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POLITICO Playbook 2012
The End of the Line: Romney vs. Obama: The 34 Days That Decided the Election
The fourth and final eBook in POLITICO’s Playbook 2012 series once again provides an unprecedented minute-by-minute account of the race for the presidency. The End of the Line follows President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney as their campaign teams go all-in to win in the critical final weeks of the 2012 election.
From Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” video to Clint Eastwood’s speech to an empty chair, the 2012 presidential campaign did not lack for memorable moments. In The End of the Line, POLITICO senior White House reporter Glenn Thrush and senior political reporter Jonathan Martin chronicle every hairpin turn in a race that defied the predictions of pundits and prognosticators.
While some political observers considered Barack Obama’s reelection far from a sure thing, the president and his team remained resolute in their belief that they would prevail. In Boston, Mitt Romney’s advisers were just as confident that their man was headed for a smashing victory. In the end, only one of those views would be validated by events. The outcome of this election was never foreordained, however, and would ultimately be determined by two candidates, three debates, and a thousand small but critical strategic decisions.
With an eye toward writing a “first draft of history,” Thrush and Martin report on the intense internal debates over ad strategy that defined the parameters of the fall campaign—including a crucial late-May decision by the Obama campaign that may have tipped the scales in the president’s favor. They provide a behind-the-scenes look at the candidates’ debate preparation sessions, and they reveal why Romney’s campaign was so confident they were going to win.
The action climaxes on election night, as the opposing camps huddle nervously in their hotel suites to await the verdict of the voters. The End of the Line reveals for the first time what the Obama brain trust really thought about the agonizingly long wait for Romney’s official concession—and what happened after Obama put the telephone to his ear and heard the words “Hello, Mr. President, it’s Mitt Romney.”
No one could have predicted all the twists and turns of the 2012 election—and no one was better equipped to chronicle them than the POLITICO team. The End of the Line is frontline campaign reporting at its finest, meticulously reported and compulsively readable.
From Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” video to Clint Eastwood’s speech to an empty chair, the 2012 presidential campaign did not lack for memorable moments. In The End of the Line, POLITICO senior White House reporter Glenn Thrush and senior political reporter Jonathan Martin chronicle every hairpin turn in a race that defied the predictions of pundits and prognosticators.
While some political observers considered Barack Obama’s reelection far from a sure thing, the president and his team remained resolute in their belief that they would prevail. In Boston, Mitt Romney’s advisers were just as confident that their man was headed for a smashing victory. In the end, only one of those views would be validated by events. The outcome of this election was never foreordained, however, and would ultimately be determined by two candidates, three debates, and a thousand small but critical strategic decisions.
With an eye toward writing a “first draft of history,” Thrush and Martin report on the intense internal debates over ad strategy that defined the parameters of the fall campaign—including a crucial late-May decision by the Obama campaign that may have tipped the scales in the president’s favor. They provide a behind-the-scenes look at the candidates’ debate preparation sessions, and they reveal why Romney’s campaign was so confident they were going to win.
The action climaxes on election night, as the opposing camps huddle nervously in their hotel suites to await the verdict of the voters. The End of the Line reveals for the first time what the Obama brain trust really thought about the agonizingly long wait for Romney’s official concession—and what happened after Obama put the telephone to his ear and heard the words “Hello, Mr. President, it’s Mitt Romney.”
No one could have predicted all the twists and turns of the 2012 election—and no one was better equipped to chronicle them than the POLITICO team. The End of the Line is frontline campaign reporting at its finest, meticulously reported and compulsively readable.
78 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2012
14 people are currently reading
90 people want to read
About the author
Glenn Thrush
4 books2 followersGlenn Thrush is an American journalist, pundit, and author. He is a reporter for The New York Times, formerly a White House correspondent. He is also a contributor for MSNBC, and was previously chief political correspondent at Politico and a senior staff writer for Politico Magazine.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
January 17, 2013
Last in the Playbook 2012 series by Politico. They need to be read in order and are an attempt to provide some analysis of events surrounding the reelection of President Obama in 2012.
There are some nuggets that never made it into the news, or at least the news that escaped my attention. Then again, by October, I was so thoroughly saturated with 48 hour-a-day commentary and news that I was tuning it all out.
For someone with supposed administrative ability, Romney made some serious mistakes, some of them one can't help but wonder if the decisions were pushed because they profited his advisers. Political consultant Stevens, for example, made a bundle on the side because it was one of his companies that was hired to run the IT operation and to book the ads, yet they paid five times more for their ads than did the Obama campaign. The IT groups creation, "Orca," never worked the way it was supposed to.
