A Promised Land

No, I haven’t finished Barack Obama’s new memoir yet. I’ll be making my way through its 700+ pages for another few weeks, but I wanted to share one early passage that really grabbed me. After I read it the first time, I read it again out loud to Jennifer and could hardly get through it. I kept choking up.

By the summer of 2006, Obama had for months been hearing from various friends and mentors that he should consider running for president. He’d put off broaching the idea with Michele until support for his candidacy had become a major news story, since she was the person in his life who would be most skeptical about the idea. His involvement in politics had always been hard on her, and, she felt, difficult for their daughters. When he’d finally sat down with her to talk about running, she had reluctantly endorsed his formally exploring the possibility, and had since participated in a series of meetings with advisors, asking questions about the campaign calendar, what would be expected of her, and what it might mean for their daughters. Gradually, Obama writes, her resistance to the idea of his running had subsided.

And then there’s this:

One day in December, just ahead of our holiday trip to Hawaii, our team held what was to be the final meeting before I decided whether to move forward or not. Michelle patiently endured an hour-long discussion on staffing and the logistics of a potential announcement before cutting in with an essential question.

“You’ve said there are a lot of other Democrats who are capable of winning an election and being president. You’ve told me the only reason for you to run is if you could provide something that the others can’t. Otherwise it’s not worth it. Right?”

I nodded.

“So my question is why you, Barack? Why do you need to be president?”

We looked at each other across the table. For a moment, it was as if we were alone in the room. My mind flipped back to the moment seventeen years earlier when we first met, me arriving late to her office, a little damp from the rain, Michelle rising up from her desk, so lovely and self-possessed in a lawyerly blouse and skirt, and the easy banter that followed. I had seen in those round, dark eyes of hers a vulnerability that I knew she rarely let show. I knew even then that she was special, that I would need to know her, that this was a woman I could love. How lucky I had been, I thought.

“Barack?”

I shook myself out of the reverie. “Right,” I said. “Why me?” I mentioned several of the reasons we’d talked about before. That I might be able to spark a new kind of politics, or get a new generation to participate, or bridge the divisions in the country better than other candidates could.

“But who knows?” I said, looking around the table. “There’s no guarantee we can pull it off. Here’s one thing I know for sure, though. I know that the day I raise my right hand and take the oath to be president of the United States, the world will start looking at America differently. I know that kids all around the country — Black kids, Hispanic kids, kids who don’t fit in — they’ll see themselves differently, too, their horizons lifted, their possibilities expanded. And that alone . . . that would be worth it.”

The room was quiet. Marty smiled. Valerie was tearing up. I could see different members of the team conjuring it in their minds, the swearing in of the first African American president of the United States.

Michelle stared at me for what felt like an eternity. “Well, honey,” she said finally, “that was a pretty good answer.”