Barack and Michelle

by Christopher Andersen

  With that budget in mind, she called on Los Angeles designer Michael Smith, who numbered among his celebrity clients Steven Spielberg, Dustin Hoffman, and Cher. “Michael shares my vision for creating a family-friendly feel for our new home,” Michelle said, “and incorporating new perspectives from some of America’s greatest artists and designers.” She also urged Smith to enlist some of her favorite American retailers to create a new look for the White House—namely, Target, Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, and Restoration Hardware.

  That first full day in office, it became clear that more than just the White House decor was in need of a redo. To quiet constitutional scholars who were claiming that the oath had been read incorrectly and therefore was invalid, Chief Justice Roberts read-ministered the oath at 7:35 P.M. in the White House Map Room.

  “Are you ready to take the oath?” Roberts asked Barack.

  “I am,” he answered. “And we’re going to do it very slowly.”

  Only nine people were in the Map Room to witness the do-over—four aides, four reporters, and a White House photographer. This time, Barack raised his right hand but did not use a Bible.

  “Congratulations again,” Roberts said.

  “Thank you, sir,” the now duly-sworn President replied.

  Sensitive to Roberts’s feelings, Barack became visibly angry when Vice President Biden poked fun at the Chief Justice during a White House ceremony. Biden later apologized. “He is always in control,” Abner Mikva said of Obama, “but you can tell when the President is angry. He clenches his fist. I’ve certainly seen him clench his fist on occasion.”

  Over the next few weeks, America’s new First Family would settle into the kind of comfortable family routine that in the past they had enjoyed only sporadically. Now Barack and Michelle exercised together in the Executive Mansion’s private gym, and then had breakfast with the kids.

  Like Laura Bush—and unlike Hillary, who as First Lady operated alongside her husband in the West Wing—Michelle followed tradition by maintaining her offices in the residential East Wing. Rather than texting her husband—the Obamas have two BlackBerrys each—during the day, Michelle would stroll over to the Oval Office to share news about her day.

  Now they were having dinners together as a family nearly every night, and for the first time in recent memory, Dad was actually tucking the girls into bed. “We haven’t had that kind of time together for years,” Michelle said, “so that explains a lot why we all feel so good in this space.”

  Realizing that hers was the youngest family in the White House since the Kennedys, Michelle borrowed a page from Jackie when it came to child rearing. Like Jackie, who asked the White House staff not to spoil her children and even told Secret Service agents to back off when she took the kids to the beach (“Drowning is my responsibility,” Jackie told them), Michelle also instructed the staff to step back a little.

  According to Mrs. Obama, the staff wants “to make your life easy”—but “when you have small kids…they don’t need their lives to be easy. They’re kids.” So Malia and Sasha would have the same chores they always had—tidying up their rooms, clearing their dishes from the table, making their beds (“Doesn’t have to look good—just throw the sheet over it,” Mom said). So that the girls would feel right at home, their parents told them they had the run of the White House—including the right to drop in to the Oval Office to see Dad. The novelty wore off quickly. When Michelle asked the girls if they wanted to go outside and see Dad’s helicopter land on the South Lawn, Malia shrugged, “We’ve already seen it.”

  The first daughters were more interested in the new thirty-five-hundred-dollar cedar-and-redwood swing set their parents had installed for them on the lawn just outside the Oval Office. While sharpshooters watched from their perch atop the White House roof and Secret Service agents kept a watchful eye from various positions on the grounds of the Executive Mansion, Malia, Sasha, and a handful of new friends from school laughed and screamed as they tried out the set’s four swings, slide, fort, and climbing wall. One detail distinguished theirs from other swing sets: a picnic table featuring brass plates engraved with the names of all forty-four Presidents—including Dad.

  As much fun as their new made-to-order playground equipment was, it did not succeed in taking the girls’ eyes off the ultimate prize: a new puppy. After what amounted to a national poll on what constituted the proper breed for a new First Dog, the Obamas would eventually settle on a spirited six-month-old black-and-white curly-haired Portuguese water dog distantly related to Ted Kennedy’s dog, Splash. Malia and Sasha promptly changed their new dog’s name from Charlie to Bo.

