocking on doors of Republicans and independents-an unheard-of practice in Iowa's Democratic caucuses. Clinton wondered if her side should do the same or if she should be making a play for students, especially young women. But Hillary feared that her war vote would get her hooted off any campus where she spoke. And Vilsack and Vilmain a.s.sured her that come caucus night, if history was any guide, the non-Democrats would remain at home and the college kids, lazy or unserious, would stay in their rooms and on their Wiis.

Hillary was worried, too, that the caucus system was unfair. The process required that voters show up in person and hang around for several hours on a frigid January evening; absentee ballots weren't allowed. For people who worked the night s.h.i.+ft, single mothers, the elderly, and active-duty military-all key elements of her const.i.tuency-the rules made it difficult or even impossible to partic.i.p.ate.

She was worried about some indications that Iowa simply didn't cotton to female candidates. Recently, she'd been informed by the Des Moines Registers Des Moines Registers David Yepsen, the dean of the Iowa press corps, that no woman had ever been elected to Congress or the governors.h.i.+p there. The factoid stunned Hillary-and she started repeating it constantly. David Yepsen, the dean of the Iowa press corps, that no woman had ever been elected to Congress or the governors.h.i.+p there. The factoid stunned Hillary-and she started repeating it constantly.

Yet in spite of all her worries, Clinton decided to double down on Iowa. Millions of additional dollars started pouring into the state. Her local advertising budget soared, her staff there was increased twofold, her calendar was packed with Iowa travel. Hillary hated spending the money but was convinced she had no choice. And the J-J had only reinforced that conviction. Within days, Penn's polling found that Obama was starting to open up a lead.

The political gamble here was evident, but the upside was huge: If Clinton carried the caucuses, the nomination would be in the bag. If she didn't, her strength in New Hamps.h.i.+re and the big states on Super Tuesday might dissipate. There was another gamble, however, involved in doubling down on Iowa-a financial wager that Solis Doyle and Harold Ickes laid out for her one day in her Senate office.

Hillaryland was burning cash at a prodigious rate, her advisers said. If she won Iowa, her fiscal health would be jake-money would come gus.h.i.+ng in to her campaign's coffers. But if Clinton fell short in the Hawkeye State, a yawning deficit loomed.

Hillary was taken aback by the forecast. Where in G.o.d's name did all the money go? Where in G.o.d's name did all the money go? she thought. She looked at Solis Doyle and Ickes, set her jaw, and said, Well, then, I guess we'd better win Iowa. she thought. She looked at Solis Doyle and Ickes, set her jaw, and said, Well, then, I guess we'd better win Iowa.

BILL CLINTON'S INVOLVEMENT IN his wife's campaign was still minimal at that point. He took part in few conference calls, had no briefing books, and was only rarely sent on the road to campaign for or with her. (The fear of him overshadowing Hillary persisted. Let's make sure that he's not going to get a bigger crowd than she's going to get, Solis Doyle told the Iowa staff whenever Bill visited for separate events.) But now his status was about to change.

Much of Clinton's political ac.u.men lay in his ability to synthesize three streams of data: the polling, what was happening on the ground, and what was happening with the candidate. With Hillary's campaign, his intake had been limited mainly to the numbers being fed to him by Penn, and for much of the year, those numbers had been good-deceptively good. But now Bill was hearing ominous chatter from the members of his old political circle, most of whom had either absented themselves from Hillaryland or been locked out. His friend Carville opined that Hillary's team was stocked with joyless misanthropes who loved neither politics nor people. Well, you have to call Hillary and tell her, Clinton said beseechingly.

Bill was keenly aware of Hillary's political (and human) liabilities, but he found it difficult to discuss them with her without raising her hackles. One day that fall, they were on a plane together and he tried to give his wife a pep talk, while at the same time gently broaching the topic of her perceived haughtiness. "I know you're working hard," he said, "but you need to let people know how hard you're working for them them, and you have to really dig in there. There's a belief that you're above them, and you need to really let them know who you are."

"Bill, I'm working eighteen hours a day," eighteen hours a day," Hillary snapped, ending the discussion. Hillary snapped, ending the discussion.

The former president thought he could rely on Penn as his instrument inside of Hillary's campaign. But Penn was stymied in his efforts to go negative against Obama. His colleagues at headquarters and in Iowa were firmly opposed to running attack ads; the press showed little interest in the dirt the Clinton press shop was peddling under the table; and Hillary refused to rule in favor of strafing Obama.

