Michelle Obama by Peter Slevin

Author:Peter Slevin [Slevin, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-95883-9
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-04-06T16:00:00+00:00

MICHELLE AND THE GIRLS DESCENDED on Des Moines for the final push with an army of relatives, friends, and babysitters. The adults spread out and campaigned while the kids frolicked. It was Michelle’s seventeenth trip to Iowa since March. She was bone-tired and on edge. “Exhausted,” said Jackie Norris, a campaign aide who often staffed her. “There’s an emotional exhaustion that you can never know until your spouse runs for office.” Michelle worried that Barack might lose. And yet as the day drew nearer and the odds grew brighter, she worried even more that he might win. What if he did win, she wondered. What would happen to her then?

The night of January 3, 2008, was bitterly cold. Given a chance to see a caucus, the peculiarly democratic phenomenon that had defined the last ten months of his life, Barack headed to a high school in suburban Ankeny. With a Secret Service agent at the wheel, he was accompanied by Plouffe, Jarrett, and two aides. They pulled into the parking lot and were elated to see throngs of people, varying in age and party, ethnicity and class. Barack thought of his late mother, and how she would have appreciated the human tapestry. Afterward, he joined Michelle and Craig, family and friends, at dinner in West Des Moines. He told Plouffe not to call with predictions, only when the results were clear. When the news did arrive, Barack’s victory was assured. He would gather 37 percent of the caucus vote, with Clinton slipping into third, a fraction of a point behind Edwards. He won decisively, by eight percentage points, in a state where one year earlier no one had given him a chance. He took the stage, all smiles, at the Hy-Vee Center, with Michelle, Malia, and Sasha beside him, their fashion choices coordinated, a striking family tableau that would soon become familiar.

“Thank you, Iowa!” he called out. “You know, they said this day would never come. They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose. But on this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do.” He thanked the precinct captains, the volunteers, and the campaign staff. He thanked one person by name: “The love of my life, the rock of the Obama family and the closer on the campaign trail. Give it up for Michelle Obama.” Thousands of supporters cheered and shouted and grinned from ear to ear. For the Obamas and their growing legion of believers, the moment was electrifying. Tougher days were yet to come, starting five days later in New Hampshire, but there would always be some magic to Iowa.

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