Blog

Newsweek for the past few cycles has devotes a special issue to going over the presidential campaigns of that year.  In my procrastination of taking my POL 502 midterm, I read it this afternoon while doing laundry.  While some of the more juicy or interesting items have received attention on the web.  Here are three tid bits I found a bit interesting.

Frustrated by reporters fishing for trivial “gaffes,” Obama did not like coming back to the plane to talk to the press. As he trudged back from time to time to deal with the reporters’ incessant questions, he looked like a suburban dad, slump-shouldered after a long day at the office, taking out the trash.

This is probably one of my favorite things about Obama, and my initial reaction is to consider these thoughts cliche.  However he seems quite real.  He is an extremely ambitious fellow, but he almost wants politics to be he day job and not his life.  In the last week of the campaign, there were reports that he was upset with reporters for not giving him time alone to trick or treat with his daughters, or take a solemn walk in Hawaii when visiting his grandmother.  In the Newsweek piece, it discussed how he was somewhat surprised he would not be able to go home on the weekends early on in the campaign.  On election night, he had dinner at his house with his immediate family.  Maybe it is just an image the Obama machine is cultivating, but he legitimately seems like a person who will treat the Presidency as a job and not a person who see themself as President.

For a couple of geekier excerpts

He had wanted to go back to the state of his first great triumph to give a speech unofficially kicking off the fall campaign, even though Clinton officially was still in the race. “That’s an interesting belt buckle,” he said to Michelle, mischievously. She feigned offense and said, “I am interesting, next to you. Surprise, surprise, a blue suit, a white shirt and a tie.” Obama grinned and bent down until he was almost at eye level with her waist. He jabbed a playful finger toward her belt buckle, and let loose his inner nerd. “The lithium crystals! Beam me up, Scotty!” Obama squeaked, laughing at his own lame joke as Michelle rolled her eyes.

So, Obama the treky?

And a hat tip to the Obama new media team…

At the end of August, as Hurricane Gustav threatened the coast of Texas, the Obama campaign called the Red Cross to say it would be routing donations to it via the Red Cross home page. Get your servers ready—our guys can be pretty nuts, Team Obama said. Sure, sure, whatever, the Red Cross responded. We’ve been through 9/11, Katrina, we can handle it. The surge of Obama dollars crashed the Red Cross Web site in less than 15 minutes.

You can read the 7 chapter Newsweek article here.