As George W. Bush proved in 2004, a twenty-first-century campaign can recover from a flawed, polarizing front man. But it can’t bounce back from mismanagement and poor planning. And Romney’s billion-dollar effort seemed less an enterprise run by a corporate turnaround artist than a family business undermined by its founder’s misguided vision of the marketplace—in Romney’s case, the composition of the American electorate. Romney was brilliant at raising cash; sources on both sides of the race had never expected him to nearly match Obama’s cash machine dollar for dollar, but he very nearly did. Yet he didn’t quite know how to spend it and seemed to mistake micromanagement for management, getting bogged down in minor details that never came within a mile of Obama. One example would resonate with his staffers after it was all over. Following the primary, Romney instituted a point system that assigned a specific numerical value to each event—rallies, speeches, fund-raisers, and so on. The more labor-intensive the event, the more points it was assigned. Romney’s instructions to his assistant were that he was not to exceed nine hundred points on a given day, the better to manage his time. Romney would allocate his time based on the point system, but it was often time not well spent.
Obama's lack of business experience was an asset. Rather than micro-manage, he left the details to his "battle-scarred" veterans of the 2008 campaign, which, ironically, had never shut down and just kept working on fine-tuning their ground operation. The Citizens United decision that had everyone in an uproar probably helped, as did the efforts of Republicans at the state-wide level to suppress voting groups likely to vote Democratic. It mostly rallied the troops and brought more people out. (I personally thought Citizens United was the correct decision from a fee speech standpoint and that the controversy had much more to do with the message rather than the money. The Constitution makes it clear that freedom of association is a basic right and that those groups have freedom of political speech, especially. But then I believe the more speech the better. And to argue the money is not speech is ludicrous.) The way the money was spent was far more important, and the Obama decision to get out ahead of the game and begin campaigning against Romney even before he had the nomination made a huge difference.
In the end it was God voting for Obama that made the difference. Given the two Hurricanes, one making a mess of the Republican Convention schedule (and thank you Clint Eastwood) and Sandy validating the role of the federal government (not to mention Romney's earlier comments regarding the irrelevance of FEMA) and it was clear God wanted Obama to win. Challenge my logic. :)
There are some nuggets that never made it into the news, or at least the news that escaped my attention. Then again, by October, I was so thoroughly saturated with 48 hour-a-day commentary and news that I was tuning it all out.
For someone with supposed administrative ability, Romney made some serious mistakes, some of them one can't help but wonder if the decisions were pushed because they profited his advisers. Political consultant Stevens, for example, made a bundle on the side because it was one of his companies that was hired to run the IT operation and to book the ads, yet they paid five times more for their ads than did the Obama campaign. The IT groups creation, "Orca," never worked the way it was supposed to.
As George W. Bush proved in 2004, a twenty-first-century campaign can recover from a flawed, polarizing front man. But it can’t bounce back from mismanagement and poor planning. And Romney’s billion-dollar effort seemed less an enterprise run by a corporate turnaround artist than a family business undermined by its founder’s misguided vision of the marketplace—in Romney’s case, the composition of the American electorate. Romney was brilliant at raising cash; sources on both sides of the race had never expected him to nearly match Obama’s cash machine dollar for dollar, but he very nearly did. Yet he didn’t quite know how to spend it and seemed to mistake micromanagement for management, getting bogged down in minor details that never came within a mile of Obama. One example would resonate with his staffers after it was all over. Following the primary, Romney instituted a point system that assigned a specific numerical value to each event—rallies, speeches, fund-raisers, and so on. The more labor-intensive the event, the more points it was assigned. Romney’s instructions to his assistant were that he was not to exceed nine hundred points on a given day, the better to manage his time. Romney would allocate his time based on the point system, but it was often time not well spent.
Obama's lack of business experience was an asset. Rather than micro-manage, he left the details to his "battle-scarred" veterans of the 2008 campaign, which, ironically, had never shut down and just kept working on fine-tuning their ground operation. The Citizens United decision that had everyone in an uproar probably helped, as did the efforts of Republicans at the state-wide level to suppress voting groups likely to vote Democratic. It mostly rallied the troops and brought more people out. (I personally thought Citizens United was the correct decision from a fee speech standpoint and that the controversy had much more to do with the message rather than the money. The Constitution makes it clear that freedom of association is a basic right and that those groups have freedom of political speech, especially. But then I believe the more speech the better. And to argue the money is not speech is ludicrous.) The way the money was spent was far more important, and the Obama decision to get out ahead of the game and begin campaigning against Romney even before he had the nomination made a huge difference.
In the end it was God voting for Obama that made the difference. Given the two Hurricanes, one making a mess of the Republican Convention schedule (and thank you Clint Eastwood) and Sandy validating the role of the federal government (not to mention Romney's earlier comments regarding the irrelevance of FEMA) and it was clear God wanted Obama to win. Challenge my logic. :)
December 30, 2012
I was looking forward to this book, but there was little substance, and it seemed to me to always bend over backward to not offend Republican readers. Example: the discussion of the VP debate came down hard on Biden for going over the top in his facial expressions, but not a word is devoted to Paul Ryan's serial falsehoods. (I guess my political bent is now clear!) Also, how could you discuss "the 34 days that decided the election" without mentioning "Romnesia," and the Romney statements that lead to Obama discovering that clinical condition. While I spent a couple of bucks on this edition, I have decided to skip the previous three books, and will wait (more or less patiently) for some more substantive treatments of the 2012 election.
