The Scene Before Obama\'s First Debate

By PETER BAKER

DENVER â€" What is it like inside President Obama's bubble as he gets ready for Wednesday night's debate? No one outside the room can know for sure. But it's worth remembering what it was like before his first debate at the presidential level five years ago

He was going up against Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other Democrats seeking the party's presidential nomination in a face-off in South Carolina in 2007. David Plouffe, then Mr. Obama's campaign manager and now the president's senior adviser, recalled the scene in his memoir, “The Audacity to Win.”

“Don't forget to smile,” David Axelrod, the campaign strategist, told Mr. Obama.

“Iraq is an economic issue too,” Mr. Plouffe added.

“And remember the experience riff,” Mr. Axelrod threw in.

Finally Mr. Obama grew impatient. “Guys, enough,” he said. “You're junking up my h ead. All I will be thinking about is what you just told me I had to do and I'll be tight.”

Mr. Obama was “not a strong debater,” as Mr. Plouffe put it in the book. He derided “the whole exercise of boiling down complex answers into thirty- or sixty-second sound bites.” So his staff was more than a little nervous when he went out to face Mrs. Clinton, one of the most formidable figures in the party. “This could be an unmitigated disaster,” Mr. Axelrod said after the candidate took the stage.

In the end, Mrs. Clinton did win, according to the pundits. Mr. Axelrod's minimalist verdict? “Well, that could have been a lot worse.”