David Plouffe

Transcription

>> And I'm thrilled to welcome David Plouffe to Google. David spent the last two decades helping get Democratic candidates elected to public office. And as many of you know, he was Barack Obama's campaign manager during the primary and general election in 2008. David's leadership style exemplifies many of the qualities we value here at Google: He's data-driven. He has a laser-like focus on the user or, in his case, the voter. He challenges the status quo. And he lets the results of his work speak for him. With those qualities, David built a billion-dollar startup that accomplished what the vast majority of the world said was simply impossible. He's written an excellent book, "The Audacity to Win." And we're thrilled to have David here at Google today. Thank you for coming. >> [Clapping] David Plouffe: Thank you, Glenn. Can you guys hear me? Okay. Glenn, actually, used to work with my wife, who plays a number of starring roles in the book. So it was a big part of helping our family survive way back when. It's good to be with you guys. I don't want to prattle on too much here, so we have time for discussion. So I thought I would just highlight some of the main -- >> [inaudible] David Plouffe: Yeah, oh my goodness. [laughter] I like avoiding videocameras, so -- but that was not purposeful. Some of the main sort of principles that thread throughout the book. Obviously, if you guys want to end the discussion, we can talk about some of the great characters and moments of the campaign -- you know, Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers and Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin, or anything that's on your mind today. And I think one of the important things about the book is -- as we're in another one of those moments when Washington is kind of in a frenzy and misreading things -- I think it's good to remind of the stability in the approach in the leadership style of the president as he keeps his eye firmly focused on the goal, not kind of the furor in politics of the moment, which was really one of the reasons we won the election. I'd start by saying, One of the big principles -- both of the book and our campaign -- was that we were successful in large measure because we defied convention. Probably something that you guys try and live and breathe every day here. But we were a startup business in the beginning. Barack Obama was highly unusual. And that almost everybody who runs for president in both parties has planned to do it for years. They spend time in Iowa, New Hampshire, and they build up fundraising apparatus. Nowadays, you build up e-mail lists. We started this campaignn with nothing. Nothing. He hadn't even had a competitive Senate race. So he hadn't gone around the country and raised money like most people do. And as hard as that was -- and it was hard in every way imaginable -- we had to, you know, get bank accounts set up and figure out our computer system and office space and who was going to staff and get familiar with the states that were going to determine our fate. We profited from that period, because we did not have a dusty playbook on the shelf about how we -- or anyone -- should run for president in the year 2008. And so, throughout the book, I highlight areas where we defied the convention. And there are big examples of that and small examples of that. Probably the biggest one is the reason we won -- is that we tried to do something that rarely has anyone in politics achieved, certainly at the presidential level -- was that, we tried to change the electorate. We tried to change our consumer base. And that wasn't just an idea, it was a necessity for us. We simply would not have won the Democratic primary had the people who always came out to vote in primaries and caucuses done so. We had to make it younger and more diverse and had to get independents and Republicans to participate. And it was a really, really hard thing to do. And we won the Iowa caucuses, which takes up a big part of the book -- almost entirely based on expansion of the electorate, you know? People over 65 had historically turned out at twice the rate of people under 30 in Iowa caucuses every time it had been held. And we changed that. And on election night in Iowa, as many people turned out under 30 as over 65. That's why we won. And if we had lost Iowa, Barack Obama would have been a small footnote in political history. It meant everything to us, and we kept our eyes focused on that prize. And you know, by the way, Google played a role in that. Because we found out that these voters -- younger voters, people who had been checked out of politics, people who might vote in general elections but not primaries -- they needed basic information. It needed to be very easy for them to find out where to participate. And one thing we did in Iowa, and then it worked -- and we did it in every primary and caucus, and Hillary Clinton did not. And then, we did in the general election; John McCain did not -- was, we did a lot of advertising just so that it would be easy for people to find out where to participate. You know, a lot of states with caucuses and primaries, we had a look-up tool that people came in through Google -- just a basic look-up tool. "I live here, where do I participate?" No one else was providing that service. No one. Not Democratic parties, not election officials -- at least, not easily. I think it enabled us to have probably produced millions of additional votes in the general election. And so, we learned not to forget about the blocking and tackling. Because these people did not know how and when to participate. And that was the thread that carried us all the way through the general election. Was, Don't just focus on the poetry and the music and all the, you know, great rhetoric; get them there. Because, obviously, if they did not vote -- and there were people, if something happened to them -- they got busier at work, a child care issue -- they were the people least likely to vote. And so, in a lot of states out west, of course, we don't have Election Day anymore. We have Election Month. We have Early Vote. And that's what we focused on -- back to Glenn's point about data. I didn't care about the raw numbers in Early Vote. What I cared about is, Are we voting those less-frequent, young voters? Are we turning them out? Because those are the people you didn't want to have to wait on Election Day to see if they came out. You wanted to get their vote in the bank. So that's a big thread -- the change in the electorate. And listen, the general election ended up not being close. We assumed it would be. Historically, it is. But on Election Day, we won. The people who voted in the Bush/Kerry election in '04, the margin was Obama 50, McCain 49. Absolute dead heat. And of course, the electoral colleges, we've learned, would have been close as well. But amongst those people voting in their first election -- or their first election in a long time -- we won 71 to 27, sixty percent of those people under thirty. You may never see another number like that in the history of American politics. That that big of an advantage in that cohort. So that was the big defying of convention that we did. And of course, what made it hard is, the political commentators, the pundits, the media -- fortunately, our opponents -- didn't believe it could happen. Did not believe it could happen. And that was hard. Because we