No, Obama answered.

"So what good is it for him to tell you that you should run if he's not going to help you?"

"He just thinks that I should do it, but he doesn't want to cross Senator Clinton," Obama replied. "He thinks I can win."

Besides Mich.e.l.le, Jarrett knew Barack Obama as well as anyone. She had watched him for months as he began to wrestle with the idea of running for president. For the first time, she could see him thinking, Maybe I can do this. Maybe I can do this.

Chapter Three.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet.

BILL CLINTON KNEW HIS wife could do it, and do it d.a.m.n well, too. From the time they fell in love three decades earlier at Yale Law School, he had been in awe of Hillary. She was the smartest, most committed, most idealistic, most impressive person he had ever met; he thought she hung the moon. Some felt that she had the nomination locked up but would face a daunting challenge in the general election. Bill Clinton believed the opposite-a point he made repeatedly to anyone who would listen. "This primary is gonna be harder than the general," he would say. "I'm just telling all you people this."

Clinton's a.s.sessment was based primarily on one thing: the anger of the party's liberal base at Hillary's vote to authorize the Iraq War and her continued refusal to recant it. By the late fall of 2005, the former president was convinced that his wife needed to find her way to a more politically palatable position. With elections in Iraq scheduled for that December, the body count rising, and sectarian violence raging in the region, calls were intensifying for a troop reduction or even a full-scale withdrawal. On November 13, Edwards, whom the Clintons considered Hillary's most serious rival for the nomination, published an op-ed in The Washington Post The Washington Post apologizing for his own Senate vote in favor of authorizing the war. (Its first sentence: "I was wrong.") The pressure was mounting on Hillary to do the same. apologizing for his own Senate vote in favor of authorizing the war. (Its first sentence: "I was wrong.") The pressure was mounting on Hillary to do the same.

Mark Penn, Bill knew, argued vehemently that a mea culpa would cause Hillary more harm than good. Penn believed her vote was right on the merits and that defending it was smart politics. He contended that the biggest hurdle Hillary would have to surmount if she ran for president was the doubt that a woman was capable of being commander in chief. At all times she had to project strength, resolution, rough-and-readiness-and do absolutely nothing that signaled squishiness. He told the Clintons that his polling showed that sticking to her guns on Iraq played to her advantage as a character issue. Apologizing now would only invite Republicans to characterize her later as another cut-and-run Democrat in the mold of Kerry, Dukakis, and McGovern.

Bill had enormous faith in Penn and his numbers. The bond between them was forged in 1996, when Clinton's ideologically androgynous Svengali, d.i.c.k Morris, brought the pollster into that year's reelection effort and then was caught up in a toe-sucking scandal with a prost.i.tute, leaving Penn with the presidential ear. And it was cemented by Penn's skillful navigation of the survival politics of impeachment and his central role in Hillary's Senate victory.

But even if an apology was off the table, surely there was a middle ground to be claimed, Clinton thought. In 1991, he had faced a comparable situation when he was asked if he would have voted to authorize the elder Bush's Gulf War. His answer was vintage Clinton: "I guess I would have voted for the majority if it was a close vote, but I agree with the arguments the minority made."

The trouble was that Hillary, for all her virtues, lacked the suppleness (or slipperiness) that was one of her husband's fortes. He knew better than anyone that she was less capable of the artful shuck and jive that he could muster on his clumsiest day, so he resolved to a.s.sist her in making a pivot to a safer berth. The first step came on November 16, just three days after Edwards's op-ed, when Bill, in Dubai on a swing through the Middle East on behalf of his philanthropic Clinton Global Fund, deviated from his prior support for the war by declaring in a speech that the invasion of Iraq was "a big mistake," adding that "Saddam is gone-it's a good thing, but I don't agree with what was done."

A few days later, Bill landed in Jerusalem and set to work ghostwriting a letter for his wife to email to her const.i.tuents reframing her stance on the war. In his suite at the King David Hotel, Clinton labored long into the night, editing and reediting faxed copies of the text in his illegible longhand scrawl.

Well after midnight, he summoned Jay Carson, his twenty-eight-year-old communications director, to his room and showed him the letter. The gist of what Hillary would a.s.sert: if Congress in 2002 possessed the information that it had at its disposal today, Bush never would have asked it to authorize the use of force in Iraq-and if he had, he would have been refused.

What do you think? Clinton asked. I think this is good. I think this gets her in the right place. Carson was aware that Hillary and her aides had been furiously debating how to handle her war vote for months-but to see his boss behaving this obsessively reinforced his sense of the gravity of the problem. Man, this is serious Man, this is serious, he thought.

