On the night of October 3, I logged into a livestream from my DNC desk. My coworkers had long ago left the second floor for watch parties. Fluorescent lights flickered ominously in the abandoned halls. But I had never felt so confident. Romney was on the ropes. We didn’t even need a decisive win on the debate stage—with a tie, or even a not-too-catastrophic loss, a second term would be guaranteed. And we had the best political performer in a generation on our side.
At 9 P.M., the candidates took the stage at dueling podiums—Romney in a red tie, President Obama in a blue one. POTUS spoke first. By coincidence, the debate fell on his twentieth wedding anniversary, and he began by addressing the First Lady in the crowd. “I just want to wish, sweetie, you a happy anniversary, and let you know that a year from now we will not be celebrating it in front of forty million people.”
Cute, right? Not to me. Like anyone who had spent lots of time listening to President Obama, I knew immediately that something was off. The instrument was out of tune. That stilted, forced delivery? The word sweetie dropped haphazardly into the middle of a sentence? It was as though this were candidate school and Barack Obama was taking his oral exams.
Then our opponent spoke. “Congratulations to you, Mr. President, on your anniversary.” On my computer screen I could see Mitt Romney’s mouth moving, but surely the voice belonged to someone else. The candidate addressing POTUS was warm. He was charming. He sounded like a human. “I’m sure this was the most romantic place you could imagine, here with me.” Where the audience had chuckled politely at President Obama’s opening line, Romney earned an appreciative, genuine laugh.
My stomach turned.
For the next few minutes I forced myself to stare at my monitor, hoping President Obama would bounce back. Then, revising my strategy, I began pacing the empty hallway and muttering fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck. Romney was fighting for his political life, landing blow after blow.
POTUS, to put it mildly, was not. After almost two years spent watching President Obama, I knew when he was phoning it in. The annoyed half smile. The words Now look, at the beginning of every sentence. The halting “uh” sounds that could suck the soul out of a phrase.
Nor was it hard to guess why this was happening. For all his talent in front of the camera, POTUS hated political theater. At times, he reaped the benefits from refusing to play the game. But now he was paying dearly. With every lackadaisical answer, he breathed new life into Romney’s campaign.
More than an hour into the debate, POTUS used my zinger. It failed to zing. Not long after, I turned off the livestream in a daze. I plodded down the second-floor hall, up the concrete steps, back through the third floor, and down the elevator. Then I drove to Jacqui’s house. We spent the night cycling through unwelcome emotions: sadness, anger, confusion, despair. It was as though a friend had died testing a bungee cord he’d designed himself.
ROMNEY SHARP AND STEADY IN FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE
PRESIDENT OBAMA SNOOZES AND LOSES
OBAMA FLUNKED THE FIRST DEBATE. BUT WHY?
The headlines the next morning were brutal. But they weren’t unfair. Trudging to my desk on the morning of October 4, I thought of everyone who had invested themselves in the idea of Barack Obama. My vols in Ohio. My coworkers in the White House. My fellow speechwriters from the convention. Scarlett and Kerry. Stacey Lihn. And at our campaign’s most critical moment, just when we had turned a long-shot reelection bid into a sure thing, our candidate had acted like he didn’t even care. This wasn’t just a missed opportunity, or a subpar performance. This was an insult.
I was angry. More than that, I was heartbroken. The myth of Obama was not that he was somehow more than human. It was that he was the best possible version of a human, and that by following him—by believing without thinking, by rarely asking questions and never admitting doubts—I could become the best possible version of a human, too. Now I saw how stupid that was. POTUS was brilliant. He was talented. He was on the right side of history. But at the end of the day, Barack Obama was just a guy.
I still liked the president and believed he deserved reelection. But slumped in my cubicle, staring into Devlin’s frightened face, I knew my relationship with my candidate had changed forever. My days in Obamaworld weren’t finished. But my days as an Obamabot were done.
“WE CAN’T AFFORD TO LOSE.”
As catchy phrases go, “Yes we can” was more exciting. But in the days after the debate, our old slogan failed to inspire. I had been drawn to politics in a kind of patriotic ecstasy. But what kept me there now was a list of pragmatic considerations, a bloodless preference for a concrete set of policy goals. Obama’s reelection would insure more people. Create more jobs. Help more students pay off loans. It was the political equivalent of a vegan cookie—all nutrition, no taste. Still, it kept me from quitting my job.
Also, Mitt Romney scared me now. He still seemed like a fundamentally decent person. But the 47 percent video suggested that, as president, he would be governed by his party’s darkest impulses.
This was not just a matter of rhetoric. Presidents in movies choose between good and evil, but real life rarely works that way. More often, presidents choose between easy and hard, between those who have power and those who do not. I thought of two-year-old Zoe Lihn, unknowingly waging a battle with her giant insurance company and the army of lobbyists it employed. I had no doubt whose side President Romney would take.
As the idea of losing became more frightening, it also became more real. On Nate Silver’s site, our chances of winning had been climbing by 7 percent per month. After the debate, they fell 7 percent in just two days. I had no clue how long the slide would last. I refreshed the site obsessively, as if my clicks held the power to reverse the trend. They didn’t, of course. By October 17, we had gone from a slam dunk to a virtual coin toss.
The only thing sinking faster than our poll numbers was morale. The entire DNC was summoned to an emergency meeting, during which we were told to stop refreshing FiveThirtyEight. Then the pep talks began. “When the game’s on the line,” said one high-ranking aide, “the president’s the guy you want holding the ball.” A week earlier this might have reassured me, but not anymore. Had this guy spent debate night in a coma?
Other Obama advisors addressed the disaster as well. On a conference call, David Axelrod tried valiantly to shoulder the blame. He had set the strategy, he told us. He should have let POTUS be more aggressive in his attacks. I admired Axe’s loyalty, but for the first time I found one of his arguments entirely unconvincing. Of course he would say that, I thought. He’s an Iowan.