Former Obama adviser speaks at UD

President Barack Obama’s former campaign manager, David Plouffe, returned to his alma mater Wednesday to speak about the Obama administration’s policies and to offer insight into the 2008 presidential campaign.

Plouffe, who left the university in 1988 a few credits short of graduating, said the biggest change the Obama administration has brought to Washington has been to refocus on long-term policy making. Instead of concentrating on what the current polls show, the administration has been spearheading controversial policy issues such as healthcare and energy efficiency, he said.

“They are not focused on re-election,” Plouffe said. “What matters most is that healthcare gets passed.”

Plouffe spoke at Mitchell Hall as part of the semester-long lecture series “Assessing Obama’s First Year.” The townhall-style event was moderated by communications professor Ralph Begleiter, student Antonia Borelli, and Ashley Biro, a managing editor at The Review.

Plouffe identified three major challenges the Obama campaign had faced.

The first dealt with getting organized. He said most people who run for president plan to do so for years, building a large staff and volunteer base, as well as raising the necessary funds.

“We thought we had 60 days to get this enterprise started or we would never get off the ground,” Plouffe said.

The campaign also had to deal with running against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party front runner for most of the primary season, who had a solid support system in all states. Other key issues involved a loss in the key primary state of New Hampshire and formulating an effective stance on the developing economic crisis.

However, he said, the single biggest threat to the candidacy was the controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons and statements to the media. The head of the church Obama attended, Wright was seen in videoed sermons making inflammatory statements about race and the cause of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“The fact that we did not watch every sermon he had done was unforgivable, and we paid the price for it,” Plouffe said.

He said Obama’s later speech on race not only defused the situation but also differentiated him from other politicians. After the comments by Wright received national media attention, Obama gave a major address in Philadelphia about race relations.

While most politicians would have played the “four corners” and hoped for the situation to go away, Obama directly addressed the issue, Plouffe said. It was a move which helped win over support for the new candidate, he said.

Look for complete coverage of the event in Tuesday’s issue of The Review.

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