The Audacity of Hope

“Huh?”
“I found ants in the kitchen. And in the bathroom upstairs.”
“Okay…”
“I need you to buy some ant traps on your way home tomorrow. I’d get them myself,
but I’ve got to take the girls to their doctor’s appointment after school. Can you do that
for me?”
“Right. Ant traps.”
“Ant traps. Don’t forget, okay, honey? And buy more than one. Listen, I need to go into
a meeting. Love you.”
I hung up the receiver, wondering if Ted Kennedy or John McCain bought ant traps on
the way home from work.
MOST PEOPLE WHO meet my wife quickly conclude that she is remarkable. They are
right about this—she is smart, funny, and thoroughly charming. She is also very
beautiful, although not in a way that men find intimidating or women find off-putting; it
is the lived-in beauty of the mother and busy professional rather than the touched-up
image we see on the cover of glossy magazines. Often, after hearing her speak at some
function or working with her on a project, people will approach me and say something
to the effect of “You know I think the world of you, Barack, but your wife…wow!” I
nod, knowing that if I ever had to run against her for public office, she would beat me
without much difficulty.
Fortunately for me, Michelle would never go into politics. “I don’t have the patience,”
she says to people who ask. As is always the case, she is telling the truth.
I met Michelle in the summer of 1988, while we were both working at Sidley & Austin,
a large corporate law firm based in Chicago. Although she is three years younger than
me, Michelle was already a practicing lawyer, having attended Harvard Law straight out
of college. I had just finished my first year at law school and had been hired as a
summer associate.
It was a difficult, transitional period in my life. I had enrolled in law school after three
years of work as a community organizer, and although I enjoyed my studies, I still
harbored doubts about my decision. Privately, I worried that it represented the
abandonment of my youthful ideals, a concession to the hard realities of money and
power—the world as it is rather than the world as it should be.
The idea of working at a corporate law firm, so near and yet so far removed from the
poor neighborhoods where my friends were still laboring, only worsened these fears.
But with student loans rapidly mounting, I was in no position to turn down the three
months of salary Sidley was offering. And so, having sublet the cheapest apartment I
could find, having purchased the first three suits ever to appear in my closet and a new