begun selling the iPhone in June 2007, about four months after Barack
announced his candidacy for president. A million of them sold in less than three
months. A billion of them sold before his second term was over. His was the first
presidency of a new era, one involving the disruption and dismantling of all
norms around privacy—involving selfies, data hacks, Snapchats, and Kardashians.
Our daughters lived more deeply inside it than we did, in part because social
media governed teen life and in part because their routines put them in closer
contact with the public than ours did. As Malia and Sasha moved around
Washington with their friends after school or on weekends, they’d catch sight of
strangers pointing their phones in their direction, or contend with grown men
and women asking—even demanding—to take a selfie with them. “You do
know that I’m a child, right?” Malia would sometimes say when turning someone
down.
Barack and I did what we could to protect our kids from too much
exposure, declining all media requests for them and working to keep their
everyday lives largely out of sight. Their Secret Service escorts supported us by
trying to be less conspicuous when following the girls around in public, wearing
board shorts and T-shirts instead of suits and swapping their earpieces and wrist
microphones for earbud headsets, in order to better blend in at the teenage
hangouts they now frequented. We strongly disapproved of the publication of
any photos of our children that weren’t connected to an official event, and the
White House press office made this clear to the media. Melissa and others on my
team became my enforcers anytime an image of one of the girls surfaced on a
gossip site, making haranguing phone calls to get it taken down.
Guarding the girls’ privacy meant finding other ways to satiate the public’s
curiosity about our family. Early in Barack’s second term, we’d added a new
puppy to the household—Sunny—a free-spirited rambler who seemed to see no
point in being house-trained, given how big her new house was. The dogs added
a lightness to everything. They were living, loafing proof that the White House
was a home. Knowing that Malia and Sasha were basically off-limits, the White
House communications teams began requesting the dogs for official appearances.
In the evenings, I’d find memos in my briefing book asking me to approve a “Bo
and Sunny Drop-By,” allowing the dogs to mingle with members of the media
or children coming for a tour. The dogs would get deployed when reporters
came to learn about the importance of American trade and exports or, later, to
hear Barack speak in favor of Merrick Garland, his pick for the Supreme Court.
Bo starred in a promotional video for the Easter Egg Roll. He and Sunny posed