Organizing for America | Ashley Long's Blog: Obama should ensure his staff is as eloquent as he

Obama should ensure his staff is as eloquent as he

By ashmom2 - Feb 12th, 2007 at 1:35 pm EST

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I just saw an interview with Obama pollster Cornell Belcher. Mr. Belcher, who is a top Democratic numbers guy, was fronting for Sen Obama on MSNBC, answering questions from Nora O'Donnell. The Republican strategist opposite Mr. Belcher unfortunately outshown him. Mr. Belcher was not very well spoken. I found myself willing him to complete a thoughtful sentence.

Nora played for Mr. Belcher two clips from the 60 Minutes interview last night. In the first, Sen Obama was talking about how American society defines a person as African American if a person looks African American. The second clip was of Michelle Obama saying that, as a black man, Sen Obama could get shot going to the gas station. Mr. Belcher failed to point out that this discussion was in response to Steve Kroft's pointed questioning first on Sen Obama's personal racial identity and then on comparing Michelle Obama's fear of a possible assassination attempt on her husband vs. Mrs. Powell's fear of a possible assassination attempt on Colin Powell, which was apparently a major consideration in keeping him out of Presidential politics. Instead, Mr. Belcher talked about how he doesn't know a single black man who hasn't been pulled over by the police and harrassed. While that could certainly be true and while I have no qualms with that argument and think we absolutely must address issues of racism in this country, I don't think that was the right message at that time.

Nora also allowed Hillary Clinton to slap Sen Obama's hand via Mr. Belcher. She brought up a quote from one of Sen Clinton's pollster's, apparently in reaction to Obama's statements over the weekend about Sen Clinton's mistakes in backing the war and her lack of vision in creating a cohesive exit strategy. The quote essentially said that the entire Democratic party should reserve the word "mistake" for the Bush administration and not use it in terms of other Dems. Mr. Belcher, on behalf of Sen Obama's campaign, found himself agreeing in an almost mea culpa manner. I can't see how that's helpful to this campaign.

My fervent hope is that the Senator will put forward campaign staff who carry forward his message of hope and who can bring at least a measure of his eloquence. Mr. Belcher is excellent at the numbers game. Perhaps, however, they should find someone else to be grilled on MSNBC.

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Disbelief | Report to Admin

By Revolutionary Visionary Feb 12th 2007 at 2:43 pm EST

I originally read this blog in disbelief that Mr. Obama's pollster could of fumbled so bad. I went to msnbc.com and sure enough there was the video you talk about. I'm instantly angered at how much out of context Barack and Michelle's words were taken. It was a cheap shot by MSNBC. I was also irritated at Mr. Belcher's comment, "obviously he is not experianced enough". I know i'm preching to the choir here when I stated Mr. Obama's exeriance isn't a negative issue. However, in the world of the echo chamber media non-issues can be given a bite. All in all this all proves the importants of this grassroots movement. The importants of us all learning the facts and extingishing the misquotes and misrepresentations. As this election moves on we will get more organized and bring change that this country so desperately needs.

eloquence | Report to Admin

By boatsie Feb 13th 2007 at 2:01 am EST

absolutely a necesssity. Also in ALL press releases, web content,media interactions. ive looked at Hillary's campaign site and while this one is without comparision much better, we need proofreaders and copy editors to ensure consistent tone. George Lasky (sp?)(Think Of An Elephant) should come on board as a consultant and assist with developing an overview for all Obama reps to speak from....i don't mean talking points... Igod, enough of them already. We need people who are trhougtful, well informed on Obama's record, ideas, campaign plans, etc. And we need consistent tone.

Who's in charge of that?

report it | Report to Admin

By 'Wale Feb 13th 2007 at 9:01 am EST

Did not see the MSNBC interview. However if you feel strongly enough that Barack should be represented by people with eloquent dispositions then I believe you should contact the Campaign at (866) 675-2008 or write them an email:

Link

Please do so. We cannot afford any slippages on our campaign!

Let us know how it goes.....

Thanks

Re: report it | Report to Admin

By ashmom2 Feb 13th 2007 at 10:05 am EST

Wale:

Thanks for the response! I did contact the campaign, via email. As I told them, I know it is incredibly presumptive for me to give campaign professionals advice, but my desire to see the Senator in the White House gives me boldness beyond my abilities.

