I always believed that the way Barack Obama ran his campaign would be his best demonstration of leadership ability, offsetting the fact that his resume otherwise does not contain any governerships, CEO positions, or military command. By now, the results are in. Starting from zero, he assembled a team that toppled the most effective political machine in recent history. They kept going when things were down, and they stayed grounded when things were up. They understood the rules of the nominating game better than the Clinton team did, which led to running up the crucial delegate lead in states like Idaho, for goodness sakes.
What I like about this video is that it provides a peek at the relationship which Obama created with his campaign staff. I’ve heard a lot of corporate leaders speak to employees, to exhort and encourage them, to give them clear and motivating goals. I have never heard it done as well as Obama does in this brief talk at the Chicago campaign headquarters.
I can only imagine what it felt like to be sitting on the floor of that room, listening to these words–the exhaustion level, the euphoria, the anxiety and hope regarding the next five months, and throughout it all, the sense of actually writing a page in history.