who’d turned up in our Emergency Department with care providers they could
see regularly, regardless of whether they could pay or not. My work felt personal.
I saw black folks streaming into the ER with issues that had long been neglected
—diabetic patients whose circulation issues had gone untended and who now
needed a leg amputated, for example—and couldn’t help but think of every
medical appointment my own father had failed to make for himself, every
symptom of his MS he’d downplayed in order not to make a fuss, or cost anyone
money, or generate paperwork, or to spare himself the feeling of being belittled
by a wealthy white doctor.
I liked my job, and while it wasn’t perfect, I also liked my life. With Sasha
about to move into elementary school, I felt as though I was at the start of a new
phase, on the brink of being able to fire up my ambition again and consider a
new set of goals. What would a presidential campaign do? It would hijack all that.
I knew enough to understand this ahead of time. Barack and I had been through
five campaigns in eleven years already, and each one had forced me to fight a bit
harder to hang on to my own priorities. Each one had put a little dent in my soul
and also in our marriage. A presidential run, I feared, would really bang us up.
Barack would be gone far more than he was while serving in Springfield or
Washington—not for half weeks, but full weeks; not for four- to eight-week
stretches with recesses in between, but for months at a time. What would that do
to our family? What would the publicity do to our girls?
I did what I could to ignore the whirlwind around Barack, even if it showed
no sign of dying down. Cable news pundits were debating his prospects. David
Brooks, the conservative columnist at the New York Times, published a surprising
sort of just-do-it plea titled “Run, Barack, Run.” He was recognized nearly
everywhere he went now, but I still had the blessing of invisibility. Standing in
line at a convenience store one day in October, I spotted the cover of Time
magazine and had to turn my head away: It was an extreme close-up of my
husband’s face, next to the headline “Why Barack Obama Could Be the Next
President.”
What I hoped was that at some point Barack himself would put an end to
the speculation, declaring himself out of contention and directing the media gaze
elsewhere. But he didn’t do this. He wouldn’t do this. He wanted to run. He
wanted it and I didn’t.
Anytime a reporter asked whether he’d join the race for president, Barack
would demur, saying simply, “I’m still thinking about it. It’s a family decision.”