This is PART 6 of a seven-part in-depth look behind the scenes of the campaign, consisting of exclusive behind-the-scenes reporting from the McCain and Obama camps assembled by a special team of reporters who were granted year-long access on the condition that none of  their findings appear until after Election Day.

The Great Debates

Later, after McCain’s ride to the rescue had been mocked in the press, some of his advisers blamed Steve Schmidt for the fiasco. The campaign’s chief strategist was forever searching for the bold stroke, the instant game changer, but by urging McCain to go to Washington, he had impetuously and blindly steered the candidate into a trap. “McCain never saw it as a stunt,” insisted one aide. But to most commentators, the bizarre rush back to Washington seemed gimmicky—one more tactical gambit in a campaign that seemed to lack any coherent or consistent strategy.

The Obama team never took seriously McCain’s announcement that he was suspending his campaign and putting off the first debate. They noted that McCain never canceled his hotel reservations (or most of his ads) or informed the Commission on Presidential Debates that the candidate would not be attending. Some McCain staffers later confessed they didn’t think for a second he’d skip the debate. Obama’s attitude toward the whole strange interlude was one of mild exasperation. When he first learned that McCain was heading for Washington, he had just silently thrown up his hands. He seemed slightly annoyed that he had to go along with the charade at the White House, which meant missing out on valuable debate-prep time, but he did not complain too loudly. There was no point; he realized soon enough that McCain had stepped on a banana peel.

Obama prepared scrupulously and relentlessly for the debates. He knew that he had delivered a mediocre to weak performance at the Saddleback forum in August. In what amounted to a preview of the formal presidential debates, the two candidates had agreed to be interviewed back to back by the Rev. Rick Warren, the bestselling evangelist, at his megachurch in California. McCain delivered short, punchy answers, and most pundits declared that he had won the day. Obama plowed along in his ponderous professor mode. Warren had asked the same questions of both candidates, and the Obama aides complained that McCain must have cheated by seeing the questions beforehand, likely furnished by aides with BlackBerrys who had watched Obama go first. McCain’s advisers retorted that McCain was kept in the dark, in part because he wanted to honor the rules and also because his aides didn’t want him to be distracted by trying to match Obama’s answers.

Never one to wing it, Obama studied for the three official presidential debates, scheduled for roughly once a week from late September to mid-October, as if he were taking the bar exam. He memorized details on new weapons systems so he wouldn’t look like a neophyte on national defense. But the real challenge, he knew, was not in the details of policy or his mastery of defense-spending arcana. He would need to show something more ineffable but profound—a true command presence. As his aides never ceased to remind him, he would have to look “presidential.”

The topic of the first debate was meant to be foreign policy, McCain’s strong suit. Obama did not object. Better to get it out of the way—to deal with his perceived weakness right away, to outperform expectations. Inevitably, given the crisis in Washington, the first questions from the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS, were bound to focus on the proposed bailout and the economy. But that was all right, too. Obama’s burden was to show that he was ready to step up to crisis, that he would not be learning on the job in the Oval Office.

In debate prep, Obama’s advisers repeatedly instructed him: Do not get personal. Stay calm and in control. Stay presidential. The voters know you represent change; now you’ve got to persuade them to see you as president.

“Command and control: we told him, ‘Write it down on your pad when you go in’,” said Joel Benenson, a pollster who was on the debate-prep team. The candidates were not allowed to bring notes in with them, but they could take notes once they got onstage. Benenson later told a NEWSWEEK reporter that he doubted that Obama took their advice to write it down. The candidate didn’t need to: “He knew that was the mission,” said Benenson.

Obama was up against McCain’s strength and experience in the national-security realm, but he was also confronting a deeper stereotype, a curse that had kept the Democrats out of the White House for 20 of the last 28 years. Ever since the days of Jimmy Carter, a majority of Americans had consistently told pollsters that they trusted the Republicans more on the issue of security—not just abroad, but at home. To use ancient and more or less discredited (but still potent) clichés, the Democrats were the Mommy party, comforting the needy and weak, while the Republicans were the Daddy party, keeping the family safe from threats. In the debates, it was critical that Obama come across as looking like Dad. His hope was that McCain would appear to be the crotchety uncle who lived up in the attic. […continued on page 2]

This is PART 5 of a seven-part in-depth look behind the scenes of the campaign, consisting of exclusive behind-the-scenes reporting from the McCain and Obama camps assembled by a special team of reporters who were granted year-long access on the condition that none of their findings appear until after Election Day. This story is based on reporting by Daren Briscoe, Eleanor Clift, Katie Connolly, Peter Goldman, Daniel Stone and Nick Summers. It was written by Evan Thomas.

