given over four years of our family’s life, that it was impossible not to feel
everything a bit personally.
The campaign had worn us out, maybe even more than I’d anticipated.
While working on my initiatives and keeping up with things like parent-teacher
conferences and monitoring the girls’ homework, I’d been speaking at campaign
events at an average of three cities a day, three days a week. And Barack’s pace
had been even more grueling. Polls consistently showed him with only a tenuous
lead over Mitt Romney. Making matters worse, he’d bombed during their first
debate in October, triggering a wave of eleventh-hour anxiety among donors and
advisers. We could read the exhaustion on the faces of our hardworking staffers.
Though they aimed never to show it, they were surely unsettled by the possibility
that Barack could be forced out of office in a matter of months.
Throughout it, Barack stayed calm, though I could see what the pressure did
to him. During the final weeks, he began to look a little wan and even skinnier
than usual, chewing his Nicorette with unusual vigor. I’d watched with wifely
concern as he tried to do everything—soothe the worriers, finish out the
campaign, and govern the nation all at once, including responding to a terrorist
attack on American diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, and managing a massive federal
response to Hurricane Sandy, which tore up the Eastern Seaboard just a week
before the election.
As polls on the East Coast began to close that evening, I headed up to the
third floor of our house, where we’d set up a kind of de facto hair and makeup
salon to prepare for the public part of the night ahead. Meredith had steamed and
readied clothes for me, my mom, and the girls. Johnny and Carl were doing my
hair and makeup. In keeping with tradition, Barack had gone out to play
basketball earlier in the day and had since settled into his office to put finishing
touches on his remarks.
We had a TV on the third floor, but I deliberately kept it off. If there was
news, good or bad, I wanted to hear it directly from Barack or Melissa, or
someone else close to me. The babble of news anchors with their interactive
electoral maps always jangled my nerves. I didn’t want the details: I just wanted
to know how to feel.
It was after 8:00 p.m. in the East now, which meant there had to be some
early results coming in. I picked up my BlackBerry and sent emails to Valerie,
Melissa, and Tina Tchen, who in 2011 had become my new chief of staff, asking
them what they knew.