Presidents and their Advisers: Barack Obama and David Axelrod
We conclude our series on Presidents and their advisers with a look at David Axelrod, who, along with David Plouffe, engineered two election victories for President Barack Obama. Born February 22, 1955, Axelrod served as director of the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and was a political advisor to President Bill Clinton before becoming a chief campaign advisor to Barack Obama during the presidential campaign of 2008. After Obama's election, Axelrod was appointed as Senior Advisor to the President. He left the White House position in early 2011 and became the Senior Strategist for Obama's successful re-election campaign in 2012, once again being the architect of another victory for President Obama.
Axelrod grew up in Manhattan, the son of a psychologist father and a journalist mother who separated when he was 8. Like Karl Rove, Axelrod also lost a parent to suicide, his father in 1977. Axelrod had the political bug from an early age, selling campaign buttons for Robert F. Kennedy when he was 13. After graduating from high school in 1972, Axelrod attended the University of Chicago where he majored in political science. He interned at the Chicago Tribune. Axelrod married Susan Landau in 1979. In June 1981, their first child, a daughter, was diagnosed with epilepsy at seven months of age. The Chicago Tribune hired Axelrod after his graduation from college. At 27, he became the City Hall Bureau Chief and a political columnist for the paper. He worked there for eight years. He joined the campaign of U.S. Senator Paul Simon as communications director in 1984 and shortly thereafter he was promoted to co-campaign manager of Simon's campaign.
In 1985, Axelrod formed the political consultancy firm, Axelrod & Associates. In 1987 he worked on the successful reelection campaign of Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor. He also ran Simon's campaign for the 1988 Democratic Presidential nomination. The Economist described Axelrod as someone who specializes in "packaging black candidates for white voters".
Axelrod was retained by the Liberal Party of Ontario to help Dalton McGuinty and his party in 2002 to be elected into government in the October 2003 election. In 2004, Axelrod worked for John Edwards' presidential campaign. In 2006, Axelrod consulted for several campaigns, including the successful campaigns of Eliot Spitzer in New York's gubernatorial election and Deval Patrick in Massachusetts's gubernatorial election. He served in 2006 as the chief political adviser for Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair U.S. Representative Rahm Emanuel for the U.S. House of Representatives elections, in which the Democrats gained 31 seats.
Axelrod first met Barack Obama in 1992, when Betty Lou Saltzmann, a Chicago democrat, introduced the two of them after Obama had impressed her at a black voter registration drive that he ran. Obama consulted Axelrod before he delivered a 2002 anti-war speech, and he asked Axelrod to read drafts of his book, The Audacity of Hope.
Axelrod contsidered taking a break from politics during the 2008 presidential campaign, because five of the candidates-Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, Chris Dodd and Tom Vilsack-were past clients of his. He had an especially difficult decision to make about campaigning against Hillary Clinton because she had raised significant funds for epilepsy on behalf of a foundation co-founded by Axelrod's wife, Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE) Axelrod's daughter suffers from developmental disabilities associated with chronic epileptic seizures. Axelrod decided to participate in the Obama campaign, and served as chief strategist and media advisor for Obama. He told The Washington Post, "I thought that if I could help Barack Obama get to Washington, then I would have accomplished something great in my life." For the initial announcement of Obama's campaign, Axelrod created a five-minute internet video released January 16, 2007.
To counter the Clinton campaign's strategy that emphasized Hillary's experience, Axelrod created the Obama campaign's main theme of "change." Axelrod criticized the Clinton campaign's position by saying that "being the consummate Washington insider is not where you want to be in a year when people want change." The change message was credited for Obama's victory in the Iowa caucuses. Axelrod also believed that the Clinton campaign underestimated the importance of the caucus states. He said "for all the talent and the money they had over there, "they bewilderingly seemed to have little understanding for the caucuses and how important they would become." In the 2008 primary season, Obama won a majority of the states that use the caucus format.
Axelrod used a strategy that encouraged the participation of people, a lesson he drew from Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign. Axelrod said that "getting volunteers involved became the legacy of the campaign." Obama's web program allowed supporters to blog, create their own personal page, and even phonebank from home. Axelrod's strategic use of the Internet helped Obama to organize under-30 voters and build over 475,000 donors in 2007, most of whom were Internet donors contributing less than $100 each.
Axelrod is described by many as soft-spoken and mild-mannered. Bill Daley, who would later become Obama's Chief of Staff, said of Axelrod, "He's not a screamer, like some of these guys, he has a good sense of humor, so he's able to defuse things."
On November 20, 2008, Obama named Axelrod as a Senior Advisor in his administration. Axelrod's role included crafting policy and communicating the President's message, working with the President's speechwriters, and the White House communications team. Axelrod left his White House senior advisor post on January 28, 2011 to become Obama's chief campaign strategist in the 2012 campaign. He crafted much of the strategy that portrayed Obama's opponent Mitt Romney as a rich elite, out of touch with common voters. He had the especially brilliant idea of targeting many of the attack ads on Romney at the time after Romney had won enough delegates for the nomination, but before he was formally nominated, a time when the Romney campaign was not spending campaign funds and could not fight back.
