David Axelrod, senior Adviser to President Barrack Obama, spoke to a nearly sold out crowd in the Flint Center on Jan. 25 as part of the Celebrity Forum Speakers Series.

Axelrod has been senior adviser since the beginning of President Obama’s administration. Former Foothill College vice president Richard L. Henning called him “the architect behind Obama’s improbable four-year march from the Illinois State Senate to the White House.” 

The main focus of the evening’s event was spent recounting anecdotes of working closely with the president, offering personal insight on our nation’s leader. Axelrod also reminisced about the events that inspired him to go into journalism in 1977. At the age of 27, Axelrod worked for the Chicago Tribune and left for politics in 1984.

Axelrod opened up to the audience by sharing how moved he was by the president’s campaign for affordable healthcare. He said his daughter has epilepsy and his family’s HMO refused to cover the associated expenses. 

“They wouldn’t pay for the medications she needed to keep herself alive so I was paying $8,000 to $10,000 out of pocket each year on a $40,000 salary,” Axelrod said. “We couldn’t get other insurance because she had a preexisting condition and we almost went broke.” 

He said he cried the night the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed.

“I knew that in the future others wouldn’t have to go through what we went through because of what we had done together on that night,” said Axelrod. “And that ultimately is the payoff of this work. That’s why we do the work, to make that kind of difference.” 

Axelrod is preparing to step down from his position as the president’s senior adviser and return to the University of Chicago to head up the Institute of Politics. 

“There is nothing I can do in politics that can parallel or match this journey I’ve taken with the president, and what I’d like to do now is try to inspire other people to get into the arena,” said Axelrod. “I think that’s particularly important now because there’s such cynicism about the political process.” 

Axelrod said his father, who was a psychologist and avid baseball fan, immigrated to the United States from eastern Europe at a young age. On July 5, ju2009, the eve of what would have been his father’s 99th birthday, Axelrod found himself in Moscow with the president listening to the Russian army’s band playing the U.S. national anthem.

Axelrod found the fact that his father’s son had returned to Eastern Europe as a senior advisor to the president to be an affirmation of his father’s faith in the U.S.

“It’s very easy to get depressed and get down about the state of things, but this is a special country, there is something that binds us that is really extraordinary and important and worth fighting for and worth preserving,” Axelrod said. “And that is one reason why I still remain an optimist despite it all and I hope that all of you are as well.” 

He exited the stage to a standing ovation from the audience. 

Future speakers for the Celebrity Forum Speakers Series include a trio of presenters — Peter Sagal, P.J. O’ Rourke, and Mo Rocca — from National Public Radio’s news-themed quiz program “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me;” famed marine biologist Jean-Michel Cousteau and Frank Abagnale, the man who inspired the 2002 film “Catch Me If You Can.”