Carson went back to his room to get some sleep. But a couple of hours later, he was called again to Clinton's suite to repeat the routine. It was nearly three o'clock in the morning now, but Clinton was still twitchy, uncertain. Did the letter go far enough? Did it find the sweet spot? Would it defang the anti-warriors?

I don't know, I just don't know, Clinton said, shaking his head. Hillary can't listen to me or anyone else, because she can't go out there and defend it every day if she doesn't agree with what she's saying. She's got to do what she thinks is right and then just try to weather the storm.

HILLARY CLINTON HAD ENCOUNTERED few storms-and certainly none of this magnitude or potential consequence-in her first five years in the Senate. In many ways, her entire time in office had been orchestrated to avoid them. Punctiliously, painstakingly, she had set about remediating her political liabilities, putting herself in the best possible position to lead her party. She had moderated her ideological profile, burnished her credentials, honed her policy chops. Established herself as a diligent legislator. Demonstrated her dedication to her const.i.tuents in New York. Sanded down every jagged edge from her formerly serrated public image. She had endeavored mightily, in other words, to place herself firmly in the Democratic mainstream, to make herself a figure of respect and admiration, of party cohesion and not divisiveness-and, not least, to create for herself a separate and distinct political persona and operation from that of her husband.

By 2006, Clinton had achieved all that, with a strategy subtler and savvier than most understood. Her public posture in the Senate, it was widely noted, revolved around bipartisanship and deference, despite her built-in superstardom. Her outreach to Republicans was so ostentatious that it bordered on the m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic: cosponsoring legislation with forty-nine of them, taking pains to mend fences with those who had voted to impeach her husband, joining a Senate prayer group favored by the GOP's staunchest social conservatives.

In private, however, Clinton's approach was nearly the polar opposite, partisan and a.s.sertive to its core. She believed pa.s.sionately in a more activist government, in a progressive agenda, and she was tired of seeing Democrats flounder in their aims simply because they lacked a coherent message, organizational skills, and a crisp, high-sticking strategy. Convinced that liberals needed an infrastructure to match the network of think tanks and advocacy groups that had bolstered the right for decades, she a.s.sisted John Podesta, one of her husband's former chiefs of staff, in launching the Center for American Progress and advised the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America. Her goal was to better fortify her party against the dense, cold-blooded armament of the Bush White House, to lay a protective groundwork for Democratic interests on the Hill. But she also was thinking ahead-to another Clinton presidential campaign and administration, when those reinforcements could ease her path and abet her power.

Within the Senate she was something of a scold toward her party's leadership, forever prodding Reid to develop a sharper and more consistent approach to battling the Republicans. Her opinion of his predecessor, Daschle, was no better; she had quickly pegged him as ineffectual and weak, a bush-leaguer in a big-league job, and his loss at the polls in 2004 had only confirmed her early verdict.

Clinton's prescription for both her and the party's reformation was rooted in the lessons she drew from recent history, from the failures of 2004, 2000, and especially the nineties. Although her husband had dragged Democrats kicking and screaming into the modern age substantively and ideologically, she considered his administration a tactical and operational disaster: soft, undisciplined, woolly minded, and leaky.

The political machine that Hillary built for herself was its opposite in every regard. The people comprising it-on her Senate staff, at her PAC, and among her outside advisers-were loyal to a fault, smart and ruthless, hardheaded and hard-boiled. With few exceptions, they embraced her conception of politics as total war and shared her reflexive antipathy to the Fourth Estate. They more closely resembled Bush's operation than Bill Clinton's (and were happy, even proud, to admit it). They referred to themselves collectively as Hillaryland, and everyone else in politics did too.

More than any other player, Solis Doyle embodied the culture of Hillaryland. The sixth child of Mexican parents who came to America and settled in Chicago, she started out as Hillary's scheduler in 1991 and steadily ama.s.sed duties and influence from there on. She had a ready laugh and a teasing wit, but could be brutal in her role as the chief enforcer of Hillaryland's code of omerta and rarely spoke to reporters. More than her political ac.u.men, it was her almost daughterly connection to Hillary that was her source of power. At forty-one, she was the first and last aide Clinton consulted on any big decision, and was often said to possess the capacity to channel her boss's thinking.