In January 2013, Axelrod established a bipartisan Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, where he serves as director. Since then he has helped Italian prime minister Mario Monti with his election campaign. Monti's coalition went on to come fourth with 10.5% of the vote in the Italian general election, 2013. On February 19, 2013, Axelrod joined NBC News and MSNBC as a senior political analyst. In April of this year it was announced that Axelrod had been appointed senior strategic adviser to the British Labour Party with a view to advising party leader Ed Miliband in the run-up to the 2015 general election.
Axelrod grew up in Manhattan, the son of a psychologist father and a journalist mother who separated when he was 8. Like Karl Rove, Axelrod also lost a parent to suicide, his father in 1977. Axelrod had the political bug from an early age, selling campaign buttons for Robert F. Kennedy when he was 13. After graduating from high school in 1972, Axelrod attended the University of Chicago where he majored in political science. He interned at the Chicago Tribune. Axelrod married Susan Landau in 1979. In June 1981, their first child, a daughter, was diagnosed with epilepsy at seven months of age. The Chicago Tribune hired Axelrod after his graduation from college. At 27, he became the City Hall Bureau Chief and a political columnist for the paper. He worked there for eight years. He joined the campaign of U.S. Senator Paul Simon as communications director in 1984 and shortly thereafter he was promoted to co-campaign manager of Simon's campaign.
In 1985, Axelrod formed the political consultancy firm, Axelrod & Associates. In 1987 he worked on the successful reelection campaign of Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor. He also ran Simon's campaign for the 1988 Democratic Presidential nomination. The Economist described Axelrod as someone who specializes in "packaging black candidates for white voters".
Axelrod was retained by the Liberal Party of Ontario to help Dalton McGuinty and his party in 2002 to be elected into government in the October 2003 election. In 2004, Axelrod worked for John Edwards' presidential campaign. In 2006, Axelrod consulted for several campaigns, including the successful campaigns of Eliot Spitzer in New York's gubernatorial election and Deval Patrick in Massachusetts's gubernatorial election. He served in 2006 as the chief political adviser for Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair U.S. Representative Rahm Emanuel for the U.S. House of Representatives elections, in which the Democrats gained 31 seats.
Axelrod first met Barack Obama in 1992, when Betty Lou Saltzmann, a Chicago democrat, introduced the two of them after Obama had impressed her at a black voter registration drive that he ran. Obama consulted Axelrod before he delivered a 2002 anti-war speech, and he asked Axelrod to read drafts of his book, The Audacity of Hope.
Axelrod contsidered taking a break from politics during the 2008 presidential campaign, because five of the candidates-Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, Chris Dodd and Tom Vilsack-were past clients of his. He had an especially difficult decision to make about campaigning against Hillary Clinton because she had raised significant funds for epilepsy on behalf of a foundation co-founded by Axelrod's wife, Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE) Axelrod's daughter suffers from developmental disabilities associated with chronic epileptic seizures. Axelrod decided to participate in the Obama campaign, and served as chief strategist and media advisor for Obama. He told The Washington Post, "I thought that if I could help Barack Obama get to Washington, then I would have accomplished something great in my life." For the initial announcement of Obama's campaign, Axelrod created a five-minute internet video released January 16, 2007.
To counter the Clinton campaign's strategy that emphasized Hillary's experience, Axelrod created the Obama campaign's main theme of "change." Axelrod criticized the Clinton campaign's position by saying that "being the consummate Washington insider is not where you want to be in a year when people want change." The change message was credited for Obama's victory in the Iowa caucuses. Axelrod also believed that the Clinton campaign underestimated the importance of the caucus states. He said "for all the talent and the money they had over there, "they bewilderingly seemed to have little understanding for the caucuses and how important they would become." In the 2008 primary season, Obama won a majority of the states that use the caucus format.
Axelrod used a strategy that encouraged the participation of people, a lesson he drew from Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign. Axelrod said that "getting volunteers involved became the legacy of the campaign." Obama's web program allowed supporters to blog, create their own personal page, and even phonebank from home. Axelrod's strategic use of the Internet helped Obama to organize under-30 voters and build over 475,000 donors in 2007, most of whom were Internet donors contributing less than $100 each.
Axelrod is described by many as soft-spoken and mild-mannered. Bill Daley, who would later become Obama's Chief of Staff, said of Axelrod, "He's not a screamer, like some of these guys, he has a good sense of humor, so he's able to defuse things."
On November 20, 2008, Obama named Axelrod as a Senior Advisor in his administration. Axelrod's role included crafting policy and communicating the President's message, working with the President's speechwriters, and the White House communications team. Axelrod left his White House senior advisor post on January 28, 2011 to become Obama's chief campaign strategist in the 2012 campaign. He crafted much of the strategy that portrayed Obama's opponent Mitt Romney as a rich elite, out of touch with common voters. He had the especially brilliant idea of targeting many of the attack ads on Romney at the time after Romney had won enough delegates for the nomination, but before he was formally nominated, a time when the Romney campaign was not spending campaign funds and could not fight back.
In January 2013, Axelrod established a bipartisan Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, where he serves as director. Since then he has helped Italian prime minister Mario Monti with his election campaign. Monti's coalition went on to come fourth with 10.5% of the vote in the Italian general election, 2013. On February 19, 2013, Axelrod joined NBC News and MSNBC as a senior political analyst. In April of this year it was announced that Axelrod had been appointed senior strategic adviser to the British Labour Party with a view to advising party leader Ed Miliband in the run-up to the 2015 general election.