enough to understand this ahead of time. Barack and I had been through five campaigns in eleven years already, and each one had forced me to fight a bit harder to hang on to my own priorities. Each one had put a little dent in my soul and also in our marriage. A presidential run, I feared, would really bang us up. Barack would be gone far more than he was while serving in Springfield or Washington—not for half weeks, but full weeks; not for four- to eight-week stretches with recesses in between, but for months at a time. What would that do to our family? What would the publicity do to our girls?
I did what I could to ignore the whirlwind around Barack, even if it showed no sign of dying down. Cable news pundits were debating his prospects. David Brooks, the conservative columnist at the New York Times, published a surprising sort of just-do-it plea titled “Run, Barack, Run.” He was recognized nearly everywhere he went now, but I still had the blessing of invisibility. Standing in line at a convenience store one day in October, I spotted the cover of Time magazine and had to turn my head away: It was an extreme close-up of my husband’s face, next to the headline “Why Barack Obama Could Be the Next President.”
What I hoped was that at some point Barack himself would put an end to the speculation, declaring himself out of contention and directing the media gaze elsewhere. But he didn’t do this. He wouldn’t do this. He wanted to run. He wanted it and I didn’t.
Anytime a reporter asked whether he’d join the race for president, Barack would demur, saying simply, “I’m still thinking about it. It’s a family decision.” Which was code for “Only if Michelle says I can.”
On nights when Barack was in Washington, I lay alone in bed, feeling as if it were me against the world. I wanted Barack for our family. Everyone else seemed to want him for our country. He had his council of advisers—David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs, the two campaign strategists who’d been critical in getting him elected to the Senate; David Plouffe, another consultant from Axelrod’s firm; his chief of staff, Pete Rouse; and Valerie—all of whom were cautiously supportive. But they’d also made clear that there was no half doing a presidential campaign.Barack and I both would need to be fully on board. The demands on him would be unimaginable. Without missing a beat in his Senate duties, he’d have to build and maintain a coast-to-coast campaign operation, develop a policy platform, and also raise an astonishing amount of money. My job would be not just to give tacit support to the campaign but to participate in it. I’d be expected to make myself and our children available for viewing, to smile approvingly and shake a lot of hands. Everything would be about him now, I realized, in support of this larger cause.
Even Craig, who’d so avidly protected me since the day I was born, had gotten swept up in the excitement of a potential run. He called me one evening explicitly to make a plug. “Listen, Miche,” he said, speaking as he often did, in basketball terms. “I know you’re worried about this, but if Barack’s got a shot, he’s got to take it. You can see that, right?”
It was on me. It was all on me. Was I afraid or just tired?
For better or worse, I’d fallen in love with a man with a vision who was optimistic without being naive, undaunted by conflict, and intrigued by how complicated the world was. He was strangely unintimidated by how much work there was to be done. He was dreading the thought of leaving me and the girls for long stretches, he said, but he also kept reminding me of how secure our love was. “We can handle this, right?” he said, holding my hand one night as we sat in his upstairs study and finally began to really talk about it. “We’re strong and we’re smart, and so are our kids. We’ll be just fine. We can afford this.”
What he meant was yes, a campaign would be costly. There were things we’d give up—time, togetherness, our privacy. It was too early to predict exactly how much would be required, but surely it would be a lot. For me, it was like spending money without knowing your