NYT: From Knife Seller to the President’s Hard Edge
From Knife Seller to the President’s Hard Edge
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Some may call them campaigns, but for David Plouffe, a political adviser to President Obama, they are “brass-knuckle time.”
By MARK LEIBOVICH
Published: February 20, 2012
WASHINGTON — David Plouffe is not a hugger, crier or someone who gets all gaga every time he walks into his West Wing office, just a few feet from that of the president. He disdains doomsayers as “bed-wetters,” press hordes as “jackals” and the political noise machine as a profanity that begins with “cluster.”
David Plouffe “is the one most in tune with the president's personality,” a colleague says.
Fiercely data-driven, Mr. Plouffe revels in the company of spreadsheets, lists, maps and the Baseball Almanac. Fiercely competitive, he once decked a colleague in a friendly touch football game for taunting him. Fiercely unsentimental, he expends zero amazement over his career climb from selling knives door to door to a first-among-equals status in the White House’s closed circle.
Mr. Plouffe, 44, who managed President Obama’s campaign in the relatively dewy-eyed days of 2008, rejoined his team last year after a lucrative hiatus. Since then, he has asserted himself as the main orchestrator of the White House message, political strategy and day-to-day presentation of the candidate.
If the campaign of four years ago sold Mr. Obama as a force for what Mr. Plouffe called “a politics of unity, hope and common purpose,” this one is rooted firmly in the grind-it-out imperatives of re-election. Today, Mr. Obama seems every bit primed for “brass-knuckle time,” as Mr. Plouffe once termed campaign brawling, with Mr. Plouffe leading an effort that has shown every sign of doing whatever it takes to succeed.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/us/politics/plouffe-obama-aide-lends-firm-hand-to-campaign.html?_r=1