Even so, what emerges is important: a portrait of political campaigning that is more like what we hope than what we fear, that rises above the machinations and muck. Almost a decade ago, Joe Klein wrote a memorable book, “Politics Lost,” savaging the “pollster-consultant industrial complex.” He opened with Bobby Kennedy’s stirring, impromptu speech at a campaign rally the night of Martin Luther King’s assassination. That speech, Klein said, was the last high point of political campaigning. Strikingly, Axelrod returns to that same night and writes again and again of how he wants to restore Kennedy’s aspirational politics.

Axelrod is not above sharp jabs and hard-nosed politics. He is, after all, from Chicago. But over the course of 40 years and 150 campaigns, he has earned a reputation on both sides as one of the good guys. Family tragedies along the way — especially his daughter’s epilepsy, which began in her infancy — have also kept him grounded.

Obama doesn’t always walk on water in this account, but he comes close: high-minded, reflective, unruffled. He and Axelrod have occasional blowups in which Obama is condescending and sometimes profane; Obama also keeps an emotional distance. But the two smooth things over quickly and move on. Unlike some other Obama-insider memoirists, Axelrod chooses not to dis. (One mystery: Why does one of the most powerful people around Obama, Valerie Jarrett, virtually disappear here? What is Axelrod not telling us?)

But there are prices to be paid for writing with devoted loyalty. For one thing, Obama emerges as two-dimensional. He, like most presidents, is an unusually complicated person. But given how consequential his presidency is, one would like to understand him far better than we do.

Axelrod also shies away from the hard questions of why President Obama has fallen short of the dreams inspired by Candidate Obama. Instead, he makes a stout defense — indeed, the best I have read — of the Obama years. He believes Obama inherited the worst mess of any modern president and accomplished more in his first years than anyone since Lyndon Johnson. As for Obama’s losing some of his fizz, Axelrod says, that’s because governing is tougher than campaigning.

Fair enough, but one day down the road, an Obama confidant must explain why he connected so movingly as a candidate but, to many of his supporters, seems emotionally remote today. Why did a man with a grand strategy for campaigning lack one for governing, especially overseas? Why did he put together a superb team in his presidential campaign but not in the White House? Why has he allowed that same White House team to marginalize so many talented cabinet officers? Why? Why?

The person who can best answer sits in the Oval Office. Judging from his first book, Obama has the talent to write the best presidential memoir in modern times. It is worth waiting for. But for now, David Axelrod has written a highly readable, uplifting account of the candidate he loves — and, reassuringly, has shown politics can still be a calling, not a business.