I asked the campaign if they could give those of us working in the grassroots blogosphere a list of campaign staffers or, short of that, a contact or two for media "crises" such as this (perhaps via the Rapid Response group). They can't be everywhere, but, with our numbers, we almost can. As mentioned in another blog, it would seem prudent to keep the "prickly" (ref Tucker MSNBC) Senator away from defending negative press. In conjunction with the campaign staff, I think we could be of use in this area. I will blog on this later.

Ashman, here is a list of Senator Obama's top staff. | Report to Admin

By Daewoo "Hussein" Kim Feb 13th 2007 at 9:46 pm EST

Ashman,

Thanks for your great post. I hadn't caught that exchange on tv, and so I'm glad you did. According to at least one political writer at the Washington Post, Senator Obama has some of best staff of any candidate. But from what you've told us, some of them should be kept off tv.

The Obama staffer I follow most closely is David Axelrod. From what I can tell, he is a brilliant strategist. When he talks, I listen.

Thanks again for your great post!

Daewoo Kim
Seattle, Washington

============================== ================

Obama boasts a dedicated, high-powered inner circle

By Mike Dorning and Christi Parsons

Chicago Tribune

(MCT)

WASHINGTON - The gravitational pull around Sen. Barack Obama grows
stronger day by day, as he and his advisers seek commitments from
political operatives and donors in preparation for a likely run for the
presidency.

The existing core of advisers around the Illinois Democrat
simultaneously anchors him in the pragmatic sensibility of his urban
Midwestern home base and encompasses the world of ideas of his Harvard
Law School classmates.

The political professionals who are Obama's closest formal advisers are
careful, deliberate counselors, wary of unnecessary risks and no
strangers to campaign street fights. The informal coterie is a
multi-hued collection of high achievers, men and women who are friends
and intellectual peers.

There's David Axelrod, the strategist at Obama's right hand, perhaps
the best-known Democratic consultant working outside of Washington,
D.C., equally adept at sensing the right metaphor for high-minded
aspirations and at finding the vulnerable spot to savage an opponent.

Then, Robert Gibbs, communications director, a campaign veteran
described by one Democratic operative - approvingly - as "Northern
ruthlessness and Southern charm combined."

Key players also include friends of Obama, among them a
straight-talking veteran of Chicago Democratic circles, Valerie
Jarrett, and a group of South Side professionals.

Perhaps most influential is his wife, Michelle, a formidable daughter
of the South Side who is an alumna both of the Ivy League and Chicago's
rough-and-tumble City Hall. She may not be in on all the conference
calls or offer her own health plan in the style of former First Lady
Hillary Clinton but no one else in the inner circle denies that she
would be a driving force in any presidential campaign.

At the center is a 45-year-old political phenomenon who close
associates say is prepared both to challenge the views he hears from
advisers and to be challenged by them.

"He really wants to know all the points of view in the room. He doesn't
want to shut people down or force a consensus," said Michael Froman, an
informal Obama adviser who was a Harvard Law classmate and former chief
of staff to Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin.

Obama "pushes back" in those conversations, said Jarrett, a friend of
both Obamas whose dining room table in Hyde Park has sometimes been the
setting for consultations. He's intent on thinking through ideas
thoroughly, she said.

The senator periodically assembles informal advisers and his senior
Senate staff for freewheeling evening sessions to set strategy and
appraise his performance. In November, it was a four-hour gathering
with stacks of take-out pizza boxes on a conference room table to talk
over the senator's future.

Obama and Axelrod speak almost every day. But Obama also often reaches
out directly to friends for advice, by e-mail or telephone. Sometimes,
the conversations are leisurely. But, lately they are mostly quick and
compressed, snatched by cell phone as he moves between committee
hearings or during downtime in a car traveling from event to event.

Though Obama hasn't announced a run for the White House, he and his
advisers are working so intently to put the pieces in place that
operatives are starting to tell Obama's likely rivals they are
otherwise engaged.

Associates say Obama has settled on Chicago as the headquarters for a
national campaign. Donors and fundraisers are being asked to make
commitments, and the nascent operation is pulling in staffers and
consultants from throughout the nation.