had to muscle through and convince people that we had the right strategy. Our belief that we could win states like North Carolina, Indiana, Virginia, even Florida, was a big part of our success. You know, politics is a competition. And we dictated the campaign to John McCain. Because, by the end, he was worrying more about holding on to those Bush states that they swore weren't going to be competitive than trying to beat us in Kerry states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania etc. So, it's a chess match. And by the end of the election, we had checkmated the king, because we were dictating the terms of the debate to him. And one thing I hope, if you read the book -- those of you that do -- you'll learn is, the election is not as it's portrayed commonly in the media. Okay? It's not about the clever ad that you put on TV or the national polls or even state polls, okay? The way we viewed the election was, It's a puzzle to get to 270 electoral votes. And beneath that kind of topline puzzle is your theory of how you're going to win the states to get you to 270. And that's what we lived and breathed every day. We had a theory of how we're going to win every state. Okay, How many people do we have to register in North Carolina? How many Republicans do we have to get? How many Independents? How many women between the ages of 25 and 50 with a college degree do we need to win? All of that. And that's what we tracked. And the way we were able to track it is, we had volunteers out there doing millions of contacts every day so that we were getting data back. And that was our Bible; that was our north star -- not any of the stuff that was really talked about ad nauseam publicly. So that was a big risk. We also believed strongly in two areas: both grassroots volunteer work and technology -- that you really can't talk about one without the other. And combined and married together, they became one of the most powerful forces in political history in this country. And you know, the reason it worked for us was that -- from the very, very beginning, most political campaigns -- and I would argue still too many private sector companies -- do not have those two things: Technology and the power of people talking to people at the core of their mission. And we did. Okay? We were going to be a grassroots campaign. We're going to lose. And our theory was, "So many people in their lives live all, or most of it, through technology." And if their intersection with our campaign was somehow an exception to that -- as politics normally was; people did not use the digital space to do much more than raise money -- we would lose. And we did not try and set out to build the best political website in the field or even in history. Our view -- and we got a lot of great guidance from people out in this area of the country who, when no one else was for us -- there weren't a lot of people jumping on the Barack Obama bandwagon in the beginning, but a lot of people in your field were. And so, our view was, "Well, we have to have a website and a social networking site that -- when people are on Amazon or they're searching on Google or they're on Facebook, whatever site they're on, NewYorkTimes.com -- their experience with us can't be terribly deficient. If it is, they're never going to come back. And I think that's the way you have to look at it. And we tried to build a website that became a home for people so that they could do anything they wanted to there for us -- organize for us, raise money for us, get information. We tried to drive people there to watch big moments in the campaign. You might remember when we announced our vice presidential pick, we did it by text message. But in that text message, we said, "We've picked Joe Biden. Watch the first event, Saturday at two o'clock on Barack Obama.com." Not on TV. On our website. And it became a home for people. And our social networking site became a very, very powerful thing, where millions of people got involved in a campaign and organized in their states for us long before we had a staff person on the ground. You know, some of the smartest things we did in the campaign were just, Stay out of people's way and let them do their thing -- and they did their thing. And that's why we were able to beat Hillary Clinton in the primary in places where she had all the political support and 30 point leads. It's because we had people on the ground in Durango, Colorado and in St. Paul, Minnesota and in Mobile, Alabama, organizing for us. Long before I even focused on it, they were making it happen. And then, once we got on the ground, we were able to really focus things. So the grassroots and technology played such an enormous role. Now, it obviously helped us fund our campaign. That's the thing the press and observers pay a lot of attention to -- and it was important. Money matters in politics. We raised 750 million, 500 million of it online. Most of that from average Americans -- four million of them -- who gave us an average of $85. We've never seen that before in politics. We didn't take any money from lobbyists or PACs. We took it from people. And almost all of those people volunteered. And we tried to build campaigns, and I talk a lot about this in the book. We tried to build campaigns in each battleground state that, in and of themselves, could help deliver us victory. So in the state of Florida or the state of Ohio, or the state of North Carolina, we decided, "What is everything that we can humanly do to win this election?" So in Florida, it was $38 million. Think about that, you know? That is probably -- by a factor of ten -- more money than has ever been spent in Florida in presidential politics. State after state. And you know, it was down to the dollar, and we actually shared those budgets with our donors so they understood what the money was going to. It wasn't just a black hole. We tried to build trust with people so that they understood, when they were giving time or money, what it meant. And I think any organization that's trying to get people to give time -- whether it's in Google and they're asking you to do something outside of your normal course of business or nonprofits or political campaigns -- you've got to explain to people how what they're doing fits into the overall message. And that's what we did. And so, when someone went out there and knocked on doors for four hours and registered 12 voters in Raleigh, North Carolina, they understood what it meant. Because they said, "Okay, I've been told to win North Carolina. We have to register 200,000 people. And I just did my part and hundreds of people like me today did." So the money was important, but what the grassroots did -- only enabled by technology -- was, it organized our campaign, okay? In ways big and small. And I talked about expansion of the electorate. We always believed that the best way to get somebody to vote -- obviously, they had to have some interest in Obama, some belief in him. But we always thought the most likely reason a 45-year-old African-American man in Philadelphia would register and vote for the very first time was because his friend or his family member was going to do so, and said, "I'm going to register and vote. You should too." Why did so many young people get involved? It was almost always because one of their friends was getting involved and said, "Hey, I'm going to go down to the Obama office in Durango, Colorado. Why don't you join me?" And so, the grassroots movement out there registered the voters, persuaded the voters, recruited the volunteers. And it wasn't just the numbers. We had more volunteers than we've ever seen in American political history and may ever again, except for 2012. It was who they were that made a difference. When I -- or any of you, who have a known political persuasion, talks about politics with our friends or family members or colleagues, no one listens to what we say, because they already know what we're going to say. But 50 percent of our people had never been involved in politics before -- had never given time or money to a campaign. So when they talk about politics, people lean in a little bit more closely. Say, "John, I've never heard you care about politics. I want to listen." 