L.G.: You'd obviously had the insight early on that caucuses were going to be extraordinarily important, and I just wondered how surprised you were that the Clinton campaign did not seem to appreciate that?
D.P.: Well, we were surprised because at some point it became likely that it was going to be a battle that went on for some time, and delegates that are gained through a caucus are no different than through a primary-so every contest mattered. What was interesting was, if you look at the contest in February and March, the caucuses of Minnesota, Colorado, Nebraska, Washington State, and almost all those states, our initial research, whether that be polling or voter I.D. work, showed us losing. Because it was the people who had gone before, and Hillary Clinton was the established candidate, so we had to expand the electorate, which was no easy task. It was made easier because they ceded the field to us for a long period of time. I think if they had contested those caucus states, we might've won those caucus states but we wouldn't have won them 55-35. As we all know now, the only way to rack up delegates is to win by a landslide. A close outcome yields an equal delegate count. So, it was those landslides, 60-40, 65-35, that gave us that delegate lead. We might've still won those caucuses, but I guarantee if they had contested them vigorously, our margins would've been shrunk. And that's the tale of the campaign. Otherwise we didn't rack up the huge landslide. We did in some of the primary states for sure, Virginia was a big win, Wisconsin was a big win, but those caucuses provided us a huge delegate lead.
L.G.: Did the loss in New Hampshire to Hillary have the effect of energizing the campaign?
D.P.: Well it did. It was a blow obviously. I think it was a real test of our campaign and our candidate. I think at the end of the day, voters want to see their next president struggle a little bit through this process, and if we would've won New Hampshire, we would've been like a comet streaking across the sky. I think they wanted to see Obama have to fight for it, struggle for it, and I think in many ways, we were better off for having lost New Hampshire. It's harder to see it in that moment-but it gave him a little more texture, and voters could say, okay, how do you respond to adversity, a tough situation? I think at that moment, the night of January 8, most political observers in the press thought Hillary Clinton was going to be the nominee, and that we were kind of a one-trick pony. We won Iowa, that was a nice political sideshow, and now order had been restored. But, yeah, I'm really proud how we fought back from that and were able to win the nomination.
L.G.: Perhaps the media, which is so focused on what's in front of their face-I say that with all due disrespect to myself-didn't realize what you were doing on the ground in these other states, coming up.
D.P.: I think that's right. All the focus about February 5-and February 5 for us was always a matter of survival-was that it was a day that was built for Hillary Clinton and we did better on February 5 than we could've ever imagined, I mean, we won more states and more delegates, but there was very little attention paid to what comes after February 5, and we won 11 in a row and we won almost all of them by landslide margins. That's why we built up a delegate lead that was never going to be given up.
L.G.: They obviously had Harold Ickes, who was supposed to be this huge expert on the rules and on how primaries proceed in the Democratic Party. Were you surprised they kind of dropped the ball on that?
D.P.: We were surprised. I'd read various accounts that Harold tried to bring to everybody's attention that this was going to become a delegate battle. I think they were much more tactical. The press narrative of the day was important to them. We were surprised.
L.G.: Another question. Winning presidential campaigns, as all of us know, are so often vehicles for people to become stars. Obviously the '92 campaign produced a number of stars. You took the position that you didn't want to have anything to do with that. Why was that, David?
D.P.: Well, I think it was candidate first and it was mission first. I also learned a long time ago that we're all replaceable, the only person that's not replaceable in the campaign is the candidate. I'm proud of the job I did, I'm very proud of the job the entire campaign did. But this was all about Barack Obama. Even though I'm probably going to write a book, I'm doing that because I think there's going to be a good story to tell. It's not going to be in any way an adulatory exercise about my role. The fact was, this was such a grassroots campaign, our partners in this were these millions of Americans who participated in the campaign, who were never seen before. We had all these supporters out there, volunteers, millions of people, and they're all part of the campaign, and I think that keeps us grounded, because they were a really powerful, important part of our campaign.
L.G.: So you're doing a book? Which is not a surprise-have you signed a deal to do it?
D.P.: I have not.
L.G.: I can well imagine you've been inundated with offers and pitches. Are you, too, using the sainted Bob Barnett?
D.P.: I am, yes.
L.G.: Why is it that this man handles every book deal out of Washington? It's amazing to me.
D.P.: Well, he's built a nice niche business, it's been good. This is not a familiar role to me. I'm going to be very careful about the book I write. It's one, going to be nothing but great, adulatory about the president. I'm not there to tell secret tales. We'll see if there's an interest in that. I'm just not going to do that.
L.G.: Positive books about winning strategies seem to do well. Now, just to understand how you dealt with some of these tough moments-for instance the sound bite in the Huffington Post about the candidate talking about bitter religious gun owners in San Francisco, that seemed to have a long half-life. And then there were the sermons of Reverend Wright that got enormous play. Were those crisis moments in the campaign you had to deal with? Can you walk me through some of that?