David Plouffe, an Axelrod partner who worked on Obama's 2004 Senate
campaign, is the likely campaign manager.

Bill Burton, national press secretary for the House Democrats' mid-term
campaign, is likely to join up, associates said.

Peter Giangreco, a Chicago-based media consultant and veteran of the
Iowa caucuses, is on board to do the direct mail as is his West Coast
partner Larry Grisolano. At least one pollster is lined up: Paul
Harstad, another Iowa veteran, who also worked on Obama's Senate
campaign. Julianna Smoot, finance director for the John Edwards 2004
campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2006, will
fill the same role for Obama.

But the group most tightly circled around Obama is a longstanding one,
made up of old friends who share an understanding of how he works. His
relationships with them provide an insight, albeit admittedly
sympathetic, into his approach to leadership.

Axelrod has been a political counselor to Obama even before his Senate
race. Gibbs joined shortly after Obama won the party primary. Gibbs and
Axelrod were standing together on the floor of the Democratic National
Convention in Boston in 2004 for the speech that would propel Obama
onto the national stage.

The two had emerged from backstage to stand amid the crowd for the
speech they'd heard Obama, then the Democratic nominee for the Senate,
practice several times. As enthusiasm engulfed the convention
delegates, both men say, they knew they were working for something more
than the average Senate campaign. People around them were crying.

"Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" Gibbs recalls saying to Axelrod.

Neither man is prone to swooning over candidates. Since leaving a job
as the Chicago Tribune political writer in 1984 to become spokesman and
eventually campaign manager for Sen. Paul Simon, Axelrod has been a
part of almost every high-profile campaign in Illinois and several
national ones.

No stranger to a good game of political hardball, during the Illinois
Democratic primary for governor in 1998, Axelrod put together TV ads
that made right-of-center Congressman Glenn Poshard look notably like
Adolph Hitler.

Gibbs joined up with Obama during the summer of 2004, several months
after leaving the John Kerry presidential campaign. But he quickly
became close to Obama, traveling with him extensively during the final
months of the campaign. Gibbs had worked as a national spokesman for
the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2002 and on several
Senate campaigns before that.

Gibbs said working with Obama was clearly going to be different, as
evidenced by the way his 2004 speech came together. Obama never asked
him for a set of "talking points," which might have been the first
order of business for others. Instead, he asked for audio and video of
previous convention speeches to make his own assessment.

Obama then holed up in a hotel in Springfield, where the state
legislature was in session, and wrote the speech, Gibbs said.

Chief of staff Peter Rouse, who previously headed the office of Senate
Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, was added after Obama's election. Rouse
is a low-key institutionalist with an expansive knowledge of Senate
folkways and a reputation for loyalty and discretion.

In a presidential campaign, associates said, Rouse's role will be to
remain behind to watch Obama's back in the Senate, where rivals and
their allies will have plenty of opportunities to lay political traps.

As a group, "they're all incredibly deliberative," said Erik Smith, a
veteran Democratic operative. "They're not inclined to radical and
last-minute decisions."

State Senate president Emil Jones, D-Chicago, an early mentor,
continues to give political counsel. Obama also recently has sought
advice from several seasoned political advisers, including former
Clinton Cabinet member and party elder Bill Daley, who in turn has been
quietly asking others for promises to support Obama.

"He brings stature and experience," said Steve Elmendorf, deputy
campaign manager for Kerry's 2004 presidential run. "He can get on the
phone with elected officials around the country."

Still, Daley's role is not yet clear, Axelrod said.

"Bill's among many friends who are supportive of Obama," Axelrod said.
"I don't know what role he would play in a campaign."

Members of the team say the way Obama relies on his advisers is as
conversationalists who explore issues in depth.

Jarrett brings two decades of Chicago political experience as a former
aide to Mayor Richard Daley and his appointee to head the Chicago
Transit Authority. Jarrett now serves as chairwoman of the Chicago
Stock Exchange Board and will rise to CEO of the Habitat Co. at the end
of the month. As a good friend, she can speak bluntly to Obama.

"He rarely accepts anyone's initial position without any push back,"
Jarrett said. "He consistently probes deeper and deeper to make sure
that you and he both have really thoroughly analyzed any given issue."