20 percent of our core volunteers were Republicans and Independents. So when a Republican says, "I've never voted for a presidential candidate who's a Democrat going all the way back to John F Kennedy, I voted for Richard Nixon in that race, but I'm voting for Obama -- let me tell you why." People want to listen to that. So it was the diversity, not just in age or ethnicity, but in those people who hadn't been involved in politics who we thought were so powerful. And then, there were message deliverers -- and this is something you guys understand better than I do. You know, it wasn't too long ago in this country where -- if you did a press conference or spoke to several network and cable news anchors, you were reaching most of the voters in this country. Obviously, not anymore. Particularly, the expansion electorate we're talking about. They do not watch cable news -- any of them. None of them. None of them. They very rarely watch the networks. They certainly don't read the national news. And they don't always get information online. Some of it is they just talk to each other through e-mail, through social networking, through phone calls, from conversations. And that's what we believed in: That there's no more powerful communication -- whether it's to get someone to try a new brand or a new product, or to consider voting for someone -- than a human being talking to a human being. And ideally, it's someone from their community, someone they grew up with, someone that's lived on their block their whole life. Particularly when you knew we were going to get attacked in very personal and character-based ways. The best way to convince, you know, the independent diner owner from Indiana that Obama wasn't trying to, you know, completely destroy the tax system here and, you know, was going to protect America and did see America like we all did, unlike what Sarah Palin said, was to have someone on that block say, "I've looked into this. Don't believe it. Let me tell you the truth." Okay? And that was something that got very little attention in the campaign, but it made all the difference in the world. And technology allowed us to do that, because on a day that Joe the Plumber, you know, arrives on the scene, the debate for a period of days was about tax cuts and "Was Barack Obama socialist or not?" -- as silly as that is, okay? So it doesn't do any good if our volunteer on the ground in Ohio is talking about health care when the debate for the moment has turned to tax cuts. Now, in a campaign, it's easy for us to say, "Okay, this is what Barack Obama is going to say today. This is what Joe Biden is going to say today. This is what people like I are going to say today." It's harder to get 13 million people on the same message. But we're able to do that obviously through e-mail -- some texting -- so that people were as current in the campaign as any of us were. And that was probably the hardest thing we did, but it was really important. And to make sure we were in alignment -- something I talk a lot in the book about. And I think -- I look at a lot of people who are trying to communicate today, and they're not in full alignment. And what does that mean? Well, from our standpoint, it meant: If Barack Obama was in Denver, Colorado giving a speech about health care -- the television ad, the radio ad, the Internet advertising, the e-mails, and the volunteers at the door and on the phones, better be talking about health care that day. Because if you are not in alignment and you're not compounding your message activities, you are missing a huge opportunity. And I'm amazed at how many people are communicating today where they'll have a new TV campaign or the CEO is giving a speech and the digital messaging is not in alignment. In today's world, you never know how you're going to reach somebody. It's really, really hard. And our view was, you had to fill every space and you had to be saying the same thing. And that meant in a battleground state -- and those of you living in San Francisco, or the area -- you did not witness the presidential campaign. But if you lived in Terre Haute, Indiana or Roanoke, Virginia, you did. And we tried to be obviously on your television, broadcast and cable, on demand -- we did a lot of on demand and got millions and millions of people watching lengthier programming. That was a huge asset. We were all over radio, including on traditional radio. A lot of faith radio. A lot of radio that sports men and women listen to, to go right after McCain and his base. We did an enormous amount of Internet advertising obviously, more so than anyone had ever done as a balance. But we also wanted to be at community events. We wanted to be at your doors. We wanted to be in your e-mail and your cell phone -- not to annoy you, but you never know when you're going to be able to capture somebody. And so, that's got to be compounded. So that's a thread of the book in the campaign that I think was really, really important. And then, last thing I'll say on a big point was -- and you know, this maybe crossing into kum bah yah land, but -- you guys are an entity that believes in culture of the organization and we did too. And first of all, the volunteers in our campaign were extension of our staff. We didn't, you know, it wasn't like the volunteers are a nice addition. They were our campaign. We made strategic decisions based on what we thought they could mean to the campaign. We wouldn't have targeted Indiana and North Carolina, for instance, if we didn't have a strong enough grassroots campaign, because we thought there was no way we could win either one of those states without what we had on the ground. So we had a great communication network and esprit de corps with our volunteers, starting with Barack Obama. You know, there was a lot of discussion of, "Okay, well. What you guys did with technology with volunteers, other campaigns should do that." Well, I happen to think everybody running for office should try and get people involved in our campaign. But it's not that easy. You can't manufacture this. The reason it worked is, Barack Obama had a relationship with 13 million Americans. And it strengthened and solidified so that they got inspired to give time they did not have to give and money they did not have to give. And the tactics and the technologies and the tools and the strategies would have been pointless without that. But that relationship was strong, and we trusted them. And I think most of our volunteers really believed that Barack Obama and his campaign really believed in them -- that what they were doing mattered. But also, you know, for all of