Now Barack and Michelle were meeting with Wright’s successor at Trinity United, the Reverend Otis Moss III, and, in Obama’s words, “praying on what to do.” In these discussions, Michelle’s opinion prevailed. “You stand by your family, the people you love, no matter what,” she insisted, “and Reverend Wright is family.”
It would be another month before the Obamas finally resigned from the church, and then only after Father Michael Pfleger, a visiting Catholic priest, gave a sermon at Trinity United that mocked Hillary Clinton. “I really believe she always thought,” Pfleger said, “‘This is mine. I’m Bill’s wife. I’m white, and this is mine.’…Then out of nowhere came, “Hey, I’m Barack Obama,” and she said, “Oh, damn! Where did you come from? I’m white! I’m entitled! There’s a black man stealing my show!’” Then Pfleger, who is white, pretended to wipe tears from his face, mimicking Hillary’s emotion-charged remarks before the New Hampshire primary. “She wasn’t the only one crying,” Pfleger said. “There was a whole lot of white people crying.”
Once again, Barack and Michelle talked over what to do about Trinity United. This time, since the culprit was not Jeremiah Wright but a white priest, they agreed that they could leave the church without appearing to turn their backs on their pastor and the black community.
“I am deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger’s divisive, backward-looking rhetoric,” Barack said, making no reference to Wright’s similarly inflammatory statements. Submitting the Obamas’ formal letter of resignation from the church, Barack said, “This is not a decision I come to lightly. We do it with some sadness…. We don’t want to have the church subjected to the scrutiny that a presidential campaign legitimately undergoes.”
In the end, Barack and Michelle never repudiated or abandoned Wright per se—only certain sentiments he expressed, sentiments they insisted they had never actually heard him express in church. According to an acquaintance of the reverend, “Since they left the church, both Barack and Michelle have spoken to Reverend Wright several times. He is still a part of their lives.”
In the meantime, Barack and Hillary continued to battle it out for the nomination. On May 6, Hillary won in Indiana but lost the all-important North Carolina primary to Barack. “You did it,” Michelle told Barack as the results came in, assuring his nomination. “You did it.”
As she had for every victory and defeat, Michelle, this time clad in a pumpkin-colored dress and her trademark pearls, clasped hands with Barack and joined him onstage in North Carolina. “This fall, we intend to march forward as one Democratic Party, united by a common vision for this country,” he told the cheering crowd. “Because we all agree at this defining moment in history…we can’t afford to give John McCain the chance to serve out George Bush’s third term.”
Hillary, however, was not about to concede. Obama maintained his usual cool, but behind the scenes Michelle was seething. “Why doesn’t she just do the right thing and bow out gracefully?” Michelle asked. “There’s no reason for her to keep hangin’ on.”
It would be a month before Barack’s June 3 win in the Montana primary would trigger a mass migration of superdelegates to Obama’s camp, formally clinching the nomination for Barack. Even then, Hillary would refuse to admit defeat until her supporters told her the race was over in a conference call. Two days later, Hillary conceded via e-mail.
Now faced with defeating John McCain, Barack joked with Michelle about his chances. “Oh, great,” he said about how the matchup would be touted in the press, “war hero against snot-nosed rookie.”
In truth, Barack had been treated with kid gloves by the mainstream press—and he knew it. Over the course of the campaign, Barack—either with or without Michelle—would wind up on countless magazine covers, from Time (no fewer than fifteen times before the end of 2008), Newsweek, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, and the Atlantic to People, GQ, Men’s Vogue, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Men’s Health to Vibe, Parade, Esquire, Ebony, Rolling Stone, and Tiger Beat. With the rare exception, nearly every article portrayed him in glowing, almost messianic terms.
Michelle was not so fortunate. While her coverage was overwhelmingly positive, she came in for far more criticism than her husband. Columnist Michelle Malkin called Michelle “Barack’s bitter half,” while the conservative National Review ran a picture of a scowling Michelle on the cover under the heading “Mrs. Grievance.”
Even Obama-friendly Time, in an article titled “The War over Michelle Obama,” speculated that Barack’s wife “could be a liability as well as an asset. Her speeches can sound stark and stern compared with her husband’s roof raisers. He’s all about the promise; she’s more about the problem.”
None of this came as a surprise to Michelle’s brother, Craig, now the head basketball coach at Oregon State University. “When you get to the Final Four,” he said, “you aren’t going to run up against guys who say, ‘Well, we are happy to have gotten this far; you can have it.’”
Craig had no qualms about his sister’s ability to weather the storm. “In a funny way, she was raised to be in this position,” he said. “To be political, you have to care about what people think about you. We were raised the complete opposite.”
Still, it hardly helped matters when Fox News anchor E. D. Hill jokingly referred to the fist-pound greeting the Obamas used—taught to them by some of their younger staffers—as some sort of “terrorist fist-jab.” In the context of the lighthearted piece Hill was doing on the candidate’s body language, the offhand comment was clearly meant to be funny. Essentially an updated version of the high five, the fist-pound (also known as the “bump” or “dap”) was a staple on softball and soccer fields as well as basketball courts across the country.
