"Wow, that was surreal," Obama told Axelrod. He was struck by her fury, and more than that, he thought that she seemed shaken. "You could see something in her eyes," he said, something he hadn't seen before. Maybe it was fear. Maybe desperation. "You know what?" Obama said. "We're doing something right."

On her plane, Clinton related her interpretation of what had happened. I tried to apologize, she told her people, but then he started yelling. The way Obama came back at her told her that he he was rattled. She couldn't believe he'd put his hand on her, violated her personal s.p.a.ce. "He's got a lot of nerve," she said. was rattled. She couldn't believe he'd put his hand on her, violated her personal s.p.a.ce. "He's got a lot of nerve," she said.

Later that day, Clinton, under pressure from her New Hampshire staff, agreed to excommunicate Shaheen. But she still had plenty of surrogates ready to sink their canines into Obama's keister. That night on MSNBC's Hardball Hardball, Penn appeared in a segment from the debate hall spin room with Trippi and with Axelrod via remote. Chris Matthews asked about the Clinton team's turn toward negativity, and Penn replied, "The issue related to cocaine use is not something that the campaign was in any way raising."

"He just did it again! He just did it again! Unbelievable!" Trippi interrupted indignantly, pointing at Penn. "He just said 'cocaine' again!"

"I think you're you're saying 'cocaine,'" Penn chuckled. "I think saying 'cocaine,'" Penn chuckled. "I think you're you're saying it." saying it."

Axelrod shook his head mournfully at the sleaziness on display. Trippi fulminated further. And Penn returned to Clinton's Des Moines headquarters giddy as a schoolgirl, giggling to his colleagues, "Did you notice how many times I said 'cocaine'?"

And then there was Hillary's husband. As part of a book tour to promote his latest tome, Giving Giving, Bill Clinton appeared on Charlie Rose Charlie Rose the night after the verbal fisticuffs on the tarmac. He spent most of the show talking earnestly about philanthropy, but when Rose nudged him into the realm of politics, he couldn't restrain himself. A year's worth of agitation flooded out. Voters had to decide, Clinton said, if they wanted a nominee with the experience to be a change agent or were willing to "roll the dice" on "somebody who started running for president a year after he became a senator because he's fresh, he's new, he's never made a mistake, and he has ma.s.sive political skills." Bill dinged Obama for repeating a "total canard" about his wife pursuing a decades-long scheme to run for president. He reamed out the press for being "stenographers" for Obama and attributed Barack's strength in Iowa to the fact that he lived in a neighboring state. He predicted that people would "watch this interview and pa.r.s.e everything I said" in order to "get a political story and a fight going." the night after the verbal fisticuffs on the tarmac. He spent most of the show talking earnestly about philanthropy, but when Rose nudged him into the realm of politics, he couldn't restrain himself. A year's worth of agitation flooded out. Voters had to decide, Clinton said, if they wanted a nominee with the experience to be a change agent or were willing to "roll the dice" on "somebody who started running for president a year after he became a senator because he's fresh, he's new, he's never made a mistake, and he has ma.s.sive political skills." Bill dinged Obama for repeating a "total canard" about his wife pursuing a decades-long scheme to run for president. He reamed out the press for being "stenographers" for Obama and attributed Barack's strength in Iowa to the fact that he lived in a neighboring state. He predicted that people would "watch this interview and pa.r.s.e everything I said" in order to "get a political story and a fight going."

He was right about that. His denigration of Obama on the eve of the caucuses had everyone talking. But Clinton didn't care. His att.i.tude toward politics was in some ways simple: always be on offense, never on defense; if someone is standing in your way, the only sensible course is to crush him. f.u.c.k it, he thought. Somebody has to say this stuff about Obama, and Hillary's campaign isn't going to. I know I shouldn't have done it, but I'm glad I did.

Hillary didn't blame her husband for the controversy his comments engendered, in no small part because she believed that every word he said was true. But she could see that her side's negative barrage was backfiring, that it looked like indiscriminate flailing, that all the energy in Iowa remained with Obama.

Clinton began to despair. "If he's who they want, they can have him," she said dejectedly.

Then came a bolt from the blue. In years past in Iowa, the next most influential occurrence after the J-J had been the Register Register endors.e.m.e.nt. Both sides had courted the paper a.s.siduously, slavishly, and the Clintons especially so. (Vilsack plotted out their strategy; surrogates such as Madeleine Albright were enlisted to call ed-board members; and Bill laid the charm on thick with the editorial chief.) Because of the paper's leftish leanings, though, most believed Obama had it cinched. endors.e.m.e.nt. Both sides had courted the paper a.s.siduously, slavishly, and the Clintons especially so. (Vilsack plotted out their strategy; surrogates such as Madeleine Albright were enlisted to call ed-board members; and Bill laid the charm on thick with the editorial chief.) Because of the paper's leftish leanings, though, most believed Obama had it cinched.