June 22, 2013
In the opening anecdote of Glenn Thrush and Jonathan Martin’s
The End of the Line
, their behind-the-scenes e-book about the last month of the 2012 presidential campaign, we join our regularly scheduled election already in progress:
Politico goes on on a limb to call the series “a new form of campaign chronicle, combining the in-depth reporting of a book with the immediacy of deadline journalism.” I think that’s largely right, but the depth and immediacy necessarily work at cross purposes.
The e-book is the fourth in the Politico Playbook 2012 series that Politico and Random House published during — and this volume about a month after — the 2012 campaign. (Politico Playbook is the name of Politico chief White House correspondent Mike Allen's influential morning tip-sheet, which has quotes and links to news stories that are making the rounds, and — oddly — birthday wishes to D.C. political and media figures.)
The first e-book in the series, The Right Fights Back by Allen and historian Evan Thomas, was published in November 2011 as the Republican primary battle was heating up. It zig-zagged through the Republican challengers' campaigns and included a lot of gossipy, anecdotal tidbits.
The second, Inside the Circus , also by Allen and Thomas and largely about the campaign for the GOP nomination, included a previously unreported story about Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who had back surgery shortly before jumping into the campaign and was taking pain medication, loudly singing "I've Been Working on the Railroad" in a public restroom before one of the Republican primary debates.
The third, Obama's Last Stand by Politico's Glenn Thrush, focused on the Obama campaign. The fourth, The End of the Line , focused on the last month of the campaign and was published a month after the election.
If journalism is the first draft of history, the Politico Playbook 2012 series falls somewhere between the first draft and the second. It lacks the narrative power of, say, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s best-selling Game Change . But Game Change was published 14 months after the 2008 election; three-fourths of the Playbook 2012 series was published during the 2012 campaign.
The major innovation of the series was its availability on platforms like Amazon's Kindle, Apple's iBookstore and Barnes & Noble's Nook. The e-books were inexpensive ($2.99 each on all platforms) and short without being insubstantial (50-60 book pages each). The quality of the reporting — the access, insight, scope, buzz-worthiness, etc. — is what you would expect from experienced campaign reporters like Glenn Thrush and Jonathan Martin, though they were not alone in taking a long-form approach to covering the campaign.
The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza produced a thoughtful and timely body of campaign reportage that included several longform pieces and an illuminating piece two weeks after the election that has been uncannily prescient on the Republican Party's often conflicting efforts to make inroads with a growing Latino population by tackling immigration reform. John Heilemann's May 2012 New York magazine piece about the Obama team's framing of the campaign and Michael Lewis's October 2012 profile of President Obama for Vanity Fair were important, agenda-setting pieces that were little different than short e-books in their length and scope.
A handful of other influential e-books were published during and immediately after the 2012 campaign, including Mother Jones reporter David Corn's Showdown: The Inside Story of How Obama Fought Back Against Boehner Cantor and the Tea Party in March 2012 and 47 Percent: Uncovering the Romney Video that Rocked the 2012 Election. BuzzFeed reporter Michael Hastings (who died tragically a few days ago in an automobile accident) published one of the first lengthy accounts of the Obama campaign, Panic 2012: The Sublime and Terrifying Inside Story of Obama's Final Campaign, in January.
The Playbook 2012 series is a breezy, fly-on-the-wall, real-time reporter’s notebook. Campaign insiders retell and analyze events that we all watched in real-time — the stump speeches, the ads, the debates, and election night. It is not a definitive history of the election and does not purport to be, but two themes do emerge: Obama’s early success in defining Romney and the Romney campaign’s certainty to the last minute that they were going to win.
The Obama campaign started running battleground-state ads against Romney as soon as the Republican primary ended in May. By branding Romney so early and with so much available bandwidth to get the message out before voters were sick of campaign ads, the Obama camp established Romney’s brand before Romney could do so himself.
The Romney brand? Shortly after the election, former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour described the Obama team’s take on Romney as aptly as I’ve seen in The End of the Line: “This was all personal: that Romney is a vulture capitalist who doesn’t care about people like you, ships jobs overseas, is a quintessential plutocrat, and is married to a known equestrian.” Exactly.
Thrush and Martin describe Romney's now-infamous 2008 "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" op-ed in the New York Times as “the major impediment to seriously challenging Obama in the industrial Midwest — especially in Ohio” and as the impetus for Romney’s disastrous late-October TV ad that accused Obama of moving Chrysler jobs to China that drew a sharp, public rebuke from Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne.
