Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America - Hardcover

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On the Cusp of History

It ended where it began. On the evening of November 5, 2012, twenty thousand people lined the streets of the East Village section of downtown Des Moines. The golden dome atop the Iowa Capitol building stood in the background, brilliantly illuminated against the black sky. From the Capitol to the Des Moines River, the streets were cordoned off and had been for days, awaiting the president’s arrival. Behind the stage sat the old headquarters from the first campaign—a squat one-story building that was now a church. For many in the traveling party, including the president, it was still familiar ground. Some of them could recall exactly where people sat four years earlier as they made the final phone calls to supporters during the caucuses in 2008. They remembered too their nervousness as they awaited the returns from precincts across the state and their elation when finally he had won on that frigid January night. It had all happened so fast, and now, even more quickly, they were at the end. The verdict would come the next day from the voters.

The whole team was there: David Axelrod, David Plouffe, and Robert Gibbs, the trio of advisers who led the first campaign; speechwriter Jon Favreau and his 2008 writing partner Ben Rhodes, now deputy national security adviser. Friends Marty Nesbitt and Mike Ramos were along for the ride. So too was Valerie Jarrett, the president’s White House confidante and one of his and the First Lady’s closest friends. Reggie Love, the president’s irrepressible body man who was now off on other pursuits, had come back too. Jen Psaki, who had logged almost every mile with Obama in 2008 and spent time in the White House, was back as traveling campaign spokeswoman. Jay Carney had seen the 2008 campaign from the outside as Time’s Washington bureau chief. Now he too was in the staff cabin on Air Force One as White House press secretary. Trip director Marvin Nicholson, who was also the president’s golfing buddy, tried to keep the operation moving to schedule. It was like the end of a long-running television series in which all the characters from previous seasons had come back to make cameo appearances, Axelrod said. The whole family was back together one last time.

It was easy to forget how far Obama had come in such a short time, and how dramatic the ascent had been. He had been on the national stage barely eight years, beginning with that night in Boston in 2004 when as a little-known Illinois state senator he gave a keynote address that electrified the Democratic convention of John Kerry. Soon he became a vessel for the hopes and dreams of millions of Americans, who had rallied behind him as he began an improbable quest for the White House. That first election made history and brought almost two million people to the Washington Mall for his historic inauguration day. He came to office amid great expectations and facing enormous problems. His presidency had been rocky—his aides called it a roller-coaster ride, which was a charitable way to put it—as he dealt with the deepest recession since the Great Depression, battled a Republican Party unified in its opposition to almost everything he proposed, and suffered a historic midterm election defeat just two years after he stood in Chicago’s Grant Park to claim the presidency. He was confident as he approached election day 2012—he was never one to lack for self-confidence about anything. But those around him could also sense the weight of the moment bearing down on him. He had told someone that he believed that everything—everything—about his presidency was on the line with this election: how he would be viewed by history, his legacy, his accomplishments, and the future of the country. He wasn’t nervous so much as he was clear-eyed about the enormity of the moment and the consequences of defeat.

The final swing had begun on Sunday, November 4, when he left the White House for a flight to New Hampshire. Bill Clinton joined him. The president and former president, tense rivals during those 2008 primaries between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, were now allies. They had campaigned together the night before in Virginia and were to do one last joint rally before splitting off in separate directions for the final day and a half of campaigning. On the half-hour ride from the Manchester airport to Concord, Plouffe and Axelrod joined them in the president’s limousine. Clinton was delighted to be back in the state that had saved his candidacy during the primaries in 1992 and resurrected his wife’s ultimately failed candidacy in 2008. “I love New Hampshire,” he exclaimed. New Hampshire summoned different memories for Obama’s team. They all remembered the pain of losing the primary there to Hillary Clinton when everyone believed Obama was a sure winner. Plouffe wouldn’t say he exactly hated the state, so he said, “We like New Hampshire, but we like Iowa a little bit more.” From New Hampshire, Obama had flown south to Florida and then back to the most contested of all the battlegrounds, Ohio, for an evening rally with Stevie Wonder at the University of Cincinnati. Hecklers interrupted him, one of them an anti-abortion demonstrator who gripped the railing of the balcony as police took him away. After the rally, the traveling press corps broke off from the presidential party and flew on to Madison, Wisconsin. But Obama had one more stop, a late-night rally in Aurora, Colorado. By the time he got to his hotel in Madison, it was after 3 a.m.

If Sunday was a grueling march across the country and back, Monday was a day of nostalgia and emotions, for the president and all those with him. Racing through the president’s mind, Axelrod believed, was the improbable journey he had been on and the finality of knowing that whatever came the next day, this chapter was ending. On one flight during the day, Obama said to Axelrod, Plouffe, and Gibbs, Listen, I remember the night of [the 2008 primary in] New Hampshire, you three knocking on my door and pulling me out of dinner with my wife to tell me that we had lost. If you show up at my door tomorrow night, just remember I’m still going to be president for two more months. Everybody had a good laugh at that, and Axelrod said, “No problem, Mr. President, we already talked about this. If someone is knocking, it’s going to be [campaign manager Jim] Messina.”

Bruce Springsteen was also with him that day. On the trip from Madison to the president’s second stop of the day in Columbus, Ohio, Springsteen rode on Air Force One. During the flight, the president placed a call to New Jersey’s Chris Christie. The Republican governor and the Democratic president had bonded in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the storm that had devastated parts of the East Coast a week earlier. Republicans were dismayed by what they saw as Christie’s excessive praise for the president, given the closeness of the election. Christie was a huge fan of Springsteen, but it was an unrequited love. Obama decided to have some fun with his new friend the governor. Aboard Air Force One, Obama’s companions thought Christie didn’t recognize Springsteen’s voice. Nonsense, Christie said later—he instantly knew who Obama had on the line. “[Obama] says to me, ‘You know, in a crisis like we’re going through, you know the only thing that’s better than one guy from Jersey?’ I said, ‘No.’ He goes, ‘Two guys from Jersey.’ Then I hear, ‘Hey, Gov, we meet in the wildest places, don’t we?’ I said to him, ‘Are you on Air Force One?’ He said to me, ‘It is unbelievable, it is unbelievable, yes, I’m on Air Force One,’ and you could just tell that...