Two years after leaving the White House, David Axelrod continues to advise President Obama, even as he begins work on his memoir and oversees a new Institute of Politics at his alma mater, the University of Chicago. This week, he sat down with John Harwood of The New York Times and CNBC to discuss his role in Mr. Obama’s career, the president’s setback on guns, and America’s shifting political landscape, before an audience at Washington College in Chestertown, Md. What follows is a condensed, edited portion of their discussion.
What was your unique contribution to Obama?
I had a lot of experience working with African-American candidates in campaigns. I understood the kinds of signals and cues that had to be sent.
The first ad I ever did for [Obama] was when he was running for the Senate. It was him telling the story of all the barriers that he had broken, both in his personal life, but also in his work as a legislator â€" first black president of Harvard Law Review. It was all, “They said it couldn’t be done and we did it.†And it finished with, “Now they say we can’t change Washington. I’m Barack Obama and I approve this message to say Yes We Can.â€
It was the first time we ever used that phrase. He does it, and then he turns to me, and he says, “Is that too corny?†And Michelle was sitting there, and he turned to her. She just shook her head and said, “Not too corny.â€
I thought about that years later during the Arab Spring, because I saw a young guy in Tahrir Square holding up a sign saying, “Yes We Can.â€
[In the White House], I was the guy who always came in with the polling. That was my job. I never was recommending that he necessarily follow the polls … and he almost never did. And I always say that what I like about him so much is that he listens to me so little.
I want to ask you about what’s going on right now with the issue of gay rights, gay marriage. Do you think you and Obama underestimated the flimsiness of that barrier? Is supporting gay marriage something that you could have, with no fear of huge political fallout, done in 2008 as well as in 2012?
Attitudes have shifted on this as quickly as any issue that I’ve seen. They’re far different now even than they were in 2008.
I think the president has had something to do with that. And not just what he said on the issue of gay marriage, but also the two-year battle he waged on the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, the decision of the administration to withdraw its representation with the DOMA law.
So I do think he’s played a leadership role on this. But I also think this was going to happen over time.
How is it that you get to an issue like background checks on guns â€" where 90 percent of the American people are for you, you have won the election, the opposition is in the dumps â€" and you can’t get the votes you need to get it on the floor of the Senate.
The Republican Party today is, at its core, a mostly Southern, white, old, evangelical party. That is enough to dominate Congressional elections in the states where they hold sway. So you have a party that is capable of controlling at least a house of Congress, but it’s incapable of winning a general election for president.
The first rule of politics for most people who hold office is survival. Until people start losing their offices because they take that position, I think the N.R.A. is still going to be able to influence a lot of votes, because the N.R.A. threatens people, threatens their re-election, particularly in those states, rural states, states where they are particularly strong. And there is no evidence yet that people have lost their jobs because they have taken the other position.
So my advice to my friends in the movement for background checks and other common-sense gun laws is to organize as the N.R.A. does, and make sure those who feel strongly about this issue know about it, and make it a voting issue.
As you reflect on how that whole thing went down, is there anything that your side, the president, could have done more effectively? Be tougher? More schmoozing? Be more like L.B.J.?
I have great reverence for the legislative skills of Lyndon Johnson. But he came to office at an unusual time, as the successor to a martyred president â€" took his program and passed it. Franklin Roosevelt, who is revered as another master, took on Congress on the Supreme Court in 1938, and never passed a major piece of domestic legislation again for the rest of his presidency. So there’s a little bit of mythology that grows up around people.
I don’t think this was a matter of schmoozing, I don’t think it was a matter of toughness. I think the president was very, very vigorous on behalf of this and very connected emotionally with this.
The one question that’s been raised is: Should there have been a lightning strike after Newtown? Should there have been a vote? I’d say two things about that. Remember, at the time we were in the midst of a big battle over whether or not taxes were going to go up January 1st, and that was an all-consuming battle. Secondly, the nature of these institutions, and particularly the Senate â€" they’re not built for lightning strikes. They’re built to slow down the process.
Are moments like this emblematic of something larger in his presidency? Or are they discrete issues, and a loss on guns doesn’t tell you anything about whether he can get a grand bargain on the budget, which isn’t going to tell you anything about whether he can get an immigration bill?