All of the interviews for The End of the Line were conducted either after the election or before but with the understanding that the story would not be published until after the election, so it provides one of the earliest glimpses of the big moments of the campaign with the first layer of spin peeled away. What emerges is a bizarre dual reality — both campaigns getting increasing confident of victory the closer they got to election day.
One of the campaigns, of course, turned out to be delusional and fantastically wrong — blindly relying on voter-turnout models that reality would not later bear out.
“I totally believed we were going to win,” Romney finance chief Spencer Zwick told the authors, “and I think everyone around [Romney] believed we were going to win. If anyone tells you that they knew we weren’t going to win, I think they’re lying to you.”
Weeks before The End of the Line was published, I had read Politico and The New Republic 's stories about the Romney camp’s election-night optimism. Still, it was jarring to see the conviction in Romney pollster Neil Newhouse the day before the election as he predicted wins in Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire — not in a booster-ish public statement but in a private, all-caps email to the Romney campaign senior staff.
The End of the Line’s real value is in the never-before-published personal anecdotes: Obama driving Robert Gibbs’ Chevy Volt around the White House parking lot. White House press secretary Jay Carney doing the “Gangnam Style” dance. Obama getting drilled in mock debate after mock debate by Sen. John Kerry and then by Romney in the actual first debate.
The e-book shifts between the two campaigns, but the Obama story is a better read. It’s hard to tell if that’s because Obama’s was the more interesting of the two campaigns to cover, or if the reporters simply had better access to the Obama staffers than to the Romney staffers.
I suspect it’s both. The bulk of the the reporting on the Romney campaign showed it to be a corporate outfit with a small group of decision-makers. And there’s no evidence that two of the more significant campaign figures — Romney’s wife Ann and oldest son Tagg — gave interviews to the authors.
Ultimately, The End of the Line is what it is — a $2.99, two-hour, behind-the-scenes read that casts some new reporting into the well of coverage of the 2012 campaign at a time when books like Jonathan Alter's The Center Holds : Obama and His Enemies (published earlier this month) is just joining the conversation and Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s Double Down: Game Change 2012 (coming November) is still a ways off.
It was more than an hour after the networks had called the election, and Mitt Romney had not addressed the media or made the traditional concession phone call to the winner. David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett were agitated. Obama’s campaign manager called the Romney campaign manager and got his voice mail. “He’ll call,” Obama told his team. Finally, at 12:30 a.m., after much of America had seen the outcome and gone to bed, Obama’s phone rang. “Hello, Mr. President, it’s Mitt Romney...”
Politico goes on on a limb to call the series “a new form of campaign chronicle, combining the in-depth reporting of a book with the immediacy of deadline journalism.” I think that’s largely right, but the depth and immediacy necessarily work at cross purposes.
The e-book is the fourth in the Politico Playbook 2012 series that Politico and Random House published during — and this volume about a month after — the 2012 campaign. (Politico Playbook is the name of Politico chief White House correspondent Mike Allen's influential morning tip-sheet, which has quotes and links to news stories that are making the rounds, and — oddly — birthday wishes to D.C. political and media figures.)
The first e-book in the series, The Right Fights Back by Allen and historian Evan Thomas, was published in November 2011 as the Republican primary battle was heating up. It zig-zagged through the Republican challengers' campaigns and included a lot of gossipy, anecdotal tidbits.
The second, Inside the Circus , also by Allen and Thomas and largely about the campaign for the GOP nomination, included a previously unreported story about Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who had back surgery shortly before jumping into the campaign and was taking pain medication, loudly singing "I've Been Working on the Railroad" in a public restroom before one of the Republican primary debates.
The third, Obama's Last Stand by Politico's Glenn Thrush, focused on the Obama campaign. The fourth, The End of the Line , focused on the last month of the campaign and was published a month after the election.
If journalism is the first draft of history, the Politico Playbook 2012 series falls somewhere between the first draft and the second. It lacks the narrative power of, say, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s best-selling Game Change . But Game Change was published 14 months after the 2008 election; three-fourths of the Playbook 2012 series was published during the 2012 campaign.
The major innovation of the series was its availability on platforms like Amazon's Kindle, Apple's iBookstore and Barnes & Noble's Nook. The e-books were inexpensive ($2.99 each on all platforms) and short without being insubstantial (50-60 book pages each). The quality of the reporting — the access, insight, scope, buzz-worthiness, etc. — is what you would expect from experienced campaign reporters like Glenn Thrush and Jonathan Martin, though they were not alone in taking a long-form approach to covering the campaign.
The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza produced a thoughtful and timely body of campaign reportage that included several longform pieces and an illuminating piece two weeks after the election that has been uncannily prescient on the Republican Party's often conflicting efforts to make inroads with a growing Latino population by tackling immigration reform. John Heilemann's May 2012 New York magazine piece about the Obama team's framing of the campaign and Michael Lewis's October 2012 profile of President Obama for Vanity Fair were important, agenda-setting pieces that were little different than short e-books in their length and scope.
