was popular and successful, and plate spinner that he was, he was also starting to think about bigger things—namely, running for the U.S. Congress, hoping to unseat a four-term Democrat named Bobby Rush. Did I think it was a good idea for him to run for Congress? No, I did not. It struck me as unlikely that he’d win, given that Rush was well-known and Barack was still a virtual nobody. But he was a politician now and had traction inside the state Democratic Party. He had advisers and supporters, some of whom were urging him to give it a shot. Somebody had conducted a preliminary poll that seemed to suggest maybe he could win. And this I know for sure about my husband: You don’t dangle an opportunity in front of him, something that could give him a wider field of impact, and expect him just to walk away. Because he doesn’t. He won’t.
* * *
At the end of 1999, when Malia was almost eighteen months old, we took her to Hawaii at Christmastime to visit her great-grandmother Toot, who was now seventy-seven years old and living in the same small high-rise apartment she’d been in for decades. It was meant to be a family visit—the one time each year Toot could see her grandson and great-granddaughter. Winter had once again clapped itself over Chicago, siphoning the warmth from the air and the blue from the sky. Feeling antsy both at home and at work, we’d booked a modest hotel room near Waikiki Beach and started counting down the days. Barack’s teaching duties at the law school had wrapped up for the semester, and I’d put in for time off at my job. But then politics got in the way.
The Illinois senate was hung up in a marathon debate, trying to settle on the provisions of a major crime bill. Instead of breaking for the holidays, it went into a special session with the aim of pushing through to a vote before Christmas. Barack called me from Springfield, saying we’d need to delay our trip by a few days. This wasn’t great news, but I understood it was out of his hands. All I cared was that we eventually got there. I didn’t want Toot spending Christmas alone, and beyond that Barack and I needed the downtime. The trip to Hawaii, I was figuring, would separate both of us from our work and give us a chance to simply breathe.
He was now officially running for Congress, which meant that he rarely switched off. He would later give an interview to a local paper, estimating that during the six or so months he campaigned for Congress, he spent less than four full days at home with me and Malia. This was the painful reality of campaigning. On top of his other responsibilities, Barack lived with a ticking clock, one that incessantly reminded him of the minutes and hours remaining before the March primary. How he spent each of those minutes and hours could, at least in theory, affect the eventual outcome. What I was learning, too, was that in the eyes of a campaign operation, any minutes or hours a candidate spends privately with family are viewed basically as a waste of that valuable time.
I was enough of a veteran now to try to keep myself largely disengaged from the daily ups and downs of the race. I’d given Barack’s decision to run a wan blessing, adopting a let’s-just-get-this-out-of-the-way attitude about the whole thing. I thought maybe he’d try and fail to get into national politics and that this would then motivate him to want to try something entirely different. In an ideal world (my ideal world, anyway), Barack would do something like become the head of a foundation, where he could have an impact on issues that mattered and also make it home for dinner at night.
We flew to Hawaii on December 23, after the legislature finally hit pause for the holiday, though it still hadn’t managed to find a resolution. But to my relief, we’d made it. Waikiki Beach was a revelation for young Malia. She tootled up and down the shoreline, kicking at the waves and exhausting herself with joy. We spent a merry, uneventful Christmas with Toot in her apartment, opening gifts and marveling at her devotion to the five-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle she had going on a card table. As it always had, Oahu’s languid green waters and cheery populace