us in the campaign, you know -- campaigns are tough. And we went through moments of great challenge and triumph. All of '07, no one thought we could win. We lose the New Hampshire primary; it looked like we had lost our chance. We go through the Reverend Wright thing, which was deeply challenging. Obviously dealing with the furor around Palin challenged us as well. And he was at his calmest and his best and his most dogged during those moments. And calmness kind of infiltrated the entire organization. And I can't tell you how important that is. And I think it's important today, as you're trying to sort through all the challenges, and -- I would still argue -- huge opportunities we have in this country, if we only have the courage to take advantage of them. That calmness -- which should not be mistaken for a lack of urgency -- was really important. The other thing: We were very metrics-driven. And we had strategy/message, which were the two pillars of any political campaign. Google probably has different pillars. For us, it's, "What's your electoral strategy? What's your message?" We were not a democracy in that regard. And that's what we were going to do. We weren't arrogant. We weren't sure they'd work, but our view was, you had to commit yourself to a path. Campaigns are short. What's your path? What's your theory of success and stick to it. And we tried to educate people in the campaign -- from senior staff down to the volunteer what that was, so that decision making became uneventful. As a leader, that's the thing I'm most interested in, by the way -- making decision-making uneventful. So that there's clarity on things. Things either support your strategy and your message or they don't. So 98 percent of the things that cross your desk are easy yes's or no. And people in the organization did understand why. Even if they disagree, they understand that there's a theory behind it. And it is not subjective. And we were that way in terms of measuring performance. And you guys are more into data than I am, but we measured people's performance in the campaign -- by the way, including volunteers. We had to relieve some volunteers of their duty, because we weren't getting the job done. But it was based on numbers. How much money were we supposed to raise in this city this day? How many volunteers were we supposed to recruit? What kind of press coverage were we supposed to get in the local market? How many votes were we supposed to bank today? All of that was laid out. So that, as we viewed the campaign, we didn't say, "Hey, we had a good day today, because the pundits on CNN said we did." We had a good day today, because we hit our metrics in most places. And so then, when we're able to talk to -- when we had to have conversations with people about their performance, they could be done in a very, very objective fashion. And if we needed a course-correct, I think our employees understood that it wasn't based on some subjective thought about their performance. It was based on cold, hard numbers. So none of that's as exciting as, you know, dealing with Sarah Palin or, you know, some of the advertising we did. But politics, at the end of the day, is about a lot of blocking and tackling. It's about having a clear strategy. Now, none of the stuff I've mentioned matters, obviously, if you don't have a wonderful candidate. And that's the thing that really threads through the book most importantly of all is that -- someone who had never been on this national political stage, who every time he went to a county or a town in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, it was always the first time he had been there his entire life. And never had a negative ad run against him. Had never been through a tough, rigorous proctological exam by the press. [laughter] None of these things had happened. And yet, over a two-year period, in what is a flawed process in many ways: You could say, "It's too long. It's too expensive." It can be too banal. It is enormously transparent, particularly with technology where people can fire up their computers and watch any video, any interview, any speech a candidate's given. And increasingly, that will be done on mobile devices. You cannot hide who you are. And over that two-year period, he built a grassroots movement and fed it and nourished it, the likes of which we'd never seen. He ran that obstacle course, which is highly brutal, and grew in stature for the American people. Most people diminish over time in a campaign like that. He grew. And at the moments of greatest crisis -- Reverend Wright, losing New Hampshire, the economic crisis, McCain saying he's not going to debate. All these moments. We couldn't take a poll to decide how to deal with it. It was his instincts and judgments and performance that led us out of the wilderness. And so, I think that's something that comes through clearly in the book is that, you know, I think there's far too much attention paid to our campaign in terms of the tactics and the strategy. None of that matters without a candidate who met his time and met his moment. And that's what we had in president Obama. So with that, I'd be happy to entertain anything you guys have on your mind. And don't be shy. Yes, sir. Q Just wondering how the campaign tactics differ between a caucus state and a non-caucus state? David Plouffe: Difference between caucus and non-caucus state. Well, very different. Obviously, caucuses historically have lower turn out. How many of you have been to a caucus? Wow. What state? Q I was a volunteer down at Texas. David Plouffe: Texas caucus. Well, caucus basically in most states, you've got to show up at one time -- so 6:30, 7:00. You separate into groups -- publicly -- so your neighbors are there. And you go in the corner. Here's the Obama group. Here's the Clinton group. Here's the Edwards group. So you publicly state your preference. And then, in most states, if your candidate doesn't get 15 percent of the people in that group, then you get to vote twice essentially. So you've got to know who's everybody's second choice is. In a lot of states, like Iowa, they also conduct party business before you get to the voting. So someone's got to make like, a two-hour commitment to be there. That's why turn out is really low. Now, there became a mythology that caucuses were our territory and primaries were hers. I can tell you in every state where there were caucuses -- our initial polling, we were getting clobbered. And had the people who normally turned out in caucuses turned out, we would have gotten clobbered. Caucuses were where we had to expand the electorate. Now, because turn out had been so low, you had a greater ability to expand the electorate, because in a primary, you can only go from, let's say, here to here. And caucus you go from here to here. So that's what we set out to do. So the expansion of the electorate. And then, it's organizing. I mean, you've got to be on people -- like white on rice, all the way through -- to make sure they go. And we did a lot of demystifying of the caucus for people. We put out videos. We did trainings to say, "It's not as bad as you think. Just show up and everything will be okay." And so, you have to have -- there are people called 'precinct captains'. There are volunteers, okay? There are people who are teachers. People who work at Google. People who run businesses who say, "I will be the Obama precinct captain, and I will