When I was in the White House we probably invested too much time in the leadership and not enough time in the rank-and-file members of Congress. I think that’s been corrected now, and I think that’s the right strategy.
I think the immigration bill has a life of its own. The only linkage I see was, I had a concern that there were some Republicans who think they get one hall-pass from the conservative right, and they had already calculated they might have to use it for immigration reform. So they were afraid to take too much license and vote for [gun background checks].
But you know Washington is all about instant measurements, and most of the time they’re wrong.
It may be, by the way, that after Republicans are through their filing process for the next election cycle and they know whether or not they have primary challengers, you may pry a few more loose [on guns]. Republicans spend a lot of time looking over their right shoulders.
When you think about the nature of the two parties, how the country is changing, does that remind you of any particular point in history, like when Democrats were losing the presidency while winning only one state a couple of times?
Well, we marched through a pretty arid desert there in the 1980s, which really trains the mind.
The way the country’s divided, that kind of result is almost impossible now. I thought we won a substantial victory [in 2012]. You could have an even more substantial victory, depending on who the Republican Party nominates. And I say this on the day reports surface that Senator Cruz from Texas is thinking of running for president. So that would test the proposition of just how big a blow-out you can have.
The Republican Party has to decide who it is, and whether or not satisfying its base and the most strident voices within its base is a prescription for success. One of the things they say: “Well, Obama just had better analytics guys.†That’s not the problem. Analytics guys can help you if you’re poised to win.
If you’re on your own 20-yard line, your field goal team isn’t going to help you. You’ve got to get down the field. And they have to decide whether they want to charge down the field or not.
We’re going to continue to become a more diverse country. The state of Texas, which is the biggest prize in the Republican constellation, is a state with 3 million unregistered Hispanic voters. The most popular baby boy’s name in Texas is Jose.
If implementation of the health care law doesn’t work, it’s a mess, people lose faith in it, then it’s not worth a whole lot. Will it be a durable achievement?
I do think it will be a durable achievement. This law is predicated on a grand bargain between the insurance industry and consumers. There is going to be a floor beyond which the insurance industry can’t go in terms of excluding people with pre-existing conditions and so on. And in exchange they get tens of millions of new customers. Now the part that needs to be implemented is the part that needs to bring them the tens of millions of new customers.
Everything I know about politics tells me that the Congress isn’t going to repeal all the good things that have already been implemented.
There is a powerful impetus, when people sit down and think about it â€" whether it’s the insurance industry or our officeholders â€" to say, “You know what? We’re not going to go backward, we’re going to go forward and make this work.â€
If the president asks you, “How do we retake the House?†what would your advice be?
The first thing to recognize is that there are only a handful of genuinely swing districts, maybe two dozen. You have to focus your efforts on those.
No. 2: The reason why you have a different result in the presidential elections has a lot to do with turnout. The great challenge for the Democratic Party is, how you reduce the big gap between who votes in presidential elections and who votes in Congressional elections. The mid-term electorate is older, it’s whiter. The youth vote was 18 percent of the electorate in 2008, 19 percent in 2012, but it was only 12 percent in 2010.
So the question is, how do we motivate those voters who made a difference for the Democratic Party in the presidential years to think it’s important enough to participate? That’s where we need to use some of the technology that’s been developed to really target those voters and get them involved.
Does your success in 2012 tell Republicans what they need to do in 2016?
If our organization had been doing the same things in 2012 as we did in 2008, we would have lost. I see the Republican Party talking a lot about reverse engineering what we did, and replicating it in 2016.
The way technology is moving, at the pace it’s moving, there will be a whole new array of tools and imperatives for the winning campaign in 2016. So the question isn’t, “Can we catch up with what they did?†The question is, “What is the next big thing?†And my challenge to anyone running for president on either side is, don’t try to repeat what was done in 2012.
There is going to be a greater emphasis on how we use mobile phones and smartphones to communicate, to send media. Every single day they’re becoming more of an information center for people. There will come a point when you can send relevant media directly to people’s smartphones on a very targeted basis.
Give an honest grade for how Obama has succeeded in changing Washington â€" or failed.
I think that he, in his own conduct, has done that. I think he has been more transparent.
Has he changed the overall gestalt of Washington, the pathology of Washington? Has he cracked that code yet?
No. And if I said, “Yes,†that would impeach everything I said earlier in the minds of these fine people.
