A Spokesman So Close, He's the 'Barack Whisperer'

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Robert Gibbs

Robert Gibbs, a senior campaign strategist for President-elect Barack Obama, will likely be appointed press secretary in the Obama administration starting Jan. 20, 2009. Gibbs was formerly the press secretary for Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004 and was previously communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

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By 1998, Gibbs was the campaign spokesman for Sen. Fritz Hollings of South Carolina and two years later for the successful Senate campaign of Michigan's Debbie Stabenow. It was in that role that Gibbs caught the eye of Jim Jordan, who hired him for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

"He's one of the funniest guys I've ever known, which has really been a bonding point with Obama," Jordan says. "They love the game." Gibbs has "a strong personality," and "all the skills of a good flack. He knew how to move a negative story."

When Jordan was running John Kerry's presidential campaign, he brought Gibbs along, but the spokesman quit in protest when Jordan was dumped in the fall of 2003. Gibbs drew flak when he joined a group called Americans for Jobs, Health Care and Progressive Values, which aired a commercial using a picture of Osama bin Laden in attacking a Kerry presidential rival, Howard Dean, for his lack of foreign policy experience. Gibbs said the group was independent and was trying to raise important issues.

After a period of unemployment, Gibbs got a call from longtime Obama adviser David Axelrod, inviting him to join the Democrat's 2004 Senate campaign. Gibbs knew little about the Illinois lawmaker, but at their initial meeting, he says, "I found him remarkably easy to talk to."

When sexual allegations about Obama's Republican rival, Jack Ryan, became public, Gibbs urged Obama to steer clear of the controversy and not to return reporters' calls, according to the book "Obama: From Promise to Power." Ryan soon dropped out.

After two years as Obama's Senate spokesman, Gibbs was the natural choice to be communications director of the fledgling presidential bid. In the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, CBS's Reynolds says, Gibbs would walk up and ask if he needed anything.

"He became less and less helpful as Obama got more and more successful," Reynolds says. "His stature became more elevated than just schmoozing the press. He became a strategist, an insider. The more he knew about what was going on, the less he was willing to spill the beans."

Gibbs says there is a natural tension -- especially on campaigns marked by "sleeplessness and over-caffeinated interactions" -- between the media's demand for access and the strategists' insistence on driving a message. As a campaign strategist, "you're putting forth a series of images and values," he says. "You want the country to understand who a particular person is, what they stand for and what makes them tick."

Several reporters say Gibbs shared extra tidbits with favored correspondents and froze out others who criticized Obama, refusing to return calls or e-mails for weeks. Shouting matches were not uncommon, say these reporters, who did not want to be quoted criticizing an official they have to deal with, and Gibbs sometimes went over their heads and complained to their bosses.

Last spring, when Newsweek ran a cover portraying Obama as the elitist "arugula" candidate, followed weeks later by a cover story in which editor Evan Thomas wrote Obama an open memo on dealing with race, the campaign suddenly stopped cooperating with the magazine's quadrennial book project, which requires behind-the-scenes access. Thomas had to fly to Detroit and try to assuage Gibbs during a campaign flight before access was restored.

"I thought the Obama campaign was overreacting to those two covers," Thomas says. "They thought we were overly concerned with race." In light of the election, "maybe they were right."

Journalistic resentment boiled over in June when reporters were trapped on the plane as it took off from Washington without Obama, with Gibbs saying only that the candidate had "scheduled some meetings." Not until the flight landed in Chicago did Gibbs acknowledge that Obama had been secretly huddling with his defeated rival, Hillary Clinton.