Axelrod Sets More Combative Tone for Obama in 2012 CHICAGO - Almost exactly four years ago, when President Obama was on the cusp of winning the White House, he spoke emotionally about David Axelrod, the strategist who guided him from the Illinois State Senate to the pinnacle of national politics. He praised Mr. Axelrod for his "basic take" on "how politics should be able to draw on our best and not our worst." Mr. Axelrod talking to reporters in Boca Raton, Fla., after the final presidential debate. Friends said he took the first debate harder than he let on. The other day, toward the bitter end of one of the most negatively fought presidential campaigns in modern memory, Mr. Axelrod was asked over breakfast here how that whole thing had turned out. I mean, look, what's the old expression? "Politics isn't beanbag," " Mr. Axelrod said, digging into a greasy egg dish he knew he shouldn't have ordered but, well, it's nearly the end and sometimes stress must be fed. Noting that both campaigns have their share of political warriors, he added, "There are no ingénues in this battle." For more than a decade, Mr. Axelrod and Mr. Obama have formed one of the most famous partnerships in presidential politics, like those of Karl Rove and George W. Bush, Michael K. Deaver and Ronald Reagan, and James A. Farley and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Where Mr. Axelrod honed and protected the idealism that defined Mr. Obama's 2008 campaign, he has been an important force driving the combativeness of Mr. Obama's campaign of 2012, embodying how their hope to change the system has given way to a more traditional reliance on partisan muscle in this, their final campaign together. It is through Mr. Axelrod that the story of Mr. Obama's perhaps inevitable evolution can best be tracked. Those who know Mr. Axelrod say that he, like Mr. Obama, is a man of ideals but also a street fighter who wants to win - and has proved himself willing to take off the gloves in these closing weeks of the campaign to protect his friend's legacy before Mr. Axelrod heads off to start an academic institute dedicated to his craft at the University of Chicago. On any given day his mustachioed face can be seen on national television calling Mr. Romney the "most secretive" candidate since Richard M. Nixon, an "outsourcer in chief" and, more recently, "a parrot." Making fun this week of Mr. Romney's bid to make last-minute inroads in the perceived Obama strongholds of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota, he promised on the MSNBC program "Morning Joe" to "shave off my mustache of 40 years if we lose any of those three states." A joke but also a statement of how personally Mr. Axelrod takes Mr. Obama's re-election, the failure of which would bring a crushing end to what had been the pride of Mr. Axelrod's career, shepherding to the White House the nation's first African-American president. Friends said that he took Mr. Obama's widely panned showing in the first presidential debate this year harder than he let on, "carrying the weight of it," as one colleague put it in an interview this week, and redoubled his efforts to ensure Mr. Obama brought more focus the second time. Yet Mr. Axelrod also gets credit for playing a critical role in bringing Mr. Obama as far as he did until then, overcoming so much drag from the slowly recovering economy. He and his colleagues did that in large part through a long-running and hard-hitting campaign to cast Mr. Romney as a job-killing plutocrat while promoting Mr. Obama as the true champion of the middle class. "David enjoys it all the time, playing hardball politics," said William Daley, the former White House chief of staff who helped recruit Mr. Axelrod some 25 years ago to run his brother Richard's first successful mayoral race. Speaking of the president, Mr. Daley added, "When he's got to do it, he can do it, and enjoy it." Mr. Axelrod bristles at such descriptions. And when asked if his approach has helped open the campaign to charges that it has abandoned its promises of high-minded politics, Mr. Axelrod can show flashes of indignation, arguing that Mr. Obama's opponents have played a role since the primaries, if not since the start of his presidency.