Barack and Michelle

by Christopher Andersen

  “I am not convinced the Obamas have any sense of how hard the Clintons fight,” said Al Gore’s former presidential campaign manager Donna Brazile, “when they feel their birthright is being challenged.”

  Even though his wife boasted a double-digit lead in the polls, Bill Clinton was telling friends in Arkansas that he feared Obama would be able to run away with the nomination. One reason for this was the complicated new Clinton-endorsed system of delegates and “superdelegates”—elected officials and party bigwigs—that made it possible for a candidate to lose the popular vote and still walk away with the nomination.

  Now Bill jumped into the fray. Over the next nine months he would accuse the Obama campaign of everything from playing the race card to personal attacks on his wife’s character to using union members to intimidate voters. When the former President claimed that Obama was exaggerating his opposition to the war—Clinton called Barack’s account of his position “a fairy tale”—Michelle called her husband’s advisers and demanded that the campaign fire back. “You can’t let him get away with that,” she told them. “Barack opposed the war when they went right along with Bush. How dare they.”

  For the most part, Michelle refrained from publicly lashing out against her husband’s adversaries. But now her speeches seemed to be salted with not-so-subtle references to the Clintons’ marital troubles (“Our view is that if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House”) and sly remarks about people who had simply been in power too long.

  Michelle let her guard down one afternoon when someone asked what she thought about the broadsides Bill Clinton was leveling against her husband. “I want to rip his eyes out!” she said, clawing with her fingernails. When a campaign staffer cast a disapproving look in her direction, she demurred. “Kidding!” she said. “See, this is what gets me into trouble.”

  That summer of 2007, all the Obamas were out in force in Iowa. While the girls ran across the green grass in their summer dresses, Michelle kicked off her shoes and told a few dozen Iowans gathered for a garden party in Sioux City why they should vote for her husband. On her ninth birthday, a poised Malia was warmly applauded when she gave a speech about the meaning of freedom to a small Fourth of July crowd. A few weeks later, she and Sasha were screaming as they rode alongside Dad on Big Ben, one of the scarier rides at the Iowa State Fair. Then Sasha and Dad teamed up against Malia and her mom playing several carnival games.

  Michelle was more irreverent than other aspiring First Ladies who had had to make the requisite pilgrimage to Iowa in primary season. “We’re here for the state fair,” Michelle would tell crowds with a straight face. “I just want some stuff on a stick—a corn dog, a Snickers bar…doesn’t matter what it is. Just has to be on a stick.”

  The Obamas did not always have the media coverage to themselves; in several instances on the stump, they found themselves looking on as Daddy shared a platform that included Hillary. At this time, as Daddy’s battle with his archrival was building to a fever pitch, Malia suddenly turned serious. “You know, this is a pretty big deal,” the ten-year-old said. “If Daddy wins, he’d be the first African American to be a nominee.”

  Michelle was surprised at her daughter’s out-of-the-blue comment, and pleased. “Do you realize how important that is, how significant?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Malia answered confidently. “Because there was slavery, and there were people who couldn’t do things because of their race.” Then she paused. “But it would also be a big deal if a woman won. Because there was also the time when women couldn’t vote. So it would be a big deal either way.”

  “This,” Michelle said when later recounting the exchange, “is her talking…. Amazing.”

  While the more free-spirited Sasha provided much of the comic relief, spinning around until she dizzily plopped to the ground and giving everyone from the Vice President on down high fives, Malia proved time and again that she was one of the more thoughtful members of the family. When asked what it felt like to appear in front of large crowds with her parents, Malia replied, “Well, I realize the people aren’t here to see me. I’m just a kid.

  “I can do my part,” Malia continued. “I can recycle. I can pick up the trash. But I can’t pass any laws to make anybody do anything. They just think I’m cute. I just wave and I smile and I’m outa there.” Barack’s nickname for his elder daughter: “Little Miss Articulate.”

