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Review: 'Believer' a candid memoir by Obama adviser Axelrod

 
Tampa Bay Times
Published March 11, 2015

After many years of observing politics I have developed a carefully crafted theory that every president needs at least one or two people within the inner circle who must be completely free to remind the commander-in-chief he is a complete moron — or words to that effect.

During the Barack Obama presidency, one of those people was Rahm Emanuel. As a boy Emanuel had lost his middle finger in an accident, which Obama once joked practically rendered his chief of staff mute. One of the others was chief political adviser David Axelrod, who played a pivotal role in helping an obscure Illinois state senator ascend to the highest office in the land.

As he recounts in his highly readable memoir, Believer: My Forty Years in Politics, Axelrod recounts how he dithered over whether to take a job in the White House after Obama's 2008 election. After all, Axelrod had enjoyed a successful career as a highly paid political consultant who called his own shots.

Now the Obama victory all but assured Axelrod a gold-plated consulting career moving forward. And besides, going to work for Obama would mean he would never be able to tell the president of the United States to commit a certain unnatural act.

But Axelrod was won over once Obama assured his mentor he could indeed freely utter the phrase — "... just don't do it in front of anyone else."

And that sort of sums up the tone of Believer, a candid, thoughtful exploration of a political junky's rise through the hardball world of high-stakes political campaigns that took the New York-born but Chicago-shaped Axelrod to the pinnacle of power, literally a doorway removed from the Oval Office.

Axelrod wound up at the University of Chicago as much to escape from a dysfunctional family back in New York as to bask in the school's towering academic reputation. But once in the Windy City, Axelrod found himself captivated by Chicago's legendary political viper pit (how could he not be?), which eventually led to his hiring by the Chicago Tribune.

As a Chicago Sun-Times alum, I find these passages in the book at times seem like old home week, especially Axelrod's fondness for his first editor, Bernie Judge, a revered Chicago journalism icon I too had the honor and pleasure to work with.

In time, though, management changes at the Tribune paved the way for Axelrod to hang up his press pass and embark on a consulting career, scoring an early and impressive victory in Paul Simon's defeat of Republican U.S. Sen. Charles Percy.

Other triumphs would follow, and some less than stellar candidates, too, until his fateful introduction to a big-eared former community organizer with probably the worst conceivable name for an American political candidate: Barack Hussein Obama.

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In Obama Axelrod found an ideal client, disciplined, single-minded, handsome, articulate, savvy and willing to listen to advice — especially Axelrod's.

The two men would practically live together on the campaign trail from 2004 until 2012, an often times rocky road on the not-so-long climb to the presidency.

Believer provides the ultimate insider's account of the Obama-Axelrod relationship, nicely interwoven with the sometimes arcane but nonetheless fascinating crafting of a national political campaign.

Like all memoirs, Axelrod's uses the space to settle some accounts. Former Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne comes in for some particularly damning (and accurate) shots as a conniving, duplicitous political hack. Now-imprisoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich comes off as an inept, money-grubbing pol.

But Axelrod more often directs his unflinching criticism directly at himself. All too eager to become part of a national campaign, Axelrod recounts his brief, ill-fated 2004 work for North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, an assignment he admits he took on purely out of overly ambitious hubris without realizing his candidate was a mile wide and an inch deep and his wife was, well, crazy.

On the home front, with his own wife struggling to contend with a developmentally disabled daughter, Axelrod was often an infrequent presence, preferring to chase after the next candidate, the next poll, the next vote. And it is in these passages the reader begins to truly understand the Icarus-like allure politics holds out to the ambitious hustler.

Believer is equally candid about Axelrod's own stump missteps, including a not so wise decision during the 2008 Democratic primary election in Pennsylvania. In order to underscore the candidate's common man bona fides, Axelrod alighted on the brilliant idea of sending Obama (who had never played the sport) off to a bowling alley, where his mind-boggling score of 37 was met only with derision by the locals and the press corps. Oops.

Ultimately Believer is a compelling account of the unyielding demands of campaigning and a sobering view of one man's not always successful struggle to balance his high-octane career and his family.

Finally, for those who still suspect Obama is a Marxist/Trotskyite/commie/socialist, Axelrod's portrayal reveals a brutally pragmatic pol who transcended ideology to rebuild the economy, save the auto industry, wage a war on terrorism, rein in the excesses of banks, make college more affordable and end sexual orientation discrimination.

Which side you come down on probably depends on what you want to believe.

Contact Daniel Ruth at druth@tampabay.com.