the Illinois winter had in store. It was a small triumph, but a triumph nonetheless, and it was mine.
* * *
Announcement day—February 10, 2007—turned out to be a bright, cloudless morning, the kind of sparkling midwinter Saturday that looks a lot better than it actually feels. The air temperature sat at about twelve degrees, with a light breeze blowing. Our family had arrived in Springfield the previous day, staying in a three-room suite at a downtown hotel, on a floor that had been rented out entirely by the campaign to house a couple dozen of our family and friends who’d traveled down from Chicago as well.
Already, we were beginning to experience the pressures of a national campaign. Barack’s announcement had inadvertently been scheduled for the same day as the State of the Black Union, a forum organized each year by the public-broadcasting personality Tavis Smiley, who was evidently angry about it. He’d made his displeasure clear to the campaign staff, suggesting that the move showed a disregard for the African American community and would end up hurting Barack’s candidacy. I was surprised that the first shots fired at us came from within the black community. Then, just a day ahead of the announcement, Rolling Stone published a piece on Barack that included the reporter making a visit to Trinity Church in Chicago. We were still members there, though our attendance had dropped off significantly after the girls were born. The piece quoted from an angry and inflammatory sermon the Reverend Jeremiah Wright had delivered many years earlier regarding the treatment of blacks in our country, intimating that Americans cared more about maintaining white supremacy than they did about God.
While the profile itself was largely positive, the cover line of the magazine read, “The Radical Roots of Barack Obama,” which we knew would quickly get weaponized by the conservative media. It was a disaster in the making, especially on the eve of the campaign launch and especially because Reverend Wright was scheduled to lead the invocation ahead of Barack’s speech. Barack had to make a difficult call, phoning the pastor and asking whether he’d be willing to step back from the spotlight, giving us a private backstage blessing instead. Reverend Wright’s feelings were hurt, Barack said, but he also seemed to understand the stakes, leading us to believe that he’d be supportive without dwelling on his disappointment.
That morning, it hit me that we’d reached the no-turning-back moment. We were literally now putting our family in front of the American people. The day was meant to be a massive kickoff party for the campaign, one for which everyone had spent weeks preparing. And like every paranoid host, I couldn’t shake the fear that when the time finally came, no one would show up. Unlike Barack, I could be a doubter. I still held on to the worries I’d had since childhood. What if we’re not good enough? Maybe everything we’d been told was an exaggeration. Maybe Barack was less popular than his people believed. Maybe it just wasn’t yet his time. I tried to shove all doubts aside as we arrived through a side entrance to a staging area inside the old capitol, still unable to see what was going on out front. So that I could get a briefing from the staff, I handed Sasha and Malia off to my mother and Kaye Wilson—“Mama Kaye”—a former mentor of Barack’s who had in recent years stepped into the role of second grandmother to our girls.
The crowd was looking good, I was told. People had started gathering before dawn. The plan was for Barack to walk out first, and then the girls and I would join him a few moments later on the platform, climbing a few stairs before turning to wave at the crowd. I’d made it clear already that we would not stay onstage for his twenty-minute address. It was too much to ask two little kids to sit still and pretend to be interested. If they looked at all bored, if either one sneezed or started fidgeting, it would do nothing for Barack’s cause. The same went for me. I knew the stereotype I was meant to inhabit, the immaculately groomed doll-wife with the painted-on smile, gazing bright-eyed at her husband, as if hanging on every word. This was not me and never would be. I could be supportive, but I couldn’t be a robot.