C2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11 , 2020
candidate Pete Buttigieg, re-
marked that the job of a White
House spouse is “to take the
weight of the day and make it go
away.” Which prompts the obvi-
ous but unanswerable follow-up:
Whose job is it to relieve the
burden of the first lady’s day?
How much time and energy is left
for her? These White House roles
weren’t designed with modern
marriages in mind, in which both
members of a couple often share
the load of working, raising chil-
dren and supporting each other.
But, for the Obamas, the ten-
sion was not lasting. The book
begins as the presidency ends —
with a period of rest and relax-
ation. Obama writes of spending
his first month as a former presi-
dent going for long walks with
Michelle, enjoying leisurely din-
ners and sleeping late, how they
“replenished our friendship” and
“rediscovered our love.” In the
quiet and stillness after years of
pressure and stress — like two
empty-nesters who get to once
again revel in each other’s compa-
ny after the kids leave for college
— husband and wife get to recon-
nect.
[email protected]Lisa Bonos writes about dating and
relationships for The Washington
Post.the thought that those days might
not return.”
Any couple juggling two ca-
reers and kids might experience
such wistfulness for their rela-
tionship’s simpler, early days. But
a large part of the distance
Obama describes is unique to the
presidency, and any first couple is
likely to experience it. In imagin-
ing what it would be like to be the
spouse of a president or vice
president, Chasten Buttigieg, the
husband of 2020 presidentialthey’d go their separate ways —
Michelle to her study and Obama
to the Treaty Room to continue
working — and by the time he was
finished, she was asleep. In one of
the book’s most bittersweet pas-
sages, Obama writes, “There were
nights when, lying next to Mi-
chelle in the dark, I’d think about
those days when everything be-
tween us felt lighter, when her
smile was more constant and our
love less encumbered, and my
heart would suddenly tighten atnotes, was “an undercurrent of
tension in her, subtle but con-
stant, like the faint thrum of a
hidden machine.” Obama sensed
the strain his position put on
their marriage. “It was as if, con-
fined as we were within the walls
of the White House, all of her
previous sources of frustration
became more concentrated, more
vivid, whether it was my round-
the-clock absorption with work,
or the way politics exposed our
family to constant scrutiny and
attacks, or the tendency of even
friends and family members to
treat her role as secondary in
importance.”
And yet, she rarely shared
those feelings with her husband,
the former president writes. She
didn’t want to add to his load, and
there wasn’t much he could do to
change their circumstances. “And
maybe she stopped talking be-
cause she knew I’d try to reason
away her fears, or try to placate
her in some inconsequential way,
or imply that all she needed was a
change in attitude,” Obama
writes. “If I was fine, she should
be too.”
There were gasps of normalcy
— when they’d get to snuggle
under a blanket and watch TV or
play with the girls and Bo, the
first family’s Portuguese water
dog. But most nights, after dinnerprises is a sense of isolation, from
the rest of the world and from
each other. In the White House,
every move has to be scheduled,
calculated and approved by oth-
ers — from whom they invite to
dinner to where they vacation to
where they would live after the
2012 election should he not be
reelected.
Such tight control, and the
high stakes involved in each day’s
work, can change a person. But
Obama notes several times that
he seemed to be taking every-
thing in stride, even the crises. So
much so that longtime friend and
senior advisor Valerie Jarrett re-
marked several times “on how
little the presidency changed me,”
Obama writes.
Michelle, however, had a differ-
ent response. After all, she had
never had political aspirations —
and yet she was propelled into a
role with so many expectations.
“Look beautiful. Care for your
family. Be gracious. Support your
man. For most of American his-
tory, t he First Lady’s job had been
defined by these tenets, and Mi-
chelle was hitting all the marks,”
Obama writes. “What she hid
from the outside world, though,
was the way her new role initially
chafed, how fraught with uncer-
tainty it felt.”
The result, her husband laterboth partners get a say in big
decisions.
Michelle’s probing questions
and hard lines weren’t a n incon-
venience for an ambitious politi-
cian; rather, they echoed what
first attracted Obama to Michelle.
“The weird thing was, I liked...
how she constantly challenged
me and kept me honest.” The
lesson here is that, even in a
relationship labeled “couple
goals” and viewed as highly aspi-
rational, conflict is natural. It’s
how you navigate it — not how
much of it you have or how far
apart you might initially seem —
that determines a partnership’s
strength.
Overall, Obama’s memoir is a
portrait of how an unlikely presi-
dency came to be, how Obama
dealt with political adversaries,
what he achieved and what was
left undone. Amid the nitty-gritty
dissection of how government
does (and doesn’t) work, and dos-
es of yes-we-can idealism, the
book also explores what happens
to a marriage when one person’s
dream thrusts both partners into
the public eye. Michelle agrees to
a presidential run, but neither
she nor Obama fully realizes what
they’re signing up for.
