Not long after that first day of school, Barack and Michelle took the girls to see the Lincoln Memorial. After looking up at Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, which is carved onto one of the monument’s walls, Sasha said, “Looks long.” Malia looked at her father. “First African American President,” she said. “Better be good.”
For weeks since the election, Grandma had been mulling over whether or not to accept the Obamas’ invitation to live with them in the White House. Multigenerational White Houses did not always work out. Harry Truman’s mother-in-law publicly disparaged him and frequently questioned his policies. Dwight Eisenhower’s domineering mother-in-law nagged constantly and bossed around the White House staff.
But Marian Robinson had already proved herself to be a valuable part of her grandchildren’s lives. For twenty-two months, when their mother wasn’t around, she drew the girls’ baths, supervised their homework, took them to dentist appointments, and chauffeured them to and from ballet lessons and soccer practice.
Grandma had also made only a fainthearted effort to adhere to Michelle’s strict rules governing bedtime (eight thirty), TV (one hour maximum), and food (organic whenever possible). “I have candy, they stay up late—come to my house, they watch TV as long as they want to, we’ll play games until the wee hours,” Marian said. “I do everything grandmothers do that they’re not supposed to.”
Indeed, whenever Michelle caught her mother bending the rules, Marian had a hard time concealing her feelings. “Mom, what are you rolling your eyes at?” Michelle asked at one point. “You made us do the same thing.”
“I don’t remember being that bad,” she told Michelle. “I think you’re just going overboard.”
Now Marian was balking at what many would consider the ultimate invitation—to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. “I love those people,” she mused, “but I love my own house. The White House reminds me of a museum. How do you sleep in a museum?”
Her son-in-law understood. “She doesn’t like a lot of fuss around her,” Barack said, “and like it or not, there is some fuss in the White House.”
Just as important to Marian was the fear that she might be intruding on her daughter’s marriage—a marriage that just a few years before had gone through a decidedly rocky patch. “That, I can do without,” she said of being around whenever her daughter and her son-in-law might be in the middle of a spat. “When you move in, you just hear a little bit too much.” But isn’t the White House big enough for that not to be a problem? she was asked. “It’s never,” Grandma replied, “big enough for that.”
In the end, Marian decided to move into a guest room on the third floor of the White House—a floor above the rooms occupied by her son-in-law and his family. She made it clear that the move was to be on a trial basis, and that she had no intention of giving up her Chicago apartment. “They’re going to need me,” Grandma said, “so I’m going to be there.”
Marian was on board when, three days before the inauguration, the “Obama Express” retraced Lincoln’s 137-mile whistle-stop tour from Philadelphia to Washington. In Wilmington, Delaware, the Obamas stopped to pick up Joe Biden. “I like him. I love her,” Biden said of the Obamas. “She is the most impressive person I’ve met in thirty-five years.”
Since January 17 also happened to be Michelle’s forty-fifth birthday, when the adults got off in Baltimore to give speeches, Malia and Sasha used the time to decorate the interior of the blue 1939 vintage rail car with streamers, balloons, and banners.
Later, when the train was under way, the girls and a few of their friends went through the other cars distributing noisemakers, party hats, and Hawaiian leis. After they sang “Happy Birthday” to Mommy, she then got up and led all the kids in a stomp dance. “Nice,” Michelle said as she settled back down in her seat. Then she turned to her husband. “They’ve got to clean up!” she told Barack. “We can’t leave this mess for Amtrak.”
Finally settled with his family in Blair House, Barack started out on January 18 by joining Biden to place a wreath at Arlington Cemetery’s Tomb of the Unknowns. Later that day, the Obamas had front-row seats at the star-studded “We Are One” concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial. An estimated three hundred thousand people flanked the reflecting pools on the National Mall to hear such superstars as Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Mary J. Blige, and Bono perform. For two hours Malia, who had been diligently taking snapshots with her new digital camera, huddled with her sister against near-freezing temperatures as Mom and Dad bounced, bobbed, and clapped to the rhythm in their seats—clearly oblivious to the numbing cold.
