Measured Response To Financial Crisis Sealed the Election

In hindsight, however, the primaries tested Obama's political instincts and endurance more than the general election ever would. His long-shot triumph in the nominating process came after an intense focus on one state, Iowa, for most of 2007, followed by a grueling 55 contests, across multiple time zones, against a relentlessly energetic opponent, for months.

McCain turned out to be a less rigorous match, whose staff "worked hard, but there's a difference between going all out in ways you didn't even know you could do, and just working hard," said one Obama aide. Because of the nature of the electoral college map, McCain actually challenged Obama in fewer states than Clinton did; then he gave Obama the unexpected gift of pulling out of the expensive battleground of Michigan in early October.

"John McCain was nothing compared to Hillary Clinton," the Obama aide said.

New Slogan, New Strategies

But no one knew that in June, when Obama finally defeated Clinton after a bruising primary campaign. What Obama's aides did know was that they would need a message adjustment, away from "Change We Can Believe In," which had worked so well against the Clinton juggernaut by suggesting that her claim to be a change agent was insincere. By late summer, after researching and road-testing slogans, there was a new one, tailored for McCain: "The Change We Need."

At the campaign's headquarters in Chicago, an unprecedented ground game was under development. Regional directors, battle-hardened during the primaries, were retrained and dispatched the moment the general election launched, opening offices across an ambitious 18-state battleground.

Rather than work toward a traditional Democratic electoral map that hinged on trying to steal Ohio or Florida, Obama advisers aimed at using the candidate's unique profile -- and the vast public dissatisfaction with President Bush -- to peel off seemingly more difficult states such as Virginia and Colorado.

"We decided at the get-go to have a very broad playing field and to run, in each of these states, the largest presidential campaign in history," said campaign manager David Plouffe.

Jon Carson, a brainy, 33-year-old field director, developed sophisticated databases to chart developments -- the number of hits the campaign's Florida Web page got in a single day, for example, or the number of people nationwide who had downloaded voter-registration forms. Such unprecedented technology would later give the campaign confidence that its strength in Republican-leaning states was not a mirage.

Fueling it all was an influx of money like none in history. In June, Obama decided to forgo public financing in the general election -- another potentially dangerous move, but one that the last Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), adamantly urged. Obama raised as much as $750 million, a sum so staggering, so much greater than the $84 million McCain took in public financing and the $240 million more than the Republican Party raised, that it was a line of attack for McCain as he tried to argue that the decks were unfairly stacked.

For all these overwhelming advantages, Obama had a steady but stubbornly narrow lead at the beginning of the summer. But three potentially decisive moments were on the horizon: the selection of a running mate, the Democratic convention in August and the debates against McCain in the fall. Obama added a risky fourth -- a trip abroad in July.

Still recovering from the exhausting primaries, his campaign put its efforts into the foreign trip, believing Obama could not take on a war hero if he did not set foot in Iraq once more. He traveled for a week and a half, visiting Iraq and Afghanistan, then Europe.

The most publicized event of the journey was his speech in Berlin, which drew an audience of 200,000. The address, a bold, outsize move -- four years earlier, Kerry had fought mockery that he seemed too "French," and Obama was already edging toward being seen as elitist -- was in part a nod to independent voters weary of the negative U.S. image abroad.