take responsibility for convincing the people in my precinct to support him to turn out. And on caucus night, I will run that precinct. I will have it organized." It's an enormous amount of responsibility for a volunteer. And so, it's very different. I happen to think caucuses are wonderful, because I believe in grassroots politics. I think it made us a stronger campaign in the general, because we were so organized. You have to organize in every precinct. So that was the difference. Yes, sir. Q So you were talking about how you have this huge network of supporters to react really quickly to topics -- [inaudible] David Plouffe: Sure. Well, one of the things we tried to do was -- Listen, there would be moments of the campaign where we were leaning into a health care comparison with McCain or a debate on diplomacy with Hillary Clinton, and then we wanted everybody in the campaign to be talking about that. Okay? Back to my point about alignment. But one thing we tried to do -- even in moments like that -- but just general like, when we were in Iowa, and we were trying to build in Iowa -- the thing we tell people is -- who said, "Well, I've decided to support Obama." They tell us. "Well, go get more people to support Obama." "But what do you want me to say?" "Well, say what you're going to say, because if you're reading off some script, it's not going to be authentic." It's always more authentic when someone speaks from here. And so, even on health care, we wanted them to be able to have the best sentence down about Obama's health care plan and how it differed with McCain. But it was always best if they said, "And listen, I care about this, because my sister was denied coverage by the insurance companies. And we have to get change now." That was always more powerful than a stale script. So we did something a little bit unusual. We encouraged people to speak from their heart -- to not be automatons. And obviously, we did a lot of user-generated -- both, you know, text commentary and video commentary throughout the campaign. And it was a great way for people to express themselves. And it also -- there was an authenticity to it. One of the things we did -- we shared a lot of videos and other -- we captured a lot of the work that was going on out there in the country and shared it with people. Because not everybody who was out there volunteering in Anderson, Indiana would necessarily, you know, I think relate to what I was doing on a given day or David Axelrod, but they relate to what the volunteer in Denver, Colorado was doing and say, "Hey. Boy, they put on a great canvas. I can do that too." So we tried to let a thousand flowers bloom and let people talk from the heart. And even in our advertising -- and this was a challenge, because some of the firms that we brought in to work with us, you know, they were used to kind of scripting everybody. "This is what I want the person to say." And we didn't want that to happen. People always put things in a more compelling way if you just let them talk. And it always sounds less political. So when we did ads with people in them, we just let them talk. And you know, it was always better than if we had said, "Hey, why don't you say this?" Always better. And you know, Listen, authenticity -- people's B.S. meter is highly sensitized, particularly younger voters. Particularly younger voters. And you guys probably find this. And if we were not dealing authentically, you know, they'd let us know. And that's why, if you look at the videos we did throughout the campaign -- I'm just talking about videos that we e-mailed out to people, to our supporters, to get them motivated -- whether they were from me or from Barack Obama -- they weren't scripted. You know, he'd come off the stage at a rally just talk to the camera. You know, we have some sense of, "Hey, we're doing a big voter registration effort." Or Early Vote effort. So he'd talk about that, but then, he'd just talk. And I do the same thing. And you know, I did one where -- I remember the first couple I did, I just did them on a Mac laptop camera and, you know, a couple of people in the campaign said, "Hey, you know, Plouffe, we're running for president and you look like your in the hostage video. [laughter] You know. Can we professionalize this up a little bit?" So we tried one where we went to an office and lit it and shot it with an HD camera, and our supporters hated it. Because it was like propaganda to them. They wanted to be let in the campaign. They wanted me to roll out a debate prep at 2 a.m. in the morning and flew to Ohio, kind of groggy-eyed and speaking to the camera about what was going on. And so, we learned a lot from that -- that authenticity you know. And listen, at the core, remember Barack Obama was challenged a lot in the campaign. He doesn't speak enough in sound bites. He's trusting voters to have an adult conversation, of all things. He's too professorial. Now, he wasn't going to change who he was, because he said, "This is who I am." that authenticity. I think candidates always get in difficulty when they kind of adjust something core to who they are. And we had a candidate who that just wasn't a debate. Whether it would have been a smart thing to do or not, it just wasn't entertainment. Yes, sir. Q Two questions. One, what do you think happened this summer when the conservatives I would say won the grassroots effort on health care [inaudible]? David Plouffe: Well first, I would heavily disagree with the notion that they won. People on Fox and CNN were talking about them. That's not reality, okay? Reality is what is happening on the ground throughout the country. And I think that, in the campaign, the truth is, the organizing that we did that is so kind of mythologized now, it wasn't appreciated during the campaign. It wasn't until people saw the election results. They said, "Hey, all those volunteers actually made a difference." And what happened -- and we have been organizing on health care going back to the spring. We've had millions of Americans making phone calls, sending out e-mails, you know, visiting Congress. Now, some of the tea-baggers in a few town halls, you know, the truth is, this is not an interesting story to the media. Eighty supporters of Barack Obama showed up at a town hall today to express support for health care. In their view, "Boring." But people yelling and screaming, that's exciting. So, but if you look at health care reform, it has remained remarkably stable in terms of support, okay? Now, there's a lot of people opposed to it, a lot of people supporting it. The components of it actually have grown in support. Why is that? Because if you look at historical health care reform efforts -- whether it was Bill Clinton, whether it was Richard Nixon, whether it was Harry Truman, whether it was both Roosevelts. You know, by this time health care reform had been stripped bare because of all the attacks. And support for health care has remained pretty stable. Why is that? Because my view is, people are talking to each other about this. And they're saying, "Okay, death panels. Do we believe it or not? We don't." "Am I not going to be able to see my doctor anymore? Well, let me think about that. Let me share information. I don't think so." So I think they did a good job of capturing the media's attention, but I don't think structurally. And listen, the members of Congress -- certainly the Democratic members of Congress -- know what's happening on the ground. The vast, vast majority of them have heard from our side on this. The vast majority of town halls were flooded with people supporting health care reform. So I think they did some clever tactically things. I don't think that what you're seeing right now, by the way -- the canvassing, the phone calling -- it's not happening on the other side. So they did a good job of kind of capturing the fascination of the media, but I don't think structurally. For me, personally, you know I have a young family -- we went through two years, as everyone else did in the administration. Everyone had to make their personal decision. It just didn't make sense for me. I had an infant daughter born two days after the election on top of our son. I just couldn't go in for two years. Maybe longer. I mean, I don't really have a huge desire to work in the White House. I have a huge desire to help him. I'm under no illusions that, at some point, I'm probably going to -- the gig will be up and I'll have to hand back over my life and I'll be happy to do so. So I'm just doing what I can on the outside for a couple of years, and then we'll see. But I think, listen, the truth is -- You know, it's funny, I was on a radio show here earlier today with Ron Owens. And he was playing some clips of Obama's speeches during the campaign. And it is remarkable that he is trying to do exactly what he said he was going to do. And there is a belief out there that it should be easier than it is. But let me tell you something. The reason he ran for president was, he believed on health care and energy -- to some extent on education. Washington was failing the country. If we do not stop spending twice as much money on health care as our competitors, if we do not lead on green technology and jobs -- as we did in the industrial, information revolution -- and, if we don't reform our education system, 25, 50 years from now, there is no guarantee this country -- the United States of America -- will be as strong as it is today or has been. We have to renew ourselves. And Washington wasn't getting the job done, because Washington is very short-term. It's very political. It's always easy to say, "No, not this year. Not now." And that's what he's delivering on. And this is a really, really hard thing to do. Because think about it: As he's trying to triage the economy, along with the private sector obviously, he's trying to do these long-term structural things. Long-term, meaning the benefits of health care are going to take a long time to settle in. The investments in energy are going to take some time to materialize. The education changes take some time to materialize. So you're asking Congress and the country to do things that the positive benefit won't be apparent in the next election, or the one after that, or the one after that. And that's what Washington has refused to do. So I think that one of his strengths, by the way, is during August -- during the 'tea bag' moment -- we went through some tough moments in the campaign where the kind of commentariat questioned us. He and his organization do not view their success or failures through the prism of that. They have goals. They have metrics internally that they're trying to get to. Because if you govern based on the kind of politics of the moment -- listen, Fox News is doing well ratings-wise. But let's remember this -- their average viewership at night, so during the the great you know, three hours of Reilly and Beck and van Sustren, it's only two and a half million people. Think about that. 140 million people voted in the elections. Less than two percent of the election. That is not reality. But it is viewed as reality in Washington. And so, it's something you have to have a lot of discipline and strength not to overreact to, in my view. Yeah. Q So I think education and health care are two of the _____ spinned by most of the time. I was definitely an Obama supporter after the primary. But one thing, after watching the debates, that all the candidates seem to have a very similar view on was same sex marriage. For me, I thought [inaudible] I was kind of surprised that McCain had the same position on that. Can you talk about, you know, [inaudible] David Plouffe: Question about same sex marriage. Well listen, I think most candidates in both parties had the same view. You know, in the president's case and Hillary Clinton's case and most of our Democrat competitors, it was full rights, but, you know, personally not supportive of marriage. You know, my personal view is, this is something that, you know, there's a generational divide. And you look at people under 30 -- Republicans, Independents, and Democrats -- and you know, support levels obviously are much, much higher. I do think, by the way, you don't see some of these social issues driving other elections like they used to. And I think that's a positive development. So people say, "I may have a strong feeling about gay marriage one way or the other, guns, abortion, but I'm not necessarily going to cast my vote for president or senator or governor based on that." And I think that's a good development. Partially because I think, you know, we're facing some really serious challenges. People are feeling it in their lives. So, I do think, you know, signing hate crimes legislation that had language for ten years is really important. There's been some really important reforms made in terms of federal law and employment around the rights of same sex partners. And I think we just have to continue to make progress, but it's really hard. And you know, it's a civil rights issue. So I think people are right to be impatient. But we've got that. We've got huge crises around the world brewing. We've obviously got an economic calamity the likes of what we haven't seen since the Great Depression. And it is truth is, everywhere is feeling it. But, you know, for those of you that have been out in the middle part of the country, you know it's -- these people are feeling it. You've got unemployment rates in some of these communities of 15, 18, 20, 22. And you know, this is big stuff. And they've lost health care. And because the economy has changed in fundamental ways and the job market has, in a lot of these communities, you know, there is no easy pathway. It's not just, "Okay, the economy is going to bounce back, and then, I'll get rehired." So this is really tough stuff they're dealing with. And you know he's getting accused of -- by some people -- of not doing enough things. By many other people, of trying to do too much. And so, it's hard to please everybody, but I can assure you this. He did not run -- is that? [pause] I'll use the podium. [pause] You'd probably expect me to say this, but he did not run for the presidency to occupy that office, or to win reelection as a central principle. It was to try and tackle tough problems. And not everyone's going to agree. Many people won't agree with everything he's doing -- his priorities, the specific policy solutions. But I think that's going to serve the country well. Because otherwise, you're going to get cowed, and you're not going to think long-term, and we've had too much of that in Washington already. Yes, sir. Q [undecipherable] David Plouffe: No, he would. I mean, I think that some of the e-mail messages we sent out, he would look at them all. He wrote a few. He edited most. Listen, he was the best writer in our