There were a few mortifying moments proving that no dad—not even Barack Obama—could really be cool in the eyes of his own children. When Beyoncé was telling the President-Elect about her new hit, “Single Ladies’ Dance,” he replied, “Oh, I’m trying to learn that.” Malia and Sasha winced in embarrassment (there is no “single ladies’ dance”). “Oh, Dad,” they groaned in unison.
That night, Barack and Michelle threw a private party for ninety family members and friends, including Oprah and Michelle’s mom. Dining on a simple menu of chicken, fish, and rice, guests laughed and toasted their hosts as children ricocheted from room to room—“just kids being kids,” said one of the guests, Charles Fishman. “It was a very warm, informal evening—a little sendoff party.”
On the morning of January 19, Barack traveled by motorcade to the Sasha Bruce House, a shelter for teens, and helped paint a wall to promote his Day of Service program. “Now that I know he can do this,” Michelle cracked after watching her husband paint, “it’s another thing he can do at home.”
At the “Kids’ Inaugural: We Are the Future” inauguration eve concert in Washington’s Verizon Center, Malia and Sasha clapped and swayed and bounced in their seats as they and fourteen thousand others sang along with teen stars the Jonas Brothers. Then Joe Jonas led the girls onstage to dance with the Jonases and fellow teen sensations Miley Cyrus, Keke Palmer, and Demi Lovato.
Just hours away from taking the oath of office, Barack stayed up past midnight practicing the inaugural address he had been working on for seven weeks with Axelrod and twenty-seven-year-old chief speechwriter, Jon Favreau. Up until the previous day, Favreau had spent hours tinkering with the speech at a local Starbucks.
In addition to running through his address, Barack rehearsed taking the oath itself. There was one other thing he was determined to get right: after consulting a military aide about the proper form, the new President practiced snapping off a few crisp salutes in front of a mirror. Michelle, ever the perfectionist, asked him to do it a couple of more times before nodding in approval. “Sharp,” she said.
The next morning—January 20, Inauguration Day—Michelle and Barack got up at six and squeezed in their customary early-morning workout. (“I can go for days without going into a gym,” Michelle said. “He really can’t.”)
Then, while Grandma helped the girls get ready for the big day, Dad donned a black suit and red tie. A sobering reminder of the times, Barack’s suit was reportedly the creation of Colombian designer Miguel Caballero, who specialized in making bullet-resistant clothing.
The President-Elect then waited anxiously in the Blair House foyer as Mom finished dressing in her Isabel Toledo–designed lemongrass-colored Swiss wool lace coat and sheath, J. Crew jade leather gloves, $585 green Jimmy Choo pumps, and twenty-thousand-dollar two-carat diamond stud earrings. “Barack puts on his suit, tie, and he’s out the door,” the compulsively punctual Michelle had said of this ritual. “I’m getting my hair, makeup, the kids…and he’s asking, ‘What’s the problem?’”
The couple emerged from Blair House at 8:46 A.M. and Barack held the door of their limousine open for Michelle as she slid into the backseat. Their motorcade then turned the corner and within two minutes arrived at historic yellow-and-white Saint John’s Episcopal Church for an Inauguration Day prayer service.
Joined by their J. Crew-outfitted daughters—Mal
ia in violet-blue and Sasha in pastel shades of pink and orange—as well as the President-Elect’s sister Maya (whose daughter, Suhaila, called Barack “Uncle Rocky”) and Michelle’s brother, Craig, the Obamas settled into the front-row pew next to Joe Biden and his family. Saint John’s Church rector Luis Leon welcomed the new First Family—a tradition he had now upheld through ten inaugurations. After a brief invocation by Bishop Charles E. Blake, the choir sang a rafter-rattling rendition of “This Little Light of Mine.”