Clinton happily learned otherwise on a frigid mid-December day while she was flying on a tiny chartered jet from New York to Washington. A loud, mysterious buzzing sound kept going off on the plane. Her Secret Service detail began to panic, thinking that it must be an emergency alarm. But then someone noticed an ancient air phone tucked under Hillary's seat. Headquarters was on the line with the good news about the Register. Register. Clinton did a little dance for joy-it was the best news she'd heard in weeks. Clinton did a little dance for joy-it was the best news she'd heard in weeks.

Penn and others inside Hillaryland thought the Register Register endors.e.m.e.nt could be a game changer. A rapid shift of strategy was called for. Out with the negative. In with the positive. Showcase Hillary's softer side. The internal advocates of humanizing her were thrilled, although they worried that it was too late. The price tag on the Iowa campaign was already stratospheric-more than $25 million had now been spent-but no expense would be spared in the last two weeks before the caucuses. To put Clinton in front of as many voters as possible, a private helicopter was secured. (The sleek, navy blue Bell 222 chopper was promptly christened the Hil-o-copter.) And, maybe most remarkable of all, Chelsea Clinton would hit the trail in Iowa. endors.e.m.e.nt could be a game changer. A rapid shift of strategy was called for. Out with the negative. In with the positive. Showcase Hillary's softer side. The internal advocates of humanizing her were thrilled, although they worried that it was too late. The price tag on the Iowa campaign was already stratospheric-more than $25 million had now been spent-but no expense would be spared in the last two weeks before the caucuses. To put Clinton in front of as many voters as possible, a private helicopter was secured. (The sleek, navy blue Bell 222 chopper was promptly christened the Hil-o-copter.) And, maybe most remarkable of all, Chelsea Clinton would hit the trail in Iowa.

She had done so only once before, a couple of weeks earlier, on the same day that Oprah arrived to campaign for Obama. Hillary detested the idea, fought it tooth and nail. Her protectiveness of Chelsea had been unwavering and fierce since the Clintons went national. Her daughter was an adult now, sure, old enough to make her own decisions. But Hillary was nervous anyway about throwing her into the middle of the mayhem-and if Chelsea made a mistake or was hara.s.sed, Hillary would feel the sting of responsibility.

The prohibition against deploying Chelsea-intelligent, poised, and charming as she was-struck many of Clinton's advisers as nuts. ("Is the daughter dead?" Vilmain asked incredulously on learning that Chelsea wouldn't be accompanying her parents on their July 4 Iowa swing.) And Chelsea desperately wanted to help, lobbying her mother insistently, enlisting aides to make her case. She knows you don't want her to do it, Clinton's traveling chief of staff, Huma Abedin, told Hillary. But she she wants to do it-she keeps calling and telling me she wants to do it. Finally, Hillary relented. wants to do it-she keeps calling and telling me she wants to do it. Finally, Hillary relented.

For five days leading up to Christmas, Hillary embarked on what The New York Times The New York Times described as a "likability tour" of Iowa. She brought her husband along to vouch for her warm and fuzzy side. She brought her best friend from sixth grade. She brought farmers from New York to tell Iowans how she'd helped them. She even brought Magic Johnson to a few events. Gone from her speeches were any strident tones. Speaking as if she were on Quaaludes, her voice was bedtime-story soft, her cadences syrupy slow. In a Des Moines grocery store, she told reporters, "I know that people have been saying, 'Well, you know, we've got to know more about her, we want to know more about her personally.' And I totally get that. It's a little hard for me. It's not easy for me to talk about myself." described as a "likability tour" of Iowa. She brought her husband along to vouch for her warm and fuzzy side. She brought her best friend from sixth grade. She brought farmers from New York to tell Iowans how she'd helped them. She even brought Magic Johnson to a few events. Gone from her speeches were any strident tones. Speaking as if she were on Quaaludes, her voice was bedtime-story soft, her cadences syrupy slow. In a Des Moines grocery store, she told reporters, "I know that people have been saying, 'Well, you know, we've got to know more about her, we want to know more about her personally.' And I totally get that. It's a little hard for me. It's not easy for me to talk about myself."

The hokiness of Hillary's likability tour was overpowering-and the inconsistency of it with her message all year long even more so. But there were signs that whatever Clinton was doing, it was working.

