something about "Believer: My Forty Years in Politics" by David Axelrod

David Axelrod emerged on the national political scene as Barack Obama's invaluable strategist during the 2008 campaign. After the campaign, Axelrod stayed on as Obama's senior advisor for half of the first term. He returned to the campaign trail for Obama in 2012. While these events, covered in Axelrod's memoir, Believer, are momentous, I enjoyed the beginning of Axelrod's story most of all.

When he was a child, the future strategist, born in New York City, witnessed a John F. Kennedy campaign speech. Axelrod cites that moment as a formative experience. He had caught and internalized the political optimism of the day. He recalls the experience with undiminished sincerity.

I also enjoyed his brief recount of Chicago's modern political history. This memoir also offers a little of the guilty pleasure of gossipy criticism, such as when Axelrod criticizes Elizabeth Edwards for micromanaging the 2004 presidential campaign of her husband, John.

Axelrod went to college in Chicago, then started as a journalist investigating Chicago politics and corruption. He had his own column in a city paper by age 18. Axelrod was friends with Obama long before they campaigned together, both having built careers out of Chicago politics.
 
Axelrod keeps the narrative moving. He could have written a whole book on just the first week in the White House, with the whole country groaning under the weight of the the financial crisis. But Axelrod gives those monumental days only the standard highlight reel. His writing is crisp, clever, and often funny. His forty-year career goes by too fast at times. He is an underrated and undervalued figure in our national politics. His enduring belief in the promise of America is precious.

about being a city brotherly love

I know there were moments there when I told myself, "Hold on to this feeling." But all I remember is how I felt seeing the seven-day outlook on the local news of a city I was about to leave forever. And, out on the sidewalk, under the old church awning, all that regret and anguish stored up in a man's face.

(posts) the warning that was taped on the refrigerator in the break room