THREE DAYS IN
OCTOBER
spent two days in Windsor, Vt. for
his first immersive debate prep experience. I learned later that longtime Romney adviser Beth Myers,
who oversaw the process for selecting his running mate, had been
the loudest voice insisting that
Romney block out large chunks of
time to get ready for the three debates. Myers, one Romney adviser
said, was also the one responsible
for choosing Portman as the one to
play Obama in prep sessions.
Obama took a different approach to the debates than Romney, going to more remote locations and then flying into the
debate city the day of the showdown. Obama spent two days at
the Westin Lake Las Vegas Resort
in Nevada before the first debate
in Denver, two full days at the
Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg,
Va., ahead of the second debate
on Long Island, and then two days
at Camp David ahead of the final
debate in Boca Raton, Fla.
Obama, whose busy schedule as president made it difficult
enough to set aside large chunks
of time to prepare, didn’t seem
as keen as Romney on cramming
either. He decided to skip an afternoon session ahead of the first
debate to go see the Hoover Dam.
HUFFINGTON
11.04.12
And when a supporter asked how
the prep was going, Obama joked,
“It’s a drag. They’re making me
do my homework.”
‘WE’VE UNSTUCK
THE SON OF A BITCH’
A few days before the first debate,
I sat in a Chicago high rise across
from Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager, in his office. I asked
him if he was relaxed. The storyline at that point had become, essentially, “How in the world did
Obama manage to end up in such
a good position, despite a bad
economy and some very unpopular
signature legislative accomplishments?” Obama was up in the
national polls, and looked like he
might be on the verge of running
away with Ohio. One Republican in
Ohio told me Romney was “stuck
in the mud” there.
Messina insisted that he wasn’t
taking it easy, however, and
said that he expected things “to
tighten.” And Ben LaBolt, the national spokesman for the Obama
campaign, told me he was bracing himself for a Romney surge.
Yet Messina insisted that even if
Romney made a move, the Democrats were outpacing the Republicans in early voting and their