A few days before Christmas, Hillary awoke to a new CNN poll that had her in first place in Iowa, two points ahead of Obama and four ahead of Edwards. On her staff call that morning, she was loose and frisky. Wolfson informed her that journalists thought her campaign had stabilized since the Register Register endors.e.m.e.nt. Clinton agreed. Obama's support outside Des Moines is thin, she said. "We need to start thinking about Edwards." She mentioned that she'd seen him quoted saying he was the most consistent candidate among the Democrats. endors.e.m.e.nt. Clinton agreed. Obama's support outside Des Moines is thin, she said. "We need to start thinking about Edwards." She mentioned that she'd seen him quoted saying he was the most consistent candidate among the Democrats.

Hillary scoffed. Edwards and Obama were very different cats, but they shared something in common. Both were "gripped in delusion," she said.

IF EDWARDS HAD ANY doubts about his sanity, he didn't have to look far for signs that would a.s.suage them. The collective media a.s.sessment was that Iowa was still a down-to-the-wire three-way race, with an Edwards victory no less plausible than a Clinton or Obama win. In one twenty-four-hour stretch in mid-December, Edwards graced the cover of Newsweek Newsweek-looking serious and determined, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened-flanked by the headline "The Sleeper"; appeared the same morning on This Week with George Stephanopoulos This Week with George Stephanopoulos and and Face the Nation Face the Nation; and received the endors.e.m.e.nt of Iowa governor Chet Culver's wife, Mari, whose preference was seen by some as a proxy for her husband, who had pledged to stay neutral.

Edwards was bolstered on the trail by the presence of his children and Elizabeth, who had returned to the road after a month-long absence. During the four long weeks of her hiatus, John's advisers had fielded countless press calls asking about her health: Had it taken a turn for the worse? But now here she was, back on the hustings, as feisty and outspoken as ever, monitoring the debates, turning up on cable television, receiving wild cheers at rallies. Everything seemed to be back to normal.

Then the Enquirer Enquirer struck again. struck again.

On December 18, the tabloid published a follow-up to its October expose on Edwards's affair-and this one was a doozy. Whereas the first Enquirer Enquirer story had failed to name Rielle Hunter, the new piece did that and much more. It included a photograph of her six months pregnant, and bore a headline that read "UPDATE: JOHN EDWARDS LOVE CHILD SCANDAL." And it claimed that Hunter had told "a close confidante that Edwards is the father of her baby!" story had failed to name Rielle Hunter, the new piece did that and much more. It included a photograph of her six months pregnant, and bore a headline that read "UPDATE: JOHN EDWARDS LOVE CHILD SCANDAL." And it claimed that Hunter had told "a close confidante that Edwards is the father of her baby!"

Team Edwards had known that the Enquirer Enquirer story was coming for some time. Fred Baron, John's friend and finance chair, had scrambled to coordinate statements from lawyers for the candidate and Hunter denying John's paternity, which the piece included. It also introduced a new character to the drama: Edwards's longtime personal aide, Andrew Young, who was a.s.serting that story was coming for some time. Fred Baron, John's friend and finance chair, had scrambled to coordinate statements from lawyers for the candidate and Hunter denying John's paternity, which the piece included. It also introduced a new character to the drama: Edwards's longtime personal aide, Andrew Young, who was a.s.serting that he he was the father. was the father.

The details in the article around Young's involvement were as squirrely as could be. The Enquirer Enquirer reported that Hunter was living in a rented house near the home of Young, his wife, and children in Governors Club, an exclusive gated community in Chapel Hill. When an reported that Hunter was living in a rented house near the home of Young, his wife, and children in Governors Club, an exclusive gated community in Chapel Hill. When an Enquirer Enquirer reporter confronted Young face-to-face, he first denied his ident.i.ty and knowing Hunter-this despite the fact that the car she was driving was registered in his name-before announcing the next day through his attorney that he was the sire of the unborn baby. Drawing out the obvious implication from this curious chain of events, the story noted, "Some insiders wonder whether Young's paternity claim is simply a cover-up to protect his longtime pal Edwards." reporter confronted Young face-to-face, he first denied his ident.i.ty and knowing Hunter-this despite the fact that the car she was driving was registered in his name-before announcing the next day through his attorney that he was the sire of the unborn baby. Drawing out the obvious implication from this curious chain of events, the story noted, "Some insiders wonder whether Young's paternity claim is simply a cover-up to protect his longtime pal Edwards."

