Obama's near-flawless run from start to finish

Hungry for something new
In focus group testing with voters, aides found that the associations to people like Mr. Ayers, whose domestic terrorism group’s targets included the Capitol and the Pentagon, were troublesome. But they also found that voters were so hungry for a candidate who promised something new that they would quickly accept the explanations Mr. Obama offered in his advertising.

One advertisement began with a shot of Mr. McCain saying Mr. Obama should not be held responsible for his longtime pastor’s remarks, Mr. Axelrod said.

And his advertising team produced spots that directly addressed doubts about Mr. Obama’s background and experience.

Through weeks of focus group testing and polling, Mr. Obama’s advisers came to believe that the single best way to allay those concerns was to produce commercials in which he spoke directly into the camera.

“We found those concerns were less and less as he told his story and talked about what he wanted to do for the nation,” said Jim Margolis, Mr. Obama’s senior advertising strategist. “We saw that repeatedly.”

As a black candidate with a background that voters would have found unusual no matter his race, Mr. Obama’s aides wanted to keep those advertisements running almost constantly.

“He had to be an incredibly individuated figure,” said Mr. Belcher, meaning, he said, that Mr. Obama — whose white grandparents appeared in many of his advertisements — should be seen as someone gifted enough to be president and who happened to be black.

But, to avoid making the election a referendum on him, rather than a choice between him and a challenger who is tied to the unpopular incumbent party, the campaign had to also run a constant stream of advertisements attacking Mr. McCain.

To do it all, and reach new supporters in traditionally Republican states, was going to take money, far more than the $84 million provided by the publicly supported campaign finance system.

A difficult call
Mr. Obama embarked on a politically risky move that his aides saw as worth the likely criticism: he would opt out of the system and raise money on his own.

Aides had been considering the move for about a year, even after Mr. Obama wrote “yes” on a questionnaire asking whether he would pledge to accept public financing if his opponent did, a commitment intended to underscore his promise to rid Washington of the influence of powerful interest groups.

Mr. Obama’s strategists consider it one of their most important decisions. They had online fund-raising down to a science, and as tens of millions of dollars flowed in to the campaign, they were sent out to support field operations in 50 states and to pay for record amounts of advertising.

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To Mr. McCain’s frustration, Mr. Obama’s decision to break his pledge did draw complaints, but it was also celebrated for underscoring how a new politician once tagged as naïve had shown real savvy.

And he was showing it in other ways that went largely undetected: As his campaign ran glossy, positive advertisements against Mr. McCain on national television, it showed bruising, sometimes misleading ones on the radio and in local markets. While some spots highlighted Mr. Obama’s teenage years with his white grandparents, another one running on black-oriented programs was using some of the most evocative images of the civil rights era to urge African-Americans to vote: those of marchers being power-hosed by the authorities, who were white.

But there were moments when the Obama campaign was outmaneuvered by its rival’s on issues driving the election. Seizing on the pain of high gas prices, Mr. McCain found a welcome audience for his new support for offshore drilling. Mr. Obama refused for weeks to make a similar shift before reversing himself, virtually ceding the issue to the Republicans.

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