campaign in a campaign full of great writers. He's one of the best writers in the country, in my view. So, you know, he obviously authored most of our important speeches. But yeah, he would. And he would often say, you know, particularly, you know, he was out there with people. So he'd be in a state, and volunteers would come up to him and say, "You know what? I keep getting these e-mails about how you won't salute the flag or, you know, you're a Muslim or all these things. And you know, the campaign's not making it easy enough for us to respond." So sometimes he'd come back with feedback and say, "Hey, you know. Why don't we make an adjustment on the website so it's easier for people?" Now, he's someone who lives a lot of his life through technology. So that was really terrific. Because, you know, he was online all the time and he had a lot of interaction with our volunteers. So yeah, he provided us a lot of guidance in that regard. Yes. Q I'm hoping you could address the decision to hold Camp Obamas [inaudible] David Plouffe: Yeah, well. For those of you who don't know, we started things called 'Camp Obamas', where we invited people who had expressed an interest in the campaign -- first, to come to Chicago, and then, we did them regionally to learn about organizing. We had, by the way, we had tens of thousands of people who essentially were full-time campaign employees, but weren't on our payroll, who said, "I'm going to take four months or six months off work. I'm going to quit my job." They wanted to learn how to organize. And in the beginning, it was a big challenge. You know, one of the reasons we won was our focus. We were focused on Iowa, and to a lesser extent, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada. Well, there's 46 other states. And even in the beginning, when we were pretty small, we had a really robust, excited group of supporters that grew. And so, honestly, it was as much challenge as opportunity to figure out what to do with all these people. By the way, the thing we'd always say, and it would frustrate people. "I want to help. I'm in St. Louis. What can I do?" "You can get ten more people to sign up on the website." And sometimes people think that was a blow-off. Nothing was more important to us than growing that list, because those were people that we could convert to volunteers and donors and precinct captains. But people wanted to do more than that. And so, we said, "Well, let's do these 'Camp Obamas'." And they just flourished. So we had all these people that understood how we organized, that we valued it. See, that's really important. I started off as a canvasser, a field staffer, organizer. Back then, we were called 'field scum.' You know, it wasn't something that was really -- it was kind of secondary to the campaign. Everybody, I think, who helped us in the campaign understood that we valued organizing, largely because the president valued organizing. So these Camp Obamas were a great way to surface great talent. So we hired a lot of our staff out of them. We had a lot of people who said, "I'm going to go give you a month on the ground." and they were better schooled. And you know, it made a huge difference for us. I mean, listen, I told the very young kids who were part of our campaign how spoiled they were. Because to be involved in a campaign like this, when anything was possible, because of the people, okay? Virginia. We wanted to talk to 20 percent of the Republican electorate, because we thought they might beat for us. Every Independent in certain demographic areas. Every Democrat. Try and register every African-American voter. Every young person. Think about that. We could do that, human being to human being. So our campaign really was the art of the possible. And I think -- because of the people. And we had good strategies, and I think we pushed the envelope in a lot of ways, but it was all about the people. So the Camp Obamas -- and, by the way, it tells you that, most of the people who came to the campaign came through a digital portal. And we communicated with them digitally. And many of them organized on our social networking site. They raised money on our site. But still, most of the key persuasion work was done offline. And interestingly enough, we ended up building kind of a real estate empire out there. We had thousands and thousands of offices and 90 percent of our supporters lived within ten minutes of an Obama office -- I mean, everywhere. And the reason we did that is, we found that people wanted to have that connection. Even if they made most of their phone calls for us at home, they wanted to be able to go in at the office. And so, it was an important lesson that, even as this is going to become -- politics will become more and more technologically-driven, I think you've got to have that component. Because there still is no substitute for human being looking a human being in the eye. And this is something we could measure. The door knocking that was done was always much more productive than the phone calling or the e-mailing. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to know why, you know? You develop a relationship with someone and you actually, you know? You have longer conversations, more intense conversations. You elicit more information, and you build a relationship. And I'd say, even in Iowa, you know one's phenomenon, our supporters -- many of them who went through Camp Obama -- were so dogged. It was like, you know, windchill below zero in Iowa the last three or four days. And we were all over the streets. And you know, we weren't seeing our opponents as much. And some Iowa caucus-goers who were undecided said, "I've decided to be for you, because if you're nuts enough to be out here in this weather, you clearly believe in this guy." And even a small thing like that made a big difference in the caucuses. Yes. Q Talking about metrics around things that were here in 2008 election, in 2012 is going to be really, really context where do you think it's going to apply? And where do you think it's not going to apply? David Plouffe: Well, you know, we're not -- largely through a presidential dictate -- not really focused on '12, because you know, I think that's right. We got big problems, and you don't want to be thinking about the election. So I just have some kind of topline, macro thoughts. That campaign will be different in many ways, and I don't think we know today How it will be different. The one commonality will be -- because any effort Barack Obama is involved in will have people at its core -- we will of course, want to get people involved as we did. And have the grassroots play such an important role. You know, the issue environment -- where the economy is -- could determine which states are more easily won or lost. I know that technology is going to change in fundamental ways. And it's not, you know, I don't know if it's 12, could be -- could be '16, could be '20. But it won't be too long that people will look back at what we did in this campaign, sending people e-mails they opened up on their desktop or their laptop -- it's going to be like Jurassic Park. And so, we know that things are heading to a place where more and more people are going to do most of their e-mails and their video-watching and sharing and searching for information on their mobile device. And I salivated that, because I think about what had happened if 30 percent of our supporters were