I love the stories of the journeys people take to make things happen. I’m fascinated when artists talk about how they wrestle with their work, when business executives describe the aha! moments that lead to the big turnaround. I would love to be in the room with U2 as they work out a new album, on a stool in the corner when April Gornik paints, at the table while the jury selection consultant advises the lawyers. I’m into process porn… and so I am enjoying immensely this series of Newsweek articles on the presidential campaign.
A team of Newsweek reporters were given special access to the various campaigns for a year, on the condition that they reported none of their findings until after the election. The result is seven in-depth articles that show the individual campaigns at work, as well as tracing the overall arc that brought Barack Obama to the Democratic nomination and then to the presidency.
It’s fascinating stuff — the campaign seen through the lens of human choices, relationships, how the candidates and their staffs responded to the pressures of the moment. It’s given me the best sense of context I’ve had for the campaign as a whole, and it’s full of observations of the candidates in both personal and political moments.
It’s easy for me to disengage from politics, to feel overwhelmed by the anger and the hyperbole and the sheer competitive win win gotta WIN! frenzy, the self-righteousness and other-hatred that sweeps people up and away. The process feels so dehumanizing to me. But the last weeks of Obama’s campaign made me begin to see him as a real person (as well as a politician)… and now the Newsweek writers have given me a doorway through which I may step back in and remember that everyone in the campaign was human. That it was after all a human process. I’m grateful for that.