Book details Obamas' marital tiffs
BARACK AND MICHELLE | She sought advice from Rev. Wright, 'the man she trusted most . . . who counseled Barack': author
A new book about Barack and Michelle Obama focuses on their marriage and concludes that -- despite tensions in the earlier years --they are a rock-solid happy couple.
Though plenty of the anecdotes are culled from previously published accounts and the president's autobiographies, author Christopher Andersen, who wrote books about the Clintons, the Bushes and the Kennedys, said he talked to 200 friends and relatives of the Obamas in Chicago, Hawaii and Indonesia to fill out the record.
(AP file)
He does not claim to have interviewed the first couple for Barack and Michelle.
He opens with an account of what he calls the "little-known" case of Sasha Obama's spinal meningitis, which struck at a time of severe tensions in the Obamas' marriage.
Obama had launched a disastrous race for Congress against his wife's advice, spending a lot of time on the road and away from the family. Michelle told him, as recounted in the book and Obama's autobiography, "You only think about yourself. . . . I never thought I'd have to raise a family alone."
Then there was the notorious vote on gun control in the Illinois state Legislature, during which Obama stayed in Hawaii on vacation because his daughter had a cold and he had promised Michelle he would take some time away from the campaign trail to spend with the family. The measure narrowly lost without his support, and Obama lost the congressional race.
"I love Michelle, but she's killing me with this constant criticism," Andersen quotes Obama as telling his grandmother, who died shortly before Obama won the presidency.
Sure to inflame the Obamas' conservative critics is this passage: "Michelle sought advice from the man she trusted most -- the man who married them, who counseled Barack on many matters, and who baptized their children, Rev. Jeremiah Wright." Wright counseled her to be patient with her husband and let him follow his political dreams, Andersen wrote.
As 3-month-old Sasha cried unconsolably that night in September 2001, Obama got out of bed, came into the room and asked, "Jeez, Michelle -- Can't you get her to stop?" Andersen writes. Michelle "whirled around and shot her husband a withering glance," Andersen wrote.
They brought the girl to the doctor's office, then the hospital and spent 72 hours at Sasha's bedside realizing there were more important things than what they had been arguing about.
"I had to change," the book quotes Michelle saying -- actually she told it to the Ladies Home Journal -- "So how do I stop being mad at him and start problem solving?"
They made their deal that if Obama lost his race for U.S. Senate, he would spend more time at home. Of course, he won.
Now Obama makes sure to set aside some "Michelle time" every day to spend with his wife, Andersen said on MSNBC Tuesday.
Other first couples he wrote about, such as the Clintons, had "tensions just below the surface," but not the Obamas, he said.