In Their Words

The Time of Their Life

There’s a rhythm to all this that you have to get used to. Most people in the country had heard him speak once, and it was at the 2004 Democratic Convention. So when he went to a meet and greet with voters, people expected to hear the convention speech. That took a little getting used to. During the primary season, at one of the labor cattle calls in D.C., he was the last [of nine candidates] to speak. There are about eight things that you’re going to say to this group, and they’ve all now been said. I remember he was down after that because he just couldn’t understand why it had gone so poorly. So we’re flying to Iowa, and Reggie [Love, his personal assistant] and he are sitting next to each other, and I’m saying, “Senator, you just have to figure out how to enjoy this, you have to figure out how to have a little fun. Are you having any fun right now?” And he said, “I’m not having any fun at all.” And Reggie, without blinking an eye, pipes up and says, “Man, I’m having the time of my life!” Robert Gibbs, Obama campaign senior communications strategist

A Simple Gift

After the Feb. 21 debate in Austin, Texas, we were leaving in the morning. Barack had the flu. There was an elderly black gentleman who had been our elevator operator for three days. As we got to the ground floor, he said, “Senator Obama, I have something I want to give you,” and he handed him his military patch. He said, “I’ve carried this military patch with me every day for 40 years, and I want you to carry it, and it will keep you safe in your journey.” It was just such an unbelievable act of generosity. So later we asked Barack what he had done with it. And he pulled it out of his pocket and said, “This is why I do this. Because people have their hopes and dreams about what we can do together.” Valerie Jarrett, senior Obama adviser

Bracing on the Campaign Plane

Marvin [Nicholson], the trip director, came out to Senator Obama and whispered in his ear. Senator Obama said, “What’s wrong with the plane?” Marvin said there was something wrong with the hydraulic system. He told us that we would be landing in a city other than our destination and that we might want to assume the brace position. [Obama] said, “What’s that?” Marvin explained, and Obama’s reaction was one word: “Golly.” After we landed safely, the first thing he did was call his wife, who had been watching it on cable. Linda Douglass, Obama spokeswoman

In Kuwait: Nothing but Net

We’d been there two years before, on his previous Iraq trip–same gym, same base. We walked in, not sure what to expect, and the gym was packed. He sort of teed up the basketball, and it was in the air, and I thought there’s no way this is going in. And the next thing you know–swish!–and the whole place just went crazy. He came over to me and just sort of smiled, and he said, “I knew I was going to make it.” Mark Lippert, Obama’s top foreign-affairs staffer in the Senate, on the 3-pointer Obama made on his July trip overseas

Learning from Losing

Obviously, we thought we were going to win [New Hampshire]. We should have listened to what we were feeling instead of what we were told. We had to go up and tell him in the hotel that in fact we were going to lose. And he asked some questions about why we thought that was going to be. He leaned up against a wall and smiled kind of wanly and said, “This thing is going to go on for a while, isn’t it?” And we said, “Yeah, it’s going to go on for a while.” David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, on losing the New Hampshire primary to Hillary