In midsummer, the Obama campaign’s computers were attacked by a virus. The campaign’s tech experts spotted it and took standard precautions, such as putting in a firewall. At first, the campaign figured it was a routine “phishing” attack, using common methods. Or so it seemed. In fact, the campaign had been the target of sophisticated foreign cyber-espionage.

The next day, the Obama headquarters had two visitors: from the FBI and the Secret Service. “You have a problem way bigger than what you understand,” said an FBI agent. “You have been compromised, and a serious amount of files have been loaded off your system.” The Feds were cryptic and did not answer too many questions. But the next day, Obama campaign chief David Plouffe heard from White House chief of staff Josh Bolten. “You have a real problem,” Bolten told the Obama aide. “It’s way bigger than you guys think and you have to deal with it.”

By late afternoon the campaign’s chief technology officer, Michael Slaby, was on the phone with the FBI field agent who was running the investigation out of Los Angeles. Slaby was told that the hackers had been moving documents out of Obama’s system at a rapid rate. Potentially, Obama’s entire computer network had been compromised.

The campaign brought in a top tech-security firm to scrub its system. On Aug. 18 an Obama official was summoned to FBI headquarters in Chicago for a briefing, only to be told that the White House had ordered the FBI not to give the briefing. The Obama official asked why, and was told that three hours earlier the Feds had learned that the McCain campaign had been compromised as well.

The security firm retained by the Obama campaign was finally able to remove the virus. (The campaign’s fundraising records were kept on a different computer system and were never compromised.) On Aug. 20 the Obama campaign got its briefing from the FBI. The Obama team was told that its system had been hacked by a “foreign entity.” The official would not say which “foreign entity,” but indicated that U.S. intelligence believed that both campaigns had been the target of political espionage by some country—or foreign organization—that wanted to look at the evolution of the Obama and McCain camps on policy issues, information that might be useful in any negotiations with a future Obama or McCain administration. There was no suggestion that terrorists were involved; technical experts hired by the Obama campaign speculated that the hackers were Russian or Chinese.

Obama himself was briefed, and his personal laptop was examined and found not to have been hacked. The Obama campaign took steps to better secure its computer system, including encrypting any documents used by the policy and transition teams. The Feds assured the Obama team that it had not been hacked by its political opponents, which was sort of reassuring. A senior McCain official confirmed to NEWSWEEK that the campaign had been hacked and that the FBI had become involved. White House and FBI officials had no comment earlier this week.

To David Axelrod, the stretch of August between Obama’s triumphal tour abroad and the Democratic convention were “lost weeks.” Looking back after the convention, Obama’s chief strategist felt that the campaign had been in a “rut.” Though the campaign publicly scoffed at McCain’s “celebrity” ad as a bit of desperate fluff on the part of the McCainiacs, the more honest Obama advisers conceded that Obama had been knocked a little off stride, made more cautious. Axelrod decided to tone down the rock-star aspect of the campaign. The candidate was no longer scheduled into mega-rallies but rather performed at smaller, more-subdued events. Axelrod was a little uneasy about the coming Democratic convention in Denver. The campaign had already declared that Obama would address a football stadium full of supporters in Denver on the last night. The intention was to mimic John F. Kennedy, who in 1960 had departed the crowded convention hall to deliver his acceptance speech under the lights at the massive Los Angeles Coliseum. (The Obamaites also wanted to use the event to create a giant phone bank—everyone who attended was supposed to use their cell phones to call friends and family. Extra cell towers were brought in to accommodate the avalanche of calls and texting.) At Invesco Field in Denver, the production staff of the Democratic National Committee proposed erecting enormous white columns on either side of the podium with all sorts of lights and adornments. To Axelrod, the whole setup looked like an over-the-top version of ancient Greece—or, more likely, a scene set from the movie “Star Wars”—and he asked for something more modest and sober, simple but presidential. The designers came back with some white columns that vaguely resembled the arcade between the West Wing and the White House, still a little presumptuous, perhaps, but better than trying to re-create Mount Olympus.