reading our e-mails, getting our videos, while they were walking around in restaurants sitting here -- the ability to share that instantaneously, to look at an ap and say, "Hey look, the Obama office down the street is short four canvassers? I'll go canvas." I mean, things like that just are going to make participatory democracy even greater. Now of course, the atmospherics of that election, the history's been made. And you've got a record to run on. So it'll be different in many ways in that regard. But I know that one thing we'll be committed to is running a grassroots campaign. And my hope is that the Republicans study that book and the 2008 election. Because I assure you, we will have some new chapters in store. One more. Yes, sir. No Sarah Palin questions. This is amazing. [laughter] Q Going back to the nomination, back to February/March 2008, [inaudible] David Plouffe: Well, it's something I write about in the book. You know listen, this was not a fun way to live, but we lived all of 2007 and we used the first 35 days of 2008 with the full knowledge that she was in all likelihood the winner, that we had one narrow path, and that a lot of things had to go right for us to win. And I think that made us a very, very good campaign. We knew what we're up against. So we win Iowa -- we didn't think we were going to win. We thought that was our -- essentially the gate had been open. And we'll see how far we can run. But it was an opportunity then, to see if we could begin to erode her leads. We lose New Hampshire. I think the biggest surprise of the entire two years is that Barack Obama is the President of the United States having lost a New Hampshire primary. I can assure you that was not in our playbook about how to win. And I think there was a lot of commentary and a lot of people believed that the race was then over -- that we had had our moment in Iowa, but order had been restored, Hillary came back, and won New Hampshire. And I think some of that commentary is a little extreme, but it's hard for me to argue with it. We were up against it then. And the way we were able to recover is we got -- and I spent a lot of time in the book writing about South Carolina. South Carolina, for a lot of reasons, gave us more momentum than we could have realized, coupled with an endorsement from Senator Kennedy two days later that was more about what he said than that he endorsed -- you know, linking us to his slain brothers in a way he had never done before, taking on some of the attacks that were being made against us, in relation to what they had said about his brother Jack, was just enormously powerful. And then, we go into February 5th, including California. And that was the day we lived in fear of, the entire campaign. She's sitting there with leads of 15, 20, 30 points. We couldn't campaign in those states, because there was ten days between South Carolina and February 5th. We did a half day in California. And we knew we needed time on the ground to win. And we had raised more money than we thought, so we were doing some advertising, but it was still pretty modest. And we knew we had better organization, which is something we didn't expect in all of states, including the ones we lost. But would that be enough? And remarkably, because I think -- and you know, this is hard for our supporters in California -- we didn't come bunker in out here, even though it was a big state. We knew we were going to lose it, but we thought the delegates were going to be pretty close, so we went to places like Idaho and Kansas and Georgia and tried to run up the margin, because in our primary system, the only way to experience a real delegate yield is to win a landslide. And so, February 5th -- my favorite story, New Jersey -- it's a big state. She wins by 11 points. It offers like, 130 delegates. She only nets 11 out of the equation. So the delegates are pretty even. Little, tiny Idaho only offers 18 delegates, but we won an 80 to 20. We get 15 delegates, she gets three. We gain more delegates out of winning Ohio/Idaho, than she did in New Jersey. She wins California, you know, by nine points. We actually won Election Day, by the way, but we got clobbered in the early vote. She nets, I think, 33 delegates. We erase that in Colorado in Minnesota, and that's the story of February 5th. We cobbled together a bunch of smaller states. So the first time I thought that, all things being equal, Barack Obama should win the nomination was -- to use a term that gained some notoriety in the campaign -- about 3 a.m. on February 6th. And then, we went off and ran 11 victories off in a row. And we gained an upper hand. And then, because I made some mistakes and we didn't close well, we ended up losing the Texas primary, and the campaign dragged on for three months after that. But the outcome was known. Unless something cataclysmic happened, we were going to win. So that's when it was. It was when we survived the day that was the greatest threat to our candidacy. And, you know, after New Hampshire, the other thing I find most remarkable. You got to remember, you guys -- well, you don't have many competitors. You have some. [laughter] But, you know, politics is a competitive enterprise. John McCain had three additional months. Think about that. He was the nominee on March 4th, because we didn't win Texas. We didn't clinch our nomination till June 3rd. We gave him three months. And we figured, "Great. He's going to get better organized in the battleground states. He's going to be far ahead of us strategically. He's going to develop an incisive economic message. He's going to separate from Bush. And he's going to be ready to unleash holy hell on us when we come out of the primary." And none of that happened. And it was a feat of enormous political malpractice. [laughter] Because, if they had used those three months differently -- see, it doesn't seem like a big deal now. People say, "Plouffe, who cares you lost the Texas primary? You won." But, you think about that. I mean, that night I thought, "We have really screwed the pu chair. We might have just caused ourselves the presidency." Because we actually thought McCain was going to end up running a very good campaign. He was a dangerous candidate for a number of reasons to us. And so, that was what's frustrating in March. We knew how that story was going to end, but we couldn't turn the page. And we assumed McCain was going to be gallivanting across the country, building all sorts of advantages on us. And thankfully, from our perspective, he did not. Well, you guys are great to listen and to let me prattle on here. But hopefully, you'll enjoy the book and stay involved in politics if you got involved. And change is hard, but you know, if we all do the right thing over the next three or four years. You know, listen, you guys are going to lead the country. Many of you are leading it now. But, you know, I always tell folks, you know, "You're going to inherit this very, very soon. And you know, if we don't do the right things now to strengthen and stabilize this country, it's going to make our job much harder." So, hopefully, we can do some smart things over the next few years. So in many ways, you are already leading, but you are going to be leading formally in the not-too-distant future. You know, things -- we can hand off a little bit better situation so you can really make it flourish and grow. So, thanks for being here. >> [Clapping]