I could quit. Sometime in May, the Tennessee Republican Party released an online video, replaying my remarks in Wisconsin against clips of voters saying things like “Boy, I’ve been proud to be an American since I was a kid.” NPR’s website carried a story with the headline: “Is Michelle Obama an Asset or Liability?” Below it, in boldface, came what were apparently points of debate about me: “Refreshingly Honest or Too Direct?” and “Her Looks: Regal or Intimidating?”
I am telling you, this stuff hurt.
I sometimes blamed Barack’s campaign for the position I was in. I understood that I was more active than many candidates’ spouses, which made me more of a target for attacks. My instinct was to hit back, to speak up against the lies and unfair generalizations or to have Barack make some comment, but his campaign team kept telling me it was better not to respond, to march forward and simply take the hits. “This is just politics” was always the mantra, as if we could do nothing about it, as if we’d all moved to a new city on a new planet called Politics, where none of the normal rules applied.
Anytime my spirits started to dip, I’d punish myself further with a slew of disparaging thoughts: I hadn’t chosen this. I’d never liked politics. I’d left my job and given my identity over to this campaign and now I was a liability? Where had my power gone?
Sitting in our kitchen in Chicago on a Sunday evening when Barack was home for a one-night stopover, I’d let all my frustrations pour out.
“I don’t need to do this,” I told him. “If I’m hurting the campaign, why on earth am I out there?”
I explained that Melissa, Katie, and I were feeling overmatched by the volume of media requests and the work it took to travel on the tight budget we were on. I didn’t want to foul anything up and I wanted to be supportive, but we lacked the time and resources to do any more than react to the moment at hand. And when it came to the mounting scrutiny of me, I was tired of being defenseless, tired of being seen as someone altogether different from the person I was. “I can just stay home and be with the kids if that’s better,” I told Barack. “I’ll just be a regular wife who shows up only at the big events and smiles. Maybe that’d be a lot easier on everybody.”
Barack listened sympathetically. I could tell he was tired, eager to head upstairs and get some needed sleep. I hated sometimes how the lines had blurred between family life and political life for us. His days were filled with split-second problem solving and hundreds of interactions. I didn’t want to be another issue he needed to contend with, but then again, my existence had been fully folded into his.
“You’re so much more of an asset than a liability, Michelle, you have to know that,” he said, looking stricken. “But if you want to stop or slow down, I completely understand. You can do whatever you want here.”
He told me I should never feel beholden to him or to the machinery of the campaign. And if I wanted to keep going but needed more support and resources to do it, he’d figure out how to get them.
I was comforted by this, though only a little. I still felt like the first grader in the lunch line who’d just been walloped.
But with this, we dropped the politics and took our weary selves to bed.
* * *
Not long after that, I went to David Axelrod’s office in Chicago and sat down with him and Valerie to watch video of some of my public appearances. It was, I realize now, something of an intervention, an attempt to show me which small parts of this process I could control. The two of them praised me for how hard I’d been working and how effectively I was able to rally Barack’s supporters. But then Axe muted the volume as he replayed my stump speech, removing my voice so that we could look more closely at my body language, specifically my facial expressions.
What did I see? I saw myself speaking with intensity and conviction and never letting up. I always addressed the tough times many Americans were facing, as well as the inequities within our schools and our health-care