The whole thing baffled Bill. Over the past months, his a.s.sessment of Obama had hardened. Yes, he was exciting. Yes, he was talented. Yes, he was the future. But he was also, Bill thought, an "off-the-rack Chicago politician" who had figured out how to have it both ways-appearing to be above bare-knuckle tactics while his team practiced them with a vengeance. In early November, for example, The Atlantic The Atlantic had published a story in which an unnamed Obama official plopped down next to the author and inquired as to "when reporters would begin to look into Bill Clinton's postpresidential s.e.x life." The incident enraged Bill for reasons that went beyond the obvious. Obama was constantly bragging on the cleanness of his campaign. Yet no one in the media saw fit to call him out when his hired guns egged on the press to start rummaging around in Bill's boudoir. What more evidence did anyone need that the media was in the tank for Obama? It was as if the referees were on the field wearing the opposing team's jerseys, Clinton said. had published a story in which an unnamed Obama official plopped down next to the author and inquired as to "when reporters would begin to look into Bill Clinton's postpresidential s.e.x life." The incident enraged Bill for reasons that went beyond the obvious. Obama was constantly bragging on the cleanness of his campaign. Yet no one in the media saw fit to call him out when his hired guns egged on the press to start rummaging around in Bill's boudoir. What more evidence did anyone need that the media was in the tank for Obama? It was as if the referees were on the field wearing the opposing team's jerseys, Clinton said.

Clinton grasped the rhythm of a presidential campaign as well as anyone alive. He knew there always came a moment, late in the game, when a candidate either found his voice or didn't, when the souffle either rose or fell. For him, the moment had come in the autumn of 1991, with a series of third-way policy speeches that propelled him into the lead. Clinton could see that the J-J had done the same for Obama-and that his wife was headed in the opposite direction. Ever since Philly, the press had been all over Hillary, and not just about the debate. There were stories about her staff planting questions at town hall meetings in Iowa. About her failing to leave a tip at a Maid-Rite diner. She was being buffeted by external flaps, distracted by overblown ha.s.sles, coping with internal disagreements, and all the while not only failing to find her homestretch groove, but looking ever more lost out there.

Hillary sensed it, too. Her Iowa stump speech was a themeless pudding, laundry-listy and flat, but she was too busy lurching from crisis to crisis to find time to fix it. The story about her not leaving a tip was bulls.h.i.+t, plain and simple, and the one about the planted questions . . . well, that was true, and, man, did she give her staff an earful about it. She asked them, What are we doing? We're supposed to have this organization that's the best in the world. Why do we keep making these mistakes? The press is gonna turn molehills into mountains, but can we please stop giving them so many molehills to work with?

One night around Thanksgiving, the Clintons held a private meeting with Penn to discuss what they should do to stanch the bleeding and turn Iowa around. Once again, Bill and Penn pressed the argument for going negative against Obama on TV. Hillary had been hitting Obama harder of late. ("Voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of ten prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next president will face," she'd said in Iowa. "I think we need a president with more experience than that.") But her team was ineffective in backing her up when she took on Obama. She told Penn that she felt like a general running up a hill with a sword in her hand but no troops behind her. For months, she'd tried to stay on the high road-but now she'd had enough. She was ready, she announced to Penn and her husband, to commence the carpet-bombing.

Bill had definite ideas about how to nuke Obama. He was still obsessed, and so was Penn, with Obama's Iraq record. He was also fixated on Obama's habit of voting "present" in the Illinois state senate, his less-than-pristine history of taking campaign cash from lobbyists, and his ties to the shady Chicago developer Tony Rezko.

At Penn's instruction, Grunwald produced an array of ads revolving around those issues. She made harsh ads, mild ads, mean ads, funny ads-but when they were tested with Iowa voters, every one of them fell flat. Grunwald showed the spots to the Clintons at a meeting at Whitehaven. She explained her difficulty in finding anything that stuck. Bill told her to keep trying, offering ideas in granular detail about the scripts and visuals.

But nothing worked. It began to dawn on Grunwald that the problem was that Iowans simply didn't want to hear trash talk about Obama from Hillary. They liked him and they didn't like her, and there would be no changing that-her negatives were just too deeply cooked into the ca.s.serole.

The Clintons flew out to Iowa just after Thanksgiving in a state of irritation and anxiety. On the first night of December, they had drinks at Azalea, a swish restaurant in Des Moines, with the editorial board of the Register Register and some of its political reporters. Hillary was working hard for the paper's endors.e.m.e.nt; Bill was gathering intelligence, chatting up the beat reporter who was covering Hillary's campaign. The reporter told him that the Obamans were regularly feeding her negative information about Hillary-but that no one from the Clinton team was doing the same regarding Obama. and some of its political reporters. Hillary was working hard for the paper's endors.e.m.e.nt; Bill was gathering intelligence, chatting up the beat reporter who was covering Hillary's campaign. The reporter told him that the Obamans were regularly feeding her negative information about Hillary-but that no one from the Clinton team was doing the same regarding Obama.

