The reselling of the Presdient 2012

Look at any campaign, for student body President or for President of the United States and we see some key ingredients. The clarity and strength of the message, the quality of the political organization, the discipline of the candidate, the get out the vote effort and the resonance of the broader issues.

As President Obama entered his reelection campaign, a full two years before election day, by any objective standard, these things were in flux and not always for the better.

To paraphrase his opposition, the hope and change thing wasn’t going so well. And yet Obama would become the first president, since Ike, to be re elected with over 50% of the vote. What the campaign did, right and wrong, is the subject of Richard Wolffe’s, 2012 campaign biography The Message: The Reselling of President Obama.

My conversation with Richard Wolffe:

All the running he can do.....

As Republicans now face the reality of trying to govern and run congress with a rather diverse group of freshman legislators, so two years ago, the Obama administration came to office with real divisions within their coalition. Divisions between true believers, what MSNBC analyst Richard Wolffe calls "revivalist" and those with a more practical, Washington based agenda, the so call "survivalists."

Amidst these divisions, the country faced problem unequaled since the 1930's, an opposition party set to "no" as its default position on everything, and in spite of it all, the new President accomplished an extraordinary amount. How did this play out and what price did the administration and the nation have to pay?  This is the backdrop for Richard Wolffe's new book Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House.

My conversation with Richard Wolffe:

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