And yet in terms of Hillaryland mojo, Solis Doyle was matched by Penn, who exerted an iron grip on Clinton's message strategy. Appointed CEO of the public-relations behemoth Burson-Marsteller in 2005, he had spent the previous three decades polling on behalf of clients ranging from Ed Koch to Tony Blair-along with companies such as Microsoft and Avis-and had made a specialty of carving up the electorate into itty-bitty demographic and psychographic slices and propounding micropolicies to satisfy voters' cravings and allay their anxieties. He was fifty-two years old, doughy, disheveled, and socially maladroit; in the Clinton White House, his nickname had alternated between Schlumpy and Schlumbo.

Hillary was attached to Solis Doyle and Penn for different reasons, and they in turn reflected different aspects of her character. What she liked about Solis Doyle was her crawl-across-broken-gla.s.s fealty, her discretion, and the mind meld the two of them had achieved; Patti was a comfortable and comforting presence. What she liked about Penn was his data-drivenness, his tendency to frame even the grubbiest issues and nastiest tactics in lofty policy terms, and, most of all, his cert.i.tude; when her own political instincts were muddy, as they often were, he told her what to do.

The job that the Hillarylanders had done for Hillary had been masterly by any measure. They helped her win her Senate seat when people said it was a pipe dream. They helped her lay waste to the prevailing caricature of her (an arrogant, corrupt, power-mad, harsh, hypocritical liberal) and sketched a new picture (a competent, clever, hardworking, determined, pragmatic centrist) that boosted her popularity ratings to the moon. They were on the way to helping her collect nearly $50 million for her Senate reelection campaign that year, in which she faced only token opposition. And whatever money was left over could be put directly into a presidential bid, a.s.suming she decided to take the plunge into that pool.

But now the controversy over Hillary's war vote threatened to eclipse everything she had accomplished. The King David letter, despite Bill's best efforts, did nothing to subdue her critics. If anything, the attacks only grew more vitriolic in the first half of 2006, as Clinton refused to endorse the demand of some liberal Democrats for a firm timetable for troop withdrawal. To Hillaryland, the a.s.sault on her from the left was a test-and the results were not encouraging. The internal deliberations over how to handle the situation consumed dozens upon dozens of meetings and conference calls; her people debated the matter endlessly but never reached a conclusion. What should she do? Introduce legislation? Give a speech? Sit for an interview? And if so, what should she say? Stand her ground? Apologize? What?

Hillary had no intention of saying she was sorry. I don't have anything to apologize for I don't have anything to apologize for, she thought. You want me to apologize for the fact that the president is an idiot? You want me to apologize for the fact that the president is an idiot?

Hillary liked to say that she was blessed (or cursed) with a "responsibility gene." It was no small part of why, as a senator from New York in the wake of 9/11, she had voted to authorize the war in the first place-and why she was resistant to pushing for a date certain for withdrawal now. If she did run for president and wound up in the Oval Office, the decisions regarding Iraq would fall into her lap, and having lived in the White House, she understood the presidential premium on flexibility. Then there were the politics of the matter. "I'm not going to let myself be dragged too far left during the primary season," she explained to one of her most generous donors. If she reversed herself now, she would be buying a one-way ticket to Kerryville: the GOP would tattoo her forehead with the lethal "flip-flopper" label.

And so would the press-of that she was certain. The standards to which she was held by the media, she believed, and not without reason, were so much more strict (and latently hostile) than those applied to any other politician in the country. "Everything I do carries political risk because n.o.body gets the scrutiny that I get," she told a reporter. "It's not like I have any margin for error whatsoever. I don't. Everybody else does, and I don't. And that's fine. That's just who I am, and that's what I live with."

The Iraq dilemma was vexing, a pure Hobson's choice. She was d.a.m.ned if she did and d.a.m.ned if she didn't-and so she adopted her husband's method and split the difference. In the King David letter, Hillary had claimed that she wasn't voting for war in 2002 but instead for more diplomacy. Now she decided to add her name to legislation that urged the president to begin a "phased redeployment" of the troops by the end of 2006.

How the Democratic base would react to these maneuvers was an open question. In mid-June, brave in a hot-pink pantsuit before a rancorous crowd of several thousand progressive activists at the Take Back America conference at the Washington Hilton, Clinton excoriated the Bush administration's domestic agenda and its handling of Iraq-for having "rushed to war," "refused to let the U.N. inspectors conduct and complete their mission," "committed strategic blunder after blunder," and "undermined America's leadership in the world."

But then Clinton raised her hands defensively and added, with a mild quaver in her voice, "I just have to say it: I do not think it is a smart strategy either for the president to continue with his open-ended commitment, which I think does not put enough pressure on the new Iraqi government, nor do I think it is smart strategy to set a date certain. I do not agree that that is in the best interest of our troops or our country."