A handful of other influential e-books were published during and immediately after the 2012 campaign, including Mother Jones reporter David Corn's Showdown: The Inside Story of How Obama Fought Back Against Boehner Cantor and the Tea Party in March 2012 and 47 Percent: Uncovering the Romney Video that Rocked the 2012 Election. BuzzFeed reporter Michael Hastings (who died tragically a few days ago in an automobile accident) published one of the first lengthy accounts of the Obama campaign, Panic 2012: The Sublime and Terrifying Inside Story of Obama's Final Campaign, in January.
The Playbook 2012 series is a breezy, fly-on-the-wall, real-time reporter’s notebook. Campaign insiders retell and analyze events that we all watched in real-time — the stump speeches, the ads, the debates, and election night. It is not a definitive history of the election and does not purport to be, but two themes do emerge: Obama’s early success in defining Romney and the Romney campaign’s certainty to the last minute that they were going to win.
The Obama campaign started running battleground-state ads against Romney as soon as the Republican primary ended in May. By branding Romney so early and with so much available bandwidth to get the message out before voters were sick of campaign ads, the Obama camp established Romney’s brand before Romney could do so himself.
The Romney brand? Shortly after the election, former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour described the Obama team’s take on Romney as aptly as I’ve seen in The End of the Line: “This was all personal: that Romney is a vulture capitalist who doesn’t care about people like you, ships jobs overseas, is a quintessential plutocrat, and is married to a known equestrian.” Exactly.
Thrush and Martin describe Romney's now-infamous 2008 "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" op-ed in the New York Times as “the major impediment to seriously challenging Obama in the industrial Midwest — especially in Ohio” and as the impetus for Romney’s disastrous late-October TV ad that accused Obama of moving Chrysler jobs to China that drew a sharp, public rebuke from Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne.
All of the interviews for The End of the Line were conducted either after the election or before but with the understanding that the story would not be published until after the election, so it provides one of the earliest glimpses of the big moments of the campaign with the first layer of spin peeled away. What emerges is a bizarre dual reality — both campaigns getting increasing confident of victory the closer they got to election day.
One of the campaigns, of course, turned out to be delusional and fantastically wrong — blindly relying on voter-turnout models that reality would not later bear out.
“I totally believed we were going to win,” Romney finance chief Spencer Zwick told the authors, “and I think everyone around [Romney] believed we were going to win. If anyone tells you that they knew we weren’t going to win, I think they’re lying to you.”
Weeks before The End of the Line was published, I had read Politico and The New Republic 's stories about the Romney camp’s election-night optimism. Still, it was jarring to see the conviction in Romney pollster Neil Newhouse the day before the election as he predicted wins in Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire — not in a booster-ish public statement but in a private, all-caps email to the Romney campaign senior staff.
The End of the Line’s real value is in the never-before-published personal anecdotes: Obama driving Robert Gibbs’ Chevy Volt around the White House parking lot. White House press secretary Jay Carney doing the “Gangnam Style” dance. Obama getting drilled in mock debate after mock debate by Sen. John Kerry and then by Romney in the actual first debate.
The e-book shifts between the two campaigns, but the Obama story is a better read. It’s hard to tell if that’s because Obama’s was the more interesting of the two campaigns to cover, or if the reporters simply had better access to the Obama staffers than to the Romney staffers.
I suspect it’s both. The bulk of the the reporting on the Romney campaign showed it to be a corporate outfit with a small group of decision-makers. And there’s no evidence that two of the more significant campaign figures — Romney’s wife Ann and oldest son Tagg — gave interviews to the authors.
Ultimately, The End of the Line is what it is — a $2.99, two-hour, behind-the-scenes read that casts some new reporting into the well of coverage of the 2012 campaign at a time when books like Jonathan Alter's The Center Holds : Obama and His Enemies (published earlier this month) is just joining the conversation and Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s Double Down: Game Change 2012 (coming November) is still a ways off.
March 20, 2024
I LOVED this book when I was like eleven, reread today on my flight.
Literally my favorite comedy.
Actual comedians.
Straight out of Veep.
He's truly just so unique.
Like genuinely obsessed.
Me when I arrive at the being delusional contest and my opponent is Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign
Certified hood classic 11/10
Two forces of nature, Hurricanes Isaac and Stuart, shredded that script.
Literally my favorite comedy.
Stevens and Romney were also the prime movers behind the biggest unnatural disaster in Tampa, the decision to give Clint Eastwood a prime-time slot on the third and final night of the convention, according to people close to the campaign.
Actual comedians.
“We sent him a script and some talking points, and basically what we wanted him to perform was his ‘Halftime in America’ spiel...That’s what we expected him to do. And he showed up without any notes, nothing for the teleprompter, and he asked for a chair, and he was given a chair.”
Straight out of Veep.
The campaign had to be careful about putting [Romney] in regular-guy situations—the staple “off the record” visits at diners and hardware stores—because of his tendency to say weird, off-putting things.