  Sasha, on the other hand, managed to throw Mommy with her questions about a particular video that was suddenly causing a sensation on the Internet. In the less-than-completely-wholesome “I Got a Crush…On Obama,” bikini-clad self-proclaimed “Obama Girl” Amber Lee Ettinger sang of her love for Michelle’s husband against the backdrop of Barack running on the beach.

  “Wow,” Michelle said when she first clicked on to the video. “That’s weird…but I guess nobody’s really gonna hear about that.” But in June, Sasha declared, “Daddy has a girlfriend. It’s you, Mommy.”

  Michelle suddenly realized that Sasha was talking about Obama Girl, but for some reason had confused Ettinger with Mommy. “Oh, shhhii…. Yeah,” Michelle replied, stopping just short of uttering an expletive. “Yeah, Mommy is Daddy’s girlfriend, all right.” (Ettinger would later make a video in which she pleaded with Hillary Clinton to “stop the attacks.”)

  As kind as Malia had been about Hillary Clinton, one high-profile member of the Obamas’ inner circle proved to be considerably less charitable. “Barack knows what it means to be a black man in a country and a process that is controlled by rich white men,” said the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, apparently not imbued with the spirit of the holidays, during his Christmas sermon. “Hillary can never know that, Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger!”

  On January 3, 2008, nearly one year after his first campaign stop in Iowa, Barack scored a decisive victory in that state’s caucuses. On election night in Des Moines, Michelle, wearing a black dress and jawbreaker-sized pearls, stood by her husband and their two daughters and waved to the cheering crowd. “It was,” wrote Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, “one of those moments that give you goose bumps.”

  “They said this day would never come,” Barack said, adding that his victory was a “defining moment in history.” Perhaps. But just five days later, Hillary rebounded with an upset win in New Hampshire. The polls had predicted that Barack would ride a wave of momentum to victory in the Granite State. Instead, women who felt Hillary had been unfairly treated by the media—a sentiment that was reinforced when Hillary choked back tears during a discussion in a Portsmouth, New Hampshire, coffee shop—turned out in force to support her.

  Over the next few weeks, the lead seesawed between Hillary and Barack as she won in Michigan and Nevada and he scored an impressive victory in South Carolina. Announcing his endorsement of Obama in late January, Senator Ted Kennedy compared Barack to his brother John and even drew parallels between Bill Clinton’s sniping at Barack and former President Harry Truman’s early criticism of JFK’s candidacy. “And John Kennedy replied: ‘The world is changing. The old ways will not do. It is time for a new generation of leadership,’” Ted boomed. “So it is with Barack Obama!”

  A few days later, on the eve of the February 5, 2008, Super Tuesday contest, when voters in more than twenty states and protectorates cast their ballots, Michelle was joined onstage at a rally in Los Angeles by Caroline Kennedy, Kennedy cousin Maria Shriver, and Oprah. Beneath her cool exterior, Michelle later confessed to being “completely starstruck. I mean, Caroline Kennedy—come on! She’s part of history.”

  Even when the inevitable comparisons were made between the tall, stylish, immaculately tailored Michelle and Jacqueline Kennedy, Michelle was more impressed with Jackie’s abilities as a parent than her status as legendary style icon. “If you botch raising your children,” Jackie had famously said, “nothing else you do matters very much.” Michelle agreed. Given the media microscope Caroline and John junior grew up under—not to mention th
e assassinations of their father and their beloved uncle Bobby—the two Kennedy children wound up as “wonderful, well-balanced adults. That doesn’t happen by accident,” Michelle said. “Jackie was obviously an incredible mom.”

  If the Clintons justifiably felt betrayed by their longtime political allies the Kennedys, Hillary got some modicum of revenge on Super Tuesday. Although Barack won thirteen states, Hillary’s eight wins included the Kennedys’ home state of Massachusetts and the biggest prize of all—California.