D.P.: Reverend Wright was the most severe test we faced. The "bitter" comments were challenging, so what we tried to do is just handle them calmly. This was the place where Obama proved himself, I think, to be a unique leader. He was always the calmest guy in all of those-I think the way he decided to give that speech on race in Philadelphia was exactly what you'd want in a president. "I don't know if people are going to accept this or not, I'm going to say what I think, and they'll either accept it or not." That certainly wasn't in the political playbook, to give a speech about race, and deal with that. We were tested, there's no doubt about that, and we were tested in the primary. We went through as rigorous a primary as we've ever seen in our country's history, I think, and there's no doubt that made us a stronger general election candidate. A lot of our dirty laundry was aired, and we had practice in testing a campaign. Clinton, she was formidable, the campaign was formidable, it was very aggressive. We were the front-runner for a while, which meant the press took a bite out of us. We had really been tested, and we went into the general election in very much fighting shape. We were ready for those five months because we had been through 54 primaries and caucuses, and run the gauntlet. McCain hadn't done that. For all of his years in public life, he never went through anything like what we did in that primary.
L.G.: By the way, were you at all concerned at the time of the Reverend Wright business that it was really going to be damaging and might deny you the nomination?
D.P.: We didn't think it would deny us the nomination, but we knew it would be a hit to the main engine. It bothered people, it was a factor in the general election. But people had digested it, and those people got by it, others couldn't. But it was a big issue and it was a real test. I think the way he dealt with it, most voters said, Okay, he dealt with that in a way that I can respect.
L.G.: But it wasn't a near-death experience of the kind that, if you cast back to 1992, the whole draft-Gennifer Flowers business was for the Clinton campaign. It wasn't at that order of magnitude.
D.P.: No, but I think it was probably a notch below that. It was a serious, serious episode and tested us in every way possible.
L.G.: Walk me through the risk/benefit analysis you went through in deciding not to take public financing.
D.P.: Well, he's a campaign reformer by nature and by record so it was not an easy decision. First of all, we thought we'd achieved one of the ideals of campaign finance reform, which is millions of Americans contributing to the campaign. We didn't take P.A.C. money, we didn't take lobbyist money, we had millions of contributors, so we felt that we were doing right by the reformer agenda. Secondly, we thought the Republicans would have tons of outside money. It was clear that they didn't have any interest in policing that. Then, third, we were trying to control as much of our campaign as we could. The truth is, what happened was the McCain campaign raised a ton of money. This notion that somehow they were destitute is ridiculous. The R.N.C. raised $250 million in September and October, but it was raised in huge checks, a lot of $30,000 checks, P.A.C.'s, and lobbyists. We thought our funding stream was pure, and I think at the end of the day it was an important decision not because of the dollar amount, so much as we had control over the campaign, the field operation, our ads. We didn't have to outsource it to the D.N.C. Having control of all the levers of the campaign was important.
L.G.: How important was the D.N.C. in your operation?
D.P.: Well, the party apparatus was less important than it was four years ago, than it was to the McCain campaign, because we were the central actor. But they had a budget and a program that was donated in concert with us, and our relationship with them was great. They did everything we wanted them to do. There was never any source of dissent. They didn't make anything hard. Howard Dean was great, he basically said, "This is your committee now, you just tell us what you want to do." It was a terrific working relationship.
L.G.: By the way, your name has been put up for everything from Senator from Delaware to D.N.C. chair. I know you sort of pooh-poohed the senator thing. Is the D.N.C. thing at all intriguing to you?
D.P.: It's not. I think there are plenty of great people who will do that, and I'll help as a volunteer. I apologize but I have to jump on a call that started six minutes ago.
L.G.: One last thing. This list of donors you have, what happens to that? I assume it's a pretty damn valuable list, isn't it?
D.P.: We haven't made a firm decision on that. The most important thing is that a lot of them want to be involved in their government, in helping, so we'll figure out a way to make sure if they want to help, articulate on behalf of issues, they're able to do that. I think they want to remain involved in the country's civic life. It's a precious relationship we have with these people, so we want to make sure we continue it, that they feel good about it and they feel they're being productive. That's the most important thing. If they want to help, and we've asked them, we've surveyed them, got a huge amount of data back about how they'd like to help and the critique of our campaign, what do they like about the interaction, what could be improved, it's a source of really rich data.
L.G.: I see. By the way, for someone who doesn't have a job you sure have a lot of conference calls, man.
D.P.: Yeah, well, you know, it's the way things go.
L.G.: Tell Barack to leave you alone!
D.P.: I know. I'm trying to pull away.
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