An hour later, George W. Bush greeted Barack with a spirited “Sir!” at the North Portico of the White House, then led the new occupants inside for coffee. Later, President Obama would read the personal note his predecessor had, according to tradition, left inside the top drawer of his Oval Office desk. While the rest of the note would remain secret, Bush had written that Barack’s term signified a “fabulous new chapter” in American history. For now, however, it was Michelle who presented Laura with a gift—a white leather journal and pen to encourage the outgoing First Lady, who had just signed a seven-figure book deal, to get to work on her memoirs.
At 11:01, the 1.5 million people who had come to the nation’s capital to witness history being made roared as the Obamas took their places among the dignitaries at the West Front of the Capitol. Only moments before, in a Capitol holding room, Barack had rehearsed the presidential oath with Michelle while her mother watched from the sidelines. Once outside, Malia, still determined to record everything on her new camera, clicked away; later, when her angle was obscured, Malia handed her camera to Vice President Joe Biden and asked if he’d take a few shots for her.
After the Reverend Rick Warren delivered the invocation and Aretha Franklin belted out a stirring rendition of “America,” Biden handed the camera back to Malia and stood to be sworn in as Vice President at 11:48 A.M. Twelve minutes later, Michelle lifted up the burgundy velvet–covered Bible Abraham Lincoln had used for his 1861 inauguration and carefully held it out to her husband with two gloved hands. Dad placed his left hand on the volume and, as Malia and Sasha stood by grinning, Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office.
It would not go smoothly. Unlike previous Chief Justices, Roberts was not reading the thirty-five-word oath from a card, and misplaced the word faithfully—as in “faithfully execute the office of President”—in the second phrase. When the Chief Justice botched it yet again, Barack arched an eyebrow ever so slightly. (Later, Michelle joked with her husband, “That’s what you get for not voting for his confirmation.”)
Still, when the oath seemed to have been completed, cannons sounded, the multitudes cheered, and a smiling Sasha gave Dad an orange-gloved thumbs-up—the first of several. A hush fell over the throng as the new President proclaimed, “Today we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”
Punctuated with cheers and applause, the nineteen-minute speech ended with a vow. “Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end,” Barack said, “that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.” Afterward, the President enveloped his predecessor in a warm hug.
Moments later, the Obamas and the Bidens were on the other side of the Capitol, saying good-bye to George and Laura Bush. To underscore the amicable nature of the succession, W hugged Barack yet again before the Bushes boarded the marine helicopter that would carry them off to Andrews Air Force Base and a plane bound for Midland, Texas.
For Barack and Michelle, the day’s drama continued at the congressional luncheon for some two hundred dignitaries in National Statuary Hall. No sooner had Chief Justice Roberts sidled up to the President to sheepishly whisper, “It’s my fault,” than Senator Ted Kennedy cried out in pain. Collapsing to the floor in a full-throttle seizure, Kennedy, who had been battling brain cancer, was rushed by ambulance to nearby Washington Hospital Center.
Like everyone else at the luncheon, Barack and Michelle were visibly upset. “I would be lying to you if I did not say that right now a part of me is with him,” the President later said. “And I think that’s true for all of us. It’s a joyous time but also a sobering time.” (Less than an hour later, the President was informed that the Senator was chatting with relatives and friends and resting comfortably.)
Memories of her husband practicing in the mirror were still fresh when Barack saluted a military color guard gathered in his honor. Then the First Couple climbed into “The Beast,” the hermetically sealed presidential Cadillac limousine that, among other things, weighs fourteen thousand pounds and boasts five-inch-thick armor plating.
Secret Service agents scrambled as Barack and Michelle emerged from their car near Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street Northwest and strolled hand in hand down the avenue. The Obamas arrived at the White House at 4:40 P.M., freshened up, and then reemerged with Malia and Sasha to walk down the North Driveway toward the enclosed, bulletproof Inaugural Parade reviewing stand. As they walked up to the stand, Michelle yelled to the crowd, “We’re here. We’re home!”