The new Enquirer Enquirer story rocked the Edwardsphere to its core. Crazy as it sounded, the idea that Young was taking the fall for John had the deafening ring of truth. An attorney in his early forties, Young had a history of run-ins with the law and a rumored alcohol problem. Though he'd done some fund-raising over the years, his main role with Edwards was menial: household ch.o.r.es, personal errands, airport runs for the family. His devotion to his boss was comically servile. One Edwards staffer liked to joke, "If John asked Andrew to wipe his a.s.s, he would say, 'What kind of toilet paper?'" story rocked the Edwardsphere to its core. Crazy as it sounded, the idea that Young was taking the fall for John had the deafening ring of truth. An attorney in his early forties, Young had a history of run-ins with the law and a rumored alcohol problem. Though he'd done some fund-raising over the years, his main role with Edwards was menial: household ch.o.r.es, personal errands, airport runs for the family. His devotion to his boss was comically servile. One Edwards staffer liked to joke, "If John asked Andrew to wipe his a.s.s, he would say, 'What kind of toilet paper?'"

Edwards denounced the Enquirer Enquirer piece vehemently to his staff. On the campaign bus, he railed at the tabloid: "How could they f.u.c.king say this? How could they do this to me? How could they do this to Elizabeth?" piece vehemently to his staff. On the campaign bus, he railed at the tabloid: "How could they f.u.c.king say this? How could they do this to me? How could they do this to Elizabeth?"

Some Edwards aides believed John's denials, thought the story was too far-out to be true. The campaign's press shop, as it had in October, moved rapidly to contain the damage. Between Edwards's and Hunter's categorical denials and Young's paternity claim, reporters would have a hard time advancing the narrative-the story might just be survivable.

But other Edwards staffers decided to stop spinning the candidate's disavowals to the media, so certain were they that their boss was lying. Too many of them knew that Young had talked openly about having a vasectomy a few years earlier, after the birth of his third child, sharing details with anyone who would listen. A bit of math and a glance at a calendar made clear that Hunter had gotten pregnant around June, within months of the recurrence of Elizabeth's cancer, right around the time Hunter popped up again. Despite the terrors Elizabeth inflicted on the staffers, their sympathy for her now was huge.

Elizabeth's presence back on the trail, however, created a situation of ma.s.sive instability. Even before the second Enquirer Enquirer piece, she had turned against Trippi and Jonathan Prince, her husband's deputy campaign manager. (Prince, she was sure, had helped facilitate the Hunter affair; Trippi had lost her confidence by becoming friends with Prince.) She was alternately paranoid about and jealous of their closeness to John, attempting to banish both advisers first from Iowa and then from the campaign bus. Before the final pre-Iowa debate in December, she insisted that they be excluded from John's prep sessions. John begged Trippi and Prince to understand. Elizabeth is a little upset right now, he said; she's going through a lot of stress. Edwards arranged to meet with the two aides secretly to get ready for the debate. piece, she had turned against Trippi and Jonathan Prince, her husband's deputy campaign manager. (Prince, she was sure, had helped facilitate the Hunter affair; Trippi had lost her confidence by becoming friends with Prince.) She was alternately paranoid about and jealous of their closeness to John, attempting to banish both advisers first from Iowa and then from the campaign bus. Before the final pre-Iowa debate in December, she insisted that they be excluded from John's prep sessions. John begged Trippi and Prince to understand. Elizabeth is a little upset right now, he said; she's going through a lot of stress. Edwards arranged to meet with the two aides secretly to get ready for the debate.

After the story broke, things went from bad to worse. John and Elizabeth were fighting all the time, sometimes all night long. More than once, she announced to the staff that she could no longer speak in public on her husband's behalf or stay in the same hotel with him. Once, in the middle of the night, she woke up a trip director and commanded, Get me out of here! I'm not campaigning for this a.s.shole another day!

At other times, Elizabeth seemed intent on convincing herself that Young was indeed the father. She ordered the campaign staff to a.s.semble an elaborate chronology of the previous months, establishing the nights when Young and Hunter might have been in the same city. "When were they together?" she demanded. "We need to figure this out, how many times they were together."

It's been a humiliating few weeks, Elizabeth told a friend. I wish I could wring Andrew Young's neck.

One night in the last week before the caucuses, she and John had dinner at Azalea with Kim Rubey and David Ginsberg, two of the former aides from 2004 who had left the Edwardsphere in large part because of the looming threat of Hunter. They had come to Des Moines with mixed emotions and motives: to help their old colleagues handle the mammoth workload and to witness the final days of Edwards as a presidential candidate. They had been there at the start. They wanted to be there at the end. And they believed this was was the end. the end.

Edwards had invited Ginsberg and Rubey to supper after seeing them at one of his events. He seemed touched that they were in Iowa, in light of the circ.u.mstances, about which he knew they were better versed than most.

"Can you believe this is Andrew?" Elizabeth said over dinner. "How has Andrew done this to our family?" She solicited everyone's opinion about Young and Hunter. Had Ginsberg and Rubey ever seen them together?