When the drinks were over, Bill related the story to Hillary. The next morning, she woke up simmering-and then received yet more bad news. One of her most trusted aides confided that he'd spoken the night before with Karen Hicks, a veteran field organizer who had been dispatched to Des Moines to fortify the Iowa operation. Karen's unhappy, the aide told Hillary. The Iowa team isn't getting what it needs from headquarters. Phone calls aren't being returned. Decisions aren't getting made. Hillary's aide didn't cast blame explicitly on Solis Doyle or Henry, but Hillary had no difficulty in drawing the inference.

Clinton picked up the phone and got on the morning briefing call with her senior advisers-and promptly blew a gasket. Our communications shop isn't getting the job done, she growled, mentioning what she and Bill had learned during drinks the previous night. No one is engaging with reporters, she said. Nothing we throw at Obama is sticking. Everything he throws at us is. All the decision makers are back in Was.h.i.+ngton, doing G.o.d knows what. Clinton seethed uninterrupted for five minutes; when she finished, there was silence.

Finally, Solis Doyle offered meekly, "I'll have a plan for you this afternoon."

"I've been asking you this for weeks, Patti!" Hillary angrily replied.

After the call, Clinton phoned Solis Doyle directly and ordered her and all the rest of the b.a.l.l.ston high command to head to Iowa. You need to get out here, Hillary said. This is too important. Pretend that nothing else exists in the country.

Clinton could hardly believe where she'd found herself five weeks out from caucus day. Frustrated, panicky, still steaming over what she'd learned that morning, she went before reporters at an afternoon news conference in Cedar Rapids. After criticizing Obama for insisting that his health care plan was universal when it wasn't, Clinton was asked if her opponent's lack of candor on the topic meant he had a character problem.

"It's beginning to look a lot like that," Hillary said. "I have said for months that I would much rather be attacking Republicans and attacking [the] problems of our country, because ultimately that's what I want to do as president. But I have been for months on the receiving end of rather consistent attacks-well, now the fun fun part starts." part starts."

Chapter Nine.

The Fun Part.

FOR OBAMA, THE FUN PART had already been under way for weeks. The J-J had been a slingshot for him; he was flying now. His media team put the speech front and center in TV advertising and direct mail. And its message became the core of what Obama was saying four or five or six times each day on the stump. At the end of November, the latest Register Register poll confirmed the Obama uptick: he was three points ahead of Clinton and four ahead of Edwards (a swing of ten and five points, respectively, since October). In early December, his friend Oprah Winfrey traveled to Des Moines and anointed him in front of eighteen thousand fans. "There are those who say it's not his time, that he should wait his turn," Oprah proclaimed. "I'm sick of politics as usual. We need Barack Obama." poll confirmed the Obama uptick: he was three points ahead of Clinton and four ahead of Edwards (a swing of ten and five points, respectively, since October). In early December, his friend Oprah Winfrey traveled to Des Moines and anointed him in front of eighteen thousand fans. "There are those who say it's not his time, that he should wait his turn," Oprah proclaimed. "I'm sick of politics as usual. We need Barack Obama."

Since the start of Obama's bid for the nomination, Plouffe had been chanting a mantra in his ear: "You need to own Iowa." Owning Iowa meant establis.h.i.+ng a deep and intimate connection to the state. It meant visiting any county and remembering what had happened the last time he was there-whom he'd met, why they mattered. It meant doing more than appreciating the gra.s.sroots machine that Hildebrand and Tewes were building. It meant being invested in it, living it and breathing it, becoming one with it.

It took Obama a long time to get there, but now something had clicked. All of a sudden, he was asking, How many people am I getting? How many supporter cards? How many precinct captains? Instead of begging off making calls, he was reaching for the phone. At rallies, he started bringing organizers up onstage and giving props to them by name, a nice idea that impressed Plouffe all the more because it was Obama's. After town hall meetings, he would take a group picture with his volunteers-and then another with the high school students in attendance, because those who'd be eighteen by the general election were eligible to partic.i.p.ate in the caucuses. To Penn, they might have looked like Facebook. To Obama, they looked like victory.

