奥巴马竞选背后的策划者

No one in the White House, aside from the president, has more to lose than David Plouffe if Mitt Romney wins next week's election.

如果罗姆尼(Mitt Romney)赢得下周的选举，白宫除了总统之外，没有谁的损失比普拉夫(David Plouffe)更大。

Mr. Plouffe's official title is senior White House adviser. Unlike others in President Barack Obama's small circle of advisers, he always has had just one job: to win Mr. Obama a second term.

普拉夫的官方头衔是白宫高级顾问。和奥巴马(Barack Obama)少量顾问中的其他人不同，普拉夫的任务一直就只一件：让奥巴马再当一届总统。

He has played a key role in almost all the decisions over the past two years that have brought the president to this moment - a dead heat six days from Election Day - people inside and outside the White House say.

离选举日仅剩六天之际，奥巴马与对手仍旧不分胜负。据白宫内外的人士说，在过去两年让奥巴马达到目前这种状态的几乎所有决策中，普拉夫都曾发挥关键作用。

Ultracompetitive, like his boss, Mr. Plouffe was the force behind the president's 48-hour blitz of eight states last week, aides said. The trip included calls to thousands of supporters from Air Force One, an appearance on 'The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,' and a red-eye flight between Las Vegas and Tampa.

据幕僚说，普拉夫像他上司一样拥有极其强烈的求胜心，奥巴马上周48小时闪电巡访八个州，他就是背后的推动力量。巡访期间，奥巴马从“空军一号给数千支持者打电话，亮相电视节目《今夜秀》(The Tonight Show with Jay Leno)，并乘坐红眼航班从拉斯维加斯前往坦帕。

Mr. Plouffe crafted the campaign's focus on the middle class and its early attacks on Mr. Romney's policy positions that propelled the president to early leads in polls. He also was the architect of the strategy that led to Mr. Obama's defeat of Hillary Clinton in the 2010 primaries.

把竞选重点放在中产阶级身上、选战初期对罗姆尼的一些政策立场进行抨击（因为罗姆尼这些立场，奥巴马在早期民调中取得了领先优势），这些都是普拉夫制定的策略。让奥巴马在2010年的初选期间击败克林顿(Hillary Clinton)的策略，同样也是普拉夫设计的。

Other recent efforts have been less smooth. Mr. Plouffe was a leading adviser on the president's widely panned strategy of not aggressively challenging Mr. Romney in the first debate in Denver, people familiar with the process said. He also didn't anticipate that Mr. Romney would use the event to make a move to the center, they said. Those miscalculations gave the Republican nominee a burst of momentum that closed some of the president's polling edge.

最近的其他动作就没那么顺利。奥巴马在丹佛的首场辩论中不与罗姆尼激烈对抗的策略饱受诟病；据知情人士说，普拉夫在这一策略的制定过程中发挥了首要作用。知情人士说，普拉夫也没有料到罗姆尼会利用这次辩论向中间立场倾斜。这些失误使罗姆尼选情大增，消除了奥巴马在民调中的部分领先优势。

After the debate, Mr. Plouffe, who declined to be interviewed for this story, drove the campaign's response, repeatedly telling other top advisers: 'We've got to make people understand that what they're seeing is not the real Mitt Romney.'

那次辩论之后，普拉夫主推奥巴马阵营的对策。他反复告诉其他高级顾问：我们得让人们知道，他们眼中看到的罗姆尼不是真正的罗姆尼。普拉夫拒绝为本文接受采访。

For political strategists, winning washes away all mistakes - just as losing amplifies them. 'If the president succeeds, in large respect it will be because David was pretty farsighted in approaching this,' said Bill Carrick, a Democratic strategist who has worked with Mr. Plouffe.

对于政坛谋士来说，只要获胜，一切错误都会被遗忘，同样，一旦失败，错误就会被放大。曾与普拉夫共事的民主党谋士卡里克(Bill Carrick)说，如果奥巴马获胜，很大程度上将是因为普拉夫相当有远见。

Karl Rove, who masterminded President George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 victories and is often compared with Mr. Plouffe, called his counterpart 'tactically very good.' But he criticized what he called the president's relentless campaigning over the past 18 months, saying it kept him from governing. 'Strategically…I'm not sure how smart it is to make the president so persistent and visible on the campaign trail for 18 months,' he said.

罗夫(Karl Rove)是布什(George W. Bush)在2000年和2004年大选中获胜的幕后策划，人们常常拿他跟普拉夫相提并论。罗夫说，普拉夫“战术上非常好。但他也批评奥巴马过去18个月的竞选不顾一切，说这使他无法抽身执政。他说，从战略上来讲，不知道让总统在18个月的竞选过程中如此执着而高调有多明智。

What isn't in doubt is Mr. Plouffe's influence. Ask any top aide in the White House or the Obama campaign to point to a decision carrying Mr. Plouffe's imprint, and inevitably the response is 'everything.'

