Obama's Advisors;David Axelrod

If all you have is a dagger, and your opponent is a knight on a white stallion, your cause looks lost. But if you look closer, the knight's armor isn't always as solid as it looks from a distance. Those folks who can recognize weak links in the adversary's seemingly invincible polling data are called "political consultants."
This is Obama's man...

Given his rhetorical skills, Harvard Law pedigree, up-by-the-bootstraps bio and, well, his race, it is hard not to compare recently elected Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick to his friend Barack Obama. Both men entered crowded primaries in which they were definitively not favored. They both inspired a kind of personal pride among supporters that is rare in politics. On the evening of Obama's convincing primary victory, the crowd and the candidate joined in chanting, "Yes We Can!" and if you listen closely to video of Patrick rallies, you'll hear the crowd chanting the very same thing. When Patrick looked into the camera in one ad and said the state's problem wasn't a "deficit of dollars but a deficit of leadership," it was hard not to hear echoes of Obama's oft-used line that the country's biggest problem isn't a budget deficit but an "empathy deficit." And in Patrick's most effective ad, he stands on a stage delivering an impassioned speech to a crescendo of applause as Obama sits on a stool just behind him, nodding approvingly, his head perfectly framed in the shot.

Which brings us to something else the two men share: David Axelrod, the 51-year-old reporter turned media consultant who was the key media strategist for both men's campaigns. He's the one who wrote those ads, framed that shot and came up with the "Yes We Can" tag line.

Axelrod has done Chicago's mayor as well as Cleveland's. He did Paul Simon's presidential bid and Elliot Spitzer's New York gubernatorial victory.

This LATimes article from Feb 15, '08...

That's the essence of the Illinois senator's message: Obama equals change; Hillary Rodham Clinton equals status quo. All else cascades from there. In this contest -- where the candidates are but a micron apart on most policy matters -- message is everything.

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The burly 52-year-old with the drooping mustache helped put together the team working to get Obama elected. He oversees ad creation and coordinates with the campaign's pollsters. During preparation for debates, he plays Clinton.

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Axelrod is described as Obama's answer to Karl Rove and the most powerful political consultant not on a coast. And at a time when New York Sen. Clinton is shaking up her own campaign staff, he is someone, said one political observer, who "ain't going to be fired."

These articles are little more than self-puffery, of course. Whatever the byline, they were probably written by the campaign, handed to the politics desk, and then published verbatim. They still provide a little insight to what the campaign manager believes is important, and what they want us to know about them.