The two former aides squirmed in their seats and held their tongues-while John sat staring silently at them from across the table. They left the dinner astonished by Elizabeth's herculean efforts at willingly suspending disbelief. But as disquieting for them as the scene at Azalea was, even more disturbing was the possibility that they were wrong about how Edwards would fare in Iowa. What if he won? What would they do? What should should they do? they do?

The thought was occurring in the minds of many old Edwards hands that week, in Iowa and farther afield. The mainstream media, yet again, was determinedly ignoring the Enquirer. Enquirer. If that trend continued, there was a chance, however remote, that John could win the nomination-and thus deliver the White House to the GOP on a platter when the story eventually, inevitably, was proved true. If that trend continued, there was a chance, however remote, that John could win the nomination-and thus deliver the White House to the GOP on a platter when the story eventually, inevitably, was proved true.

Tentatively, unhappily, but soberly and seriously, the Edwards old guard began discussing their obligation to the party to come forward with what they knew. When should they leak the truth to The Washington Post The Washington Post or or The New York Times? The New York Times? Which of them would make the call? Which of them would make the call?

TWO DAYS AFTER CHRISTMAS, Obama delivered what his aides billed as his "closing argument" in Iowa, in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Scottish Rite Temple in Des Moines. With a law professor's attention to detail and a litigator's argumentativeness-plus a hint of the defensiveness of a politician under fire-he included reb.u.t.tals to almost every criticism that Clinton had hurled at him down the homestretch. For a month he'd been telling Axelrod he still wasn't happy with his response to the charge of insufficient experience. But his research team helped him solve that puzzle with the discovery of a quote from a source both gilt-edged and delicious to invoke.

"The truth is, you can have the right kind of experience and the wrong kind of experience," Obama said in the Masonic temple's bas.e.m.e.nt. "Mine is rooted in the real lives of real people and it will bring real results if we have the courage to change. I believe deeply in those words. But they are not mine. They were Bill Clinton's in 1992, when Washington insiders questioned his readiness to lead."

For all Obama's confidence, however, his advisers were worried about Hillary's apparently strong last-minute push and Edwards's entrenched and loyal following. The Obama campaign's internal tracking poll on December 27 made the race a three-way tie, with Clinton and Edwards at 26 percent and Obama at 25. The trouble was, the trend lines were moving in the wrong direction. By December 30, the final Obama tracking numbers were Clinton, 27; Edwards, 26; Obama, 24. But the Obama campaign was still phone-banking like mad, calling thousands of voters a day. The calls, his team was pleased to discover, suggested more support for Obama than their tracking poll did, and they all had faith in their turnout operation.

As he headed for his final event in an eventful year, at Iowa State University, in Ames, Obama was exhausted. A quiet dinner with his wife was on the schedule for late that night. For all her reluctance at the outset, Mich.e.l.le had poured her heart into Iowa in the closing days. Every voter who met her loved her. Her skill at inducing supporters to sign up had become legend. Mich.e.l.le was compet.i.tive. She was constantly teasing Barack about how she was better at the game than he was. "I got fifteen supporter cards today," she said to him. "What'd you do?"

What greeted Obama at Iowa State on New Year's Eve was a healthy crowd and an extraordinary piece of news: the results of the last Register Register poll before the caucuses on January 3, ricocheting from BlackBerry to cell phone. Everyone had been on tenterhooks for the poll before the caucuses on January 3, ricocheting from BlackBerry to cell phone. Everyone had been on tenterhooks for the Register Register's results. The paper's polling team was highly esteemed, with a long-held reputation for producing numbers of startling accuracy. And these were certainly startling: Obama, 32; Clinton, 25; Edwards, 24. The a.s.sumptions beneath the numbers were even more eye-popping. The paper forecast "a dramatic influx of first-time caucusgoers, including a sizable bloc of political independents," with both groups heavily favoring Obama.

Onstage, a hoa.r.s.e Obama reveled in the numbers: "Up six points, maybe it's seven. Six or seven. It's beyond the margin of error. So we might just pull this thing off. We might just pull this thing off, Iowa. Who woulda thunk it?"

For the rest of the night, the wails of Clinton and Edwards operatives could be heard above the clink of champagne flutes all over Des Moines. At the 801 Grand steak house, Trippi piled into the booth of every journalist in sight and explained in numbing detail the glaring flaws in the poll's methodology: too many first-time voters, too many independents, a turnout model that defied the laws of caucus physics. (In 2004, 124,000 showed up; the Register Register seemed to be predicting at least 220,000 this year.) And Vilsack, who knew the caucuses like the back of his hand, took one look at the numbers and said, "That can't be right." seemed to be predicting at least 220,000 this year.) And Vilsack, who knew the caucuses like the back of his hand, took one look at the numbers and said, "That can't be right."

