Cutter appears in combative YouTube campaign videos. | POLITICO screen grabs The 1-woman rapid response team

If you think you’re seeing Stephanie Cutter everywhere these days, you would be right.

There she is after the recent Supreme Court ruling accusing Mitt Romney of not being truthful about his position on health care reform, dueling with Republican heavyweights on national television, giving the Obama-bashing Koch brothers the back of the hand on one her many YouTube videos, and presiding over the Obama campaign’s controversial assaults on Romney’s corporate career.


In the blink of an eye, the unrelenting Democratic strategist and deputy campaign manager has emerged as the ubiquitous face and trenchant voice of the Obama operation — a one-woman rapid response squad flooding the zones on cable, YouTube and the Sunday news shows.

( Also on POLITICO: 7 unscripted lines from Obama's bus tour)

She’s considered one of the campaign’s few dependable voices at a time when the Obama team can’t seem to manage its free-wheeling surrogates like Bill Clinton, and when some Democrats worry that the campaign is not doing enough to put forth a clear, forward-looking message.

“Stephanie Cutter is arguably the strongest player on either side out there now,” said Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, who was her opposite number on the 2004 race between George W. Bush and John Kerry, and later during two Supreme Court nominations skirmishes “She is a very, very good on TV as a messenger for the campaign.”

That Cutter has emerged as one of the most prominent voices in the party, and one of its top strategists and crisis managers, is remarkable given where she was eight years ago, a time when many thought her career in politics had crashed. After a tumultuous ride as communications director for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential effort, she was all but written off by many operatives and journalists who saw her as a difficult and surly personality in a failed campaign. She became a convenient scapegoat for the campaign’s many shortcomings.

Friends and political opponents alike say her return to the front lines is a testament to her raw talent, tenacity and discipline. “No one who was ever an opponent of Stephanie Cutter has come away with anything other than an abiding respect,” says Schmidt.

“She is a terrific surrogate because she distills the president’s message — and contrasts it with Romney’s — in a way that resonates with the national media, and that the average person understands,” says presidential adviser David Plouffe. “She’s very aggressive about seeing an opportunity and moving fast.”

Today, Cutter’s Kerry experience largely seems a distant memory and she is considered a powerful Obama insider in a tight-knit group that hasn’t let in many outsiders. Her champions start with President Barack Obama himself, who personally prevailed upon her twice to stay on in various White House jobs when she was thinking of leaving. In 2008, it was Cutter who was brought on to the campaign by senior officials Anita Dunn and David Axelrod to help Michelle Obama overcome her battered image. White House aides say Cutter and Obama’s similar no-nonsense styles instantly clicked, and Cutter is widely credited with enabling the first lady to transform into a hugely popular role model.

Known to be tireless, methodical, and in-your-face at times, Cutter seems to have found her perfect job after two decades in politics. She moved to Chicago last year, leaving her post as a senior White House adviser to become a deputy Obama campaign manager overseeing media and strategic messaging. Her footprint can be found throughout every aspect of the campaign, say sources — from the biting television ads attacking Romney to six-page missives disputing stories.

Some of her combative YouTube videos taking on the opposition have generated huge traffic. “She wanted a more prominent role and we felt we needed her in a more prominent role,” says David Axelrod, the senior Obama strategist who worked closely with Cutter in the White House.

“Look, I met with her every single day in the last year and found her to be an uncanny counselor. She always had great advice on how to present things internally and externally. … She’s just invaluable and very effective.”

As an indicator of just how effective, Romney campaign officials privately grouse about her, and have tried to diminish her. On a recent Sunday news show, Romney’s top confidant Eric Fehrnstrom — of Etch-A-Sketch fame— anxiously shook his head when she was making her points about his boss. Though seated beside her, he never looked at her. Crossroads GPS, the stout GOP super PAC supported by Karl Rove, quickly launched a YouTube response to her video attacking Rove — with Crossroads’ leader Steven Law talking to her picture on a screen.

One of her greatest strengths, colleagues say, is her ability to develop a comprehensive strategic plan on paper — and then doggedly implement it. In the face of second-guessing from the likes of Clinton and Newark Mayor Cory Booker, for instance, Cutter has remained a driving force on the campaign’s decision to attack Romney’s work at Bain Capital. A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed the ads were resonating in battleground states.

“There are a lot of good ideas and bad ideas in politics. What makes her a standout is that she executes the good ones — which is rarer,” says Plouffe, who worked closely with her in the 2008 campaign and in the White House.

Cutter grew up in Massachusetts and started her career in Washington right out of Smith College as a junior staff aide for then-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo in Washington. She worked at the Environmental Protection Agency in the 90s, while earning her law degree from Georgetown — and she’s held just about every relevant press job in Washington from the Clinton White House to the DNC.

