Chicago Tribune: "Inside Obama's Inner Circle"

The Chicago Tribune posts an interesting (but long) piece on Barack Obama's inner-circle of advisors. As Obama himself comes closer to announcing, so the scrunity will increase and some of the people mentioned in this article's profliles will increase (for better or worse).

INSIDE OBAMA'S INNER CIRCLE

Ahead of likely presidential campaign, senator relies on core of trusted advisers

By Mike Dorning and Christi Parsons
Washington Bureau
Published January 14, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The gravitational pull around Sen. Barack Obama grows stronger day by day, as he and his advisers seek commitments from political operatives and donors in preparation for a likely run for the presidency.The existing core of advisers around the Illinois Democrat simultaneously anchors him in the pragmatic sensibility of his urban Midwestern home base and encompasses the world of ideas of his Harvard Law School classmates.

The political professionals who are Obama's closest formal advisers are careful, deliberate counselors, wary of unnecessary risks and no strangers to campaign street fights. The informal coterie is a multihued collection of high achievers, men and women who are friends and intellectual peers.

There's David Axelrod, the strategist at Obama's right hand, perhaps the best-known Democratic consultant working outside of Washington, D.C., equally adept at sensing the right metaphor for high-minded aspirations and at finding the vulnerable spot to savage an opponent.

Then, Robert Gibbs, communications director, a campaign veteran described by one Democratic operative--approvingly--as "Northern ruthlessness and Southern charm combined."

Key players also include friends of Obama's, among them a straight-talking veteran of Chicago Democratic circles, Valerie Jarrett, and a group of South Side professionals.

Perhaps most influential is his wife, Michelle, a formidable daughter of the South Side who is an alumna of the Ivy League and Chicago's rough-and-tumble City Hall. She may not be in on all the conference calls or offer her own health plan in the style of former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton but no one else in the inner circle denies that she would be a driving force in any presidential campaign.

At the center is a 45-year-old political phenomenon who close associates say is prepared both to challenge the views he hears from advisers and to be challenged by them.

For the rest of the article, click here.