The crowd erupted. "Why not?" people yelled amid a cacophony of boos and hisses so raucous that Clinton could barely be heard above the din. Stepping down off the stage, she was serenaded with chants of protest-"Bring the troops home! Bring the troops home!"-as she made her way to the exit.

The antiwar base was sending a fundamental message: Clinton's front-runner status was rooted in shaky ground. As wary as she was of being stereotyped as a conventional liberal a la Kerry or Dean, Hillary didn't fully apprehend that her split-the-difference stance was reviving an equally damaging narrative. With it, and with a handful of other moves that smacked of cynicism-her cosponsorship of a bill to criminalize flag-burning was frequently cited-Clinton was breathing new life into perceptions that she had done so much to slay: that she was a calculating, expedient schemer wedded to no great principle other than her own advancement.

For many Democrats, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, triangulating, and poll-tested centrism were among the least appetizing features of the Clinton years. But, of course, there were others-as Hillary herself was reminded all the time, in the most unpleasant ways.

WHEN SHE FIRST GOT the word, she was stunned and angry. The New York Times The New York Times was doing was doing what what? There was just no way it could be true-but it was, she was told by her press secretary, Philippe Reines, and his counterpart for her husband, Jay Carson.

In the spring of 2006, the Paper of Record was in the midst of reporting a story on the state of the Clinton marriage. And from what the flaks could ascertain from their conversations with the reporter, it wasn't going to be pretty. The thrust of the piece, they believed, was that the marriage was a sham; that Hillary and Bill barely saw each other, rarely slept in the same bed; that their matrimony was a partnership, an understanding, but little more; that Bill's bachelor lifestyle had the potential to derail her presidential aspirations.

How is this a legitimate story? Hillary wanted to know. And not just a story, but a story in the most esteemed newspaper in the country. "It's just f.u.c.king unbelievable," she said. "This is my life? I have to deal with this bulls.h.i.t?"

Carson and Reines suspected that the Times Times's true intention was more pernicious still: the paper wanted to write about the rumors swirling around Bill Clinton's alleged infidelities and was using a discussion of the Clinton marriage as camouflage. Within Hillary's and Bill's operations, a series of heated discussions ensued about whether to engage with the reporter, Patrick Healy, or simply say, "No comment." The dominant view inside Hillaryland, with its aversion to the press, was that to partic.i.p.ate would do nothing but legitimize the story. Carson and Reines strongly disagreed. Guys, the story is likely to be on page A1 of The New York Times The New York Times, Carson said. It's already legitimized! Carson and Reines considered Healy an ethical reporter, persuadable by the facts. Weighing in, they felt, could influence the piece, soften it, and at least prevent errors or egregious insinuations from appearing in print.

Carson and Reines prevailed in that debate and spent a frantic weekend pushing back on the story. They pulled schedules to demonstrate that the Clintons spent plenty of nights together-more, in fact, than Chuck Schumer spent with his wife, Iris. The Clintons loved each other, the press guys insisted; this was not a marriage in name only.

When the story appeared, on May 23, the Clinton camps were braced for the worst. But although it was indeed on A1, the effects of Carson's and Reines's efforts were evident. The piece was elliptical, full of loaded language and ominous hints, but contained no damaging facts. Even better from the Clinton perspective, the reaction from readers was harsh-a flood of letters denouncing the paper for going tabloid, for slumming in the gutter. (Stung by the criticisms, the Times's Times's public editor felt compelled to devote a column to justifying the article.) Months later, Carson would tell Bill Clinton that the story, for all the agita around it, turned out to be a blessing in disguise. For as long as anyone could remember, Carson thought, reporters had been dying to peek inside the couple's bedroom. The Clinton people warned them not to do it-there's a big mean dog in there, they suggested, ready to chew your face off. Now the public editor felt compelled to devote a column to justifying the article.) Months later, Carson would tell Bill Clinton that the story, for all the agita around it, turned out to be a blessing in disguise. For as long as anyone could remember, Carson thought, reporters had been dying to peek inside the couple's bedroom. The Clinton people warned them not to do it-there's a big mean dog in there, they suggested, ready to chew your face off. Now the Times Times had ventured in and come out bleeding. From that point on, for two solid years, not a single reporter approached Clintonworld in pursuit of a similar story. had ventured in and come out bleeding. From that point on, for two solid years, not a single reporter approached Clintonworld in pursuit of a similar story.