  Five days later, Barack won his second spoken word Grammy, this time for The Audacity of Hope. “I’m almost more impressed by that,” Michelle cracked to a friend, “than by this whole running-for-President thing.”

  Wisecracks aside, Michelle took each victory—and each defeat—to heart. As tensions mounted, she became increasingly irritable. When a TV reporter physically brushed aside her press secretary, Michelle asked angrily, “Did you place your hand on my staff? You do not touch my team.”

  Barack was feeling the pressure, too. But he turned increasingly to the one thing that had helped him stay calm in times of crisis: cigarettes. Despite Michelle’s tongue-in-cheek plea for Americans to report to her if they caught him smoking, Barack was lighting up more than ever in restrooms, stairwells, and the back of his SUV. The only difference from earlier in the campaign was that he indulged his habit under the watchful eyes of the Secret Service agents assigned to protect him.

  Still, the rigors of the campaign seemed to be taking a greater toll on Michelle than on the candidate himself. “Barack will say she’s more driven than he is,” a campaign staffer observed, “and in the sense that she does not really let things roll off her back as easily as he does, he’s right.” As the momentum shifted from her husband to Hillary Clinton and back again, Michelle was perhaps most responsible for insisting that her husband “not equivocate. When he was weighing his words carefully, she told him to come out swinging.”

  During a conference call before a debate in early February, Michelle had dialed in to listen as he brainstormed with his advisers. Exasperated with all the varying opinions being offered, Michelle finally cut in. “Barack,” she told him, “feel—don’t think! You’ve been overthinking, and Hillary just cuts right to the point. Don’t get caught in the weeds. Be visceral. Use your heart—and your head.”

  Silence. Michelle had spoken. “Nobody’s opinion matters more to Barack,” said one participant in the conference call. “And of course, she was absolutely right.”

  Unfortunately, no one was minding Michelle on February 18 when she told Obama supporters in Madison, Wisconsin, that “for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is making a comeback.” Later that same day at a rally in Milwaukee, she said it again. Only this time, there were TV cameras there to record her remarks.

  Understandably, Michelle’s claim that in her entire adult life she had never been proud of America unleashed a torrent of criticism. While Cindy McCain, the wife of presumptive Republican nominee Senator John McCain, proclaimed that she had always been proud of her country, Laura Bush unexpectedly sprang to Michelle’s defense. What Michelle meant to say, the First Lady suggested, was that she was “more proud” of her country now that an African American was within striking distance of the presidency.

  Touched by these unsolicited words, Michelle dashed off a note of thanks to Laura. “There’s a reason people like her,” Michelle later said. “She doesn’t add fuel to the fire.”

  Good intentions aside, Laura’s interpretation of what Michelle “meant to say” wasn’t entirely accurate, either. “What she meant was,” Barack told an interviewer, “this is the first time she’s been proud of the politics of America. Because she’s pretty cynical about the political process, and with good reason, and she’s not alone.”

  Cast in the classic “angry black woman” mold, Michelle would draw fire for months. But as a campaign issue, Michelle’s comments would be all but totally eclipsed by another, potentially far more damaging controversy.

  For over a year, David Axelrod and his senior staff had been wringing their hands in anticipation of the moment when the press would wake up to Jeremiah Wright and his offensive rhetoric. In March of 2008, that moment arrived when ABC News aired excerpts from Wright’s more provocative rants.

  The ensuing outrage over the reverend’s racist and blatantly anti-American rhetoric (“God bless America? No, no, no. God damn America!”) threatened to capsize the Obama campaign. (Wright also had choice words for the Clintons during the campaign: “Hillary is married to Bill and Bill has been good to us. No, he ain’t! Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty.”)

  Frantic, Axelrod and Barack’s other staff advisers unanimously urged him to get out in front of the issue and disavow Wright in unequivocal terms.

  Mrs. Obama thought otherwise. “Pastor Wright is like a father to us,” Michelle told her husband. “You are not going to turn your back on him just because some people don’t like what he has to say.”