Nevertheless, the “terrorist fist-jab” line gained traction, and soon the Internet was abuzz with rumors that videotape existed of Michelle railing against “whitey.” Michelle’s reaction to this particular fable was predictable. “Whitey? ‘Whitey’?” she said, utterly dumbfounded. “What is this, the seventies? I mean, come on. It’s not a word I would ever use.”
Barack was incensed. “If they think they’re going to make Michelle an issue in this campaign,” he said, “they should be careful because I find that unacceptable, the notion that you start attacking my wife or my family. These folks should lay off my wife.”
Righteous indignation aside, by June the campaign was casting about for new ways to make over Michelle’s image. Six months earlier, Michelle had turned down an invitation to appear on ABC’s popular daytime talk show The View because she would not cross a picket line during a lengthy writers’ strike. After Cindy McCain cohosted The View in April, Michelle told the show’s executive producer, Bill Geddie, that she wanted to do the same.
Now, two months after McCain’s appearance, Michelle needed the kind of exposure to a largely women’s audience that only a show like The View could provide. On June 18—the same day the New York Times ran a front-page story on Mrs. Obama’s perceived gaffes and ongoing efforts to “soften” her image—Michelle appeared on the show. Just as she had kidded with her husband not to “screw it up” right before his 2004 convention keynote speech, Barack called her up to offer words of advice before her debut on The View. “Be good,” he said.
No sooner had she been greeted with a standing ovation from the studio audience in New York than Michelle abruptly halted the proceedings. “I have to be greeted properly,” she said with a straight face. “Fist-bump, please.” She then pressed knuckles with cohosts Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, Joy Behar, and Sherri Shepherd.
When Walters asked her to address her critics, Michelle was eager to set the record straight about her claim that for the first time in her adult life she was proud of her country. “I am proud of my country, without a doubt,” she said. “I’m a girl who grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Chicago, and let me tell you, of course I’m proud. Nowhere but in America could my story be possible.”
Asked why she thou
ght there were as many negative stories about her in the press as there were positive stories about her husband, Michelle replied, “I wear my heart on my sleeve. There’s a level of passion there…that’s the risk that you take.” Another reason for all the controversy, she said, was the media’s appetite for controversy. “I fill up some space,” she said.
For the remainder of the hour-long show, a charming and relaxed Michelle talked about her marriage and her children, her fashion sense (“I stopped wearing panty hose a long time ago—it’s painful…put ’em on, rip ’em, it’s inconvenient”), and the many comparisons to Jackie Kennedy. She conceded that Hillary had been the victim of sexism (“People aren’t used to strong women. We don’t even know how to talk about ’em”), and even praised Hasselbeck, an outspoken supporter of John McCain, as “solid. She has great kids, she’s funny.”
Members of Barack’s staff who were watching the show live as it aired in New York burst into applause. If poll numbers were any indication, her View appearance and the mountain of press it received did much to improve the public’s perception of the woman who aspired to be America’s first black First Lady. Michelle’s turn on The View was also a boost for New York designer Donna Ricco. Even before the show was over, women were rushing out to buy Michelle’s off-the-rack sleeveless black-and-white print Ricco sundress. The price: $148.
For the next few weeks, Michelle, now sensitive to the fact that any verbal misstep could cost her husband support in a tight election, tossed aside her usual doom-and-gloom script. It wasn’t long, however, before the intemperate remarks of another Obama supporter were making headlines.
On July 8, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, unaware that his microphone was on as he waited to do a TV interview, whispered to his fellow guest that he was fed up with Barack “talkin’ down to black people. I wanna,” he added, “cut his nuts off.” To drive home his point, he clenched his teeth and made a slashing gesture with his right hand.
Jackson’s tasteless remark ignited a firestorm of controversy, and the reverend immediately called a televised news conference to apologize for what he conceded were his “hurtful” comments. His daughter Santita also apologized to her pal Michelle, although it was hardly necessary. “Hey,” Michelle cracked to another friend, “it’s not something I haven’t considered doing myself.”
As it turned out, that July both Barack and Michelle would find themselves taking more friendly fire. As her husband was about to depart on a long-planned tour of Europe and the Middle East designed to bolster his foreign policy credentials, Michelle’s favorite magazine—the New Yorker—ran a cover story on the Obamas that would unintentionally revive some of the old fears about them.
On the cover of the magazine’s July 21, 2008, issue, a cartoon by Barry Blitt depicted an Afro-topped, camouflage-wearing, AK-47-toting Michelle and her turbaned husband fist-bumping in the Oval Office while the American flag burned in the fireplace. Above the mantel: a portrait of Osama Bin Laden.
Although it was clearly a satirical swipe at some of the strange rumors that had swirled around the Obamas throughout the campaign, many failed to get the joke. Outraged readers of the liberal publication wrote in saying they were canceling their subscriptions. Both the Obama and McCain camps condemned the cover, claiming that most readers would find the cartoon “tasteless and offensive.”
For their part, Barack and Michelle could only shrug their shoulders. “Why would they do this?” asked Michelle, who knew that many would mistakenly interpret the cover as an endorsement of the charges of anti-Americanism that had been leveled against them in some quarters. “Unbelievable.” Still, it was not nearly as offensive as a Web site posting—also by someone who was apparently sympathetic to the Obamas—that showed Michelle being lynched. Under pressure, the Web site took it down.
