The message — of unity and hope — did not come out of nowhere. David Axelrod, a Chicago campaign consultant, long ago hatched the idea that Democrats’ campaigns should revolve more around personality than policy.
The money turned a seat-of-the-pants enterprise into a vast operation that occupied the 11th floor of a skyscraper on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, where 20-somethings tossed footballs, computer whizzes designed interactive Web sites and older volunteers filled an entire call center, not to place calls but to receive them from Democrats who were eager to help.
Then, while the public battle played out in Iowa’s farm towns, cities and at its colleges, the senator’s staff huddled in Chicago to map out a strategy that would counter Clinton’s strength, by blunting her advantage in states such as California, Ohio and Pennsylvania, then beating her where she wasn’t.
Obama also has strong support in Europe, the heartland of anti-Bush sentiment. “Germany is Obama country,” said Karsten Voight, the German government’s coordinator for German-North American cooperation. “He seems to strike a chord with average Germans,” who see him as a transformational figure such as John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr.
Despite his Harvard Law School degree and comparisons to historical greats, Obama is an accessible and familiar figure for millions of people, particularly in poor nations.
His father’s journey to America as a Kenyan immigrant resonates with millions of migrants. Many people interviewed said that the son’s living in Indonesia for several years as a child doesn’t qualify as foreign policy credentials, but it may give him a more instinctive feel for the plight of the developing world.
Obama could not compete with Clinton for the support of the political establishment, so he attracted hundreds of thousands of new voters. He could never out-raise Clinton among big donors, so he created an online network of small donors, stunning even his own advisors by raising more than $265 million. He couldn’t overcome Clinton’s name recognition in big states — at least starting out — so he focused on small ones, a strategy that proved decisive when the nominating contest became an incremental fight for delegates.
He started as an underdog, but that worked to Obama’s advantage. His strategists felt free to challenge conventional thinking, like the notion that targeting young people and Republican-leaning states would be a waste of time and resources. Both proved crucial to Obama’s success.
By the way, Obama isn’t the first person “of color” on a major party presidential ticket. Herbert Hoover’s vice president, Charles Curtis, was half Native American. He also was the last vice president to sport a mustache.
We do not know what lies ahead in our nation’s fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution.
To observe this year’s twin anniversaries, Vanity Fair set out to do something that has never been done: to compile an oral history, speaking with scores of people involved in every stage of the Internet’s development, from the 1950s onward. From more than 100 hours of interviews we have distilled and edited their words into a concise narrative of the past half-century—a history of the Internet in the words of the people who made it.
It’s a dilemma that American parents don’t have a chance to confront. And it’s a vivid example of the difference between what the Finns call a social democracyand our society. Finland is a leading example of the northern European view that a successful, competitive society should provide basic social services to all its citizens at affordable prices or at no cost at all. This isn’t controversial in Finland; it is taken for granted. For a patriotic American like me, the Finns present a difficult challenge: If we Americans are so rich and so smart, why can’t we treat our citizens as well as the Finns do?
Finns have one of the world’s most generous systems of state-funded educational, medical and welfare services, from pregnancy to the end of life. They pay nothing for education at any level, including medical school or law school. Their medical care, which contributes to an infant mortality rate that is half of ours and a life expectancy greater than ours, costs relatively little. (Finns devote 7 percent of gross domestic product to health care; we spend 15 percent.) Finnish senior citizens are well cared for. Unemployment benefits are good and last, in one form or another, indefinitely.
On the other hand, Finns live in smaller homes than Americans and consume a lot less. They spend relatively little on national defense, though they still have universal male conscription, and it is popular. Their per capita national income is about 30 percent lower than ours. Private consumption of goods and services represents about 52 percent of Finland’s economy, and 71 percent of the United States’. Finns pay considerably higher taxes — nearly half their national income is taken in taxes, while Americans pay about 30 percent on average to federal, state and local governments.
