http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/magazine/21Gibbs-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1ONE WAY THAT THE OBAMA MODEL in the White House would diverge sharply from the Bush model is that Gibbs knows his principal intimately — Obama’s mind, his history, his rhythms. In addition to his podium duties, Gibbs said he plans to continue to spend a great deal of time advising Obama. “That’s part of the role that the president-elect wants me to be taking on,” he told me.
Obama praises Gibbs’s intuitive sense of “what is on the minds of the American people,” and his ear for “how things play” in the media. “He’s honest, sometimes to a fault,” Obama said. “And he’s passionate about folks getting a fair shake.” Gibbs, he added, is “invaluable in any discussion we’re having about policy or politics. And beyond that, I trust him completely.”
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ON A TEAM known for its cerebral, even-tempered approach, Gibbs is something of a scrappy populist. “Because he has a Southern accent, I often think that he is underestimated by people,” Dunn said of Gibbs, who tends to be playfully chauvinistic about his Southern heritage. He counts himself a member of an organization called Rednecks for Obama, started by two old guys from Missouri operating out of a pick-up truck. He is a proud owner of a Rednecks for Obama T-shirt, button, bumper sticker and sign, all of which he says he will take to his office at the White House.
Called “Bobby” as a kid, Gibbs spent his formative years in the college town of Auburn, Ala. The son of two librarians, Gibbs hated to read as a child and, sure enough, grew up to make his living as a talker. His parents were liberal Democrats, part of the 10 percent of white Alabamans who voted for Obama over McCain, the lowest proportion in the country.
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Another recurring episode during the campaign was for Obama and his advisers to be debating something while Gibbs sat off to the side staring into his BlackBerry. Without looking up, Gibbs would utter some random thought that would stop the discussion cold.
“Well, there’s Gibbs’s one good idea for the day,” Obama would quip, according to Jim Margolis, a campaign ad man and media adviser.
Dunn tells the story of a tense practice session before the third debate in which Obama, sitting at a table, kept looking up intently at Gibbs across the room. They were sending urgent-looking BlackBerry messages back and forth, and Dunn became concerned that some crisis had arisen. When the session ended, the men ran over to each other. It was a Sunday afternoon, and they had been following the fortunes of Obama’s fantasy football team.