How He Did it.

I have been reading this wonderful piece on Newsweek called Barack Obama: How He Did it. "How He Did it" is a special exclusive article from Newsweek covering the behind the scene happenings of the major party candidates for the United States Presidency. The project was started back in 1984, and involved Newsweek reporters sent to various candidates to each major candidate's campaign to observe and record. The one stipulation was that they were only allowed to report the information they uncovered after the polls are closed. In other words, these are awesome behind the scene stories that humanized the candidates like you have never seen before... Well, that is, unless you read the 2004 edition of "How Bush Did It", then you've probably seen something like this before.

Here is an excerpt that I absolutely loved:

The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

AWESOME!

I really can't explain what a fantastic read this is, I can only urge you to give it a chance, and I hope and pray that the last chapter be made available online soon.

Highlights: Hacker and Spending Spree
Chapter 1: How He Did It
Chapter 2: Back From the Dead
Chapter 3: The Long Siege
Chapter 4: Going Into Battle
Chapter 5: Center Stage
Chapter 6: The Great Debate
Chapter 7: The Final Days
I am seriously thinking about heading to the store to pickup a print copy.

(The reason I listed the chapters and title of the story is that newsweek apparently doesn't care about their stories past the age of 1 month. And their chapter menu is flash driven and separate from the article. This means that someday some fresh faced intern will accidentally hit delete, and the links to all these wonderful stories will blow away like dust in the wind, only decipherable by internet archeologists. I'm actually really tempted to post all the chapters separately here, so that years later, if this blog still exist, I can find the actual stories without having to jump through weird URL hoops and killing koala bears for an actual address.)