  Within days of moving into the Executive Mansion, Michelle reached out to the surrounding community just as she had in Chicago. Visiting a primary school with her husband, she announced, “They’ve let us out!” Later, she dropped in at the Interior Department to meet with Native Americans, read to children at a Washington day care center, and brought a magnolia tree seedling to USDA workers at the Department of Agriculture. Quietly, she got to know her children’s schoolmates and teachers.

  At dinner every night in the family quarters of the White House, Barack and Michelle kicked off the conversation with a little game they had played for years. It was called Roses and Thorns, and involved each member sharing the rose and thorn they had experienced that day. Aware of the mounting crises the President was facing, Malia said, “Dad, you seem to have a pretty thorny job.”

  Her parents laughed. “Yes,” Barack allowed, “you could say that.” Michelle, on the other hand, felt her days were overwhelmingly “rosy.” Ironically enough, winning the presidency had also meant winning something akin to the genuine family life Michelle had always craved. And while she no longer badgered Barack about chores, he was expected to walk Bo at 10:00 P.M., just as she was expected to walk the dog first thing in the morning.

  Of course, none of their lives would ever really be normal again. Among other things, from now on they would be constantly shadowed by the Secret Service. Curiously, the Obamas’ romantic-sounding Secret Service code names faintly echoed those given to the Kennedys. Where the Kennedys were Lancer (for JFK), Lace ( Jackie), Lyric (Caroline), and Lark ( John junior), the Obamas were Renegade (the President), Renaissance (Michelle), Radiance (Malia), and Rosebud (Sasha).

  The comparisons with that other first family would persist, although Barack and Michelle both chafed at the notion that they were ushering in a new Camelot. “Jackie Kennedy was wonderful and I admire her greatly,” Michelle said, “but believe me, I’m no Jackie Kennedy.”

  To be sure, at forty-five Michelle was fully fourteen years older than Jackie when she became First Lady in 1961. Still, more than any First Lady in recent memory, the tall, leggy, well-put-together Michelle had already established herself as a new kind of style icon—one whose tastes ran from the trendiest designers to clothes plucked off the rack at Target and J. Crew. “She’s always loved clothes,” said her friend Cheryl Rucker-Whitaker. “She loves purses, she loves getting a manicure, getting her hair done. She really is a girly girl.” Michelle’s favorite drink (Jackie’s, too): champagne.

  Quick to deny that she was a “fashionista,” Michelle, who routinely showed off her well-toned arms in sleeveless dresses and tops, nevertheless confessed that she liked dressing up in evening gowns and “feeling pretty for [her] husband.” Her decision to pose for the cover of Vogue even before her husband took office was motivated by a desire to set an example for her “daughters and little girls just like them, who haven’t seen themselves represented in these magazines.”

  At her first formal function at the White House, the annual ball honoring the nation’s governors, Michelle asked her mother’s help in selecting the menu, making sure that they served Barack’s favorite dessert—huckleberry cobbler. Michelle also decided to break with tradition by mixing and matching pieces from various sets of china used by previous administrations.

  “We laugh at ourselves a lot. We laugh at just
the amazement that we’re here,” conceded Valerie Jarrett, who as Senior Adviser and Assistant to the President now occupied the second-floor office in the West Wing that once belonged to Hillary Clinton and later to George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove. “Like, can’t you just pinch yourself?” (Not all of the Obamas’ old friends were welcome at the White House. Jeremiah Wright complained that “them Jews” allegedly surrounding the new President were keeping the two men apart. Wright later apologized, explaining that he really should have used the word “Zionists” instead.)

  With her husband away on his first official trip to Canada in February, Michelle invited Jarrett and other female staff members to a girls-only screening of the romantic comedy He’s Just Not That Into You. “She just kicked off her shoes and curled up with popcorn and drooled over Ben Affleck like the rest of us,” said one of the guests. “She has this big, wonderful laugh.”

