Becoming

Joe Biden, the affable senator from Delaware who’d soon be announced as his running mate. I felt ...

Chicago. We were tired, all of us. We’d done the parade and the picnic. We’d engaged with what felt lik ...

F 18 our months later, on November 4, 2008, I cast my vote for Barack. The two of us went early that ...

and power up close. I’d seen how just a handful of votes in every precinct could mean the difference no ...

minority candidates, voters often hid their prejudice from pollsters, expressing it only from the privacy o ...

A “Tired?” “Nope.” He smiled up at me, as if trying to prove it was true. Only a day earlier, we’d recei ...

I were police officers stationed on practically every corner, Coast Guard boats patrolling the lake, ...

Secret Service agents into a freight elevator, hustled out a back exit at the hotel and into a waiting SU ...

process none of it. It all felt too big. I remember little of Barack’s speech that night. Sasha, Malia, ...

Becoming More ...

T 19 here is no handbook for incoming First Ladies of the United States. It’s not technically a job, nor ...

M journey. I wouldn’t have the luxury of settling into my new role slowly before being judged. And whe ...

plan for this transition. Doing anything ahead of time would have been viewed as presumptuous. For a ...

“Raindance.”) When speaking to me directly, the Secret Service agents almost always called me “ma’am.” As in, ...

I’ he’s going to travel with now?” He smiled. “Every day for his entire presidency, yes,” he said. “It’s goi ...

Kennedy’s caskets had also lain there for viewing. I could feel my mind sifting through all th ...

together contact lists, calendars, and sample correspondence to help me find my footing when it came to t ...

W checking out the two bedrooms that I thought would work best for Sasha and Malia, j ...

ahead of the inauguration, which meant that we had to make temporary arrangements, renting room ...

security accommodations that would now be needed for Malia and Sasha, which meant we wouldn’t be too b ...