Yet the Clinton victory, in the moment, was a pyrrhic one. In Washington, the fact that the Times Times-the prudish, starchy, self-important Gray Lady-had been willing to go there, however awkwardly, merely turned up the flame on the burning speculation about Bill's putative priapism. What had been a slow simmer in 2005 became a roiling boil in the summer and fall of 2006, as the chattering cla.s.ses theorized about whether and why the Times Times had pulled its punches. Worse, Clintonworld was hearing that a gusher of gossip was flowing from members of the couple's own inner circle-and in particular from Steve Ricchetti, the longtime consigliere to Bill who had been so keen on Hillary running for president in 2004. had pulled its punches. Worse, Clintonworld was hearing that a gusher of gossip was flowing from members of the couple's own inner circle-and in particular from Steve Ricchetti, the longtime consigliere to Bill who had been so keen on Hillary running for president in 2004.

Since his departure from the White House, Bill Clinton had not exactly erred on the side of caution when it came to his personal comportment. Within days of settling into the Clintons' new house in Chappaqua in 2001, he could be found at Lange's deli, chatting up the stay-at-home mothers who trundled in after yoga, startling his aides that he already knew all the women by name. He gallivanted around the world with his business partner Ron Burkle, the supermarket magnate and notorious playboy, whose custom-converted Boeing 757 was referred to by Burkle's young aides as "Air f.u.c.k One." Clinton's regular trips to that carnal triptych of Los Angeles, Miami, and Las Vegas struck many of his friends as a recipe, if not for trouble, then at least for undue temptation and embarra.s.sment. But Bill seemed not to care. He was going to do what he wanted to do, appearances be d.a.m.ned.

And yet Bill was rips.h.i.t when Carson and Terry McAuliffe informed him of the extent to which tongues were wagging in Washington. Those G.o.dd.a.m.n people in D.C., Clinton fumed. They don't have anything better to do than talk about my s.e.x life? G.o.dd.a.m.n that city! This is why I hated it from the beginning down there. Everybody's got boring lives so they just sit around and talk about someone else's.

All the murmurings about Bill were starting to get back to Hillaryland as well. When Solis Doyle made the rounds of senior party players-members of Congress, major donors, former Cabinet secretaries-to chat about Hillary's prospective presidential run, she was encountering a troubling pattern. Almost uniformly, the Democratic grandees professed their affection and respect for Senator Clinton. She's terrific, they said; she'd be a good candidate and make a great president. But then would come the inevitable addendum: What are you going to do about Bill?

What Solis Doyle invariably would say was "We've got that under control." It was a clever answer she had come up with herself, and it seemed to pacify her listeners.

But Patti was rattled by the specificity of the chatter she was hearing. One rumor was that Bill Clinton was having an affair with a dishy Canadian member of parliament, Belinda Stronach; another involved a wealthy divorcee, Julie Tauber McMahon, who lived in Chappaqua; another revolved around the Hollywood actress Gina Gershon; and the list went on.

Solis Doyle was equally unnerved by the caliber of the people indulging in the speculation. One day she paid a visit to Ricchetti, who mentioned without blinking that he'd recently been on a conference call with a handful of big-name Clinton stalwarts, including former treasury secretary Robert Rubin, which devolved into a prolonged discussion of Bill's supposed indiscretions and the danger they posed to Hillary.

This is a problem, Solis Doyle thought, and not a small one. These were heavy-hitting Clinton supporters who had Hillary's best interests at heart, whose intent was anything but malicious, who were actually trying to help. Solis Doyle decided that she needed to tell Hillary, and quick.

She had brought word to Hillary more than once about the rumors hovering around Bill. "It's not true," Hillary would say, and in any case, she knew how to handle it. She had some experience in this area, after all, and she had always emerged intact. "We'll be ready for it," she said, and then, again, "It's not true."

But Solis Doyle needed Hillary to listen this time, to appreciate the implications of what was happening. You don't understand, she said insistently. They're having conference calls about this-what he's doing, who he's doing it with, how it's going to damage you.

The mention of conference calls snapped Hillary to attention. She demanded to know who was on the calls. Solis Doyle told her. Hillary reeled, first stunned into silence by the betrayal, then loudly livid about their friends trafficking this c.r.a.p behind her back. How dare they? They don't know anything! Who do they think they are?

Hillary had always been adamant that her and her husband's personal lives were n.o.body's business but theirs. She immediately froze Ricchetti out of Hillaryland. (The reaction in Bill Clinton's world was even harsher; when other staffers asked Doug Band, the former president's chief counselor, why Ricchetti was no longer included on regular conference calls of old White House hands, Band icily replied, "He's dead to us.") Hillary wasn't in complete denial about the perils of the situation, however. She had seen the damage that Bill's bimbo eruptions could inflict and knew that his imputed peccadilloes were among the gravest potential impediments to her reaching the White House. Clinton turned to two aides she trusted with the most intimate matters, Solis Doyle and Cheryl Mills, and Solis Doyle included Howard Wolfson in the circle. Together, the trio formed a war room within a war room inside Hillaryland, dedicated to managing the threat posed by Bill's libido. Mills, the lawyer, handled delicate matters where attorney-client privilege might prove useful; Solis Doyle was in charge of the political dimension; and Wolfson worked the media side of the equation.