Obama was enjoying himself, too, at Hillary's expense. He and his advisers took no small pleasure in the planted-question story. (The Obama press shop pushed it sub rosa with reporters and found plenty of takers.) The episode was a perfect ill.u.s.tration of what Obama meant when he dissed "textbook" campaigns, and it reinforced the negative frame that Axelrod wanted to place around Hillary's portrait: that she'd do anything to win. At town halls, Obama would slyly mock Clinton by saying to the crowd, "You know what? Ask me any question. I haven't asked anybody here to ask me a certain question." The line always got a laugh.

As Clinton began to take more shots at Obama, his advisers-especially Axelrod and Gibbs, both summa c.u.m laude graduates of the school of rapid-response politics-were dying to return fire. But many of her shots were so maladroit that Obama found them easy to slough off. On the day she announced that the fun part was starting, her campaign put out a press release that cited an "essay" written by a four- or five-year-old Obama with the t.i.tle "I want to be president." (The point was that Obama was more ambitious than he pretended to be.) "It's the silly season," Obama said with a shrug at an event that night in Des Moines. "I understand she's been quoting my kindergarten teacher in Indonesia."

Obama's team wanted to make even more hay with the kindergarten kerfuffle. One of his ad makers hacked together a goofy Web video featuring still photos of Obama as a child dressed up to look like a buccaneer. "Barack Obama wanted to be president when he was in kindergarten but there were other things he wanted-he wanted to be a pirate," the voice-over intoned melodramatically. "Do we really want a pirate president?" (Mich.e.l.le put the kibosh on that idea; she thought it diminished her husband.) Ambition wasn't the only youthful excess of Obama's that the Clinton campaign injected into the conversation, however. On December 12, Billy Shaheen, one of Hillary's national co-chairs and a veteran of New Hamps.h.i.+re politics, gave an interview to The Was.h.i.+ngton Post The Was.h.i.+ngton Post in which he cast doubt on Obama's electability. in which he cast doubt on Obama's electability.

"Republicans are not going to give up without a fight," Shaheen said, "and one of the things they're certainly going to jump on is his drug use"-a reference to Obama's acknowledgment in Dreams Dreams that he'd dabbled with cocaine and marijuana as a young man. "It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" that he'd dabbled with cocaine and marijuana as a young man. "It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'"

Obama tried to brush off Shaheen's insinuations as garden-variety cheap politics. But it hadn't gone unnoticed by him that two Clinton volunteers had recently been caught forwarding emails suggesting that Obama was a Muslim with vague connections to jihadists trying to destroy America. Things seemed to be taking a turn for the ugly, and he and Mich.e.l.le were certain it was no accident. Obama's brain trust agreed: Shaheen was acting as a puppet for one or both Clintons.

Their suspicions weren't unreasonable. The Clintons talked about Obama's drug use with some regularity in private, citing it as another example of the willful failure of the press to vet Obama. Why are they giving him a free ride on this? the couple would complain. Why isn't it out there?

Hillary's reaction to Shaheen's remarks was "Good for him!" Followed by "Let's push it out!" Her aides violently disagreed, seeing what Shaheen had said as a PR disaster. Grudgingly, Clinton acquiesced to disowning Shaheen's comments. But she wasn't going to cut him loose. Why should Billy have to fall on his sword, she asked, for invoking something that had been fair game in every recent election?

Hillary was in Was.h.i.+ngton for votes in the Senate. So was Obama. The next day, as both of them prepared to fly to Des Moines for another debate, they found themselves boarding their campaign planes at the same time at Reagan National Airport. One of the strangest things about presidential campaigns is how rarely the candidates are ever in close proximity to one another. They might greet voters one county apart or brush past each other in a debate hall, but private conversations almost never happen.

Yet now came an exception.

"Senator Clinton would like to speak with you," one of her advance people told Obama. Obama ambled over to Clinton as she stood there on the tarmac.

I'm sorry about what Billy said, Hillary began. I didn't know he was going to do that. I'm not running that kind of campaign.

That's fine, Hillary, Obama replied, but this wasn't an isolated incident. There were those emails in Iowa . . .

Now, hold on a second! Clinton said, cutting Obama off, uncorking the long list of grievances she'd been stewing on for months. What about Geffen? What about attacking her about her White House papers? The list went on and on.

For the next several minutes, the two went at it in animated fas.h.i.+on. Bug-eyed, red-faced, waving her arms, Hillary pointed at Obama's chest. Obama tried to calm her down by putting his hand on her shoulder-but that only made her angrier. Finally, they broke from the clinch, stalking back to their respective planes.