Michelle Obama

by Peter Slevin

  THE FRESHMAN SENATOR FOUND his way, partly as a result of the good offices of Emil Jones, a gruff and savvy arm-twister and former city sewer inspector. Although the senior senate Democrat had backed Palmer, he watched with grudging respect as Barack refused to quit the race. In Springfield, Jones saw potential in his eagerness, his work ethic, and his smarts. The freshman struck him as “very aggressive,” if a touch naive. “He thought you could press a button and it would be done.” Over time, Barack developed a style that was methodical, inclusive, and ever pragmatic. “He wasn’t a maverick,” said Cynthia Canary, a lobbyist on good-government issues. “There were other legislators I would turn to if I just wanted to make a lot of noise.”

  Typically spending three nights a week in Springfield, Barack dropped by the ubiquitous cocktail hours that capped the statehouse workday and made friends and occasional allies over golf and poker, leaning across ideological lines to befriend Republicans and some of the more conservative Democrats. Even there, his innate caution came through. One regular at a poker game of legislators and lobbyists described Barack as competitive, yet supremely careful and hard to read. “One night, we were playing and things weren’t going very well for me,” recalled Larry Walsh, a white state senator. “I had a real good hand and Barack beat me out with another one. I slammed down my cards and said, ‘Doggone it, Barack, if you were a little more liberal in your card playing and a little more conservative in your politics, you and I would get along a lot better.’ ”

  Barack, pushed forward by Jones, registered bipartisan successes, negotiating the first ethics reform in Illinois in twenty-five years and brokering a bill that established mandatory taping of interrogations and confessions in death penalty cases. When he was not working, he often had long telephone conversations with Michelle. He remembered storytelling and laughter, “sharing the humor and frustrations of our days apart.” Michelle remained unpersuaded. Politics as practiced in Springfield struck her as petty, oily, and, frankly, beneath him. “Barack,” she would tell him, “this business is not noble.”

  MICHELLE GAVE BIRTH to Malia Ann Obama, their first daughter, on July 4, 1998, about eighteen months after Barack started commuting to Springfield. Malia took her middle name from Barack’s mother, who had died of cancer in November 1995 at the age of fifty-two. Home after the legislative session ended, Barack described the period after Malia’s birth as “three magical months.” They sang songs to the little girl and snapped a passel of pictures. But when the legislature resumed work, Barack returned to his weekly commute, two hundred miles each way. The burden of having an often absent husband grated on Michelle, who now had an infant at home and a demanding job at the University of Chicago. Michelle switched to a schedule with fewer hours and lower pay. She welcomed the flexibility, but the workload seemed much the same. “It’s like, oh, so you take half a salary and you do the same amount of work,” she said. “They don’t take anything off your plate.” Although the legislature was considered a part-time job, and Barack was usually in Chicago from Thursday to Monday with summers off, he often had evening meetings to attend, legal work to finish, or law school papers to grade. “The strains in our relationship began to show,” he said.

  Money was becoming an increasing worry for Michelle, despite a joint income that would reach $240,000 in 2000. They were not hurting, but the dollars were going out nearly as fast as they were coming in, paying for a full-time nanny, a mortgage, and student debt. “We didn’t pick cheap ones,” she once said of their college and law school choices. They paid more each month toward their student loans than they did toward the 2,200-square-foot Hyde Park condominium that they purchased in 1993 for $277,500. Their down payment was about $111,000, with a small assist from Barack’s grandmother. And now there was private school and college to think about. Barack continued to care little about money, sometimes forgetting to seek reimbursement for his senate expenses until reminded by an aide. He had no expensive hobbies or tastes and draped his thin frame in a wardrobe of standard-issue suits, business shirts, black sport shirts, and khakis, waiting until his clothes were threadbare to buy anything new. He played golf, but typically on public courses, including the links at the former South Shore Country Club. After he was elected to state office, he sold a black Saab 900S for $2,500 to one of Michelle’s former Public Allies, partly to put himself behind the wheel of a more politically palatable American- made car.

  IF YOU WANT to be president, it does not take long to realize the stairway to the stars is not in Springfield, even if the Illinois legislature was Abraham Lincoln’s first elective office. Barack considered himself burdened by “chronic restlessness,” and barely two years into his state senate tenure, he was feeling antsy. The Chicago mayor’s office was out. Richard M. Daley won his fourth term in February 1999. His grip on power seemed firm after he swamped U.S. Representative Bobby Rush, whose reputation dated to his past leadership of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party. But Rush’s defeat gave Barack an idea. On the eve of a new century, he saw Rush as a 1960s throwback who was not half the congressman his constituents deserved. Against the advice of friends, mentors, and Michelle, he announced that he would challenge Rush, a fellow Democrat. Only after Barack had entered the race in September 1999 did he do any polling. When he did, he quickly learned that Rush, whatever his troubles against Daley when he ran citywide, enjoyed 90 percent name recognition and a 70 percent approval rating in his district. Only one in nine voters had ever heard the name of his challenger, Barack Obama.