The war room within a war room dismissed or discredited much of the gossip floating around, but not all of it. The stories about one woman were more concrete, and after some discreet fact-finding, the group concluded that they were true: that Bill was indeed having an affair-and not a frivolous one-night stand but a sustained romantic relationship.

This was exactly the scenario that had incited so many members of the conspiracy of whispers to urge Obama into the race-and what everyone who signed up with Hillary feared each waking day. But whatever storm of emotions Clinton herself might have been experiencing she put aside in the interest of survival. She instructed her team to prepare to deal with the potential blowup of Bill's personal life. For months thereafter, the war room within a war room braced for the explosion, which her aides knew could come at any time.

Yet even without any detonations, the Bill-related rumblings and their reverberations would continue-and be absorbed by Hillary in painful, maddening, and portentous ways. In October, she was scheduled to headline a New York fund-raiser for Claire McCaskill, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Missouri. McCaskill, a plainspoken centrist who held the job of state auditor, had narrowly lost a run for governor in 2004. She'd been expected to take another shot at that office four years later, but had decided against it out of fear that Clinton would be her party's presidential nominee in 2008. According to a story in The New Yorker The New Yorker in May 2006, McCaskill had "told people in Missouri and in Washington that a ticket led by Clinton would be fatal for many Democrats on the ballot, and that a Clinton candidacy would rule out her chance to win the governorship." in May 2006, McCaskill had "told people in Missouri and in Washington that a ticket led by Clinton would be fatal for many Democrats on the ballot, and that a Clinton candidacy would rule out her chance to win the governorship."

Hillaryland was not amused by the New Yorker New Yorker piece. But McCaskill smoothed things over with the Clintons, apologizing, claiming she'd been quoted out of context. In September, Bill flew to St. Louis and did a fund-raiser for McCaskill, and now Hillary was set to help fill her coffers, though (not coincidentally) nine hundred miles away from the Missouri media. piece. But McCaskill smoothed things over with the Clintons, apologizing, claiming she'd been quoted out of context. In September, Bill flew to St. Louis and did a fund-raiser for McCaskill, and now Hillary was set to help fill her coffers, though (not coincidentally) nine hundred miles away from the Missouri media.

The day before the New York fund-raiser, however, McCaskill appeared on Meet the Press Meet the Press and was asked by Russert if she thought that Bill Clinton had been a great president. "I do," McCaskill said. "I have a lot of problems with some of his, his, his personal issues." Russert began to speak, but McCaskill cut him off. "I said at the time, I think he's been a great leader, but I don't want my daughter near him." and was asked by Russert if she thought that Bill Clinton had been a great president. "I do," McCaskill said. "I have a lot of problems with some of his, his, his personal issues." Russert began to speak, but McCaskill cut him off. "I said at the time, I think he's been a great leader, but I don't want my daughter near him."

Reines was in Chicago to attend a wedding and happened to be watching the show. Mortified, he knew that someone had to inform Hillary before the fund-raiser took place. He emailed the quote around Hillaryland. Everyone was aghast-and no one wanted to tell the senator, so Reines was saddled with the unpleasant duty.

"So what's going on?" Hillary asked, when Reines reached her by phone.

Oh, not much, Reines replied, running through the day's news, the guests on the Sunday shows, and then, at the end, sidling up gingerly to McCaskill's comment.

"She said what?" what?" Hillary asked incredulously. Hillary asked incredulously.

Reines read her the quote verbatim: "I think he's been a great leader, but I don't want my daughter near him."

The phone went quiet. Hillary was speechless. A few more seconds pa.s.sed, and then finally came her voice, hot with fury.

"f.u.c.k her," Hillary said-and then called Solis Doyle and summarily canceled the fund-raiser.

MCCASKILL WOULD AGAIN APOLOGIZE to Hillary and Bill, writing them letters, begging their forgiveness and forbearance. What she said had been stupid, hurtful, insensitive. But the truth was that McCaskill meant it, just as she'd meant her earlier prediction of the damage to Democrats across the country if Hillary won the nomination. McCaskill was in the market for a different horse-and now, like many other Democrats, she thought she saw one in Obama.