  In reality, Barack did not need much coaxing. Instead of denouncing Wright, he seized the opportunity to address the divisive issue of race at a televised news conference in Philadelphia on March 18. In a moving and wide-ranging speech, Barack condemned Wright’s comments. But, he went on, “as imperfect as he may be, Reverend Wright has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated at my wedding, and baptized my children.” And, he neglected to mention, helped save his marriage.

  “I can no more disown him,” Obama continued, “than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother…a woman who loves me as much as anything in this world, but who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

  Like others in the audience that day, Michelle grew visibly emotional as her husband spoke movingly of America’s legacy of slavery and the wounds that still needed to be healed. After he was finished, Barack found Michelle backstage, weeping. While others tried to look away, they shared a quiet, intensely difficult moment together. Once his wife seemed comforted, he turned to no one in particular. “What’s next?” he asked.

  The speech would be lavishly praised by Democrats and Republicans alike, although Barack was roundly criticized in some quarters for, in the words of more than one commentator, “throwing Grandma under the bus.”

  Apparently neither Barack nor Michelle, who had been given an advance copy of the speech, considered the possibility that Toot would be hurt by his comments. He had, after all, written about his grandmother’s prejudices years before in Dreams from My Father. At Michelle’s suggestion, Barack called his grandmother to smooth things over. “It’s okay,” she told him. “Do what you have to do. It’s okay.”

  It would not be the last time Barack and Michelle would have to deal with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. In the meantime, Barack’s own unguarded words would threaten to cost him the election. Talking to fund-raisers in San Francisco, he spoke of bitter whites whose frustrations caused them to “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them…as a way to express their frustrations.”

  The remarks, widely condemned on both sides of the aisle as elitist, did not play well in the working-class neighborhoods of Pennsylvania. Once again, Barack’s advisers scrambled to find a way to get out the message that Barack had not lost touch with the common man.

  Michelle had the answer. She urged her husband not to back down or “be all wishy-washy.” He took her advice. “No, I’m in touch,” he said at a rally in Pennsylvania. “I know exactly what’s going on. People are fed up, they’re angry, they’re frustrated.”

  It was too little, too late. On April 22, Pennsylvania voters handed Hillary Clinton a decisive win. But once again, because of the new delegate rules that had been promulgated by the Clintons, she would receive only a few more delegate
s than Barack.

  For all the flak Barack drew for what many perceived as his disparaging remarks about working-class whites, there were still elements in the black community that insisted he was really not one of them. This was one thing Michelle, who was now usually more cautious about the statements she made, was not willing to let slide. “We’re still playing around with the question of ‘Is he black enough?’” Michelle told a Women for Obama group. “That’s nonsense. Stop it! If a man like Barack isn’t black enough, then who is?”

  The Obamas were still licking their wounds from the Pennsylvania defeat when their old friend and mentor Jeremiah Wright resurfaced unexpectedly. This time Wright, who had retired as pastor of Trinity United, was delivering a speech at the National Press Club in Washington. “This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright,” Wright said of his critics, “this is an attack on the black church.”

  Wright then went on to defend his earlier comments blaming the United States for starting the AIDS epidemic and for 9/11, and to defend his friend Louis Farrakhan. As for Barack’s speech condemning some of the minister’s comments, Wright argued that Obama “had to distance himself because he’s a politician…. Politicians say what they say and do what they do because of electability.”

  This time, Barack’s advisers implored him to publicly denounce Wright and resign from Trinity United Church. Wright had betrayed their friendship, they argued, and handed Obama’s political enemies a weapon that could end his candidacy.

  But when Barack talked it over with Michelle, she defended Wright. “Your pastor is like your grandfather, right?” she said. “There are plenty of things he says that I don’t agree with, that Barack doesn’t agree with…. You can’t disown yourself from your family because they’ve got things wrong.”