The bums land everywhere, don’t they? Perfectly, purposely
placed for activation when needed.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/26/AR2007082601446_pf.html
The Outsider’s Insider - After three decades in Washington, Pete Rouse is a voice of experience for Sen. Barack Obama .
Washington Post, The (DC) - Monday, August 27, 2007
Author: Perry Bacon Jr., Washington Post Staff Writer
EXCERPT
By last fall, two years after he was elected to the Senate, Obama had a second best-selling book, received invitations to speak even in conservative states such as Nebraska and was starting to seriously consider a run for the White House, far sooner than he — or Rouse — had anticipated.
Rouse , who organized a presidential operation in 2002 for Daschle before the South Dakotan decided not to run, swung into action. In September, when Obama decided to travel to Iowa to test the waters, Rouse called Steve Hildebrand, an old friend from the Daschle operation who ran Al Gore’s Iowa campaign in 2000, to show him around the state, even though the pair had never met.
“I thought, let’s have a little fun with this. I wanted to create a little buzz,” Rouse said. And he did.
Three other campaigns quickly called Hildebrand, wanting to hire him before Obama formally decided to enter the race.
In November, when more than a dozen advisers met with Obama in Axelrod’s Chicago office to discuss running, it was Rouse who had prepared the memos detailing how Obama could win and the pros and cons of running in 2008 versus waiting.