Inside Hillaryland, the notion that Obama might enter the race seemed remote to almost everyone. Harold Ickes, a fabled Democratic operative and longtime adviser to the Clintons, was so dismissive of the idea that he offered to bet Solis Doyle $50,000 that it would never happen. Penn, too, was sure Obama would stay out; that was the skinny he was hearing from inside the Illinois senator's...o...b..t.

Hillary, for her part, had no idea what Obama would do, though she knew that he wouldn't be swayed by the argument that his experience was insufficient. "No one ever thinks they don't have the experience to do this," she told one of her aides. "No one thinks that way. He wouldn't have gotten to this point and then said, 'Oh, I don't have the experience.' You don't think about your weaknesses. You think about your strengths."

But Obama's strengths didn't strike her as especially intimidating, and whether he took his weaknesses seriously or not, they were many and glaring. Sure, he had a great deal of potential, but it was just that-potential. He had no fund-raising network, no tangible accomplishments in the Senate. The speeches he gave-oh, they were pretty, but so what? You don't change people's lives with words You don't change people's lives with words, Hillary thought. You change them with committed effort, by pushing through the opposition. You change them with a fight. You change them with committed effort, by pushing through the opposition. You change them with a fight. That was how you won elections, too. With a fight. In his entire career, Obama had yet to be hit with a single negative ad. How would he ever withstand the sheer, unrelenting h.e.l.l of a presidential race: the constant pummeling by his opponents, the withering scrutiny and X-ray intrusions of the media? That was how you won elections, too. With a fight. In his entire career, Obama had yet to be hit with a single negative ad. How would he ever withstand the sheer, unrelenting h.e.l.l of a presidential race: the constant pummeling by his opponents, the withering scrutiny and X-ray intrusions of the media?

But even as most of Clintonworld dismissed Obama, one dissenter stewed. All that talent. The antiwar credentials. The desire for something different in the country. The combination could be deadly, Bill Clinton kept saying. This guy could be trouble.

Chapter Four.

Getting to Yes.

OBAMA FLEW OUT OF Washington on August 18, 2006, and arrived the next morning in Cape Town, South Africa, to start his two-week tour of the continent-and the two-and-a-half-month rocket ride that would carry him to the day of the midterm elections. "Rocket ride" was Gibbs's term, and he wasn't exaggerating. The period would include the publication of Obama's second book, The Audacity of Hope The Audacity of Hope, the national book tour to publicize it, and a marathon stretch of campaigning for Democratic candidates from coast to coast. Everyone around Obama understood that the interval would be pivotal to his decision about running for president, which he had consciously put off until November. But most of them a.s.sumed that in the end, however tempting he found the idea, practicality would prevail.

The Africa trip turned out to be a revelation for both Barack and Mich.e.l.le. The last time he had been there was fourteen years earlier, with a pack on his back and not much more than a packet of cigarettes in his pocket. Now, from Chad to Ethiopia to Djibouti, and especially in his father's Kenyan homeland, he was treated like a head of state-or Muhammad Ali in Zaire for the Rumble in the Jungle. In Nairobi, thousands lined the streets and stood on rooftops chanting, "Obama biro, yawne yo!"-"Obama's coming, clear the way!" The crowds were bigger than any he had experienced since the Democratic convention, but unlike that audience, the African throngs were there for him and him alone. Mich.e.l.le found the spectacle discomfiting. "Part of you just wants to say, 'Can we tame this down a little bit?'" she said at the time. "Does it have to be all this? This is out of hand."

But what Mich.e.l.le saw as overwhelming, her husband viewed as possibility. He began to entertain the notion that he'd tapped into something remarkable; that by virtue of what he represented, he might be able to effect change on a global scale. It was heady and humbling at the same time, nothing short of an epiphany.

When Obama got home, he had one event on his calendar before the madness of the book tour began: the 29th Annual Harkin Steak Fry. And in its way, it was an even bigger deal than the Africa trip. Taking place every September in Indianola, Iowa, the steak fry was a political fair sponsored by Senator Tom Harkin and attended by hundreds of the state's hardcore Democratic activists-and was thus a coveted speaking venue for any aspiring presidential candidate. Eager to avoid an awkward choice between Clinton, Edwards, Warner, or Vilsack, Harkin offered Obama the keynote slot on the a.s.sumption that he wasn't running. Obama's advisers were fully aware that if he accepted, the political world would erupt with speculation about his intentions.

"You have to understand what this is going to indicate to a lot of people," Gibbs told Obama, in a meeting with the senior staff. "They're going to think you're running."

