By Caitriona Palmer
He is arguably the most important man in the world, but once a day President Barack Obama takes a break from his hectic schedule to indulge in a moment of great presidential importance: “Michelle time”.
The president will leave the Oval Office to retreat upstairs to the White House residence, to spend a quiet moment or two with his wife. Every now and then Michelle will return the favour by popping into the West Wing to visit her husband with their puppy Bo or their daughters, Malia and Sasha.
Since he became president, Obama has demonstrated that, despite the odds, it is possible to be leader of the free world and have a love life.
‘How good-looking is my wife?’
He’s taken Michelle out for “date nights” in Washington, whisked her away for a romantic night out in New York, wined and dined her in Paris, and showered her with kisses and hugs.
Despite 16-plus years of marriage, the Obamas still act like a couple that genuinely desire one another. “How good-looking is my wife?” the president proudly asked the cheering throngs at one of the inaugural balls in January.
“I think they are doing a wonderful job,” said Christine Whelan, a sociologist at the University of Iowa. “I think it is incredible that they prioritise their relationship to the extent that they do.
“President Obama has a lot on his plate but he’s making time for his wife and kids and that’s a nice role model for Americans,” said Whelan, the author of Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women.
But according to a new book released this month, the Obama marriage was not always so rosy. Renegade, by British journalist Richard Wolffe, says the couple’s marriage was strained by Barack’s political ambitions and his unsuccessful run for Congress in 2000. Michelle “hated the failed race for Congress in 2000, and their marriage was strained by the time their youngest daughter, Sasha, was born a year later”, Wolffe writes. “There was little conversation and even less romance. She was angry at his selfishness and careerism; he thought she was cold and ungrateful.”
‘Michelle is totally in control’
Obama himself has never shied away from the huge toll his political aspirations once took on his marriage.
Writing in his 2006 book, The Audacity Of Hope, Obama recalled that after their first daughter, Malia, was born, he was so busy working that “we had little time for conversation, much less romance”.
“Leaning down to kiss Michelle goodbye in the morning, all I would get was a peck on the cheek. By the time Sasha was born, my wife’s anger toward me seemed barely contained. ‘You only think about yourself,’ she would tell me. ‘I never thought I’d have to raise a family alone’.”
The Obamas have always strived to portray their marriage in an entirely realistic light, a decision that got Michelle into hot water during the presidential campaign.
On the campaign stump she publicly chided Obama for always leaving the butter out after breakfast, for never putting his dirty socks away and for being “so snorey and stinky” in the mornings that their young girls refused to get into bed with him.
Andy Schapiro, a law school friend, remembers sitting with Obama in the tense days before his decision to run for the presidency.
“He was making high-level calls but he stopped and said, ‘I’ve gotta call Michelle’. He would say: ‘Listen, Michelle, I thought I was going to be home now – but I have some more calls to make. If I take the kids from 3.30 to 4.30, can you take them from 4.30 to 5.30 so I can still get my workout?’
“He’s a phenomenon, a rock star, and he’s having the same negotiation I have with my wife every damn day,” Schapiro said.
Obama tends to speak of his no-nonsense wife as a stabilising force, incredibly encouraging of his endeavours, but ready to bring him down a peg or two in the event that he gets too cocky.
“Michelle is totally in control. She is friendly but very stern and sharp and she is very involved in his decision-making,” said Obama’s former Illinois Senate colleague Kim Lightford.
In Michelle, Obama sees a lot of his mother’s mother – the eminently practical Kansan he called “Toot” who raised him and went to work each morning so he could have the best education.
Friends say Michelle was first drawn to his passion for community service and his ability to bring people together for a greater cause.
Now that he is president, observers say he appears happier, more relaxed; that he is less of the grump that he frequently was during the election campaign.
Obama credits his new demeanour with “living above the store” and says this new closeness to his family and wife – the joy of eating dinner with them every night – “is the thing that sustains me”.
But chemistry or not, the demands of the office will surely exact a price on the marriage, say experts, who nonetheless predict that it will survive. “If their marriage gets a little strained over the next couple of years, that’s to be expected,” said Whelan. “They should ride it out and reconnect as best they can and certainly know that four to eight years from now they’ll have a lot more time for each other.”
* This article was originally published in The Mercury on June 19, 2009
Recent Comments