The Road To The White House: Victory

Steve Kroft On Obama's Historic Victory

(CBS)  That clarity was in part responsible for Obama's resurgence in the polls. McCain, saddled with the unpopularity of the Bush administration, and much less money to spend, would never regain the lead. But there were still questions about Obama’s lack of executive experience.

Asked why he thought he'd be a good president, Obama said, "Well, I think that when you think about the challenges we face these are challenges that require us to look forward and not backwards."

"Why you? I mean, why do you think you would be a good president?" Kroft asked.

"Well, I was gonna get to that," Obama said. "I think both by training and disposition I understand where we need to take the country."

"But what is there specifically about you. You mentioned disposition. What skills and traits do you have that would make you a good president?" Kroft persisted.

"I am a practical person. But somebody who, I think, can cut through some very complicated problems and figure out the right course of action. Now, there's one other element that I think is important that we need in the presidency right now: and that is somebody who understands what it's like to struggle," Obama said.

On Election Day, Obama took states that Democrats hadn't carried in decades, including Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia and Nevada. And on an unseasonably warm and thoroughly historic November night, he appeared before hundreds of thousands of people in Chicago as president-elect of the United States.

Two hours after the speech, once and future spokesman Robert Gibbs, who had lost his voice that night, reflected on the campaign’s strategy. "We competed everywhere," Gibbs said. "There wasn't a state we didn't go to. Regardless of its size, that we didn't think we could compete in. Caucus states and primary states."

"David's mantra for the general election was that we were gonna enlarge the playing field. And that we weren't gonna run the same campaigns that had been run in the past, where it all came down to just one state, you know, at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning," senior advisor Anita Dunn added.

"You ran an incredibly effective and disciplined campaign. How did you manage that? Even the Republicans were in awe," Kroft asked campaign manager David Plouffe.

"Well, it starts with the candidate. His motto is 'no drama,'" Plouffe said.

Asked how big a role Obama played in this campaign, Plouffe said, "Well, no one had a bigger role, you know. The great thing about our campaign was we didn't have a lotta discussion about what our message was or what he wanted to do. From the beginning, he knew exactly what he wanted to say. And it's one of the reasons we were successful. A lotta campaigns will spend hours every day wondering about how to change their message. And he was pretty clear about what he wanted to say, where he wanted to take the country. And people would either accept it or they wouldn’t."