Among the unwelcome sur-
BOOK WORLD FROM C1
Even in a strong marriage, role of first lady can be a fraught, lonely challenge
NIKKI KAHN/THE WASHINGTON POST
Barack Obama describes how the strains of White House life
affected the first lady. There was “an undercurrent of tension” in
Michelle, he writes, “like the faint thrum of a hidden machine.”ous Republicans and non-parti-
san participants.”
It’s a w ild thing to believe, but
believe they do. On Monday,
though, not one but two Kraken
lawsuits foundered on the rocks
of the American legal system.
“Belief is not evidence,” wrote
U.S. District Judge Linda V. Park-
er, quoting case law, in her rejec-
tion of a suit asking to decertify
Michigan’s election results.
A similar case was dismissed in
Georgia. “Much like the mytho-
logical ‘kraken’ monster after
which plaintiffs have named this
lawsuit, their claims of election
fraud and malfeasance belong
more to the kraken’s realm of
mythos than they do to reality,”
wrote attorneys for the state.
“The Kraken is more like cala-
mari,” tweeted Marc E. Elias, a
voting rights lawyer for the Dem-
ocrats, as he marked a 50th post-
election court defeat for Trump
and his allies on Tuesday.
“It appears the only Kraken
being released will be the @Seat-
tleKraken next year,” Gov. Jay In-
slee (D-Wash.) tweeted, referring
to the city’s new hockey team,
named over the summer in this
year of the Kraken.
Powell could not be reached for
comment about why she settled
on the Kraken as her touchstone,
though the creature seems to res-
onate among followers of QAnon
(the delusional online mythology
that paints Trump as a godlike
figure who is always one thunder-
clap from victory or vindication
or whatever). Perhaps Powell is
merely a fan of the 1981 film
“Clash of the Titans” or its 2010
reboot.
“Let loose the Kraken!” Lau-
rence Olivier, as Zeus, commands
in the first.
“Release the Kraken!” Liam
Neeson, as Zeus, growls in the
second.
Cinematically, Giuliani was
hospitalized Monday with covid.
On Tuesday Axios reported that
his co-counsel Jenna Ellis tested
positive. Whatever the Kraken is,
it’s loose.
Absent any satisfying explana-
tion of why the country is Krak’d
out, we turned to the “prince of
paleo-fiction,” a novelist named
Max Hawthorne, who wrote a tril-
ogy of Kraken-centric books. The
appeal of the Kraken, he says, is
that it’s a f ictional exaggeration of
real fears (the deep) and real crea-
tures (like the giant squid).
Consider the very real Donald
Trump, and the very real virus,
and it’s not hard to summon rage ,
doubt, fear and other perils that
lurk beneath. Krakens every-
where. Krakenism as a way of life.
How else to explain this sinking
feeling? There are mundane ex-
planations and less fantastical
crises available. And yet demand
is high for a monster from the
deep: evil, otherworldly.
Hawthorne, though, reduces
the appeal of the Kraken to its
dark essence. Adrift and vulner-
able, we marvel at o ur own anni-
hilation.
“The thought of being at sea
and having your vessel suddenly
immobilized, while slimy tenta-
cles slither up and drag people to
their deaths, instills a primal ter-
ror in us,” Hawthorne says by
email. “Take it from an author
who writes about these things:
Exploring the fear of being de-
voured alive is something the hu-
man psyche can never get enough
of.”
[email protected]amid mass death — is live their
lives normally, according to Gal-
lup, while Democrats remain
amenable to lockdowns and re-
strictions. A color-coded map of
the country shows uncontrolled
spread nearly everywhere. A red
ocean of surrender.
“We’re looking at the virus as a
political phenomenon and not a
scientific one,” says Ricardo A.
Samaniego, the county judge of El
Paso County, T ex., which has been
racked by covid-19. As of last
week, there were 268 corpses in
overflow cooling trailers, a queue
of 600 deaths waiting to be inves-
tigated, and a 15.5 percent positiv-
ity rate.
“It’s so irrational that anybody
would base the way they protect
themselves on their political par-
ty line,” Samaniego says. “Just
like it’s irrational that they’d be-
lieve an election is fraudulent
because of a political party line.
It’s a very interesting phenom-
enon.”
Nearly half of Trump support-
ers expect the president to be
sworn in again on Jan. 20, accord-
ing to a recent study by Bright
Line Watch. An overwhelming
majority of his supporters — as
many as 85 percent of them —
believe that the election was cor-
rupted by “millions” of instances
of malfeasance. The data suggest
that Trump’s mythmaking has
hexed many Americans’ confi-
dence in the system.
“The levels of fraud in which
these respondents profess to be-
lieve are staggering,” wrote the
authors of the poll, “and would
require the complicity of thou-
sands of local electoral officials
and volunteers, including numer-seabeast upon a fragile vessel,
leaving 286,000 bodies in its
wake. The Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention asked
people not to travel for Thanks-
giving, to avoid juicing infection
rates, to little avail. The volume of
inter-regional travel only de-
creased 4 percent from 2019 lev-
els, according to anonymized cell-
phone data provided to NPR.
