It draws heavily on Stanage's eye-witness campaign trail reporting, including interviews with key Obama advisers, old friends and grassroots volunteers.

Obama advisers who left the White House recently have been struck how different, and worse, things look from the outside.

The Obama adviser said, "There's almost an inevitability or gravitational force that pulls Holbrooke into relevant circles, because he makes himself indispensable."

Obama advisers said the smallest businesses would be exempt from this requirement.

Obama advisers described the Geffen remarks as an insignificant blip and said they saw no political danger in letting them stand.

Obama advisers acknowledge as much.

The biggest miscalculation in the minds of most Obama advisers was the assumption that he could bridge a polarized capital and forge genuinely bipartisan coalitions.

But Obama advisers feared that her plans would appear ostentatious at a time when the US economy was in the doldrums.

Summers's departure follows those of two other top Obama economic advisers, Peter Orszag and Christina Romer.

As several Obama advisers put it, Obama "wanted Larry's brain."