What is the Obamas’ stance on Joe Biden? “If President Obama is all in, he’s all in.”
She has always been outspoken about imbalances in relationships. In 2004, when her husband was running for the U.S. Senate, she told Chicago Tribune: “What I notice with men, all men, is that their order is me, my family, God somewhere, but I come first. And for women, I come fourth, and that’s not healthy.”
Michele Norris reminds me of Maureen Dowd in 2007 New York Times column, “She doesn’t flatter him.,” criticized Michelle Obama for the ways she tried to humanize her husband during their first presidential campaign. Dowd found fault with what she said at a New York fundraiser when she teased her husband for not “actually putting socks in dirty laundry.”
“This South Side Princess of Chicago,” Dowd writes, “a respected graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, wants us to know that she doesn’t polish pedestals.” That kind of over-the-top criticism is why, according to Norris, she had to be “superhuman” when she was first lady. Now, as a former first lady, she stoops to say she’s just like you.
Her outspokenness does not surprise those who know her well. She has a close and loyal circle of famous female friends who keep her cool. They include Jarrett and Norris, her husband, Broderick Johnson, who was an assistant to the president and cabinet secretary under President Obama. She is also close to her Chicago friend Kelly Dibble, and to the poet Elizabeth Alexander.
Obama spoke out about race before she became first lady. She said 60 minutes in 2007, when her husband was a presidential candidate: “As a black man, you know, Barack could get shot for going to the gas station.”
She admired the way Laura Bush approached the role of first lady with quiet restraint. But that wasn’t really Bush. “After nearly eight years of being on high alert, watching for the next danger or tragedy, I could finally breathe; I could just be,” the former first lady wrote in her memoir, Speak from the heartabout the relief she felt about leaving the White House. Obama could understand.
During the debt ceiling In talks last summer, one source said, Obama and Biden shared the Groundhog Day nature of the fight. (Obama faced a similar crisis in 2011.) The phone call may have also allowed Obama to test the octogenarian president. That day, Biden had taken an embarrassing tumble on a punching bag onstage at the Air Force Academy graduation. Biden would need Obama to prove he was up to the job. Now, more than ever, “you have to strike at the right time so that key surrogates can be useful,” a Biden aide told me before the debate. “You don’t want to waste them, and a year is a lifetime in politics by the year.”
Eric Lesser began working on Obama’s 2008 campaign before graduating from college and went on to work as a West Wing aide. But he failed to win the Democratic nomination to become lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 2022, even after posing for a photo with the former president at the Obamas’ Martha’s Vineyard home. Still, Lesser, who served four terms in the state Senate, said he believes the Obamas’ combined star power is unmatched.
“[George W.] Bush left with his tail between his legs after a major economic crisis and two disastrous wars,” he said. “In contrast, there is an enormous reservoir of goodwill for the Obama family. I’ve been to barbershops, VFW halls, and Fourth of July parades across the communities I’ve campaigned and visited, and for a long time—eight years—it’s been clear that people admire him. And it transcends party. I’ve had Republicans admire the way he raised his family, the character and dignity he brings to the office.”
So many presidential traditions—things not carved in stone but that have become almost sacred—were shattered the moment Trump entered the Oval Office. A massive breach of the U.S. Capitol, two impeachments, and countless “unprecedented” moments later—including Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts—and the Obamas remained steadfast in the idea that their political brand could thrive, even in the midst of Trump’s violent rage. “I remain a hopeful person,” Obama said, without a shred of doubt.
During Bill Clinton’s rare visits to the Obama White House, Jeremy Bernard, the Obama family’s social secretary from 2011 to 2015, recalled Clinton hugging him and introducing himself to his staff, who were “very surprised.”
Clinton once told Bernard that Obama wasn’t “good at the easy stuff, mingling and socializing.” “Obama is more focused on the job and not knowing everyone in the room. They don’t change, they have a tight-knit group,” Bernard said. That includes pre-presidential friends from Chicago like Marty Nesbitt and his wife, Dr. Anita Blanchard, and friends in DC like Dr. Sharon Malone, an obstetrician-gynecologist specializing in aging and menopause, and her husband, Eric Holder, who served as attorney general in the Obama administration and was the first African American to hold that position.
Bernard is the recipient of complaints from major donors who want to know why they aren’t getting more invitations to the White House. “For me, President Obama is who I really want in a president, his policies and most of what he stands for are consistent with what I feel as a progressive Democrat.” But being his social secretary could be a “fuckin’ nightmare.”