THE CLINTONS DIDN'T KNOW what to think. After all the confidence that stirred before Christmas, their post-holiday return to Iowa brought back a familiar disquiet. Outside a church in Indianola one frosty morning, Hillary made a surprise visit to her press bus, bringing the reporters hot coffee and bagels, making a joke at the expense of her spokesman, expressing her sympathies with those who were away from their "significant others"-and was greeted with stony silence. "Why do they hate me so much?" she asked one of her aides plaintively afterward.

Hillary had labored hard to comprehend the rules of the caucus system, and now she finally understood enough-enough to worry, that is. There were successive rounds of voting, with candidates who didn't get 15 percent of the attendees at a caucus site forced out after each round. Her campaign had hoped to strike deals with Biden and Richardson to send their voters to Clinton if they failed to reach the threshold. But the negotiations had fallen apart. Hillary considered Biden and Richardson friends (though the former more so than the latter). Why weren't they being more cooperative?

On caucus eve, January 2, Clinton's spirits brightened momentarily. Her final rally at the Iowa Historical Society was jam-packed, the music thumping, the reception for her rapturous. Backstage afterward, she and Bill talked with Vilsack and McAuliffe-both of whom were flying high, telling her she was either going to win or come in a close second.

The next morning, however, an email arrived in Hillary's in-box from Penn. The pollster was hedging his bets. If turnout was similar to 2004, then Clinton would do just fine, Penn said. But if turnout was "radically different," it would be because of "another organization," and "the outcome will be radically different."

Hillary went apes.h.i.t and called Solis Doyle, demanding an explanation.

"I'm as stunned as you are," her campaign manager replied.

Hillary was still agitated when she got on her final pre-caucus conference call with her team that afternoon. Everyone else was tense and anxious, too. Curtly, she thanked the group and hung up. Then she hunkered down with her husband to await the returns.

Around seven o'clock, McAuliffe wandered over to the campaign's second-floor boiler room in the Hotel Fort Des Moines. Thirty-odd kids hunched over computers, monitoring the turnout numbers as they came in from caucus sites around the state. Every so often someone would yell out an overall turnout estimate: 125! 140! 150! As the numbers kept climbing-165! 185! 195! 205!-McAuliffe started to wonder if something was wrong. He glanced over at Vilmain. She looked like she'd been hit with a poleaxe. Wolfson, walking by on his way to grab some pizza, said, "We're gonna get our a.s.ses kicked."

McAuliffe asked Vilmain if it was true. She said it was.

"Someone needs to prepare Hillary," McAuliffe said. "Are we going to get second?"

"Probably not."

Just then, McAuliffe's BlackBerry buzzed. Bill Clinton's counselor, Doug Band, had emailed: the former president wanted to see him upstairs, and p.r.o.nto.

The next four hours were a blur for Hillary Clinton. Reeling from the loss, she appeared onstage for a televised speech surrounded by old and pale faces-Madeleine Albright, Wesley Clark, her husband-that created an unflattering contrast with the young and multiracial tableau presented by Obama. Back upstairs at the hotel, she had to be coaxed into thanking her Iowa staff and major fund-raisers, who were gathered in a nearby suite. "Yeah, okay," she said. Standing on a chair, steadied by McAuliffe, she told the crowd that everything would be all right. It was just one loss, the race ahead would be long; she was on to New Hampshire. But the expression on her face belied her words: with her frozen smile, her dazed eyes, she looked as if she were having an out-of-body experience.

Returning to her suite, Clinton found it even more crowded than before. Chelsea was there, along with Hillary's mother, Dorothy Rodham, who sat on the bed looking inconsolable. Vilsack walked over to Hillary and apologized for having been too optimistic. "I'm sorry," he said. "I thought we could win."

"It's okay," she said-but didn't mean it.

Hillary began to pack her things. She was eager to put Iowa behind her and move on to the Granite State. But its primary was just five days away. The Clintonites had to decide, and decide right then, how they were going to halt the momentum that Obama now possessed-in particular, if they were finally going to go full-on negative, blasting him with both barrels, including TV ads.

Most of Clinton's advisers remained uneasy at the prospect-and now there was the risk, too, of making Hillary seem a sore and desperate loser.

"Can we win with a positive message?" Wolfson asked.

"I don't think so," Hillary said. "I don't know what it would be. I'm open to suggestions."

"This may be a movement," Wolfson said. "It's tough to beat a movement."