The Obama campaign had always prided itself in staying away from the Washington hothouse of party hacks and lobbyists. But the nominating conventions are traditionally giant celebrations of the party establishment. Inevitably, there was some tension between Democratic regulars and the Obama insurgents on the road to Denver. Delegates and congressmen, normally showered with free tickets, were allotted relatively few in order to […continued on page 2]

This is PART 4 of a seven-part in-depth look behind the scenes of the campaign, consisting of exclusive behind-the-scenes reporting from the McCain and Obama camps assembled by a special team of reporters who were granted year-long access on the condition that none of their findings appear until after Election Day. This story is based on reporting by Daren Briscoe, Eleanor Clift, Katie Connolly, Peter Goldman, Daniel Stone and Nick Summers. It was written by Evan Thomas.

Going Into Battle

McCain’s inner circle altered the style, feel and direction of the campaign. The candidate’s best hope was to bring down Obama.

McCain was not a natural orator on the stump. He had trouble reading from a teleprompter, and he had an odd way of smiling at inappropriate times, flashing an expression that looked more like a frozen rictus than a friendly grin. During one early debate, he smiled broadly as he discussed crushing the enemy in Iraq. McCain could be moody, and he did not try very hard to disguise his moods. One of his advisers used the word “heady” to describe the candidate. He meant that his speaking style was easily swayed by his emotions. McCain could look hot or riled up (his traveling buddy Lindsey Graham particularly affected his moods, for better and for worse), or he could appear wooden, even sullen. McCain was bored by dreary presentations of his own polling data, but he could get agitated reading about other people’s polls in the press. His staff tried to keep away overstimulating distractions, but it was hopeless. During the campaign’s low-budget period, when the candidate was traveling on the cut-rate airline JetBlue, he would get wound up watching political talk shows on the small video screen facing his seat.
Throughout the spring of 2008, McCain’s uneven speaking style was a source of frustration to his aides. They knew how open and disarmingly honest he could be when he felt like it. But his stubborn integrity (or childish willfulness, depending on your point of view) was as much a liability as a virtue. When McCain didn’t like the words he had been given to read, his inner Dennis the Menace would emerge, and he would sabotage his own speech.

McCain’s subversive instincts had long shown up in his speaking style. Before the 2000 primary in South Carolina, when he spoke in favor of flying the Confederate flag over the state capitol, he would pull a piece of paper out of his pocket and read from it. It was obvious that he didn’t really believe what he was saying and was ashamed of his pandering. His aides had trouble coaching him because the very act of telling him what to do could incite a rebellion. When distracted or restless, a not infrequent occasion, McCain could be tempted to play the high-school prankster. Once at a press availability in Kentucky he spotted a large woman, who was wearing a black T shirt embroidered with two bedazzling martini glasses, standing behind the photographers. He asked her to stand by him at the podium, where she might have a better view. “Is this OK?” he asked. “This is fi-ine!” the lady replied, but as she saw a sea of cameras and smirking reporters, she looked stunned and slightly embarrassed. She started to sidle away, and McCain asked, with mock forlornness, “You leaving me?”

In April, McCain gave a major “Service to America” speech at his alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy. A select audience had been invited, and American flags provided a proud backdrop. But the crowd seemed tiny, dwarfed by the vast football stadium, and the flags flapped wildly and noisily. The morning sun shone on the teleprompter, so McCain couldn’t read it and had to rely on a written speech. He trudged through his speech, but at one point when he looked up while turning a page, the wind caught a second page and turned it as well. McCain kept reading, but by the time he realized he had skipped a page it was too late. In the end it didn’t really matter. His performance was so disjointed that the only people who really noticed were the reporters following the text on their laptops and BlackBerrys.

McCain should have enjoyed an advantage by securing the GOP nomination in March while Obama and Clinton ground on for three more months. But the press by and large ignored the GOP candidate, who was further hobbled by poor advance work as well as by his own listless or crabby performance. At times, McCain seemed to be amused by the haphazardness of his own organization. He would crack jokes about the “well-oiled machine we have here on this campaign.” When the microphones kept dropping out during a Florida press conference, he declared, with mock outrage, “It’s a plot!”

