course, got the most of it—the public adulation as well as the scrutiny that rode inevitably on its back. The more popular you became, the more haters you acquired. It seemed almost like an unwritten rule, especially in politics, where adversaries put money into opposition research—hiring investigators to crawl through every piece of a candidate’s background, looking for anything resembling dirt.
We are built differently, my husband and I, which is why one of us chose politics and the other did not. He was aware of rumors and misperceptions that got pumped like toxic vapor into the campaign, but rarely did any of it bother him. Barack had lived through other campaigns. He’d studied political history and girded himself with the context it provided. And in general, he’s just not someone who’s easily rattled or thrown off course by anything as abstract as doubt or hurt.
I, on the other hand, was still learning about public life. I considered myself a confident, successful woman, but I was also the same kid who used to tell people she planned to be a pediatrician and devoted herself to setting perfect attendance records at school. In other words, I cared what people thought. I’d spent my young life seeking approval, dutifully collecting gold stars and avoiding messy social situations. Over time, I’d gotten better about not measuring my self-worth strictly in terms of standard, by-the-book achievement, but I did tend to believe that if I worked diligently and honestly, I’d avoid the bullies and always be seen as myself.
This belief, though, was about to come undone.
After Barack’s victory in Iowa, my message on the campaign trail grew only more impassioned, almost proportional to the size of the crowds that were turning out at rallies. I’d gone from meeting hundreds of people at a gathering to a thousand or more. I remember pulling up to an event in Delaware with Melissa and Katie and seeing a line of people five-deep and stretching around the block, waiting to get inside an already-jammed auditorium. It stunned me in the happiest of ways. I relayed this to every crowd: I was floored by what people were bringing to Barack’s campaign in terms of enthusiasm and involvement. I was humbled by their investment, the work I saw everyday people doing to help get him elected.
When it came to my stump speech, building on the theory of campaigning that had worked so well for me in Iowa, I’d developed a loose structure for it, though I didn’t use a teleprompter or worry if I went off on a slight tangent. My words weren’t polished, and I’d never be as eloquent as my husband, but I spoke from the heart. I described how my initial doubts about the political process had slowly diminished week by week, replaced by something more encouraging and hopeful. So many of us, I was realizing, had the same struggles, the same concerns for our kids and worries about the future. And so many believed as I did that Barack was the only candidate capable of delivering real change.
Barack wanted to get American troops out of Iraq. He wanted to roll back the tax cuts George W. Bush had pushed through for the super-wealthy. He wanted affordable health care for all Americans. It was an ambitious platform, but every time I walked into an auditorium of revved-up supporters, it seemed as if maybe as a nation we were ready to look past our differences and make it happen. There was pride in those rooms, a united spirit that went well past the color of anyone’s skin. The optimism was big and it was energizing. I surfed it like a wave. “Hope is making a comeback!” I would declare at every stop.
I’d been in Wisconsin one day in February when Katie got a call from someone on Barack’s communications team, saying that there seemed to be a problem. I’d evidently said something controversial in a speech I’d given at a theater in Milwaukee a few hours earlier. Katie was confused, as was I. What I’d said in Milwaukee was really no different from what I’d just finished saying to a crowd in Madison, which was no different from what I’d been saying to every crowd for months. There’d never been an issue before. Why would there be one now?
Later that day, we saw the issue for ourselves. Someone had taken film from my roughly forty-minute talk and edited it down