Penn could barely believe his ears. "We didn't go negative here, and it cost us!" he snapped at his colleagues. "This is what we have to do! This is how we're going to survive and win!"

Bill Clinton took control of the meeting. His instincts had all along aligned with Penn's, and now he'd been proved right. Hillary's team had told him that she couldn't win Iowa if she went negative . . . and she'd finished third. The h.e.l.l with this The h.e.l.l with this, Clinton thought.

He demanded to see the best negative television ads the campaign already had in the can. Grunwald sat down next to him on the couch and opened her laptop. Over the past few months, she'd made literally hundreds of negative Obama spots-not one of which, she believed, would have done them a bit of good.

Bill studied the available options, then polled the room: Should they go negative or not? Penn, McAuliffe, and Vilsack said yes. Everyone else said no.

It was nearly midnight now. An overnight flight to New Hampshire awaited them. As the suite emptied out, they all a.s.sumed that the negative air war would begin the next day-if only because the former president was adamantly in favor.

Yet no one really knew where Hillary Clinton stood. She went back and forth. Throughout the campaign, her uncertainty at crucial junctures had been profound, but never more so than it was at that moment. All the past year, during which she'd been the undisputed leader in the race, Grunwald had reminded her that front-runners never waltzed to the nomination. Somewhere along the line, they inevitably received a shock, an event that threatened to topple them from their pedestal, but which they almost always survived.

Clinton was versed enough in history to know that it was true. But this felt more like a coronary event than a typical front-runner's scare. Sitting on her small private jet before it took off for New Hampshire, she leaned back and called Penn, who was flying in a separate plane with McAuliffe and the press corps.

The confusion that gripped her went beyond questions of strategy and tactics, beyond going negative or not. It went to the existential core of her candidacy. In a voice infinitely weary, Clinton asked her Svengali, "What are we going to do now?"

As Penn started to answer, his plane took off. Hillary heard only static.

Chapter Ten.

Two for the Price of One.

SHE TOUCHED DOWN IN Manchester before dawn that Friday morning, January 4, traveled north to the Centennial Hotel in Concord, cleaned up, changed clothes, then headed back south to Nashua to begin her five-day sprint for salvation. Parlous as her circ.u.mstances were, bedraggled as she was from lack of sleep, Hillary took comfort in the steadier footing she had on this fresh soil. If Iowa was terra incognita for her, New Hampshire was terra firma: familiar, friendly, safe. There were no byzantine rules to deal with here, just one that made perfect sense: whoever gets the most votes wins. And hustling and rustling votes in New Hampshire was a Clinton specialty.

Hillary knew she had to make changes, big changes, and had to make them fast. The near-universal a.s.sumption was that Obama's momentum from Iowa would propel him to a win in New Hampshire, where he'd already been gaining ground. A fight the previous year between states jockeying for electoral influence had pushed New Hampshire to hold its primary much sooner than normal after Iowa. No one could be sure how that would shape the dynamics of the race, but Clinton's supporters feared-and her rival's fans hoped-that it would favor Obama. And that a second quick victory would all but ensure him the nomination.

As Hillary's big red-white-and-blue bus rumbled down Interstate 293, she thought about the advice that Bill had given her that morning: she should do more town hall meetings, take questions from her crowds, engage more directly with voters. That was how he turned things around in New Hampshire back in 1992, when he was on the ropes because of Gennifer Flowers, the draft, and all of that. Hillary could see the logic, though she didn't embrace the whole connecting thing with the relish that her husband did. "It would be a mistake not to appear more open"-not be be more open, but more open, but appear appear that way-was how she put it to her senior staff on her early morning briefing call. that way-was how she put it to her senior staff on her early morning briefing call.

But when her bus rolled into the airplane hangar at Boire Field, where her first rally was being held, she discovered that her New Hampshire team apparently hadn't gotten the memo. Her state director, Nick Clemons, ran through the program: give your speech, pump up the crowd, don't take questions from the audience, hightail it out of there. Hillary shook her head and said, "I'm taking questions." Clemons tried to dissuade her, said they didn't want to drain the energy from the room. Thank you for the advice, Hillary said firmly, but I'm gonna take every every question. question.

Backstage, Bill paced back and forth, talking to their old friend Terry Shumaker about the uphill climb they were facing. We could turn this around if we had the traditional eight days between Iowa and New Hampshire, he said. "I'm just not sure we have enough time."

