David Axelrod’s new book is titled “Believer: My Forty Years in Politics.” If he had had his way, the title would have been “Believer: How My Idealism Survived Forty Years in Politics,” he told a packed Appellate Courtroom in Eckstein Hall during an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program Tuesday.

That option was too wordy in the eyes of the publisher, said Axelrod, the chief strategist for President Barack Obama’s successful runs for president in 2008 and 2012.

But in his visit to Marquette Law School, Axelrod emphasized his belief that good things can be accomplished through politics, an emphasis underscored by his current work as director of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, where one of his goals is to encourage young adults to get involved.

“We have the ability to shape our future, and the way we do it is through politics,” Axelrod told Gousha, the Law School’s distinguished fellow in law and public policy. “Politics at its best can make a great deal of difference,” he said. “It’s our opportunity to seize the wheel of history and, ever so gently because it’s hard to turn that wheel, turn it in the right direction.”