"I understand," Obama said.

The truth was, he was ready to stir the pot. Going to the steak fry didn't commit him to anything. The media might whip itself up, but attending the event would let him take the temperature of Iowa activists-another important data point for decision time after the midterms. Obama was intent on not being sloppy about it, not showing too much or too little leg. "If we're gonna do this, we have to do it right," he said, then glanced around the room. In case he wasn't being sufficiently clear, he added, "Don't f.u.c.k this up."

Obama, though, was the one to blunder. After the press reported that he'd agreed to keynote the steak fry, Mich.e.l.le's phone started ringing off the hook, with people calling about her husband's first foray into Iowa. But Mich.e.l.le was totally in the dark-and now steamed at him. Obama walked into his Senate office looking sheepish.

"Next time I decide to make a big announcement," he said to Gibbs, "would you remind me to tell Mich.e.l.le?"

Not s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up the steak fry itself would require staffing Obama well. And Pete Rouse had an idea-one that made sense on the merits and was sure to draw attention. They would add Steve Hildebrand to Obama's traveling party.

Among Democratic insiders and political reporters, Hildebrand was renowned. A gra.s.sroots-organizing savant with close ties to three foundational Democratic factions-women's groups, gay activists, and labor-Hildebrand was yet another former Daschle staffer, which was how he and Rouse were friends. But his claim to fame was having helped deliver the Iowa caucuses for Al Gore in 2000. Goateed, tattooed, and openly gay, Hildebrand was the rare top-shelf national operative who lived outside the Beltway (and way outside, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota). Even rarer, he was pa.s.sionate about issues and had a romantic streak about politics as wide and verdant as a Paris boulevard.

Hildebrand had not even seen Obama's 2004 convention keynote. A few months before the steak fry, in fact, he had met with Hillary and offered to work for her-but she brushed him off. Hildebrand returned to South Dakota and grew angry at what he saw as Clinton's weaseling over the Iraq War. So when Rouse asked him to accompany Obama to Harkin's event, Hildebrand was game. He knew that his presence in Iowa at Obama's side would set off alarm bells in the political sphere, that he was being used as a tool. The Obama people are f.u.c.king with the Clintons The Obama people are f.u.c.king with the Clintons, he thought. And that was just fine with him.

The scene that greeted Obama in Indianola was pure pandemonium. Nearly four thousand people showed up that day at Balloon Field; for a typical steak fry, the number was fifteen hundred. The crowd had its share of college kids from Drake and Iowa State, and was so thick on the ground and eager to get close to Obama that he could barely move. His speech never quite gelled, but the crowd didn't seem to notice. Afterward, as Obama made his way down an endless rope line, with cameras capturing his every move, fans thrust copies of Dreams from My Father Dreams from My Father at him to autograph. "Thank you for giving us hope," one person told Obama. at him to autograph. "Thank you for giving us hope," one person told Obama.

Hildebrand was thunderstruck. It reminded him of the images of the Clinton-Gore bus tour after the convention in 1992-the rabid, spontaneous enthusiasm, the palpable sense of connection, the future-is-nowness of it. As they walked to the parking lot afterward, he asked Obama, "How do these people know so much about you?"

"I don't know. The convention speech, and then it just grew from there."

"Is it like this in other places?"

Obama shrugged and said, "It's like this everywhere we go."

The following morning, Hildebrand received an email from Solis Doyle: "Saw your name in The New York Times. The New York Times. Hope you don't make any decisions before we have a chance to talk." Hope you don't make any decisions before we have a chance to talk."

Hildebrand laughed. Hillary Clinton? Please. His decision was already made. He would do whatever it took to get Obama in the race, then elect him president.

THE OBAMA BOOK TOUR was purposefully structured to approximate the rigors of a presidential campaign. Gibbs wanted to give his boss a taste of what nonstop life on the road would be like. Each day of the tour would be in a different city and have three elements: a book signing, a political event, and a thank-you get-together for his donors. Because Obama had missed his deadline repeatedly, the publication date of The Audacity of Hope The Audacity of Hope had been pushed back to October 17, shortening the tour to just a week-and also putting the book in direct compet.i.tion with John Grisham's first nonfiction opus, had been pushed back to October 17, shortening the tour to just a week-and also putting the book in direct compet.i.tion with John Grisham's first nonfiction opus, The Innocent Man The Innocent Man, which hit the shelves the same day. The Grisham t.i.tle entered the bestseller lists at number one, with Obama's at number two. When Obama learned of the rankings, he was peevish, a little whiny. "But I want to be number one," he complained.