In 2001, she was hired as a spokesman for her home state senator, Edward Kennedy, who ultimately recommended her to Kerry for his presidential campaign. Along the way, Cutter became friends with a group of politico girlfriends who have each other’s backs and are fiercely loyal to her — operatives like former White House and DNC aide Karen Finney, Julianna Smoot, the Obama campaign fundraiser with whom Cutter went to college, communications adviser Debra Deshong Reed, Vice President Joe Biden’s communications director Shailagh Murray, and White House aide Alyssa Mastromonaco.

Cutter declined to give an interview for this story, but her friends say that the Kerry campaign and its aftermath was a tough time. Many who covered that campaign saw plenty of blame to go around in a chaotic operation with multiple power centers and egos that didn’t serve the candidate well, though others felt Cutter earned her negative reviews.

Still, fairly or not, Cutter became the lightning rod, a dynamic that culminated in a famously vicious — and some argued sexist — article in Newsweek in 2004 that went so far as to attack her wardrobe among other things.

“The criticism of her was unfair, incorrect and pejorative — I’d have her on my team any day,” said Kerry in an interview. “She came on board when it was very tough and she helped us claw back.”

One of the many mistakes she was blamed for was Kerry’s slow response to the unyielding attacks on his military service by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In reality, Cutter had pushed for a hard-hitting rapid response.

Says Kerry: “She’s an enormously effective firefighter and totally gets the rapid response that is needed in modern politics. … Listen, in the end, I’m the one that was responsible for making sure my life and my record was reflected correctly. I thought we had done enough, but obviously we hadn’t.”

As Kerry gave his painful concession speech at Faneuil Hall in Boston, Kennedy came bounding over to Cutter, standing glumly in the sidelines. “Your job is waiting for you,” his wife Vicki recalls him telling her.

And according to Cutter friends, Kennedy also said to her: “You need to heal.”

“My husband adored her and trusted her judgment without reservation,” says Vicki Kennedy, who calls Cutter a friend.

Soon after the election, Cutter worked to repair her relationships with journalists. These days, few would dispute that she enjoys a solid reputation among influential political reporters who view her as informed and smart. But to be clear: this is not to say she has abandoned the withering “that’s such a stupid question” look of disapproval, or her aggressive push back on story lines she sees as a negative.

She stayed on Kennedy’s staff for two years before forming her own communications business in 2006 — but she was never far from his reach. When Kennedy fell ill in May 2008 at his home in Hyannis Port with what would turn out to be a deadly brain tumor, Cutter was the first call his wife made after dialing 911.

A month later she joined the Obama campaign; and immediately following the election, Cutter shifted to the transition office to handle the massive media demands surrounding the first African-American president-elect. Although Obama’s inner circle was impressed by her work on the campaign, those closest to the president resisted giving her the one White House job she wanted — communications director — for reasons that are unclear.

Instead, Cutter was dispatched to the Treasury Department to manage Timothy Geithner’s confirmation hearings, and to serve as his spokesman during those chaotic early days when the economy was in freefall.

Eight months later, she was ready to return to her communications company when she found herself in the Oval Office discussing with the president what role she could play in the White House. He asked her to stay on as a consultant to oversee the high-wire politics and messaging of his first Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. By the fall of 2009, Cutter was settled into a fellowship at Harvard’s Institute of Politics when the White House came calling again. The first lady’s office was struggling with the launch of Let’s Move! — her signature health initiative — and Michelle Obama’s chief of staff reached out to Cutter for advice. “She had so many good ideas and she knew exactly what to dom so finally I said, “Will you come in January and do it with us?” says Susan Sher. “She takes charge and it’s backed by intellect and enormous hard work. She wrote a memo and we executed it.”

Sher said she gives Cutter credit for coming up with the idea to solicit support from Mike Huckabee, the former Republican governor of Arkansas who had lost 100 pounds, to head-off criticism from conservatives.

Shortly after Let’s Move! was launched, the president prevailed upon her once again to stay — this time in a high-level staff position.

Over the years, those who know Cutter well say that she has mellowed, but the laser focus and take-no-prisoners intensity have not abated.

One former administration official who worked with her at Treasury, and who holds her in high esteem tells this story:

“I thought she didn’t like me. It was a very intense time and we were in triage, and she would snap at me. But I realized it wasn’t about me. She’s a closer. She executes and moves forward. … Her judgment and message always turned out to be spot on.

“So I’ve basically concluded that her skills far outweigh any issue people might have with her style. She is very good at what she does.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misspelled the first name of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Bryan Doyle @ 07/08/2012 03:34 PM CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misspelled the first name of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.