Perversely, part of McCain’s problem behind the podium lay with his talented speechwriter and closest adviser, Mark Salter. The coauthor of his bestselling books, including “Faith of My Fathers” and “Why Courage Matters,” Salter idealized McCain and wanted him to be the heroic figure he was in his books. Salter wrote noble, eloquent speeches for McCain, high-flown words that evoked a spirit of selflessness and patriotism. Yet these sentiments—which McCain, more than any other candidate, personally embodied—sometimes sounded stilted and cringeworthy when they came from his mouth on the campaign trail. McCain may have actually believed the campaign myth that “Salter writes the way McCain thinks”; in any case, he wanted to be the hero that Salter had helped him become, and tried to sound like one. But if he became bored or his mind wandered, he read Salter’s lofty words with all the conviction and gusto of a dutiful schoolboy reciting his Latin.

Salter and McCain had a close but complicated relationship. Salter was indebted to McCain; he had bought a second home in Maine with the money he earned from their books, and he had even met his wife, Diane, in the senator’s office, where she had been a scheduler. At some level Salter worshiped McCain, but he knew not to fawn; indeed, he understood that the best way to get McCain’s attention was to appear indifferent. Salter had the confidence to stand up to McCain—the relationship was more brotherly than father-son. Salter could imagine McCain’s thoughts and supply his words, and he fancied […continued on page 2]

This research paper (authored by the British House of Commons Library) looks at recent developments in the Horn of Africa, where there are a number of protracted and interlocking crises at work, and briefly discusses some of the main factors that have been described as ‘root causes’ of conflict in the region.

The insurgency against the Transitional Federal Government and Ethiopian forces in Somalia is rapidly gathering momentum as efforts continue to form a more inclusive and viable government. There is a humanitarian crisis of massive proportions, with about 40 per cent of the population needing assistance. Almost unnoticed, there are ongoing tensions between neighbouring Somaliland and Puntland over disputed border areas.

Meanwhile, the possibility remains of a resumption of hostilities between Ethiopia and Eritrea over their long- running border dispute. In the Ogaden, which is part of Ethiopia’s Somali regional state, there has also been a humanitarian crisis as a consequence of ongoing fighting between Ethiopian troops and insurgents. Finally, earlier this year Eritrea launched an incursion into Djibouti and is yet to withdraw its forces. Click here to read the paper.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – Ethiopian superstar singer Teddy Afro has been convicted of the manslaughter of a homeless man killed in a hit-and-run incident in Addis Ababa in 2006.

The singer was found guilty of running the man down in his car and driving away without reporting the incident.

Ethiopia’s best-known pop star was also convicted of driving without a licence. He faces between five and 15 years in prison when sentenced on Friday.

Afro’s music became an anthem for opposition protests in 2005.

Many of his fans believe the charges against him were politically motivated.

But Judge Leul Gebremariam [a member of the ruling party] dismissed Afro’s defense in a long summing-up, says the BBC’s Elizabeth Blunt, who was in the courtroom.

There had been some confusion about which night the homeless man had died.

On the first date the singer – real name Tewodros Kassahun – had an alibi: He was out of the country.

On the second possible date, Afro claimed he had been out with friends. But the judge was not convinced and found him guilty on all charges.

As sentence was passed, the singer tried to protest and was hushed by his lawyers.

But as he left court, having regained his composure, Teddy Afro gave a thumbs-up sign to supporters and told journalists: “I never killed anyone, I didn’t get justice from this court.”

This is PART 3 of a seven-part in-depth look behind the scenes of the campaign, consisting of exclusive behind-the-scenes reporting from the McCain and Obama camps assembled by a special team of reporters who were granted year-long access on the condition that none of  their findings appear until after Election Day. This story is based on reporting by Daren Briscoe, Eleanor Clift, Katie Connolly, Peter Goldman, Daniel Stone and Nick Summers. It was written by Evan Thomas.

In the days after his wife’s back- from-the-brink victory in New Hampshire, Bill Clinton was full of righteous indignation. The former president had amassed an 81-page list of all the unfair and nasty things the Obama campaign had said, or was alleged to have said, about Hillary Clinton. The press was still in love with Obama, or so it seemed to Clinton, who complained to pretty much anyone who would listen. If the press wouldn’t go after Obama, then Hillary’s campaign would have to do the job, the ex-president urged. On Sunday, Jan. 13, Clinton got worked up in a phone conversation with Donna Brazile, a direct, strong-willed African-American woman who had been Al Gore’s campaign manager and advised the Clintons from time to time. “If Barack Obama is nominated, it will be the worst denigration of public service,” he told her, ranting on for much of an hour. Brazile kept asking him, “Why are you so angry?”

