It was like the postelection victory lap for the brain trust. They successfully steered the president-elect clear of any major pitfalls along his journey to become president of the United States.</p><p>And by keeping President-elect Barack Obama on message, his advisers kept their shoulder to the wheel of history. They said as much last week in Washington during a postelection wrap-up.</p><p>Obama and his wife were in the nation&#8217;s capital last week with President George W. Bush, checking out the new digs at the White House. Members of the Trotter Group, a collection of black columnists from across the nation, held their annual meeting in Washington at the same time and were given access to Obama&#8217;s top legal minds.</p><p>One of them was Mark Alexander, a senior adviser to the campaign. Alexander has been mentioned as a possible pick for White House counsel. Last week, he was reflecting on what went right during the campaign, and looking forward to the job at hand.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s going to be hard work that will take a lot of effort,&#8221; Alexander said. &#8220;Nothing will come simply within the first 100 days. There&#8217;s a lot of hard work that will need to take place over many years. What I hope is that we&#8217;ve ushered in an entirely new era in which politics has changed.&#8221;</p><p>Alexander went on to describe how he believes Obama defeated Sen. John McCain. After winning the Democratic primary, Obama showed voters he could hold his own against McCain in the debates, a critical turning point in the campaign.</p><p>The selection of Sen. Joe Biden as Obama&#8217;s vice presidential running mate, he believes, was another.</p><p>&#8220;That was a defining moment,&#8221; Alexander said of the selection of Biden. &#8220;I firmly believed that Senator Obama showed something in picking him. Once the nomination was sewn up, we also had to have a convention that brought everyone together and showcased the Democratic Party for the entire nation. To me, those were things that had to be done.&#8221;</p><p>When the economy imploded near the end of the campaign, Obama&#8217;s staff treated the crisis as if it were a question in the bonus round of a game show.</p><p>&#8220;That moment gave us yet another moment to showcase how different Barack Obama would be as president,&#8221; Alexander said. &#8220;As with all campaigns, that was something that wasn&#8217;t anticipated. I&#8217;m biased. But on a whole, I think the comparison was extremely favorable to Barack Obama.&#8221;</p><p>We also interviewed Mike Strautmanis, one of Obama&#8217;s close friends, who serves as the senior adviser and chief counsel to the president-elect. Strautmanis pointed out that critics once argued that Obama would have problems drawing female voters as well as Hispanics, both fallacies.</p><p>His opponents also warned &#8212; inaccurately &#8212; that he couldn&#8217;t win traditionally Republican Ohio and could even lose Pennsylvania, a Democratic stronghold. Strautmanis credits young volunteers with helping the campaign overcome those obstacles through their use of text-messaging and mass e-mail.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m thrilled with not only the diversity of the message, but also the diversity of the talent,&#8221; Strautmanis said. Serving the president-elect, he said, has been &#8220;the challenge of a lifetime.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Barack is the person whose name will be on all the stationery,&#8221; Strautmanis said. &#8220;His picture will be in all the buildings. I&#8217;ll take his lead and wait for his counsel and guidance. I was too young to participate in the civil rights movement. The question was, what would be my challenge? How do I put my shoulder to the wheel of history? This is it,&#8221; he said as tears flowed down his face.</p><p>It wasn&#8217;t hard to read into that show of emotion.</p><p>Obama would be wise to keep the continuity of such impassioned aides. He needs to keep top advisers such as Valerie Jarrett, Strautmanis and Alexander around him after the inauguration. He&#8217;ll need their sage wisdom during his stay at the White House even more than he needed it on the campaign trail.