Becoming

When Michelle is forty years old, with children who are three and six, she is sometimes amazed at her own energy and efficiency and what she is able to accomplish at work. At the hospital, Michelle aims to undo the barriers between the academics and hospital administrators and the surrounding areas. She institutes programs to take hospital staff and trustees into the neighborhoods. Local kids come in to shadow hospital employees.

Michelle also observes the issue of how residents get medical treatment. They are a population disproportionately affected by the chronic conditions that tend to afflict the poor, and are also largely uninsured. Thus, they jam the hospital’s emergency room—an expensive and inefficient system for getting treatment. She sets up a program to hire and train patient advocates—people who will sit with patients in the ER and help them set up follow-up appointments to get decent and affordable care. 

Michelle is happy at her job, but also understands that there are trade-offs: projects she does not follow through on, or people she could have mentored better. She tries to maintain stability and normalcy at home. Barack, meanwhile, comes and goes with his schedule but makes the most of the time he is home. He is also thinking about campaigning for the U.S. Senate, having grown increasingly frustrated by the pace of state government.

Barack, Michelle, Valerie Jarrett, and a few close friends meet to discuss Barack’s running. Barack explains that he feels he has a real shot: the incumbent is a conservative Republican in an increasingly Democratic state. After more discussion, Valerie agrees to be the finance chair for the campaign, some friends agree to donate time and money, and Michelle agrees to let him run—on the condition that if he loses, he will move on from politics. 

Barack gets a few lucky twists along the campaign. The incumbent decides not to run, and both the Democratic front-runner in the primary and the Republican nominee become involved in scandals. Barack wins the nomination running an excellent campaign, and a few months before the election, Barack doesn’t even have a Republican opponent.

Then, John Kerry invites Barack to give the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Barack is still a “complete nobody”—he had never used a teleprompter or been live on prime-time television. And yet, he seems “destined for exactly this moment.” He had been building a big vision, and is ready to speak to a fifteen-thousand-person crowd.

Barack speaks for seventeen minutes that night, explaining who he is and where he comes from: his grandfather, who had fought in World War II; his father, who had herded goats in Kenya; his parents’ improbable love and their faith in a good education for their son. He casts himself as “a literal embodiment of the American story,” calling for hope over cynicism. His optimism is “dazzling.” The crowd roars to its feet when he finishes.

The media response to the speech is “hyperbolic.” One pundit comments, “I’ve just seen the first black president.” Barack’s phone rings non-stop. People stop him on the street, asking for his autograph. Journalists ask him for his opinion on national issues. Dreams from My Father gets a paperback reissue and lands on the New York Times bestseller list. Barack is elected in November with 70 percent of the vote.

Barack starts flying back and forth to D.C. all the time, while Michelle sticks to her routine in Chicago. One day, Michelle gets a call from the wife of another senator inviting her to a club of wives of important people in Washington. Michelle politely declines, saying that she’s decided to remain in Chicago. The senator’s wife warns her that that can be “very hard on a marriage.” Michelle is put off by her judgement, thanking her and hanging up.

Michelle does visit Washington for Barack’s orientation as a senator. The “decorous traditions” of Washington confuse Michelle, as it appears catered to whiteness and maleness. She realizes that the phrase “Mrs. Obama” is starting to take on a new meaning for her—diminishing her. She can feel this diminishing deepen as people start to ask Barack whether he might run for president in 2008. Barack waves these questions away, but Michelle can see that he is already thinking about it.

Barack starts to write The Audacity of Hope, thinking through his vision of the country. Then, Hurricane Katrina blasts the Gulf Coast, stranding people—mostly black people—on the rooftops of their home. It exposes the country’s structural divides, and Michelle knows that if a similar disaster hit Chicago, many of her relatives might have experienced a similar fate.

In the summer of 2006, Barack’s political clout rises with the publication of The Audacity of Hope. His unofficial poll numbers are even with or ahead of Al Gore and John Kerry, though Hillary Clinton is decidedly the frontrunner. Michelle worries that it’s happening too quickly, wishing that he would wait until the girls are older. And, for herself, she worries about losing her career and life to his ambition, as she has a job that matters to her.

Despite many reservations, Michelle and Barack talk through the idea of his running for present. Their conversations are sometimes “angry and tearful,” sometimes “earnest and positive.” It requires them to examine who they are and what matters to them, she writes. In the end, Michelle says yes—not only because she loves him and has faith in him, but also because she knows he could help millions of people. Still, she is uncertain he can win—Barack is “a black man in America, after all.”