How Obama Really Did It

The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza has a terrific piece decoding the strategy of the Obama campaign, which for the team boiled down to one word: Bush. The winner would be “anyone who could credibly define himself as ‘not Bush,’” Lizza writes. “The appeal of the strategy was that, with only minor alterations, it could work in the primaries as well as in the general election.” Other vital nuggets: sections about Obama’s ego—he “regarded himself as just as gifted as his top strategists in the art and practice of politics”—and his drama-free, un-Clinton-like campaign staff.