Solidarity against an invisible
enemy became anger toward a
familiar one. Republican culture
warriors added another myth to
their lore: Liberals were using the
pandemic to expand their peren-
nial War on Christmas; they now
wished to ruin birthdays, re-
unions and Thanksgiving, too. On
Nov. 21, four days before “Kraken
Day,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) tweet-
ed a silhouette of a turkey subti-
tled with “COME AND TAKE IT.”
Has politics devoured all? A
pile of Ethernet cables may be
easier to fret about than a pile of
bodies. A majority of Republican
citizens think the best thing for
healthy people to do right now —they glimpsed a tentacle out of the
corner of their eyes.
While many Americans were
obsessing over whatever the
Kraken is, or what it is doing,
public health officials warned
about that other creature: SARS-
CoV-2, lashing the country like alieved that hundreds of regular
Americans — precinct captains
and poll watchers and mail carri-
ers — were perpetrating a vast
conspiracy to capsize the country.
“Could be,” Sawyer said. “It was
that belief that made me drive in a
snowstorm all the way to Lansing.... So they’re purposefully not
letting me see the ballots, they’re
purposefully moving me away
from the monitor. Why else would
they do that? So now I absolutely
believe there’s fraud going on.”
Poll watchers in a few key states
unleashed a wave of affidavits
that testified to the suspicious
creasing (or creaselessness) of
ballots, to the odd positioning of
random boxes, to the snippy be-
havior of fellow volunteers who
were anxious about the virus and
vigilant about pandemic precau-
tions. The af fiants wrote as if
they’d been told to beware a
mythical menace — “MAIL-IN
VOTING WILL LEAD TO MAS-
SIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE,”
Trump tweeted months before
Election Day — and then swore
enduring roughly a Pearl Harbor’s
worth of death per day, minus the
explanatory power of a military
attack from the sky. It is in a state
of financial emergency, minus the
clarity of a stock-market crash.
Evidence of a real crisis abounds;
somehow that’s no match for sus-
picion of an invented one.
Look around, though. We are
definitely in the grips of some-
thing, and it is pulling us under.
In Georgia this past month,
citizens gave chase to trucks and
staked out loading docks looking
for suspicious boxes that surely
contained fraudulent absentee
ballots.
In South Dakota, a nurse
claimed that gasping patients
were denying the existence of the
virus that was about to kill them,
while in North Dakota, where
hospitals were at capacity, the
governor assured the public that
“you don’t have to believe in
covi d” to do the right thing and
wear a mask.
In Pennsylvania, during a hear-
ing by the state Senate’s policy
committee, President Trump
called in to say, “We won this
election by a lot,” even though he
did not.
In Texas, a county judge walked
by cooling trailers stocked with
286 corpses while his inbox filled
with emails from small-business
owners who say he doesn’t under-
stand suffering.
In Michigan, a talk-radio host
from Antrim County described
how he found a pile of Ethernet
cables “hiding” a high-speed com-
mercial router at his polling
place, and how this indicated that
Trump was cheated out of four
more years.
“This election is stolen is what
we believe,” Randy Bishop told
the oversight committee of the
Michigan Senate last week.
“Prove. Us. Wrong.”
Our Kraken, our selves. Ameri-
ca was founded on certain myths
and beliefs relating to freedom,
individualism and righteous re-
bellion. Now these myths and be-
liefs are encircling our necks.
Over the past month, as we’ve
moved into a third wave of coro-
navirus and toward a Joe Biden
presidency, some Americans have
lived in an alternate reality, a
Kraken reality.
Linda Sawyer, a retired nurse
from Detroit, drove to Lansing,
Mich., last week because she
needed to tell the state Senate
about what she saw, or believed
she saw, while working as a poll
challenger at the TCF Center. She
saw poll workers use the pandem-
ic as an excuse to keep her from
witnessing shady business. She
saw small piles of ballots that
didn’t look tabulated. Around
midnight, she says, multiple com-
puter monitors “rebooted” and
around 4 a.m. more ballots ar-
rived. She sensed something lurk-
ing.
“They used covid to throw us
out,” Sawyer told the oversight
committee. “As a nurse I found
that despicable.” She added: “I
don’t believe the numbers are
true.” Powell, the Kraken releaser,
“did discuss something about this
in Rudy Giuliani’s press confer-
ence,” Sawyer added, referring to
an event where Trump’s legal
team publicized exotic conspiracy
theories about fake votes, “and I
do believe I witnessed that.”
Reached by phone later, Saw-
yer was asked whether she be-
KRAKEN FROM C1
When things aren’t going your way, you better get Kraken
EVAN VUCCI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
ABOVE: A Trump supporter in
Valdosta, Ga., says yes to the
hat and no to the mask at the
president’s rally for Sens. Kelly
Loeffler and D avid Perdue, who
face Democratic challengers in
a January runoff. LEFT: Sidney
Powell, an attorney later
disavowed by the Trump
campaign, at a November news
conference.JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERSOur Kraken, our selves.
America was founded
on certain myths and
beliefs relating to
freedom, individualism
and righteous rebellion.
Now these myths and
beliefs are encircling our
necks.