  In a district that was 69 percent African American and where the median household income was $24,140, Barack promised “new leadership.” But he never found his voice, or at least a voice that would connect with working-class black voters who saw no good reason to turn Rush out of office. For all of his brainpower, Barack was wordy on the stump. He struck many preachers, politicians, and business leaders as being too full of himself and in too much of a hurry. Rush and a well-worn challenger named Donne Trotter, a fellow state senator, delighted in attacking Barack for his Hawaiian roots and his bohemian tastes. In this audience, it was not a plus to teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago or to claim the title of community organizer after growing up on a Pacific island. Barack “went to Harvard and became an educated fool.… We’re not impressed with these folks with these eastern elite degrees,” Rush said that year, striking the not-black-enough chord. “Barack is a person who read about the civil rights protests and thinks he knows all about it.” Lu Palmer, a black radio host, alluded to Barack’s time at Harvard and said, “If you so impress white folks at these elite institutions, and if they name you head of these elite institutions, the Harvard Law Review, that makes one suspect.” Trotter dispensed with code and asserted that “Barack is viewed in part to be the white man in blackface in our community.”

  Barack protested that the appeal to street cred stereotypes sold the African American community short and sent a lousy message to black kids that “if you’re well educated, somehow you’re not keeping it real.” Michelle felt the same way, later explaining her frustration with African Americans who “use intellect and race as a way to drive a wedge between certain people in their own community.” The attack reminded her of her girlhood: “You talk a certain type of English and then you have to cover that up on your way to school so you don’t get your butt kicked. You know, we grew up with that.” But even if Barack could find a winning message, which was doubtful, he never had much chance to engage. On October 19, a month after Barack entered the race, Rush’s twenty-nine-year-old son Huey—named for Black Panther Party founder Huey P. Newton—was shot during a robbery outside his South Side home. He died a few days later.

  Rush was heartsick and Barack had no choice but to curtail his campaigning. A few weeks later, Rush’s elderly father died. It was January before the campaign resumed in earnest. By then, Barack had left himself open to criticism that verged on ridicule. He was in the habit of flying to Hawaii for the Christmas holi
days with Michelle to enjoy the tropical weather and see his aging grandmother, Madelyn Dunham. Amid campaign demands and a legislative debate about gun regulations, his staff urged him to forgo the trip. But he tried to squeeze the vacation into five days between Christmas and New Year’s, vowing to see Toot and “reacquaint myself” with Michelle and eighteen-month-old Malia. On the home front things were going no better than the electoral contest. “Tired and stressed,” he said, “we had little time for conversation, much less romance.”

  While they were gone, Republican governor George Ryan called the Illinois legislature into special session to vote on a gun control bill that had his support and the backing of the Democratic caucus. On the day Barack and Michelle were scheduled to fly back to Chicago, Malia had a high fever. The family stayed put. Barack missed the vote, and the gun bill failed by five votes. Rush and Trotter were quick with criticism, and the Chicago Tribune called out Barack and several other politicians by name in a searing editorial that began “What a bunch of gutless sheep.”

  Barack returned home to the headlines two days later, “a wailing baby in tow, Michelle not speaking to me.” Although his absence had not decided the gun bill’s fate, he now had to fight the impression that he had been sipping drinks on a Hawaiian beach while the legislature fought to make Chicago’s streets safer—at the very time Rush was a public face of the pain of gun violence. Barack, aware that he would lose, woke up every morning with a sense of dread, “realizing that I would have to spend the day smiling and shaking hands and pretending that everything was going according to plan.” To compound his misery, President Bill Clinton jetted to Chicago to campaign for Rush and make a commercial reminding listeners of Huey Rush’s death. By the time Barack arrived at his election night party, the media had already called the race. He lost by thirty points.

  THE THUMPING SENT Barack into a funk, what Springfield aide Dan Shomon called his “morose period.” Barack hated the fact that he had been so certain and so wrong. It did not help that he had spent more than he took in, even lending $9,500 to his campaign. The race, he said, left the household “more or less broke.” He not only had to ask donors for cash to retire $60,000 in campaign debt, he had to face the people who said “I told you so.” Or who bit their tongues and said nothing, which in some ways was worse, for it was easy to imagine their silent pity or disdain. You might attribute defeat to circumstances beyond your control, Barack said, “it’s impossible not to feel at some level as if you have been personally repudiated by the entire community, that you don’t quite have what it takes, and that everywhere you go the word ‘loser’ is flashing through people’s minds.” The defeat bruised his formidable confidence. He began to wonder whether it was all over, this experiment with politics. Maybe he did not have the skills to match his ambition. Maybe Michelle was right when she urged him to find something a little more respectable, a little more lucrative, and a lot more family friendly.

