Promised Land (9781524763183)

by Obama Barack

  I was right to feel guilty. It’s hard to overstate the burden I placed on my family during those two years I ran for president—how much I relied on Michelle’s fortitude and parenting skills, and how much I depended on my daughters’ preternatural good cheer and maturity. Earlier that summer, Michelle had agreed to bring the girls and join me as I campaigned in Butte, Montana, on the Fourth of July, which also happened to be Malia’s tenth birthday. My sister Maya and her family decided to come as well. We had our share of fun that day, visiting a mining museum and squirting one another with water guns, but much of my time was still devoted to vote getting. The girls trudged dutifully beside me as I shook hands along the town’s parade route. They stood in the heat watching me speak at an afternoon rally. In the evening, after the fireworks I’d promised were canceled due to thunderstorms, we held an impromptu birthday party in a windowless conference room on the lower level of the local Holiday Inn. Our advance staff had done its best to liven up the place with a few balloons. There was pizza and salad and a cake from the local supermarket. Still, as I watched Malia blow out the candles and make her wish for the year ahead, I wondered whether she was disappointed, whether she might later look back on this day as proof of her father’s misplaced priorities.

  Just then, Kristen Jarvis, one of Michelle’s young aides, pulled out an iPod and hooked it up to a portable speaker. Malia and Sasha grabbed my hands to pull me out of my chair. Pretty soon everyone was dancing to Beyoncé and the Jonas Brothers, Sasha gyrating, Malia shaking her short curls, Michelle and Maya letting loose as I showed off my best dad moves. After about half an hour, all of us happily out of breath, Malia came over and sat on my lap.

  “Daddy,” she said, “this is the best birthday ever.”

  I kissed the top of her head and held her tight, not letting her see my eyes get misty.

  Those were my daughters. That’s what I’d given up by being away so much. That’s why the days we stole in Hawaii that August were worth it, even if we lost some ground against McCain in the polls. Splashing in the ocean with the girls, letting them bury me in sand without having to tell them I had to get on a conference call or leave for the airport—it was worth it. Watching the sun go down over the Pacific with my arms wrapped around Michelle, just listening to the wind and rustling palms—worth it.

  Seeing Toot hunched over on her living room couch, barely able to raise her head but still smiling with quiet satisfaction as her great-granddaughters laughed and played on the floor, and then feeling her mottled, blue-veined hand squeeze mine for perhaps the last time.

  A precious sacrament.

  * * *

  —

  I COULDN’T LEAVE the campaign entirely behind while I was in Hawaii. There were updates from the team, thank-you calls to supporters, a preliminary outline of my convention speech that I drafted and sent to Favs. And there was the single most consequential decision I had to make now that I was the nominee.

  Who would be my running mate?

  I had narrowed it down to Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia and Senate colleague Joe Biden of Delaware. At the time, I was much closer to Tim, who had been the first prominent elected official outside of Illinois to endorse me for president and had worked hard as one of our top campaign surrogates. Our friendship came easily; we were roughly the same age, had similar midwestern roots, similar temperaments, and even similar résumés. (Tim had worked on a mission in Honduras while a student at Harvard Law School and had practiced civil rights law before going into politics.)

  As for Joe, we couldn’t have been more different, at least on paper. He was nineteen years my senior. I was running as the Washington outsider; Joe had spent thirty-five years in the Senate, including stints as chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee. In contrast to my peripatetic upbringing, Joe had deep roots in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and took pride in his working-class Irish heritage. (It was only later, after we were elected, that we discovered our respective Irish forebears, both boot makers, had left Ireland for America just five weeks apart.) And if I was seen as temperamentally cool and collected, measured in how I used my words, Joe was all warmth, a man without inhibitions, happy to share whatever popped into his head. It was an endearing trait, for he genuinely enjoyed people. You could see it as he worked a room, his handsome face always cast in a dazzling smile (and just inches from whomever he was talking to), asking a person where they were from, telling them a story about how much he loved their hometown (“Best calzone I ever tasted”) or how they must know so-and-so (“An absolutely great guy, salt of the earth”), flattering their children (“Anyone ever tell you you’re gorgeous?”) or their mother (“You can’t be a day over forty!”), and then on to the next person, and the next, until he’d touched every soul in the room with a flurry of handshakes, hugs, kisses, backslaps, compliments, and one-liners.

  Joe’s enthusiasm had its downside. In a town filled with people who liked to hear themselves talk, he had no peer. If a speech was scheduled for fifteen minutes, Joe went for at least a half hour. If it was scheduled for a half hour, there was no telling how long he might talk. His soliloquies during committee hearings were legendary. His lack of a filter periodically got him in trouble, as when during the primaries, he had pronounced me “articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” a phrase surely meant as a compliment, but interpreted by some as suggesting that such characteristics in a Black man were noteworthy.

  As I came to know Joe, though, I found his occasional gaffes to be trivial compared to his strengths. On domestic issues, he was smart, practical, and did his homework. His experience in foreign policy was broad and deep. During his relatively short-lived run in the primaries, he had impressed me with his skill and discipline as a debater and his comfort on a national stage.