Several other successful Chicago professionals are dinner and
conversation companions. John Rogers, head of Ariel Capital Management,
is a friend drawn into the family circle by Michelle Obama's brother,
Craig Robinson, with whom Rogers played basketball at Princeton
University.

He also lives in Hyde Park and has occasionally played basketball with
Obama - most recently at the 40th birthday party of Martin Nesbitt,
president of Chicago-based PRG Parking Management and another informal
Obama adviser. Also at that party was Jim Reynolds, chairman and CEO of
Loop Capital Markets, who also provides regular counsel.

Obama deals with his friends much the same way he relates to everyone
who crosses his path, Rogers said.

"He has this ability to connect and bring people together," he said.
"I've seen him wow people at the Commercial Club of Chicago, and then I
go to New York to watch him with the Wall Street Project, a mostly
minority crowd, and they're hanging on his every word."

Obama also turns to a small circle of Harvard Law School classmates who
have been friends for nearly 20 years.

Cassandra Butts, who first met Obama at the financial aid office, said
the friends sometimes would spend time "just sitting around and talking
about how we were going to change the world. . . . How do you take this
thing we're learning in law school and make a difference on the issues
that we care about?"

By the time Obama was elected to the Senate, Butts already had been a
senior policy adviser to House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt and to
the Gephardt presidential campaign. She took a two-month leave from her
current job at a Washington think tank to help Obama set up the office.

Froman and Julius Genachowski first knew Obama as colleagues on the
Harvard Law Review. Both men have since combined success in Washington
and in business. Froman went from Rubin's Treasury Department staff to
an executive position at Citigroup. Genachowski, a former chief counsel
to then-Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt, is now a
technology executive and investor.

Together they have helped guide Obama in the ways of Washington. Though
not a law school classmate, Broderick Johnson, a former congressional
liaison for the Clinton White House and now a lobbyist for AT&T, also
joined them. So did Don Gips, former chief domestic policy adviser to
Al Gore and now a telecom executive.

Obama also reached out to some of them for comments on chapters of his
recent book, and he often does the same with drafts of important
speeches.

The tone that Obama sets is different than most politicians in
Washington, associates said.

"With Barack it's much more collegial than paternal," Butts said. "He
doesn't require the Greek Chorus to approve of his ideas."

But he does turn to his wife for a moral check.

Although she is a Harvard-educated lawyer who once worked for Mayor
Daley, Michelle Obama doesn't play a day-to-day role in her husband's
work, associates say. Instead, says Jarrett, she is the "true north" on
his compass.

She says exactly what she thinks, friends say, and when others might
tell Obama how to get elected, she reliably advises him not to
calculate that way.

"She always asks Barack, `What do you think is the right thing to do?'"
said Jarrett. "`Forget about what polls say. Do your homework. After
you've done all the due diligence, what's the right thing to do?'"

---

MEET OBAMA'S INNER CIRCLE

_David Axelrod: Uber campaign strategist; journalist-turned-media
consultant who knows how to turn a phrase and throw a punch

_Michele Obama: Harvard-educated lawyer; South Side native grounds him
in reality, her husband's "true north"

_Bill Daley: Former Clinton Cabinet member and mayoral has quietly
asked others for support

_Robert Gibbs: Veteran of several campaigns; a seasoned political
spokesman with "Northern ruthlessness and Southern charm"

_Valerie Jarrett: Friend and confidant; lawyer and former deputy to
Mayor Richard Daley who speaks her mind on politics and policy

_Peter Rouse: Former top aide to Tom Daschle. Cautious institutionalist
known for discretion.

_Cassandra Butts: Harvard Law classmate and former senior policy
adviser to Dick Gephardt

_Jim Reynolds: Chicago financial executive

_John Rogers: Mutual fund executive and major Chicago Democratic
fundraiser

_Bill Daley: Former Clinton Cabinet member and mayoral brother has
quietly asked others for support

_David Plouffe: Level-headed and low-key, "one of the most well-rounded
strategists."

_Michael Froman: Harvard Law classmate, financial executive and former
top aide to Bob Rubin

_Julius Genachowski: Harvard Law classmate, technology executive and
former top aide to FCC chairman

_Broderick Johnson: Former Clinton White House aide and telecom
lobbyist

_Martin Nesbitt: Parking company president close to Pritzker family

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