Former White House adviser Axelrod warns of racial 'fear' towards Obama

David Axelrod, the political strategist who helped Barack Obama secure two terms in the White House, has warned that racial "fear" and hostility towards the first black US president has infected American politics and is partly to blame for Republican intransigence in confronting the president's agenda.

In an interview before the release of his new autobiography, Axelrod spoke in frank terms about what he perceives as the corrosive influence of race in the Obama era.

The former White House adviser said "no other president" in US history had had a member of Congress shout at him in the middle of a major address - as Joe Wilson of South Carolina did in 2009 with his notorious "You lie!" rebuke - or face "persistent questions" about his American citizenship, as Obama did from the "birther" movement.

"The fact is, there are some people who are uncomfortable with the changing demographics of our country," Axelrod said. "To those people, Obama is a living symbol of something they fear, they don't like, and some of that has spilled into our politics."

During the course of back-to-back presidential campaigns as Obama's top strategist in 2008 and 2012, as well as during two years in the White House before turning to consulting and TV commentary, Axelrod generally kept his thoughts about race to himself. He didn't want to imply that all political opposition to Obama in Washington was race-based or that the president saw himself as a victim.

"I never talked about it because I never wanted to imply we were ascribing all opposition to race because much of it was just philosophical differences," Axelrod said.