  The Obamas got the chance to unwind with old friends at Camp David, the presidential retreat seventy miles northwest of Washington in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains, where they continued their spring-break tradition of competing in a talent show. Michelle showed off her ability to keep two hula hoops going more or less indefinitely; the President joined with several buddies to belt out a passable rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “You Are the Sunshine of My Life.”

  Michelle was equally at ease when, during the Obamas’ first official trip to Europe in April of 2009, Queen Elizabeth II shattered precedent by putting her arm around America’s First Lady—and then lingered while Michelle reciprocated with a warm hug. Given the fact that the Queen had never been seen indulging in a single display of public affection—not even with members of her immediate family—the embrace between Her Majesty and Michelle set off a media frenzy in Britain.

  While several tabloids decried what they viewed as a shocking breach of protocol, the Times of London called the royal hug a singularly “touching moment.” Buckingham Palace concurred. “This was,” a palace spokesman said, “a mutual and spontaneous display of affection and appreciation between the Queen and Michelle Obama.” The two women would actually forge a bond of friendship in the coming months, sharing their thoughts on everything from child rearing to organic gardening via written correspondence, e-mails, and the occasional phone call. The following June, Michelle, Malia, and Sasha would join the Queen for a private tea at Buckingham Palace.

  Over the next several days, Michelle was hailed in the press as “the new Jackie Kennedy” as she and Barack traveled from England to France and then on to Germany. By the time they reached the Czech Republic, Barack decided to forgo an official meeting with that country’s leaders—who strongly opposed his economic policies—in favor of a “quiet, romantic dinner with my wife.”

  Back at the White House, the President proved to be no less attentive. At least once a day, he took a break and returned to the residence for what he called “Michelle time.”

  As comfortable as Michelle now seemed in her new role as First Lady, even she had to admit that she was “amazed” at her husband’s “level of calm…. I see him thriving in this; I don’t see the weight.” Amazed indeed, since for starters Barack faced a mind-numbing multitude of issues ranging from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to skyrocketing unemployment, proliferating corporate bankruptcies, and the threatened collapse of the world banking system.

  Publicly Michelle now insisted that she no longer sought to influence her husband’s decisions as she once did. “We’ll have conversations, and we’ll share our opinions over the course of the conversation,” she told Time. “But I don’t want to have a say.”

  Yet, according to one of the President’s oldest confidants, Michelle “was one of the strongest voices” arguing for the appointment of federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace retiring Associate Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. Once the field had been narrowed down to two women—Sotomayor and the Obamas’ old Chicago friend, federal judge Diane Wood—Michelle came down on the side of picking Sotomayor as the Supreme Court’s first Hispanic judge. “The First Lady thought Sotomayor had all those warm empathetic qualities her husband was looking for in an appointee,” the confidant said. “Barack has always listened to what she has to say. Regardless of what she says in the press, Michelle has strong opinions and she lets the President know what she thinks. She is still his most important adviser.”

  Even if the stress of the job was not plainly visible—beyond the fact that Barack’s longtime barber now claimed his hair was turning progressively grayer—the President relied more heavily than ever on proven routines to help him cope. In addition to his compulsive need for at least ninety minutes of concentrated exercise every day, Barack had fallen off the wagon and was sneaking cigarettes. Since he had promised repeatedly that he would not break the smoking ban in force at the White House, Barack sidestepped the issue with reporters. Asked during an interview in February 2009 with CNN’s Anderson Cooper whether he had had a cigarette since becoming President, Barack said that he hadn’t smoked “on these grounds,” and then smiled coyly.

  By the summer of 2009, President Obama was, in fact, smoking wherever he could away from the White House and relying on Secret Service agents to keep him covered—either while traveling or at Camp David. Happy that her husband was at least sticking to his pledge not to smoke inside the White House, Michelle gave a tentative thumbs-up whenever she was asked if her husband had managed to quit. “She’s just happy,” an old acquaintance from Chicago observed, “that he’s not setting a bad example by smoking around the girls.”