After the 1.7-mile-long parade—the most telling moment of which may have been when Barack gave the “hang loose” sign to the Punahou Academy Marching Band—the President and First Lady dashed back into the White House to dress for that evening’s ten inaugural balls.
Running more than an hour late, Michelle quickly changed out of the size 10 Isabel Toledo outfit and into her gown. “Miche, you look beautiful,” Barack said as she emerged in flowing white silk chiffon embellished with organza flowers and glittering Swarovski crystals. “I wanted the dress to reflect hope, fantasy, a dream,” said twenty-six-year-old Tapei-born designer Jason Wu. “Because this is a pretty surreal moment.” To top it off, Michelle wore rose-cut diamond drop earrings totaling sixty-one carats, white-gold-and-diamond bangle bracelets, and a thirteen-carat diamond signet ring—all of which were lent by the designer, Loree Rodkin, and later donated to the Smithsonian.
With Joe and Jill Biden in tow, the Obamas made the rounds of all ten balls. At the first stop of the evening, the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball, Barack and Michelle were greeted with wild cheers as they stepped onto a dance floor emblazoned with the Great Seal of the United States. Barack was wearing white tie—and his first new tuxedo in fifteen years. “First of all, how good-looking is my wife?” he said proudly.
Michelle allowed that her husband was “a pretty good dancer—but not as good as he thinks he is.” Tonight, however, as Beyoncé sang Etta James’s signature hit At Last, Barack and Michelle glided effortlessly across the dance floor as cameras clicked away. “You could tell that he was a black President,” said Academy Award–winning actor Jamie Foxx, “from the way he was moving.”
It was a scene the Obamas would repeat ten times—and that included Barack doing a frisky hip bump with fourteen-year-old Victoria Lucas. Among the revelers at one inaugural ball being held in the Mayflower Hotel: Zeituni Onyango. Now living in Cleveland, Barack’s Auntie Zeituni was getting ready to fight the government’s long-standing order to deport her.
Finally, the Obamas took their last spin around the dance floor and returned to the White House around twelve forty. There, with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis supplying the music, they hosted one final get-together with a few of their closest pals from Chicago.
As the First Couple took their friends on an impromptu tour of their new home, Barack stopped to point out some of the masterpieces on the walls—including works by Claude Monet, Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, and Paul Cézanne. While Valerie Jarrett and the others “gasped,” Michelle said coolly, “Pretty nice art, dontcha think?”
“It looked as though,” Jarrett said of her old friend, “she was right where she belonged.”
While all this was going on, Malia and Sasha hosted their own kids’ party, watching Bolt and High School Musical 3 in the White House theater before top
ping off the evening with a visit from the Jonas Brothers. This time Mom would not make the first daughters go to school the next day.
The White House they woke up to the next morning bore the unmistakable stamp of its new occupants—a style that, given the fact that they, too, were moving in with two young children, in some ways reflected that of Jack and Jackie Kennedy. In the Oval Office, Barack decided to keep the historic desk carved from the timbers of the British warship HMS Resolute—the same desk where FDR sat to give his famous fireside chats and that JFK Jr. (“John-John”) loved to hide beneath as a child. Barack also kept the pale yellow sunburst carpet in the Oval Office that Laura designed to convey a “sense of optimism.” He also kept a bust of Lincoln and a portrait of George Washington that hung over the fireplace mantel, but gone were four large paintings by Texas artists and a bust of Winston Churchill.
Since they wanted to maintain their Hyde Park residence as a home away from home (“The South Side of Chicago is our Kennebunkport,” Michelle said), the Obamas brought no furniture at all—just framed photographs, clothes, and personal items like Tiger, the stuffed animal Malia had not parted with since age three.
No matter. Like First Ladies before her, Michelle soon discovered she enjoyed shuffling antiques from room to room, having walls repainted, and unearthing hidden treasures locked away in storage. She was also determined to create a relaxed, homey look—and, since the country was in the middle of a deepening economic crisis, do it for under a hundred thousand dollars.
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