He's truly just so unique.
“He should have said there was the Bush way and the Obama way, and neither of them worked—here’s the Romney way … It would have required him to totally change his philosophy—but, hey, that never stopped Mitt Romney.”
Like genuinely obsessed.
Romney’s pollster, was confident his GOP-friendly model of the 2012 electorate—falling somewhere between Bush’s 2004 reelection and the 2010 midterms—was the accurate one.
Me when I arrive at the being delusional contest and my opponent is Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign
Certified hood classic 11/10
February 5, 2017
Definitely gives some great insights on a few of the critical decisions and events affecting the final outcome in 2012.
January 15, 2013
Politico wrote a series of four Kindle Singles about the election called Playbook 2012 and naturally, I read the last one first. If you haven’t ever read a Kindle Single, they’re basically long-form articles turned into ebooks for Amazon…and then you pay $.99 or $2 for the pleasure of reading them. (This one is $2.99.) I’ve found the quality of the Kindle Single collection sporadic so far, but this one was really a delight to read. It was a fast read—it only took me about an hour and a half to finish and had a quick-moving narrative.
There are some great insider tidbits from both the Obama and Romney camps and it was interesting to read some of the behind-the-scenes happenings while the election is still fresh in my mind. The book isn’t definitive and there are things I wish it had looked at—specific election results, for one. (The book touches on them but doesn’t delve much deeper than, “Obama’s team knew he was leading in X state by late afternoon.”) We don’t get any information about Romney’s reaction or the Romney team reaction post-election, save a section about the crafting of the concession speech. Although I’ve read other articles about how the Obama “ground game” turned out voters, this major point was discussed only briefly here too.
I probably shouldn’t expect such a short piece of writing to encapsulate every detail of those last 34 days. For that, I’ll wait for the upcoming book about the 2012 election by the authors of Game Change. For a short piece of writing, The End of the Line did manage to capture a lot of insider details and added context to many of the decisions in the final days of the election. It was enjoyable and informative and I’ll be interested to read the rest in the series to see how they compare.
There are some great insider tidbits from both the Obama and Romney camps and it was interesting to read some of the behind-the-scenes happenings while the election is still fresh in my mind. The book isn’t definitive and there are things I wish it had looked at—specific election results, for one. (The book touches on them but doesn’t delve much deeper than, “Obama’s team knew he was leading in X state by late afternoon.”) We don’t get any information about Romney’s reaction or the Romney team reaction post-election, save a section about the crafting of the concession speech. Although I’ve read other articles about how the Obama “ground game” turned out voters, this major point was discussed only briefly here too.
I probably shouldn’t expect such a short piece of writing to encapsulate every detail of those last 34 days. For that, I’ll wait for the upcoming book about the 2012 election by the authors of Game Change. For a short piece of writing, The End of the Line did manage to capture a lot of insider details and added context to many of the decisions in the final days of the election. It was enjoyable and informative and I’ll be interested to read the rest in the series to see how they compare.
January 8, 2013
I've really enjoyed this series. While the election has largely taken place in public, the Playbook 2012 books have been an engaging look under the water at the rest of the proverbial iceberg. Later volumes (this is the last, I should say) have been a bit more serious than the first few, which benefited from the parade of lunatics slugging it out for the GOP nomination (I'm not being broadly pejorative: Huntsman was not a lunatic, but Cain and Gingrich sure as hell were).
This last entry focused on the last month of the election, and at its best, it demonstrated how the candidates' personalities and temperaments fueled their campaigns and led to such debacles as the first debate, in which a complacent Obama got destroyed by a not-quite-desperate Romney. Overall, Romney is painted as a dedicated micromanager prone to the occasional disastrous decision, whereas Obama comes off as moody--vacillating between hyper-competitiveness and outright boredom.
Much is made of early gambles that did or did not work, but the narrative of the piece (and I realize it's journalism, so there's less emphasis on narrative) felt a bit deflated, not just because we know who won, but because the Obama victory was apparent as early as May. There are also some curious omissions. A lot of space went to Romney's disastrous "47 percent" gaffe, but there was no mention of his Halloween-costume inspiring "binders full of women". Thrush and Martin talk about how Romney's internal polling was flawed, but they never go into why.
So in many ways this feels incomplete, but I still recommend it to anyone interested in politics-as-strategy.
This last entry focused on the last month of the election, and at its best, it demonstrated how the candidates' personalities and temperaments fueled their campaigns and led to such debacles as the first debate, in which a complacent Obama got destroyed by a not-quite-desperate Romney. Overall, Romney is painted as a dedicated micromanager prone to the occasional disastrous decision, whereas Obama comes off as moody--vacillating between hyper-competitiveness and outright boredom.
