Two key backroom players charted Barack Obama's stunning success: Davids Plouffe and Axelrod, writes Mary Fitzgerald
A FEW MINUTES into Barack Obama's victory speech on Tuesday night, after he had thanked his running mate Joe Biden, his wife Michelle, his two daughters and his relatives across the globe, the president-elect paid tribute to two political operatives most Americans would never have heard of before.
First mention went to campaign manager David Plouffe, described by an elated Obama as "the unsung hero of this campaign who built the best political campaign . . . in the history of the United States of America".
Then he turned to chief strategist David Axelrod "a partner every step of the way", before congratulating and thanking what he dubbed "the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics".
No one who has closely observed the evolution of Obama's presidential campaign will have been much surprised that the duo known as the "two Davids" were singled out for praise.
For all the Obama campaign's focus on marrying online technology to grassroots organising, the operation itself was highly centralised and tightly knit, with Plouffe and Axelrod the chief architects.
The two worked well together, having been business partners before joining the Obama team. Their relationship could be viewed as a microcosm of the Obama campaign as a whole, with none of the infighting, backstabbing and damaging leaks that marred Hillary Clinton's efforts.
The unassuming Plouffe is credited with building up a finely tuned political organisation of unprecedented size and sophistication, in addition to crafting a strategy for victory in the primaries that focused on winning delegates, not just states. He was also known for his parsimonious approach to resources, keeping expenses to the minimum so more money could be committed to organising on the ground.
If Plouffe was the man behind the campaign machine, then Axelrod was the man behind its message. From the outset, "Ax" worked closely with Obama to fashion the campaign's central narrative of "change" with its focus on the "politics of hope".
While the campaign's inner circle was notable for its apparent lack of hierarchy, Axelrod, by virtue of his 16-year relationship with Obama, was considered to carry the greatest weight.
A softly spoken former Chicago Tribunereporter, Axelrod had engineered several other Democratic campaigns at local and national level. A close friend and confidant of both Obama and his wife, Axelrod saw Obama's potential at an early stage.
"My involvement was a leap of faith," Axelrod once said of his decision to help Obama in his campaign for a Senate seat in 2004. "I thought that if I could help Barack Obama get to Washington then I would have accomplished something great in my life."
An admirer of Robert Kennedy in his youth, Axelrod saw in Obama's campaign an opportunity to recapture the idealism that Kennedy had once inspired.
Another member of Obama's innermost circle during the campaign was Valerie Jarrett, a well-connected Chicago businesswoman, fundraiser and former city hall official who has been described as "the other side of Barack's brain".
In the 1990s, she hired a young Michelle Obama to work for the mayoral office in Chicago and she is now considered one of the couple's closest confidants. In addition to her role as a sounding board for Obama across the spectrum of policy and politics, Jarrett prides herself as being the person who can tell him uncomfortable truths. Jarrett will lead the president-elect's transition team along with John Podesta and Obama's Senate chief of staff Pete Rouse. The latter guided Obama's swift rise through Washington, formulating a Senate strategy that concentrated on passing bipartisan legislation. A longtime Hill staffer, Rouse had earned the nickname the "101st senator" due to more than a decade spent as chief of staff to former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle. Rouse recruited several old Daschle hands to the campaign, and secured for Obama a crucial endorsement from Daschle himself at a very early stage.
While Obama was careful to recruit both Washington insiders and Chicago outsiders to his campaign, he also rounded out his kitchen cabinet with other longtime friends and allies.
One example is Julius Genachowski who worked with Obama on the Harvard Law Review. Now a high-tech entrepreneur, Genachowski helped transform the fledgling campaign into something akin to a political experiment when he convinced Obama that the internet could be harnessed to empower and mobilise the grassroots like never before.
Apart from its innovative nature, one of the most striking aspects of the campaign that made history this week is the level of discipline, commitment, and discretion that characterised those who steered it through the long journey to November 4th.