Commemorative Editions

The Big Issues of Newsweek, Time and well, just about everyone else int he news media, have hit the stands. Newsweek's behind the scenes coverage, which we saw snippets of on HuffPo, is really detailed and intense. It's like a novel. I think they've actually produced an article longer and more in-depth than the ones you find in the New Yorker! And written to much higher than a sixth grade level. Amazing!

Secrets of the 2008 Campaign

• Chapter 1: "In November 2006, Greg Craig sat next to George Stevens, an old friend of the Robert Kennedy clan, at another Obama speech. Stevens leaned over to Craig and said, "What do you think of this guy for president? I haven't heard anybody like this since Bobby Kennedy." Craig instantly replied, 'Sign me up.' Stevens and Craig approached Obama coming out of the speech and asked, 'What are you doing in 2008?' Obama gave them a big grin and said, 'Oh, man, it wasn't that good.' But before long Craig and Stevens were raising money for Obama's political-action committee, the Hope Fund. Obama was amused by the devotion of the two old Kennedy hands. After a while, every time he saw the two men he would say, 'Here come the Kool-Aid boys.'"
  
Chapter 2: "At the time of the 2000 campaign, McCain had pictured himself as Luke Skywalker, going up against the Death Star. Rumbling along with his aides and a gaggle of mostly friendly reporters in a bus called the Straight Talk Express, he had relished the team spirit—the unit cohesion, in the language of his military past—and the teasing back-and-forth. Not long after the 2000 election, he had spoken of the heady time with a NEWSWEEK reporter over a standard-issue McCain breakfast (glazed doughnuts, coffee) in his Senate office. He was sitting at one end of his couch, the purplish melanoma scar down the left side of his face veiled in shadow. 'Yeah, we were a band of brothers,' he said, his voice low, his eyes shining. The 2000 race had been a glorious adventure, a heroic Lost Cause. But the fact was that McCain had lost."
Chapter 3: "In the days after his wife's back- from-the-brink victory in New Hampshire, Bill Clinton was full of righteous indignation. The former president had amassed an 81-page list of all the unfair and nasty things the Obama campaign had said, or was alleged to have said, about Hillary Clinton. The press was still in love with Obama, or so it seemed to Clinton, who complained to pretty much anyone who would listen. If the press wouldn't go after Obama, then Hillary's campaign would have to do the job, the ex-president urged. On Sunday, Jan. 13, Clinton got worked up in a phone conversation with Donna Brazile, a direct, strong-willed African-American woman who had been Al Gore's campaign manager and advised the Clintons from time to time. 'If Barack Obama is nominated, it will be the worst denigration of public service,' he told her, ranting on for much of an hour. Brazile kept asking him, 'Why are you so angry?'"
Chapter 4: "Throughout the spring of 2008, McCain's uneven speaking style was a source of frustration to his aides. They knew how open and disarmingly honest he could be when he felt like it. But his stubborn integrity (or childish willfulness, depending on your point of view) was as much a liability as a virtue. When McCain didn't like the words he had been given to read, his inner Dennis the Menace would emerge, and he would sabotage his own speech. McCain's subversive instincts had long shown up in his speaking style. Before the 2000 primary in South Carolina, when he spoke in favor of flying the Confederate flag over the state capitol, he would pull a piece of paper out of his pocket and read from it. It was obvious that he didn't really believe what he was saying and was ashamed of his pandering. His aides had trouble coaching him because the very act of telling him what to do could incite a rebellion."
Chapter 5: "There wasn't real panic at Obama headquarters on North Michigan Avenue—such emotionalism (normal in most campaigns) was taboo. But Palin was so unexpected a choice that some staffers were rattled. So this aide, a veteran of some nasty campaigns, would go up to staffers and say, 'Get her out of your head! It's McCain!' It was an effort to force the slightly dazed staffers to see that they needed to stay focused on McCain, not his running mate."
Chapter 6: "Never one to wing it, Obama studied for the three official presidential debates, scheduled for roughly once a week from late September to mid-October, as if he were taking the bar exam. He memorized details on new weapons systems so he wouldn't look like a neophyte on national defense. But the real challenge, he knew, was not in the details of policy or his mastery of defense-spending arcana. He would need to show something more ineffable but profound—a true command presence. As his aides never ceased to remind him, he would have to look 'presidential.'"
Chapter 7: "On the last full day of campaigning, Monday, Nov. 3, Obama walked out onstage and surveyed the crowd for a few extra seconds before giving his stump speech. The crowd was in a festive mood. A middle-aged woman with a silk scarf salsa-danced with a beaming Latino man, holding both hands above his head and flashing the victory sign as he spun and gyrated to the song 'Ain't No Stopping Us Now.' Reporters, who rarely budged from the laptops in the press room to hear Obama deliver his well-worn speech, streamed toward the stage to get a better view of the candidate. They seemed to sense that the long campaign was finally over, that this was their last chance to see the political phenomenon, who rarely came back to talk to the press. 'I have just one word for you, Florida,' Obama declared to the crowd. 'Tomorrow.' He drew on the oratory of the civil-rights movement, intoning, 'We have a righteous wind at our backs.'"

Pick up a copy-- if you can find it.

Oh, and yet one more set of revelations about Palin: "Another reporter asked Steve Schmidt if he was happy with "the pick of Palin." He ducked the question. Schmidt was trying, not very hard, to hide his true feelings. He had been compelled to personally take over Palin's debate prep when she seemed unwilling to engage in the drudge work of learning the issues. McCain's advisers had been frustrated when Palin refused to talk to donors because she found it corrupting, and they were furious when they heard rumors that Todd Palin was calling around to Alaska bigwigs telling them to hold their powder until 2012. The day of the third debate, Palin refused to go onstage with New Hampshire GOP Sen. John Sununu and Jeb Bradley, a New Hampshire congressman running for the Senate, because they were pro-choice and because Bradley opposed drilling in Alaska. The McCain campaign ordered her onstage at the next campaign stop, but she refused to acknowledge the two Republican candidates standing behind her. McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin (perhaps once a week when they were not traveling together, estimated one adviser). Aides kept him in the dark about Palin's spending on clothes because they were sure he'd be offended. In his concession speech, McCain praised Palin, but the body language between them onstage was not particularly friendly. (Palin had asked to speak; Schmidt vetoed the request.)"