Much is made of early gambles that did or did not work, but the narrative of the piece (and I realize it's journalism, so there's less emphasis on narrative) felt a bit deflated, not just because we know who won, but because the Obama victory was apparent as early as May. There are also some curious omissions. A lot of space went to Romney's disastrous "47 percent" gaffe, but there was no mention of his Halloween-costume inspiring "binders full of women". Thrush and Martin talk about how Romney's internal polling was flawed, but they never go into why.
So in many ways this feels incomplete, but I still recommend it to anyone interested in politics-as-strategy.
January 22, 2013
The End of the Line: Romney vs. Obama: the 34 days that decided the election: Playbook 2012 is a good objective read regarding the closing days leading to the 2012 U.S. Presidential election.
If you wish to have an objective, journalistic quality read that covers what happened behind the scenes, then this is the book for you. I believe Poltico's team who wrote this book will soon discover this a solid reference for political historians.
I personally enjoyed learning about the issues that plagued the campaigns and how each group addressed this election. Readers should treat this as a brief summary because it does not go into the details of each day. But if you wish to have a brief understanding of what occurred in the 2012 election, then I recommend this book.
I give this book a rating of 3.75 stars out of 5 stars. Thus a 4 star read for Goodreads.
If you wish to have an objective, journalistic quality read that covers what happened behind the scenes, then this is the book for you. I believe Poltico's team who wrote this book will soon discover this a solid reference for political historians.
I personally enjoyed learning about the issues that plagued the campaigns and how each group addressed this election. Readers should treat this as a brief summary because it does not go into the details of each day. But if you wish to have a brief understanding of what occurred in the 2012 election, then I recommend this book.
I give this book a rating of 3.75 stars out of 5 stars. Thus a 4 star read for Goodreads.
February 24, 2013
The End of the Line was so much fun to read—at least for this Democrat, given the outcome of the last elections—that I’m tempted to read it again. The authors, Glenn Thrush and Jonathan Martin, have (for political enthusiasts) the enviable responsibility of hanging out around campaigns, keeping their eyes and ears open, and recording their observations.
From superstitions in the Obama camp (such as the blanket ban on Thai food, which the team consumed hours before the devastating First Debate) to the incredulity of the Romney camp when it finally dawned on them that Romney had lost, readers get to be proverbial fly on the wall. Like the three earlier books in the Politico series in the 2012 elections, this one affords those who are interested the opportunity to essentially be present, in a very real way, when history is being made.
From superstitions in the Obama camp (such as the blanket ban on Thai food, which the team consumed hours before the devastating First Debate) to the incredulity of the Romney camp when it finally dawned on them that Romney had lost, readers get to be proverbial fly on the wall. Like the three earlier books in the Politico series in the 2012 elections, this one affords those who are interested the opportunity to essentially be present, in a very real way, when history is being made.
December 22, 2012
I have a rule - life is too short and there are too many books to be read to plow through one I am not enjoying. That being said, I did read "The End of the Line" and was able to follow it most of the time since I am a avid MSNBC watcher. Someone who is not a news junkie would not be able to comprehend it, but then, they would probably not want to read this book. It needs serious editing - there were paragraphs that I had to read and reread to comprehend, some that were just impossible - misplaced pronouns, verb tense mistakes, jumping around with subject matter. It was mildly interesting, but really gave no insight to this hard fought, gut wrenching campaign. It made me doubly glad I do not have to say "President Romney".
January 1, 2013
The last of the Politico Election 2012 series e-books. If you've followed the election there's probably not too much you didn't know, but it's always nice to read these things in context and in hindsight. The style's a tad jarring though--it picks up when Romney gives his concession speech and ends just as the election is called. Which is fine as a device, but I felt it didn't quite work here and would have preferred they kept it in chronological order.
If you read the others, definitely read this. If you haven't read any of the others and you enjoy reading about elections, go ahead and plunk down the money. It's a relatively fast and easy read and can help kill time when you're waiting.
If you read the others, definitely read this. If you haven't read any of the others and you enjoy reading about elections, go ahead and plunk down the money. It's a relatively fast and easy read and can help kill time when you're waiting.
December 28, 2012
I always love "what happened" stories after presidential campaigns. Theodore H. White had the franchaise on these,, and unfortunately, 30 years after his death he still does.
This latest e book by the staff of Politico is pretty will done. It gives us the snarky backstory by insiders of how Romney lost an election that by all odds he should have won big. Interestingly enough, even as the polls and opinions tiltled in President Obama's way; Romney and his family were thunderstruck that they lost.
The book covers the campaign from October on. Great for political junkies...like me
This latest e book by the staff of Politico is pretty will done. It gives us the snarky backstory by insiders of how Romney lost an election that by all odds he should have won big. Interestingly enough, even as the polls and opinions tiltled in President Obama's way; Romney and his family were thunderstruck that they lost.