  Most of all, Joe had heart. He’d overcome a bad stutter as a child (which probably explained his vigorous attachment to words) and two brain aneurysms in middle age. In politics, he’d known early success and suffered embarrassing defeats. And he had endured unimaginable tragedy: In 1972, just weeks after Joe was elected to the Senate, his wife and baby daughter had been killed—and his two young sons, Beau and Hunter, injured—in a car accident. In the wake of this loss, his colleagues and siblings had to talk him out of quitting the Senate, but he’d arranged his schedule to make a daily hour-and-a-half Amtrak commute between Delaware and Washington to care for his boys, a practice he’d continue for the next three decades.

  That Joe had survived such heartbreak was a credit to his second wife, Jill, a lovely and understated teacher whom he’d met three years after the accident, and who had raised Joe’s sons as her own. Anytime you saw the Bidens together, it was immediately obvious just how much his family sustained Joe—how much pride and joy he took in Beau, then Delaware’s attorney general and a rising star in state politics; in Hunter, a lawyer in D.C.; in Ashley, a social worker in Wilmington; and in their beautiful grandkids.

  Family had sustained Joe, but so, too, had a buoyancy of character. Tragedy and setbacks may have scarred him, I would learn, but they hadn’t made him bitter or cynical.

  It was on the basis of those impressions that I had asked Joe to undergo the initial vetting process and meet me while I was campaigning in Minnesota. He was resistant at first—like most senators, Joe had a healthy ego and disliked the idea of playing second fiddle. Our meeting began with him explaining all the reasons why the job of vice president might be a step down for him (along with an explanation of why he’d be the best choice). I assured him that I was looking not for a ceremonial stand-in but for a partner.

  “If you pick me,” Joe said, “I want to be able to give you my best judgment and frank advice. You’ll be the president, and I’ll defend whatever you decide. But I want to be the last guy in the room on every major decision.”

  I told him that was a commitment I could make.

  Both Axe and
Plouffe thought the world of Tim Kaine, and like me, they knew he’d fit seamlessly into an Obama administration. But also like me, they wondered whether putting two relatively young, inexperienced, and liberal civil rights attorneys on a ticket might be more hope and change than the voters could handle.

  Joe carried his own risks. We figured his lack of discipline in front of a microphone might result in unnecessary controversies. His style was old-school, he liked the limelight, and he wasn’t always self-aware. I sensed that he could get prickly if he thought he wasn’t given his due—a quality that might flare up when dealing with a much younger boss.

  And yet I found the contrast between us compelling. I liked the fact that Joe would be more than ready to serve as president if something happened to me—and that it might reassure those who still worried I was too young. His foreign policy experience would be valuable during a time when we were embroiled in two wars; so would his relationships in Congress and his potential to reach voters still wary of electing an African American president. What mattered most, though, was what my gut told me—that Joe was decent, honest, and loyal. I believed that he cared about ordinary people, and that when things got tough, I could trust him.

  I wouldn’t be disappointed.

  * * *

  —

  HOW THE DEMOCRATIC National Convention in Denver got put together is largely a mystery to me. I was consulted on the order of the program over the four nights it would take place, the themes that would be developed, the speakers scheduled. I was shown biographical videos for approval and asked for a list of family and friends who would need accommodations. Plouffe checked in to see if I was game to hold the convention’s final night not in a traditional indoor arena, but at Mile High Stadium, home of the Denver Broncos. With a capacity of close to eighty thousand, it could accommodate the tens of thousands of volunteers from across the country who’d been the foundation of our campaign. It also had no roof, which meant we’d be exposed to the elements.

  “What if it rains?” I asked.

  “We pulled one hundred years’ worth of weather reports for Denver on August 28 at eight p.m.,” Plouffe said. “It’s only rained once.”

  “What if this year’s the second time? Do we have a backup plan?”

  “Once we lock in the stadium,” Plouffe said, “there’s no going back.” He gave me a slightly maniacal grin. “Remember, we’re always at our best without a net. Why stop now?”

  Why indeed.

  Michelle and the girls traveled to Denver a couple of days ahead of me while I campaigned in a few states, so by the time I arrived, the festivities were in full swing. Satellite trucks and press tents surrounded the arena like an army laying siege; street vendors hawked T-shirts, hats, tote bags, and jewelry adorned with our rising sun logo or my jug-eared visage. Tourists and paparazzi clicked away at the politicians and occasional celebrity wandering the arena.

  Unlike the 2000 convention, when I’d been the kid pressing his face against the candy store window, or the 2004 convention, when my keynote had placed me at the center of the spectacle, I now found myself both the starring attraction and on the periphery, trapped in a hotel suite or looking out the window of my Secret Service vehicle, arriving in Denver only on the second-to-last night of the convention. It was a matter of security, I was told, as well as deliberate stagecraft—if I remained out of sight, anticipation would only build. But it made me feel restless and oddly removed, as if I were merely an expensive prop to be taken out of the box under special conditions.

