Barack Obama's On-Point Message Man

He attended the University of Chicago because he could think of no better political town.

While he was in college, his father, Joseph, a psychologist who at the age of 9 had helped other children escape the pogroms of Eastern Europe, committed suicide.

Two days after graduation, he started at the Chicago Tribune. He became a political writer, columnist and city hall bureau chief, feasting on the brash shenanigans of his adopted home town. In one column he observed, "Insults have always been a staple of Chicago politics. The town has a rich history of name-calling. Charges of thievery, homosexuality and dementia all have been part of the high-level political debate in recent years."

But he felt the "sense of mission" draining out of journalism in the 1980s, and a business mentality beginning to take hold. Also, "I thought I might tire of chasing people down the hall to get them to tell me what I already knew." He watched the bow-tied idealist Paul Simon emerging as a Senate candidate in 1984, and thought, "This is the kind of guy who inspired me."

After that first campaign, which he co-managed with Wilhelm, he worked on Harold Washington's reelection campaign for Chicago mayor. One of his steady clients is current mayor Richard M. Daley, expected to win easy reelection to a sixth term later this month despite a City Hall corruption scandal in which Daley has not been implicated.

In the Obama race, Axelrod watchers detect a man on a mission. That is classic Axelrod as well.

"He has fairly strong feelings about why he's in politics and an idealistic streak that we consultants like to think we can keep," says Anita Dunn, a Democratic political strategist. "I think he has kept it."

Not that Axelrod is a softy. "He goes negative when negative is required," says Wilhelm.

In his 1996 memoir "Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms," Ed Rollins, the Republican strategist, put Axelrod at the head of a list of "Guys I Never Want to See Lobbing Grenades at Me Again."

In the tough 1999 race for mayor of Philadelphia, when Axelrod represented John Street against Sam Katz, an attack ad Axelrod oversaw was criticized in a Philadelphia Inquirer analysis for being "filled with unsubstantiated assumptions" that were "probably misleading." Axelrod says he remains "really comfortable with the attack we made." Street won the election.

Axelrod is conflicted about the profession he left journalism to enter. "I believe there is nobility in politics," he says. "I believe there is great good that can be done."

But in the next breath he adds: "I know my business and the technology of politics and polling and focus groups, all of what we do, in some ways contributes to an atmosphere of cynicism. I try to fight that. I can't say I'm totally blameless. I think everyone in this business has a hand on that bloody dagger."