Obama: Keeping cool, focusing on 'common purpose'

— -- When Barack Obama was elected president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990, the law school was roiling with tensions over issues such as faculty diversity and school support for public-interest law.

The cool and restraint that have frustrated many Democratic strategists and hard-line liberals during Obama's presidential bid generated similar feelings at Harvard. But those qualities have worked for him then and now.

"There was lots of political and racial division. Almost every two weeks there was a blowup" at the Law Review, says former classmate Kenneth Mack, who now teaches at the law school. "Barack was good at heading off controversies before they got started. He got us … doing the things we needed to do."

Another former classmate, Brad Berenson, a Republican who was associate White House counsel in President Bush's first term, says Obama won trust by "being fair, a good listener, inclusive, and by not himself aggressively taking sides in the hotter disputes. He played more the role of the benevolent referee."

That earned him "the enmity" of editors interested in a leftist agenda, Berenson says, but "he was not going to let political ideas get in the way of putting out a successful publication."

The Harvard Law Review is 2,000 pages of material published in eight issues from November to June. As its president, Obama displayed the type of managerial skills now evident in his presidential campaign.

"You've got to manage getting the work in from the authors, getting it edited, the paper, the printers, the computer systems, the distribution network, paying vendors," Mack says. "Many law reviews don't publish on time. When Barack was president, we got every issue out on time."

Limiting confrontations

The principles Obama absorbed in his first job helping poor Chicago families organize and improve their communities have been a constant throughout his career: Listen to people, win their trust, find common goals and motivate them to work together.

The technique doesn't lend itself to showy confrontations with opponents. That's led Republican John McCain to contend Obama doesn't take difficult positions or challenge his own party.

In his low-key way, however, Obama has achieved a range of legislative goals, from requiring videotaped police interrogations and expanding a child health care program as an Illinois state senator in Springfield, to securing loose nuclear materials and putting federal contracts online as a U.S. senator in Washington.

Obama has applied the same model in a presidential campaign striking for its grass-roots strength and lack of backbiting. "In a business that is notorious for internal fighting, he's been able to keep all the people in his campaign focused on the common purpose," says Geoffrey Garin, a strategist for Hillary Rodham Clinton's nomination bid.

Aides say the no-drama decree comes straight from Obama. He expects a lot of himself and them, they say, and doesn't lose his temper if things go wrong.

Last year, Obama aides released a memo referring to Clinton as D-Punjab, a dig at her fundraising from Indians. Campaign manager David Plouffe says Obama was "very upset" and made that clear with "stern warnings."

David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, recalls a staff meeting after Obama lost the Ohio and Texas primaries in March. As Obama walked out, he stopped and said, "Look, I'm not yelling at you guys." He started walking and stopped again. " 'After blowing through $20 million in two weeks, I could yell at you, but I'm not yelling at ya.' And he laughed and walked out the door," Axelrod says. "It was much more effective than if he yelled at us."

A conciliatory style

Obama's cool approach was a problem during the primaries. In New Hampshire, Clinton was emotional while Obama seemed detached. He took no voter questions, dismissed Clinton in a debate as "likable enough," and lost.

The same dynamic held later in Pennsylvania and Ohio, where Obama struggled to connect personally with working-class voters. Party strategist Paul Begala, then a Clinton backer, at the time described Obama's fans as "eggheads and African Americans."

The intense economic focus and stark policy differences with McCain are boosting Obama now in many key states, but Democrats continue to fret.

Exasperated liberals accuse him of passivity and lament the conciliatory style that led him to refrain from criticizing GOP vice presidential pick Sarah Palin and repeatedly say "John is right" in his first debate with McCain.

"Obama doesn't seem to think in the anecdotal, visceral terms that non-wonks relate to," Slate editor Jacob Weisberg wrote Sept. 20. At the liberal website Huffington Post, strategist Drew Westen demanded on Sept. 9: "Why has the Obama campaign been so terrified of saying anything about Palin?"

Obama left the spotlight to others as Wall Street began unraveling, consulting with major players and VIP advisers by phone and making clear from afar the principles he wanted in the rescue package. Last week he ramped up, phoning reluctant lawmakers, urging public support for the bill and speaking on the Senate floor before the vote.

The upshot? Polls in the last few weeks show that Palin's popularity is dropping, Obama did better in the two debates and most voters approve of how he is handling the Wall Street mess — 51% in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll last week vs. 42% for McCain.

"How many times have we … been running in circles pulling our hair screeching for Obama to DO SOMETHING?" blogger Jan Holly Callaway of Charleston, S.C., asked recently at Talking Points Memo. "The Obama camp has shown us time and … again they know what they are doing."