family safe?
The atmosphere was tense. Finally, Jarrett interrupted and said, “Let’s try this from a different perspective. Michelle, let’s say Barack answers all your questions to your full satisfaction and he’s got an answer for every one of them. Are you in?”
“I’m in a hundred and ten percent,” Michelle said. But she wasn’t going to let her husband get away with the “We’ll figure it out” bluster that he was prone to employ over contentious matters. Turning to Barack, she said, “You’re going to be really specific with me. You’re going to tell me exactly how we’re going to work it out.”
All the stress seemed to drain right out of Obama’s posture. His shoulders slackened, his face softened. It was the first time he’d ever heard Michelle say that she could get behind his running. Her list, he knew, would be long and involved, but it would be finite—a mountain that he could scale.
Most of the questions on Michelle’s list involved their daughters. How are you going to continue being a father to them? How many days will you be home? How are you going to communicate with the girls when you’re away? How often are you going to talk to them? Are you going to come to parent-teacher conferences? What about recitals? But other questions were directed elsewhere. How are you going to take care of your health? Are you going to quit smoking? (That was a deal-breaker, she claimed.) And then there was this: How are we, as a family, going to withstand the personal attacks that will certainly be coming?
Barack knew Michelle was right to be worried about the hammer that would fall on both of them if he ran. But he believed it was possible to rise above the distortions and j’accuses that had turned politics into the sort of unedifying blood sport from which so many Americans recoiled. Obama was also resolute about not attempting to turn the onslaught against his opponents. Oh, he’d throw punches when it was necessary—he would never shy away from a vigorous fight. But if he had to become just another hack, gouging out eyes and wallowing in the mud to do this thing, then it wasn’t worth doing. If he got in, he told Michelle and his brain trust, he would be in with both feet, for sure. “But I’m also going to emerge intact,” he said. “I’m going to be Barack Obama and not some parody.”
It was an extraordinary statement, the kind that few standard-issue pols would think to make when planning a long-shot adventure with their advisers. What gave him such an assured posture was his experience of the past two years—an experience that was without precedent in modern American politics. In his brief time on the national scene, Obama had compiled a staggering succession of big-stage triumphs that took the breath away. The convention speech. The Africa trip. The book tour. Appearances on Oprah and on the covers of Time and Newsweek. The reception he’d received from the media had been uniformly glowing, and that fed Obama’s sense that he could somehow transcend the horror show. Maybe that was insanely naive. Maybe it was incandescently mature. But at that moment, he had no reason to believe that it was anything but perfectly sound.
OBAMA FLEW TO ORANGE COUNTY, California, on December 1 to take part in an event at the Saddleback megachurch run by Rick Warren, the bestselling author of The Purpose Driven Life. It was World AIDS Day, and Warren had invited Obama to appear alongside Republican senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. Brownback, speaking first, remarked to Obama, “Welcome to my house,” prompting peals from the crowd. When Obama’s turn came, he remarked, “There is one thing I’ve gotta say, Sam, though: This is my house, too. This is God’s house.” He quoted Corinthians and advocated the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV. At the end, the huge crowd of conservative Evangelicals awarded him a standing ovation.
Saddleback was the start of a feverish two-week sprint
The atmosphere was tense. Finally, Jarrett interrupted and said, “Let’s try this from a different perspective. Michelle, let’s say Barack answers all your questions to your full satisfaction and he’s got an answer for every one of them. Are you in?”
“I’m in a hundred and ten percent,” Michelle said. But she wasn’t going to let her husband get away with the “We’ll figure it out” bluster that he was prone to employ over contentious matters. Turning to Barack, she said, “You’re going to be really specific with me. You’re going to tell me exactly how we’re going to work it out.”
All the stress seemed to drain right out of Obama’s posture. His shoulders slackened, his face softened. It was the first time he’d ever heard Michelle say that she could get behind his running. Her list, he knew, would be long and involved, but it would be finite—a mountain that he could scale.
Most of the questions on Michelle’s list involved their daughters. How are you going to continue being a father to them? How many days will you be home? How are you going to communicate with the girls when you’re away? How often are you going to talk to them? Are you going to come to parent-teacher conferences? What about recitals? But other questions were directed elsewhere. How are you going to take care of your health? Are you going to quit smoking? (That was a deal-breaker, she claimed.) And then there was this: How are we, as a family, going to withstand the personal attacks that will certainly be coming?
Barack knew Michelle was right to be worried about the hammer that would fall on both of them if he ran. But he believed it was possible to rise above the distortions and j’accuses that had turned politics into the sort of unedifying blood sport from which so many Americans recoiled. Obama was also resolute about not attempting to turn the onslaught against his opponents. Oh, he’d throw punches when it was necessary—he would never shy away from a vigorous fight. But if he had to become just another hack, gouging out eyes and wallowing in the mud to do this thing, then it wasn’t worth doing. If he got in, he told Michelle and his brain trust, he would be in with both feet, for sure. “But I’m also going to emerge intact,” he said. “I’m going to be Barack Obama and not some parody.”
It was an extraordinary statement, the kind that few standard-issue pols would think to make when planning a long-shot adventure with their advisers. What gave him such an assured posture was his experience of the past two years—an experience that was without precedent in modern American politics. In his brief time on the national scene, Obama had compiled a staggering succession of big-stage triumphs that took the breath away. The convention speech. The Africa trip. The book tour. Appearances on Oprah and on the covers of Time and Newsweek. The reception he’d received from the media had been uniformly glowing, and that fed Obama’s sense that he could somehow transcend the horror show. Maybe that was insanely naive. Maybe it was incandescently mature. But at that moment, he had no reason to believe that it was anything but perfectly sound.
OBAMA FLEW TO ORANGE COUNTY, California, on December 1 to take part in an event at the Saddleback megachurch run by Rick Warren, the bestselling author of The Purpose Driven Life. It was World AIDS Day, and Warren had invited Obama to appear alongside Republican senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. Brownback, speaking first, remarked to Obama, “Welcome to my house,” prompting peals from the crowd. When Obama’s turn came, he remarked, “There is one thing I’ve gotta say, Sam, though: This is my house, too. This is God’s house.” He quoted Corinthians and advocated the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV. At the end, the huge crowd of conservative Evangelicals awarded him a standing ovation.
Saddleback was the start of a feverish two-week sprint
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