Esquire Magazine’s Lisa Taddeo has just written a 6000-word profile of Obama campaign manager David Plouffe. Here’s the key grafs, which you’ll find near the end of the long must-read:
Organizing for America, he says, was six weeks in the making. In that time he spoke daily with Tim Kaine. They studied how the Obama campaign machine functioned and read briefings on how it could be transformed into Obama’s governing machine. Obama, he says, made clear that the mandate of Organizing for America was to push forward his agenda for change, not for reelection. “I can assure you it isn’t that way with Obama. He sent that message out loud and clear, and I could not agree more strongly.”
The model they came up with will be an independent entity under the umbrella of the DNC, with a separate staff in Washington, its own structure and Web site, and field offices with technical staff and fieldworkers across the country. Like the campaign operation. Also like the campaign, Organizing for America won’t accept any outside PAC or lobbyist money. Instead, it will be funded solely from individual donors.
“Most of what this entity will be doing is building grassroots support for issues and politics,” says Plouffe. “Let’s say there’s an energy effort, an energy plan, that the president and some of Congress would like to get passed. People would get out there and talk to their neighbors and try to build support.” Petitions, canvassing, phone calls, house parties. David Plouffe will send out an e-mail or a video: America, we need your help. The state field offices will go into action. And the housewives will unsuckle themselves from Oprah and the college kids will put down their pong paddles, and together they will rise up and their voices will be heard.
The voice of David Plouffe rises now above the announcements and the suitcase wheels. You can tell he believes this could be bigger than the campaign he just led, won, and loved. This will be a direct link to the people who got Obama elected, a way to harness the grassroots power of thirteen million hopeful Americans who voted for change and have pledged to help Obama and Plouffe enact it.
Mitch Stewart, Obama’s Iowa caucus director, will serve as executive director, with Plouffe overseeing from afar with the freedom to come and go as he pleases. But Plouffe will not be on the payroll. He says they wouldn’t pay him that much, anyway, plus he sees it as a way of passing the torch. But also, “The DNC has a history of having people on contract, and our hope is that that tradition can come to an end.” In other words, in the old DNC you could be a free agent, divide your time, come in as a pinch hitter. Not anymore. In the new DNC — in Organizing for America — you will work full-time for the DNC and Obama’s goals, or you will not work for them at all. Unless, of course, you are the unpaid architect of the whole initiative.
Plouffe insists the initiative has nothing to do with reelection. But by being part of the DNC, Organizing for America will be able to morph depending upon needs. “Some people will want to help out in a Senate race in 2010,” says Plouffe. He means giving or asking for money on the Web site. “We needed to have some entity to be allowed to have all range of possibility.” Options. David Plouffe, President Obama’s inside man on the outside, is giving the president options.
February 02, 2009