  The clouds were slow to part. Hoping it would be “a bit of useful therapy,” several friends urged him to go to the August 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, where Democrats would send Vice President Al Gore into battle against Texas governor George W. Bush. Although he had set aside that summer for catching up on his legal work and spending time with Michelle and Malia, he decided to go. When he landed at the Los Angeles airport, he made his way to the Hertz counter and handed over his American Express card. “I’m sorry, Mr. Obama, but your card’s been rejected,” the clerk said. “That can’t be right,” he replied. “Can you try again?” He had reached his credit limit. On the telephone, he worked out something with American Express, but the week improved little from there. He was not a delegate, and the chairman of the 189-member Illinois delegation said he could not spare a floor pass. To see the show, Barack occasionally accompanied friends into convention center skyboxes, “where it was clear I didn’t belong.” After watching most of the first two nights of political speeches on television monitors, he decided he was wasting his time. Long before Gore’s nomination and acceptance speech, he caught a flight home.

  DURING THEIR COURTSHIP and the early years of their marriage, Michelle and Barack had set out to braid their independent lives into a unified whole, finding synergy in the work they did and the ambitions they shared. One of the marriage’s strengths, Barack said in 1996, four years after their wedding, was their ability to “imagine the other person’s hopes or pains or struggles.” Michelle said Barack helped her “kind of loosen up and feel comfortable with taking risks and not doing things the traditional way.” Barack, meanwhile, understood Michelle’s pull toward “stability and family, certainty.” In their different approaches, however, they recognized the potential for friction. “How we approach that tension is going to be really important,” Barack said.

  One source of strength was the way they pulled together amid early difficulties in starting a family. Julie Sullivan, Michelle’s Public Allies colleague, described this period as particularly hard on Michelle and recalled that Barack was “really wonderful,” even with his mother dying at the same time. “I’ve seen that relationship go through some life stresses,” Sullivan said, “and they’ve always just had a really nice way about each other.” But as parents, Barack said, they “argued repeatedly” about how to balance their obligations to work and family. At times, Michelle felt she was all but singlehandedly raising Malia and running the household while leading the student community service office. This did not feel like an equal partnership. This was not the life she had expected to lead. She told him more than once, “You only think about yourself. I never thought I’d have to raise a family alone.”

  On June 10, 2001, Michelle gave birth to daughter Natasha. By that point, on the eve of Barack’s fortieth birthday, the downward slide was clear. “My wife’s anger toward me seemed barely contained,” he said. He had vowed not to be the shirker his father had been. Indeed, his role model was Michelle’s father, Fraser Robinson, said his friend Valerie Jarrett. And yet it was as a husband and father that he was most disappointed in himself. Michelle’s displeasure forced him to confront the ways he was falling short. His old-school assumptions about gender roles contributed mightily, although he did not see it at first. “As far as I was concerned, she had nothing to complain about,” he said. He believed Michelle was being unfair. “After all, it wasn’t as if I went carousing with the boys. I made few demands of Michelle—I didn’t expect her to darn my socks or have dinner waiting for me when I got home. Whenever I could, I pitched in with the kids. All I asked for in return was a little tenderness. Instead, I found myself subjected to endless negotiations about every detail of managing the house, long lists of the things that I needed to do or had forgotten to do, and a generally sour attitude. I reminded Michelle that compared to most families, we were incredibly lucky. I reminded her as well that for all my flaws, I loved her and the girls more than anything else. My love should be enough, I thought.”

  When Natasha, known to one and all as Sasha, was just three months old, Barack and Michelle got the scare of their lives. One night, they heard her crying. It was not unusual for her to wake up, but “there was something about the way she was crying,” Barack said later. They called the pediatrician, who met them at his office in the morning. Examining Sasha, he correctly suspected meningitis, a potentially fatal inflammation of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord, and immediately sent them to the emergency room. “We were terrified,” Michelle said. Sasha, still tiny, underwent a spinal tap. As nurses administered antibiotics, her parents stayed close for three days, “not knowing whether or not she was going to emerge okay,” Barack said. “I can’t breathe,” he told Jarrett when she visited. His world “narrowed to a single point. I was not interested in anything or anybody outside the four walls of that hospital room—not my work, not my schedule, not my future.” The antibiotics worked. Sasha recovered. So, too, did their marriage, if more slowly.

  IT WAS AT ABOUT this time that Barack most
seriously considered an exit from politics. The legislative process felt incremental, the fundraising deadening, the banquets always too long. “The bad food and stale air and clipped phone conversations with a wife who had stuck by me so far but was pretty fed up with raising our children alone.” Michelle was openly questioning his priorities, and he wondered if it was time to move on to “more sensible pursuits, like an athlete or an actor who had fallen short of the dream.” The door was open at the University of Chicago, where he was teaching popular constitutional law courses. Students loved him, and he enjoyed the mental gymnastics of challenging their exuberant thinking. A tenure-track appointment would connect him more closely to the intellectual life of the Hyde Park campus and deliver lifetime job security. Instead of the long commute to Springfield, he could walk to work. Yet it was an insular world and he was hardly inspired by the legal writing expected of the professoriat. They didn’t call it the ivory tower for nothing. Another door led to corporate law, where he could pull down big money in a hurry. Sidley & Austin and any number of other firms would hire him in a flash and gladly pay him a salary deep into six figures. But a decade after he first rejected that path, he saw nothing to suggest that he would find it any less soul-deadening. The same was true of a host of opportunities in business and finance that could have been his for the asking.