Obama's Moment

Tell me your reaction when you first heard that he had picked Sarah Palin as his running mate.
I didn't know her, so it was a surprise decision. Look, you have to give them credit: It obviously energized the conservative wing of the party. And that's worth something in politics.

Weren't you shocked, at least a little, by the choice of someone with no real experience on the national stage?
As I said, we didn't know her, so we were surprised. It wasn't anticipated.

Speaking of running mates, why didn't you pick Hillary? There are still a lot of people out there who wish you had.
Look, Hillary was on my shortlist. She is an extraordinary public servant, and she's going to be a great ally in years to come, should I be fortunate enough to be elected. I thought that the skill set that Joe Biden has — his temperament, the relationship we had built on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — made him a great fit at this time. But Hillary's extraordinary as well.

You had lunch with Bill Clinton in September. What was that like? Was it awkward trying to patch up what had become a very public relationship?
You know, it wasn't awkward at all, partly because Bill Clinton's as charming a person as there is. Although I think that...well, I can just speak for myself. I never felt awkward or uncomfortable with the Clintons. And I think that some of the accusations leveled at him by some of my supporters were probably unfair. The notion that, for example, when he said, "This is a fairy tale" — that that was a racial remark. I didn't think that was a racial remark. I think he was questioning my opposition to the war in Iraq. So he was factually wrong, and it deserved to be corrected. But one of the things I've discovered over the last 21 months is that I don't take things too personally.

Is there anything you feel you can learn from him, as a candidate and as a president?
Oh, I've already learned a lot from him. Bill Clinton, I think, understood earlier than most Democrats the need to correct for some of the excesses of the late Sixties and early Seventies, both in terms of our fiscal policies and our cultural posture toward Middle America. And he was right about that. Democrats, progressives, liberals — whatever you want to call them — should never make any apologies for championing women's rights and civil rights, for insisting on greater accountability in government, for championing civil liberties. But some of the caricatures of the left as being out of touch, snotty, self-righteous — there have been times when those caricatures were justified. And Bill Clinton did a lot to make Democrats seem like they were in touch with the ordinary aspirations of a great number of Americans. That, I think, stopped the hemorrhaging of independent voters and Reagan Democrats into the Republican Party, and gave us the space and the opportunity to start reaching out to them. So I'm still in debt to Bill Clinton for what he accomplished.

Let's talk about your role in the campaign's ad strategy. Every ad begins or ends with your voice saying, "I'm Barack Obama, and I approve this message." Do you suggest ads yourself? And have there been ones you rejected?
There are times when I suggest a basic framework for an ad. There are definitely ads that I've rejected. There are some ads that I'm happier with than others.

Can you give me an example of one that was your idea?
We're now running two-minute ads focused on the economy. The way it worked was, I suggested, "We need to get above the back and forth of the daily negative ads that both campaigns have been running." I felt that explaining to the American people in a direct way what we are gonna do about the economy, or what we would do about taxes, could be useful to break through the clutter, if it was done differently. Then David Plouffe, our campaign manager, said, "Why don't we do a two-minute ad? Let's buy the time and see how it does." And I think those ads have actually been very successful during a critical time when people are anxious and nervous about the state of the economy. There's some sense that this guy's speaking directly to me, and he's explaining to me in clear language what exactly he intends to do.