A biography with the First Lady at its heart
In her acknowledgments to The Obamas, her account of the first couple's first three years in the White House, journalist Jodi Kantor thanks her New York Times editor for "a four-year conversation about ambition, power, gender and public life". That conversation is, in a real sense, the subject of this book. She tells of interviewing the Obamas in the Oval Office in September 2009, and asking them how a marriage can stay equal if one of the spouses is the president. "The first lady," observes Kantor, "let out a sharp 'hmmmpfh', as if she were relieved someone had finally asked, then let her husband suffer through the answer. It took him three stop-and-start tries."
A former White House correspondent, Kantor has interviewed 33 White House sources, as well as the Obamas (although not since 2009 and not specifically for this book). The result is less a biography than an extended profile of Michelle Obama: her husband, naturally, plays a definitive role, but Michelle is at the book's heart. In the acknowledgments, Kantor mentions a woman who "insisted Michelle was perfect and that if I told her otherwise her world would collapse". The woman's world is, presumably, still intact: the Michelle who emerges from these pages may not be perfect, but she is certainly impressive, fully deserving of the admiration she has inspired in so many.
The Obamas is not quite a domestic biography, and not quite a political one. It's what might be called a biography of domestic politics: it's about the balance of power in a marriage between two exceptional people; the politics of living in the White House; and the Obamas' efforts to shape US domestic policies. One of the book's effects is thus to reinforce the common impression of a nation, and a White House, focused almost exclusively on domestic issues – the Arab spring is never mentioned, for example. But then a politician like Obama, whose success derives from a cult of personality, is going to find it difficult to separate the personal from the political.
Although it gestures back towards each Obama's past, the story really only spans the three years of their occupancy of the White House. Much of the book concerns Michelle's attempts to find a way for the East Wing – as the first lady's staff and agendas are known – to work harmoniously with the West Wing. Kantor's reports of tension and miscommunication between the two staffs have been labelled "controversial" in some of the book's advance press, and the White House has hit back sharply, saying Kantor is "overdramatising old news". But what emerges from Kantor's account is neither particularly controversial, nor particularly dramatic. Anyone would predict a period of adjustment as people unaccustomed to working with large domestic and professional staff learned how to communicate through and with them, while raising two children and oh, yes, running the country. Political aides sometimes swear when they're frustrated, even about the first lady? The famously rancorous and divisive Rahm Emanuel was rancorous and divisive? Astonishing.
It all seems perfectly understandable, and the Obamas emerge as remarkably able to control themselves and their teams, and to stay focused on the greater good. That said, there are some memorable anecdotes about Michelle's frustration. At one point the East Wing is described by the first lady's staff as like Guam: "pleasant, but powerless". A schoolgirl says that she'd like to grow up to be first lady, and Michelle retorts, "Doesn't pay much." "She was joking," Kantor comments, "but the message was clear." Perhaps, but it also seems consistent with Michelle's promotion of ambition in young women: suggesting that you shouldn't strive to be first lady when you can strive to be president is not quite the same as merely implying that being first lady is a thankless task.
Similarly, when Vogue asked Michelle to pose for its cover, West Wing staffers were concerned it would send the wrong message during a recession, but Michelle was adamant, and explicit about her motives: "I don't have to be on the cover of Vogue wearing something that costs $20,000 … There are young black women across this country and I want them to see a black woman on the cover of Vogue."
When Kantor does criticise Michelle it is for being too demanding and regimented, as when she explained that she makes her daughters take two sports, one that they like and one that she likes, "because in life you don't always get to do the things you want". "Now, my kids are young, so we'll see if I've driven them crazy," Michelle says, and Kantor adds: "Seemingly to suddenly realise that she sounded like the single most intense mother on earth." The gloss is awkward and overstated, and seems to fall into the trap of Obama exceptionalism, as if everything they do must, by definition, be extraordinary, even when it's wrong. Surely we can easily imagine more intense mothers than this?
It is a sign of both Obamas' competitiveness that many of the book's most revealing anecdotes circle around sports. After being embarrassed by a bowling score on the election campaign, Barack practised in the White House bowling alley until he could win; when he organised a basketball match for his 49th birthday, he insisted on a mix of "amateurs, pros and veterans" in each team. The result was that LeBron James, the highest-paid NBA player, was on the third of four teams, and was heard muttering in disbelief, "I didn't get picked? … How'd I get on Team C?"
Needless to say, politics can never be far from the tale. As Kantor observes, Michelle entered the White House "with her expectations low and then exceeded them; [Barack] had entered on top of the world, and had been descending to earth ever since". Kantor chronicles the list of Obama's defeats at the hands of Republicans, often because he underestimated his opponents. At once naively certain of their rationalism and contemptuous of their views, he failed to appreciate their experience, cunning and ruthlessness.
When his first stimulus bill barely passed, with almost no Republican support, Kantor reports a "former adviser" saying, "He really couldn't believe it … He seemed stumped, truly stumped." The problem is that "Obama was elected to lead 'a rational, postracial, moderate country that is looking for sensible progress. Except, oops, it's an enraged, moralistic, harsh, desperate country,' one White House official said later. 'It's a disconnect he can't bridge.'"
The Barack Obama who emerges from this book is one we've gleaned from other reports: cool and reserved under pressure, but frustrated and increasingly stymied. His impatience and intelligence lead him to patronise his opponents, which has proven to be a strategic error. During the debates over the budget default last summer, he compared the Republicans to children waiting until the last minute to do their homework. As a result, the "journalist Mark Halperin called the president a 'dick' on TV – an unfortunate word", Kantor remarks, "but one that captured some of the prevailing Washington sentiment – and lawmakers seethed at being compared to children".
At another point, Kantor notes the Obamas' race has consistently raised questions about whether the president is given the respect due his office and achievements (particularly the notorious incident when Representative Joe Wilson shouted "You lie!" at him during an address to Congress), but when it comes to the Halperin quotation, Kantor doesn't ask whether race might have contributed to this kind of public insolence. Certainly many Americans feel the same "unfortunate word" more than aptly characterises George W Bush, but did any journalists feel sanctioned to use the term on TV to describe the holder of the highest office in the land?
The question is why this book, now? It is three years into Obama's four-year term; if he succeeds in getting re-elected, it will have been written less than halfway through his presidency. It is a judicious and perceptive book, but it also feels as ephemeral as most journalism, with only the most fugitive references to history. Kantor is not afraid to gently mock the Obamas, or to point out their small hypocrisies, as when she describes their squeamishness about politics: Michelle once told a reporter Barack wasn't a politician, but "a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make a change". This circumlocution, Kantor observes, makes the Obamas "like tailors who call themselves 'garment reconstruction engineers', unwilling to fully acknowledge the business they were really in". The question, for Kantor, is whether Obama will "finally start acting … like a politician". But if not being a politician is a weakness, it is also a strength: it is why Obama was able to convince so many people that he was the second coming.
Kantor quotes people on Capitol Hill saying that complaining about the way Washington works is like complaining about the rain, but this kind of fatalism is precisely the problem; the inertia caused by systemic corruption and ossification is what Obama was elected to fix. Telling him the only cure is to succumb to the disease is self-defeating; in fact, we might think it a classic no-win. Which is, perhaps, why the country is near a standstill, and the re-election is so much at issue. Ending with the debt crisis makes this book, like this presidency, feel unfinished. That's because it is: we are all awaiting the ending, and the suspense is killing.