Would Barack Obama have been elected president without David Axelrod?
That question is less far-fetched than it may seem. To be sure, Obama is a man of prodigious talents — the most magnetic presidential candidate since Jack Kennedy, whip smart, fiercely competitive, burning with passion and ambition even as ice water runs through his veins. He was going places in a hurry long before he had political advisers.
Yet a strong case can be made it was the partnership he formed with Axelrod and then with the campaign staff Axelrod assembled that propelled him to the White House. Axelrod is too self-effacing and loyal to take credit, but his new memoir, “Believer: My Forty Years in Politics,” reinforces the view that leadership is becoming less about a single, heroic individual and increasingly about extraordinary teams.
After a decade-long acquaintance, Obama and Axelrod first joined forces in 2002 when Obama began exploring a run for the United States Senate a couple of years later. At the time, Axelrod was the more accomplished: Since learning the bare-knuckle ways of big-city politics writing for The Chicago Tribune, he had become the guru of Chicago political advisers, running — and usually winning — dozens upon dozens of campaigns.
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Illustrated. 509 pp. Penguin Press. $35.
David Gergen is a professor of public service and co-director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He was a White House adviser to four presidents.
A version of this review appears in print on February 15, 2015, on page BR12 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: The O Team. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
