I’

he’s going to travel with now?”

He smiled. “Every day for his entire presidency, yes,” he said. “It’s going to
look like this all the time.”

I took in the spectacle: thousands and thousands of pounds of metal, a squad
of commandos, bulletproof everything. I had yet to grasp that Barack’s protection
was still only half-visible. I didn’t know that he’d also, at all times, have a nearby
helicopter ready to evacuate him, that sharpshooters would position themselves
on rooftops along the routes he traveled, that a personal physician would always
be with him in case of a medical problem, or that the vehicle he rode in
contained a store of blood of the appropriate type in case he ever needed a
transfusion. In a matter of weeks, just ahead of Barack’s inauguration, the
presidential limo would be upgraded to a newer model—aptly named the Beast—
a seven-ton tank disguised as a luxury vehicle, tricked out with hidden tear-gas
cannons, rupture-proof tires, and a sealed ventilation system meant to get him
through a biological or chemical attack.

I was now married to one of the most heavily guarded human beings on
earth. It was simultaneously relieving and distressing.

I   looked  to  Cornelius,  who waved   me  forward in  the direction   of  the limo.

“You    can head    over    now,    ma’am,” he  said.

d been inside the White House just once before, a couple of years earlier.
Through Barack’s office at the Senate, I’d signed myself and Malia and Sasha up
for a special tour being offered during one of our visits to Washington, figuring
it’d be a fun thing to do. White House tours are generally self-guided, but this
one involved being taken around by a White House curator, who walked a small
group of us through its grand hallways and various public rooms.

We stared at the cut-glass chandeliers that dangled from the high ceiling of
the East Room, where opulent balls and receptions were historically held, and
inspected George Washington’s red cheeks and sober expression in the massive,
gilt-framed portrait that hung on one wall. We learned, courtesy of our guide,
that in the late eighteenth century First Lady Abigail Adams had used the giant
space to hang her laundry and that decades later, during the Civil War, Union
troops had temporarily been quartered there. A number of First Daughters’
weddings had taken place in the East Room. Abraham Lincoln’s and John F.