普拉夫的影响力是毋庸置疑的。让奥巴马在白宫及其竞选班子中任何一位高级助手指出，总统的哪项决策刻有普拉夫的个人印记，回答必然都是：所有的决策。

'No decision of any importance is made until Plouffe has weighed in,' said Robert Gibbs, a longtime Obama adviser.

长期担任奥巴马顾问的吉布斯(Robert Gibbs)说，总统的任何决定，无论其重要程度如何，事先都经过普拉夫的权衡。

Mr. Plouffe (pronounced Pluff), who is 45 years old, has been working in Washington politics for more than 20 years and lives in the area with his wife and two children. He entered the White House 22 months ago and is expected to leave after the election. He arrived in the wake of sweeping Democratic losses in the 2010 midterms, which were seen as a rejection of Mr. Obama's first two years in office.

现年45岁的普拉夫已经在华盛顿政界工作了20多年，他现在与妻子及两个孩子居住在首都。普拉夫22个月前进入白宫，预计总统大选结束后将会离开。他是民主党在2010年的中期选举中大败后来到白宫的，外界将民主党此次的失败视为选民对奥巴马入主白宫后头两年工作的否定。

He took control of anything connected to communications and outreach, said current and former senior White House officials. Internal polling and focus grouping went through Mr. Plouffe, officials said. He installed his own lieutenant, Jon Carson, to commandeer outreach efforts. 'He kept a close eye on the dials,' said Jared Bernstein, a former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.

白宫的前任和现任高级官员们说，进入白宫后，普拉夫控制了白宫所有与沟通和外联有关的事务。这些官员说，内部意见调查和召开小组讨论会都要通过普拉夫进行。他安排自己的副手卡森(Jon Carson)来掌管外联工作。曾任副总统拜登(Joe Biden)的经济顾问的伯恩斯坦(Jared Bernstein)说，普拉夫密切关注着白宫的沟通联络工作。

In the spring of 2011, Mr. Plouffe began laying the groundwork for Mr. Obama's election-year argument about economic fairness and the middle class. 'It was very important to him that people understand…the importance of linking the benefits of health-care reform, financial reform, everything we were doing, to the well-being of the middle class,' said Mr. Bernstein.

2011年春天，普拉夫开始着手为奥巴马在大选之年有关经济公正和中产阶级的论述做准备。伯恩斯坦说，能让老百姓明白医疗改革、金融改革以及奥巴马政府所正从事的所有其他工作都与中产阶级的福祉有重要联系，这对普拉夫来说非常重要。

Mr. Plouffe set the stage with the president's jobs bill last September. The White House crafted a plan it knew would never pass Congress but was intended to make Republicans appear obstructionist, people familiar with the planning said.

普拉夫在这方面进行的准备工作是让奥巴马在去年9月拿出了创造就业法案。据知情人士说，白宫知道它提出的这项法案肯定无法被国会通过，它制定这项法案的意图就是要让共和党人在公众眼里成为故意妨碍合理议案通过的人。

Mr. Plouffe was the tip of the spear on another key decision: pinning Mr. Romney with the pejorative political label of having 'no core'─designed to cast him as a flip-flopper. And after the GOP primaries, he was the first to say Mr. Romney's core had been filled in with conservative positions.

普拉夫也是推动奥巴马另一项重要决策的急先锋。这项决策就是在选战中给罗姆尼牢牢贴上“没有定见的贬损性政治标签，此举旨在将他塑造成一个政见前后不一的人。在共和党的党内初选后，普拉夫第一个站出来说罗姆尼的核心政见充满保守派立常

Spindly thin and intensely focused, Mr. Plouffe often stands in the back of Mr. Obama's events, observing his performance. He bombards other senior advisers with what they call 'Plouffe notes'─emails with ideas about where to go, what do to, what he has read.

身材瘦高的普拉夫在人群里很显眼，他常常承担奥巴马各种公开活动的幕后统筹协调工作，并密切关注着奥巴马的临场表现。他还会给奥巴马的其他高级顾问发邮件，阐述他对于应该向哪个方向努力、应该做什么以及对于他读过的一些材料的看法。这些顾问们称他发来的邮件为“普拉夫便条。

The president has a close relationship with his adviser, but they're not chummy. He's not one of the aides Mr. Obama turns to for a game of Scrabble on his iPad while on Air Force One. Their interactions focus on the race. Said a former senior White House official: 'He really enjoys Plouffe, but it's like if you have a lawyer or an accountant you really trust.'

奥巴马与普拉夫关系密切但不亲密。他不属于那种奥巴马乘坐空军一号(Air Force One)外出时会被拉过来与奥巴马在iPad上玩拼字游戏的人。他们二人的互动都集中在总统选战事务上。一位前白宫高级顾问说，奥巴马真的很欣赏普拉夫，但普拉夫在他眼里就像是一个真正值得信赖的律师或会计师。