The first-person plural was no slip of the tongue. For a year, Hillary had been content to keep her husband at arm's length, but now she pulled him close. n.o.body knew New Hampshire the way Bill Clinton did. He had been to every town and hamlet, remembered the locals and the layout, the demographics, where every cache of votes was stored. For the next hundred hours, until the polls closed on Tuesday, Hillary and Bill would run her campaign together. She needed his expertise, his feel for the state, its quirks and biorhythms. She needed him for his doggedness, his buoyancy, and his trademark Houdini juju. She needed him because, even on his worst day, he was a font of ideas about how to win-as opposed to everyone else on her campaign, whom she increasingly saw as completely and maddeningly useless.

Take the conference call that morning, for instance. For the first time anybody could remember, Bill was on the line-and what he heard confirmed all his doubts about his wife's operation. Here she was, hanging by her fingertips, trying to hatch a comeback plan. And there was her team, beaten down, barely capable of speech. Penn's voice was so thick and sluggish that it sounded like he was drugged. Solis Doyle was inexplicably absent. When Hillary rattled off her a.n.a.lysis of what had gone wrong in Iowa-they'd "ceded people under thirty," appealed to older women at the expense of younger ones, made "a big mistake in not recognizing that Edwards was an equal threat"-her advisers added nothing. When she offered remedies, they offered silence. "We need to do things differently," Hillary said. "We need to mix it up."

More silence.

"This has been a very instructive call, talking to myself," she said. "Goodbye."

Exasperated though she was, only Hillary could resolve the open question from the night before: Were they going to run negative TV ads against Obama? She turned to Grunwald, a veteran of New Hampshire campaigns, including Bill's in 1992. Grunwald contended that there wasn't enough time to accomplish much by blitzing Obama from the air. Better for Hillary to throw herself into the New Hampshire mosh pit and body-slam him there.

Bill and Penn were all for the slamming, naturally. Penn's a.n.a.lysis was that, unlike Iowa, New Hampshire had been for Hillary all year long-and though Obama's big mo would cause some voters to shift to him, she could get them back (especially the women) if she laid out sharp and specific contrasts. A debate was set for the following night, January 5, at Saint Anselm College, just outside Manchester, among the four candidates still standing after Iowa: Clinton, Obama, Edwards, and Richardson. It was there, Clinton's advisers all agreed, that she would begin her anti-Obama counteroffensive.

Bill showed up at her debate prep session-another first-full of p.i.s.s and vinegar. Still steaming over how Obama must have cheated in Iowa, he argued for Hillary to pop him hard with that accusation in the debate. Around the room at the Centennial, her advisers squirmed; it was tough to tell a former president that his advice was loopy. Hillary had a different idea: she wanted to whack Obama for his inconsistency on health care. And when debate time came, that was what she did.

Obama defended himself-but not as stridently as Edwards defended him. "Senator Obama and I have differences," Edwards said, "but both of us are powerful voices for change. . . . What will occur every time he speaks out for change, every time I fight for change, the forces of [the] status quo are going to attack. Every single time!"

Double-teamed, Hillary hit back. "Making change is not about what you believe, it's not about a speech you make," she said. "I think it is clear that what we need is somebody who can deliver change. And we don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered." A few minutes later one of the moderators asked what Hillary would say to voters who regarded Obama as more likable than her. "Well, that hurts my feelings, but I'll try to go on," she said, with a wistful smile. "He's very likable. I agree with that. I don't think I'm that that bad." bad."

Obama glanced up from his notes and said icily, "You're likable enough, Hillary."

After the debate, Hillary marveled, yet again, at the insufferability of Obama's arrogance. And also at another instance of the double standard applied to the two of them. Can you imagine if I'd made a crack like that? she complained to her aides. The press would've guillotined her on the spot and played soccer with her severed head.

That night Penn publicly released a memo that questioned why, even after Iowa, Obama and Hillary were still tied in New Hampshire polls; its headline was "Where Is the Bounce?" By the next day, he had his answer. A new round of surveys showed Obama pulling ahead to a double-digit lead. Hillary's donors were in a panic. Advice was gushing in from every quarter-over the heads and around the backs of her top advisers. Chelsea and Carson cornered Hillary on her bus, arguing that she had to be more accessible to the reporters, chatting them up, schmoozing them off the record, traveling with them, having a press availability every day.

Out on the trail, Hillary was doing all of that and more, almost pleading with people not to be stampeded into voting for Obama. "Everybody needs to be tested and vetted," she said. "The last thing Democrats need is to just move quickly through this process."

Meanwhile, Bill was on the phone with Clemons, probing him about how they might make up ground, strategizing with Hillary at the hotel-taking advantage of a rare five nights under the same roof. The Clintons thought they were feeling tremors, seeing encouraging signs. Her staffers thought they were tripping. One likened the couple to a pair of dying patients delirious from too much morphine.

Early Monday morning, with just a day to go, Hillary summoned Solis Doyle to her suite in the Centennial.