Leaving Michelle and the kids at home, Barack headed off on his whirlwind five-day international tour, which included meetings with Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The climax of the tour was Barack’s speech to a cheering crowd of two hundred thousand at the Victory Column in Berlin. The comparisons to JFK’s stirring “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech were inevitable.
Back in Chicago for a couple of days, Barack made the most of this sliver of time he could carve out for his wife and children. He and Michelle clapped as the girls reenacted Kung Fu Panda on the living room floor, and listened patiently as seven-year-old Sasha practiced “Li’l Liza Jane” on the piano.
They ate a take-out lunch from Subway, played a quick game of Uno, and took time out of the day to pose for pictures on the living room couch. (When Sasha teased him about his thinning hair, Daddy shot back, “Well, you have no teeth!”) This was also the time when the kids would hit Daddy up for their one-dollar weekly allowance. “I’m out of town,” Barack explained, “so Malia will say, ‘Hey, you owe me ten weeks!’”
Of course, things were not entirely as they once were at 5046 South Greenwood Drive, where a discreet blue-and-white Obama for President sign had been placed on the front lawn. As a barefoot Sasha scampered outside, a Secret Service agent watching unobtrusively from the dining room whispered into the tiny walkie-talkie on his wrist: “Front porch.”
Barack had appointed his vice presidential search committee two days after clinching the nomination in June. But now, in the final few weeks leading up to the Democratic Convention in Denver, the most pressing question was: Would Barack pick Hillary to be his running mate?
Michelle, who had long insisted she was no policy wonk (“Please, I don’t have the time”), publicly insisted that she would have “nothing to do with” picking her husband’s running mate. “I don’t want it. A nominee gets to pick who he thinks will best complement him.”
In fact, according to a New York State Democratic Party official who was close to the selection process, “Michelle certainly played a role” in selecting her husband’s Vice President.
For all the talk of party unity, there were those in the Obama camp who still did not entirely trust the Clintons. But there was also a feeling that, given the fact that her husband would certainly be one of her chief counselors, Hillary could bring experience and no small degree of foreign policy credibility to the table.
The same could be said for thirty-five-year Senate veteran Joe Biden, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Although the names of Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, and Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius were floated as possible VP picks, Hillary and Biden were always at the top of the list. At one point, the Obama camp mulled over the idea of Hillary as Vice President with Biden as Secretary of State. When asked what he thought of such an arrangement, Biden made it clear that he was interested only in the vice presidential slot. Hillary, on the other hand, let it be known that she would rule nothing out.
In what may have been the deciding factor, Michelle sided with those who felt Hillary would make a better Secretary of State than a Vice President in an Obama administration. “Do you,” Michelle asked her husband at one point, “really want Bill and Hillary just down the hall from you in the White House? Could you live with that?”
On August 23, 2008, Barack announced his selection of Biden as his running mate via text message, e-mail, and on his Web site. Five days later at Denver’s Invesco Field football stadium, against a stylized Grecian temple backdrop (instantly dubbed “the Temple of Obama” by the McCain camp), Barack accepted the nomination before eighty-four thousand screaming supporters and a record-breaking television audience of forty million.
When he was finished, Michelle, dressed in a red and black shift, leaped onstage with Malia and Sasha. While the girls smiled and waved in their pink dresses, Michelle wrapped her arms around her husband. And, while the crowd roared, Barack nuzzled her cheek and kissed her.
I can’t believe you pulled this off.
—Michelle to Barack
Michelle is my chief counsel and adviser.
I would never make a big decision without asking her opinion.
—Barack
Michelle is totally in control. She is friendly but very stern and sharp—stern is the only way I know how to say it—and she is very involved in his decision making.
—Kim Lightford,
Barack’s friend and former State Senate colleague
They don’t seem to be fazed by anything.
—Barack on Malia and Sasha
Our girls are just complete comic relief.
—Michelle
8
Oh, come on,” Michelle said when she heard the news. “He’s got to be kidding.” It had been just twelve hours since her husband made history by accepting his party’s nomination. Now, on his seventy-second birthday, John McCain was making some history of his own by picking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate—and the first woman ever to appear on a Republican ticket.
Michelle’s stunned reaction to Palin’s selection was shared by Barack, his senior staff, and a sizable chunk of the American public. In fact, McCain had wanted to pick Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, a lifelong Democrat and Al Gore’s running mate in 2000, but was stopped by party leaders who felt Lieberman was too liberal. Instead, McCain, known for taking political risks, hastily picked the virtually unknown Palin.
The feisty forty-four-year-old self-described “average hockey mom” did manage to energize the GOP’s conservative base—something that McCain had failed to accomplish thus far—and to pique the nation’s curiosity. Four days after McCain introduced Palin to the nation, it was revealed that her seventeen-year-old daughter, Bristol, was unwed and pregnant. Even conservatives acknowledged that this was an embarrassment for the candidate, whose appeal was based in part on upholding traditional Christian values.
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