Obama runs tight campaign ship - - 'an island of tranquility' no matter how chaotic the campaign

[jefferson_dem]

Obama runs tight campaign ship

By: Ben Smith
Dec 21, 2007 06:51 AM EST

When Barack Obama met with friends and advisors in Washington late last year to begin seriously talking through a presidential campaign, he described the operation he'd like to build.

"He laid out his theory that, if he ran, he wanted to have a campaign with a relatively tight-knit group of people," recalled Michael Froman, a friend from Harvard Law School who is now a senior executive at CitiGroup. "No matter how chaotic the campaign got that there'd be - he used the words - 'an island of tranquility.'"

Of course, who wouldn't want an island of tranquility? What's unusual about Obama is that he seems to have gotten his wish - even as he threw together an organization with about 500 employees and a budget of $100 million based in a sprawling, open floor of an office building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

His campaign is unique among the major political organizations this cycle, and unusual in presidential politics, for its apparent unity, and for the fact that virtually none of its internal campaign arguments have spilled over into the press.

That cohesion is a mark of Obama's personal style - "he told us he wanted a drama-free campaign" one staffer recalled - which focuses more on collegiality than on the dynamism of competing views that can drive, or divide, political campaigns.

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[BeyondGeography]

1. Inner strength included with this guy

=="When you signed up for this you didn't think it was going to be an easy ride," he said, according to Julius Genachowski, another law school friend and former Clinton administration official who was there. Obama continued, "Listen, it's going to be bumpy, there's going to be turbulence. If you need me to sit next to you on the plane and hold your hand I will. But I hope you won't need that, because we have a lot of work to do and we can win this."==