The book covers the campaign from October on. Great for political junkies...like me
December 23, 2012
If you're a political junkie, this book is a must-read. It offers insider coverage of the Obama and Romney campaigns, focusing on the
last 34 days before the election These are the 34 days following the first presidential debate. The book, authored by two Politico writers, is available only as an e-book for $3.00. This is the final book in a four-e-book series on the 2012 campaign. It divulges what I call the juicy stuff. Like when Obama walked off the stage after the first debate, thinking he'd fought Romney to a draw, Michelle told him, "No, it wasn't good."
last 34 days before the election These are the 34 days following the first presidential debate. The book, authored by two Politico writers, is available only as an e-book for $3.00. This is the final book in a four-e-book series on the 2012 campaign. It divulges what I call the juicy stuff. Like when Obama walked off the stage after the first debate, thinking he'd fought Romney to a draw, Michelle told him, "No, it wasn't good."
April 17, 2013
While these two retain their supernatural talent for turning a political blow-by-blow into a riveting narrative, this book is not nearly as revelatory as its 2008 cousin, Game Change. There's a real dearth of insider information. At one point, they're quoting Andrew Sullivan blog posts... not exactly explosive. Too bad, because the Kindle Single format could have worked really well for this quick & dirty entertainment.
July 31, 2013
As a good piece of longform reporting, this is a good synopsis of the inside stuff behind the last few weeks of the 2012 Presidential election. I can forgive some of Politico's basic biases in this one because of a lot of the solid insider stuff they uncovered, and, perhaps more importantly, the useful blueprint for future campaigns as to what works and what doesn't.
Indispensable reporting for those who enjoy politics or are heavily involved.
Indispensable reporting for those who enjoy politics or are heavily involved.
Read
December 20, 2012I was a bit disappointed.
This account was workmanlike, but less than insightful than others I have read. It provides the bare details of the 2012 campaign, but view reasons for think like Romney's enormous hubris or Obama's ability to win back his base despite having so disappointed them during his term in office.
As a Democrat, I can say that the book has a good ending.
This account was workmanlike, but less than insightful than others I have read. It provides the bare details of the 2012 campaign, but view reasons for think like Romney's enormous hubris or Obama's ability to win back his base despite having so disappointed them during his term in office.
As a Democrat, I can say that the book has a good ending.
December 22, 2012
This did a nice job weaving in both sides of the race so there wasn't too much time spent on one side or the other. Not a lot of new insights but still was interesting. It would have been nice to have more on the post-election activity of the Romney team, including the post-election call that Romney did.
January 13, 2013
This Politico short contained a few interesting "behind-the-scenes" tidbits that those who closely followed the election would find compelling but otherwise it was a general overview of the final homestretch of the 2012 campaign. If you followed the campaign intensely, you'd probably find this wanting.
February 20, 2016
Good analysis of the end of the 2012 campaign. Again, nothing really new here, but it did give some good insight to what was happening in both camps.
The real kicker for me--one that I still cannot fathom--is the complete falsity of the Romney campaign's poll numbers. There was a complete disconnect from what was actually happening. I guess that when you want to be deluded, you will be.
The real kicker for me--one that I still cannot fathom--is the complete falsity of the Romney campaign's poll numbers. There was a complete disconnect from what was actually happening. I guess that when you want to be deluded, you will be.
December 28, 2012
A good behind the scenes account of the last few days of the campaign. Provides great insight into how the Romney campaign could have so misread the numbers. Momentum is great but it can't fix everything.
December 21, 2012
Overall read like an extended summary of several Politico articles that were published during the actual campaign. Very few new or interesting details. I also thought that the editing was terrible. My advice wait for Halperin and Heilemann's Game Change 2!
December 23, 2012
A good book if you're trying to gain insight into what happened during the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign season. However, if you are motivated enough to read this book, you probably followed the events real time, which means most of this will be old news to you.
July 1, 2013
If you a wholesale assessment of rivalling campaign strategies, then this is not your book. But it is generous with insight and candid comments by insiders about latestage decision-making, strife, team dynamics.
January 8, 2013
Brief insight into the final days of the election. A bit disappointed with the lack of post-election discussion. Also much more could have been elaborated on; however, for a short $3 ebook, it packs a punch.
January 11, 2013
This is the first time I've read a book like this. It was an interesting read but nothing I really didn't already know. I wanted to know more about why Romney took so long before he delivered his cessation speech but the book didn't go that far.
May 13, 2014
Interesting behind-the-scenes look at the 2012 Presidential Election. Was pretty confident in my belief that Obama's team of data wonks ran circles around the established methods Romney chose, but still surprising to read how off the mark they were.
August 15, 2016
I used to love Newsweek's long and detailed examinations of the presidential campaign that were published right after the election; these Politico Playbooks are the closest thing I could find to those.
December 22, 2012
Great book for any political junkie, especially if you were involved in the Obama ground game. It gave some insight into why things were done the way they were.
December 21, 2012
A less hasty effort perhaps would have resulted in more attention to editing. However, I do like the ending.
December 21, 2012
Very little in this that you couldn't have gotten from just following the news.
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