David Axelrod (‘72) has been interested in politics since he was five years old. From a modest start as a volunteer for political campaigns, he has become one of the top political minds in the country. Now as Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama, he can lay claim to an office next to Obama’s private study.

Axelrod met Obama in 1992 through Democratic activist Betty Saltzman, who told her friends that she believed Obama would become the first black president. Axelrod, then a political consultant, took Obama on as a client a few years later and worked on Obama’s 2004 senate campaign before signing on as Chief Strategist for Obama’s presidential campaign.

As Chief Strategist, Axelrod was responsible for crafting much of Obama’s message, especially his appeal to young people.

“When we first started to talk about the campaign, Senator Obama and I talked about how there hadn’t been a campaign that really stirred idealism, particularly in young people, for 40 years, when Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy had run for president,” Axelrod said. Both Obama and Axelrod thought “it would be great if we could stir some of that.” Axelrod advocated this type of strategy because when he was young, he was inspired by the campaigns of the 1960s. When Axelrod was five, his sister took him to see President John F. Kennedy speak near their home in lower Manhattan. She placed him on top of a mailbox so that he could see over the crowd.

“I looked around and I saw this huge crowd and this very charismatic guy and I thought ‘Wow, this must really be important,’” Axelrod said.

From that point on, Axelrod became very interested in politics. At nine years of age, he handed out flyers for Robert Kennedy’s senate campaign. He said that his teachers and classmates at Stuyvesant helped to further his interest in politics.

“It was a time of political ferment so there was a lot of political discussion back then, so that contributed to my political education,” Axelrod said. “And we spent a lot of time out of the classroom because it was during the Vietnam War. There was a lot of disruption, a lot of protests, so school was often closed.”

While at Stuyvesant, Axelrod was the editor of Caliper, the literary magazine. He was part of the Student Parent Teacher Committee, the forerunner of the Student Leadership Team, a member of the debate team, and he wrote for The Spectator.

“[Stuyvesant] was always a very interesting place. There were obviously a lot of very bright kids,” Axelrod said. “Also, a lot of great teachers. When I was there my English teacher left in the middle of the year and she was replaced by Frank McCourt, who ended up writing ‘Angela’s Ashes’ and becoming one of the great authors. But mostly I made a lot of great friends.”

After graduating from Stuyvesant, Axelrod attended the University of Chicago, where he studied political science. When he graduated from college he got a job at The Chicago Tribune as a political analyst, but after eight years left to manage Paul Simon’s campaign for senator of Illinois. He never returned to journalism, instead establishing his own political consulting firm, Axelrod & Associates, in Chicago.

It was around this same time that Obama met Axelrod. “He actually believes in what we’re doing, which actually makes him a bad consultant when he doesn’t believe in the candidate,” Obama said in an October 27, 2008 New York Times article. “And he’s a great consultant when he believes.”

Judging by the enormous success of Obama’s campaign, Axelrod had great faith in Obama. But Axelrod attributes much of the victory to the young people he and Obama had hoped to inspire.

“When so much of the Washington establishment was writing us off, I would go to Iowa and spend time with the young people who were working there for us and I always felt encouraged by that. And all over the county it was young people who turned out and cheered us on, who were knocking on the doors and who really drove those campaigns,” Axelrod said. “The young people […] were the energy, the spirit of our campaign.”

Still, Axelrod believes that students have the power to do even more, and he encourages them to become more involved in the political process. “You’re going to inherit this country, and the decisions we’re making now are going to affect your lives more than mine. So take some ownership of your own country and help steer it in the right direction,” he said. “If you’re interested in politics the best way to learn is to do. That’s what I did, you know. I volunteered and I worked my way up—and that’s the way to go.” Axelrod has worked his way to the top, but he cannot relax yet.

“We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track,” Axelrod said.

“And that means doing something about our dependence on oil, developing energy independence and clean energy. It means doing something about our healthcare system so healthcare is affordable for everyone who needs it. And it means doing something about our education system. [Obama] often says that the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow and that’s more true than ever. We need to make sure that every young person in the country is getting as good an education as you’re getting at Stuyvesant High School, and we have a-ways to go.”