  Personal foibles aside, the first African American First Family seemed almost too perfect for even their most devoted friends to comprehend. Whatever one thought of Barack’s liberal philosophy, his sometimes questionable past associations and the lingering taint of Chicago politics, his experience or lack thereof, no one could dispute that his family appeared to be a clear reflection of an American ideal.

  Like Franklin Roosevelt, who led the nation through a depression and a war, Barack Obama was called upon to prevent one and end the other. Neither man could do it alone; FDR had Eleanor, Barack turned to Michelle.

  Where one was firmly rooted in Chicago’s South Side, the other was virtually rootless. Where one had known the safety and security of a close-knit working-class family, the other had been abandoned by one parent and seldom saw the other. Where one eschewed politics, the other set out at an early age to acquire political power—and ultimately to win the greatest political prize of all.

  They did have one important thing in common. Keenly aware of the sacrifices that had been made so that they could make something of their lives, both sought to change the world around them. Michelle gave up her lucrative law career to build bridges between communities; Barack drew on his biracial, multicultural background to tap into the American consciousness in an altogether new way. Together, they shattered a barrier older than the Republic itself—and stunned the world in the process.

  Unlike Franklin and Eleanor, Jack and Jackie, or Bill and Hillary—all of whom begged the question—it scarcely seems worth asking whether Barack and Michelle really love each other. They have, since that day Michelle realized that the skinny young law student with the big ears and crazy name was something extraordinary.

  For all their style and substance—for all the history they have already made—the President and His Lady seem anything but regal. They have dealt with tensions in their marriage that at one point threatened it. They have grappled with financial problems, remaining deeply in debt well into their forties. They have fretted about infertility and faced a medical emergency that might have taken the life of their baby girl. They have delighted in their daughters as children, and worried about the world they would inherit as adults.

  Barack and Michelle have proved themselves to be remarkable—as man and woman, as husband and wife, as father and mother. But it is in those things that make them so accessible, so human, that we recognize ourselves—and, if even for a fle
eting moment, like what we see. Theirs is, in every way, an American marriage.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “We are like two icebergs,” Jacqueline Kennedy once said of her marriage to JFK, “the public life above the water, the private life submerged.” In my books about Jack and Jackie, Bill and Hillary Clinton, George and Laura Bush, and—saddest of all—Princess Diana and John Kennedy Jr., I found this mainly to be true. All of those books, along with An Affair to Remember, my look at the relationship between Spencer Tracy and my friend Katharine Hepburn, were devoted largely to exploring the mysterious forces that draw people to each other and the equally strange forces that hold them together, often against seemingly insurmountable odds.

  Like Jack and Jackie, Barack and Michelle is the biography of a sometimes funny, often inspiring, always spellbinding relationship—a true marriage of hearts and minds that has already begun to shape history. As with so many other great unions, the couple known as Barack and Michelle would turn out to be far more than the sum of its parts.

  For the twelfth time, I have the great good fortune of working with one of the finest teams in publishing. I am particularly grateful to my editor Mauro DiPreta, for both his editorial skill and his passionate commitment to seeing that the full story of Barack and Michelle Obama be told. My thanks, as well, to the entire William Morrow / HarperCollins publishing family, especially Michael Morrison, Liate Stehlik, Seale Ballenger, Debbie Stier, Melanie Jones, Chris Goff, Jennifer Schulkind, Richard Aquan, Michelle Corallo, Kim Lewis, Betty Lew, Dale Rohrbaugh, and Lisa Stokes. My continued thanks to two special friends: my very talented jacket designer Brad Foltz, and the consummately professional Camille McDuffie of Goldberg-McDuffie Communications.

  My agent of twenty-six years (and as many books), Ellen Levine, must by now be wondering how I could possibly come up with a new way to thank her for her dedication and her friendship. Given the fact that Barack Obama’s story begins in Hawaii, it seems only fitting that this time I say, “Mahalo.” My thanks, as well, to Ellen’s top-notch colleagues at Trident Media Group, especially Claire Roberts, Margie Guerra, Alanna Ramirez, and Libby Kellogg.