The former president was restless and petulant; that was obvious. Exactly why was a psychologist’s guessing game. He seemed anxious that his wife was blowing the chance to get the Clintons back in the White House. At some deeper level, the armchair shrinks speculated, he was jealous of her. Or, in some strange way, he may have been envious of Obama. Clinton was proud of the fact that some blacks called him “America’s first black president,” because of his comfort and empathy with African-Americans. Obama was upstaging him by threatening to truly become America’s first black president. More vexingly, Obama, in remarks to some reporters in Nevada, had praised Ronald Reagan as a true change agent and seemingly dismissed Bill Clinton as an incidental politician. It was always hard for Clinton to be anything but the most amazing person in the room, the “smartest boy in the class,” as author David Maraniss had once described him. Clinton wanted to be a major player in his wife’s campaign, and he used an office sometimes inhabited by Mark Penn or Mandy Grunwald at Clinton headquarters in Arlington, Va., just outside Washington. But the staff, including the campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, found his presence, complete with Secret Service, to be uncomfortable, sometimes intimidating. They were happier when he was on the road—that is, as long as he stayed on message, which was never for very long.

Bill Clinton was enormously effective at the Nevada caucuses on Jan. 19, working the casinos in his larger-than-life way, charming the off-duty waitresses and croupiers. Hillary’s narrow victory in Nevada had sustained her post-New Hampshire comeback momentum. The former president wanted to go to South Carolina for the next Democratic test, the Jan. 26 primary. He was sure his touch with African-American voters would blunt Obama’s natural advantage (almost half the Democratic voters in South Carolina are black). The campaign staff was not so sure, and scheduled him for only the briefest of visits. But Hillary sided with her husband when the staff briefed her on their minimalist approach to South Carolina. “This is crazy,” she said. “Bill needs to go to South Carolina.”

He was a disaster. He turned purple yelling at reporters for asking annoying questions. He pointedly compared Obama to Jesse Jackson, who had won the South Carolina caucuses in 1984 and 1988 by appealing directly to black votes. The liberal establishment was appalled—the president seemed to be clumsily playing the race card by trying to marginalize Obama as the “black candidate.” Blacks were also put off. Hillary Clinton lost the African-American vote in South Carolina by 86 to 14. At Clinton headquarters, a meeting was hastily convened and a simple message went out: you cannot dis Obama in any way that suggests race. A campaign emissary secretly approached Jesse Jackson. Would he write a letter saying, in effect, no big deal? Jackson replied that he wasn’t offended by Clinton’s remarks—but declined to say so in a public letter. The Clintons could see their black base, so carefully and genuinely built up over the years, beginning to crumble. The old civil-rights generation was in an awkward place. New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, told Harold Ickes, “You don’t understand what it’s like. We get called ‘house Negro’ and ‘handkerchief head’ by our constituents because we’re supporting Hillary.” Rep. John Lewis, a hero of the movement (he had been beaten repeatedly while demonstrating in the South in the ’60s) and a conscience of the Democratic Party, switched his support from Clinton to Obama.

Sen. Edward Kennedy had a difficult phone conversation with Bill Clinton about his divisive campaigning. “Well, they started it,” Clinton told Kennedy. “I don’t think that’s true,” said Kennedy. On Jan. 28, Senator Kennedy and, perhaps more significant, Caroline Kennedy, daughter of John F. Kennedy, held a press conference in Washington to endorse Obama. Clinton campaign aides were distraught and partly blamed Hillary. Despite urging from the staff, she had failed to call Caroline to enlist her support. For all her brassiness and grit onstage, Hillary was privately reluctant to call donors and supporters. She didn’t really like arm-twisting one-on-one. She was no LBJ, thought Harold Ickes.

Caroline Kennedy had never endorsed a candidate who was not a member of the Kennedy clan. But she wrote a New York Times op-ed casting Obama in the mold of John F. Kennedy. Solis Doyle saw the ad, and thought, “Oh, my God, we’re done.”

For the record, the Obama campaign did not worry that race would swing the election. “I think we may lose some votes, but we also may gain some votes because of it,” said David Axelrod. “I don’t think it will determine the outcome.” But when asked about race, Obama campaign officials often seemed touchy and guarded, as if race was a subject best not discussed. In fact, they had reason to worry that racial prejudice could become a factor, albeit in subtle ways and blended with other biases. A good part of Obama’s appeal was that he was post-racial (although Obama himself shied away from this somewhat utopian notion). For some voters, however, race mattered. […continued on page 2]