  Certain moments from that week do stand out in my mind. I remember Malia and Sasha and three of Joe’s granddaughters rolling around on a pile of air mattresses in our hotel suite, all of them giggling, lost in their secret games and wholly indifferent to the hoopla below. I remember Hillary stepping up to the microphone representing the New York delegates and formally making the motion to vote me in as the Democratic nominee, a powerful gesture of unity. And I remember sitting in the living room of a very sweet family of supporters in Missouri, making small talk and munching on snacks before Michelle appeared on the television screen, luminescent in an aquamarine dress, to deliver the convention’s opening night address.

  I had deliberately avoided reading Michelle’s speech beforehand, not wanting to meddle in the process or add to the pressure. Having seen her on the campaign trail, I had no doubt she’d be good. But listening to Michelle tell her story that night—seeing her talk about her mom and dad, the sacrifices they’d made and the values they’d passed on; hearing her trace her unlikely journey and describe her hope for our daughters; having this woman who had shouldered so much vouch for the fact that I’d always been true to my family and to my convictions; seeing the convention hall audience, the network anchors, and the people sitting next to me transfixed—well, I couldn’t have been prouder.

  Contrary to what some commentators said at the time, my wife didn’t “find” her voice that night. A national audience finally had a chance to hear that voice unfiltered.

  * * *

  —

  FORTY-EIGHT HOURS LATER, I found myself holed up with Favs and Axe in a hotel room, fine-tuning the acceptance speech I’d deliver the following evening. It had been tough to write. We felt the moment called for more prose than poetry, with a hard-hitting critique of Republican policies and an account of specific steps I intended to take as president—all without being too long, too dry, or too partisan. It had required countless revisions and I had little time to practice. As I stood behind a mock podium delivering my lines, the atmosphere was more workmanlike than inspired.

  Only once did the full meaning of my nomination hit me. By coincidence, the last night of the convention fell on the forty-fifth anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech. We had decided not to draw too much attention to that fact, figuring that it was a poor idea to invite comparisons to one of the greatest speeches in American history. But I did pay tribute to the miracle of that young preacher from Georgia in the closing bars of my speech, quoting something he’d said to the people who’d gathered on the National Mall that day in 1963: “We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”

  “We cannot walk alone.” I hadn’t remembered these particular lines from Dr. King’s speech. But as I read them aloud during practice, I found myself thinking about all the older Black volunteers I’d met in our offices around the country, the way they’d clutch my hands and tell me they never thought they’d see the day when a Black man would have a real chance to be president.

  I thought about the seniors who wrote to me to explain how they had woken up early and been first in line to vote during the primaries, even though they were sick or disabled.

  I thought about the doormen, janitors, secretaries, clerks, dishwashers, and drivers I encountered anytime I passed through hotels, conference centers, or office buildings—how they’d wave or give me a thumbs-up or shyly accept a handshake, Black men and women of a certain age who, like Michelle’s parents, had quietly done what was necessary to feed their families and send their kids to school, and now recognized in me some of the fruits of their labor.

  I thought of all the people who had sat in jail or joined the March on Washington forty, fifty years ago, and wondered how they would feel when I walked out onto that stage in Denver—how much they had seen their country transformed, and how far things still were from what they had hoped.

  “You know what…give me a second,” I said, my voice catching in my throat, my eyes starting to brim. I went to the bathroom to splash some water on my face. When I returned a few minutes later, Favs, Axe, and the teleprompter operator were all quiet, unsure of what to do.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “Let’s try it again from the top.”

  I had no trouble getting through the speech the second time around; the on
ly interruption came about halfway through my oration, when we heard a knock on the door and found a hotel server with a Caesar salad standing in the hall (“What can I say?” Axe said with a sheepish grin. “I was starving”). And by the following evening, as I walked out onto the broad, blue-carpeted stage under a clear and open sky to address a stadium full of people and millions more across the country, all that I felt was calm.

  The night was warm, the roar from the crowd infectious, the flash from thousands of cameras mirroring the stars overhead. When I was finished speaking, Michelle and the girls and then Joe and Jill Biden joined me to wave through a flurry of confetti, and across the stadium we could see people laughing and hugging, waving flags to the beat of a song by country artists Brooks & Dunn that had become a staple on the campaign trail: “Only in America.”

  * * *

  —

  HISTORICALLY, A PRESIDENTIAL candidate enjoys a healthy “bounce” in the polls after a successful convention. By all accounts, ours had been close to flawless. Our pollsters reported that after Denver, my lead over John McCain had indeed widened to at least five points.

  It lasted about a week.

  John McCain’s campaign had been flailing. Despite the fact that he’d wrapped up the Republican nomination three months before I secured mine, he hadn’t achieved much in the way of momentum. Swing voters remained unpersuaded by his proposal for further tax cuts on top of those Bush had already passed. In the new, more polarized climate, McCain himself appeared hesitant to even mention issues like immigration reform and climate change, which had previously burnished his reputation as a maverick inside his party. In fairness, he’d been dealt a bad hand. The Iraq War remained as unpopular as ever. The economy, already in recession, was rapidly worsening, and so were Bush’s approval numbers. In an election likely to hinge on the promise of change, McCain looked and sounded like more of the same.