I was proud of all of us, for almost being done.
Barack sat next to me in a folding chair. I could see the tears brimming behind his sunglasses as he watched Malia cross the stage to pick up her diploma. He was tired, I knew. Three days earlier, he’d given a eulogy for a friend from law school who’d worked for him in the White House. Two days later, an extremist would open fire inside a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing forty-nine people and wounding fifty-three more. The gravity of his job never let up.
He was a good father, dialed in and consistent in ways his own father had never been, but there were also things he’d sacrificed along the way. He’d entered into parenthood as a politician. His constituents and their needs had been with us all along.
It had to hurt a little bit, realizing he was so close to having more freedom and more time, just as our daughters were beginning to step away.
But we had to let them go. The future was theirs, just as it should be.
* * *
In late July, I flew through a violent thunderstorm, the plane dipping and diving on its approach to Philadelphia, where I was going to speak for the last time at a Democratic convention. It was perhaps the worst turbulence I’d ever experienced, and while Caroline Adler Morales, my very pregnant communications director, worried that the stress of it would put her into labor and Melissa—a skittish flier under normal circumstances—sat shrieking in her seat, all I could think was Just get me down in time to practice my speech. Though I’d long grown comfortable on the biggest stages, I still found huge comfort in preparation.
Back in 2008, during Barack’s first run for president, I’d rehearsed and re-rehearsed my convention speech until I could place the commas in my sleep, in part because I’d never given a speech on live television like that, and also because the personal stakes felt so high. I was stepping onto the stage after having been demonized as an angry black woman who didn’t love her country. My speech that night gave me a chance to humanize myself, explaining who I was in my own voice, slaying the caricatures and stereotypes with my own words. Four years later, at the convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, I’d spoken earnestly about what I’d seen in Barack during his first term—how he was still the same principled man I’d married, how I’d realized that “being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are.”
This time, I was stumping for Hillary Clinton, Barack’s opponent in the brutal 2008 primary who’d gone on to become his loyal and effective secretary of state. I’d never feel as passionately about another candidate as I did about my own husband, which made campaigning for others sometimes difficult for me. I maintained a code for myself, though, when it came to speaking publicly about anything or anyone in the political sphere: I said only what I absolutely believed and what I absolutely felt.
We landed in Philadelphia and I rushed to the convention center, finding just enough time to change clothes and run through my speech twice. Then I stepped out and spoke my truth. I talked about the fears I’d had early on about raising our daughters in the White House and how proud I was of the intelligent young women they’d become. I said that I trusted Hillary because she understood the demands of the presidency and had the temperament to lead, because she was as qualified as any nominee in history. And I acknowledged the stark choice now being put before the country.
Since childhood, I’d believed it was important to speak out against bullies while also not stooping to their level. And to be clear, we were now up against a bully, a man who among other things demeaned minorities and expressed contempt for prisoners of war, challenging the dignity of our country with practically his every utterance. I wanted Americans to understand that words matter—that the hateful language they heard coming from their TVs did not reflect the true spirit of our country and that we could vote against it. It was dignity I wanted to make an appeal for—the idea that as a nation we might hold on to the core thing that had sustained my family, going back generations. Dignity had always gotten us through. It was a choice, and not always the easy one, but the people I respected most in life made it again and again, every single day. There was a motto Barack and I tried to live by, and I offered it that night from the stage: When they go low, we go high.
Two months later, just weeks before the election, a tape would surface of Donald Trump in an unguarded moment, bragging to a TV host in 2005 about sexually assaulting women, using language so lewd and vulgar that it put media outlets in a quandary about how to quote it without violating the established standards of decency. In the end, the standards of decency were simply lowered in order to make room for the candidate’s voice.
When I heard it, I could hardly believe it. And then again, there was something painfully familiar in the menace and male jocularity of that tape. I can hurt you and get away with it. It was an expression of hatred that had generally been kept out of polite company, but still lived in the marrow of our supposedly enlightened society—alive and accepted enough that someone like Donald Trump could afford to be cavalier about it. Every woman I know recognized it. Every person who’s ever been made to feel “other” recognized it. It was precisely what so many of us hoped our own children would never need to experience, and yet probably would. Dominance, even the threat of it, is a form of dehumanization. It’s the ugliest kind of power.
My body buzzed with fury after hearing that tape. I was scheduled to speak at a campaign rally for Hillary the following week, and rather than delivering a straightforward endorsement of her capabilities, I felt compelled to try to address Trump’s words directly—to counter his voice with my own.
I worked on my remarks while sitting in a hospital room at Walter Reed, where my mother was having back surgery, my thoughts flowing fast. I’d been mocked and threatened many times now, cut down for being black, female, and vocal. I’d felt the derision directed at my body, the literal space I occupied in the world. I’d watched Donald Trump stalk Hillary Clinton during a debate, following her around as she spoke, standing too close, trying to diminish her presence with his. I can hurt you and get away with it. Women endure entire lifetimes of these indignities—in the form of catcalls, groping, assault, oppression. These things injure us. They sap our strength. Some of the cuts are so small they’re barely visible. Others are huge and gaping, leaving scars that never heal. Either way, they accumulate. We carry them everywhere, to and from school and work, at home while raising our children, at our places of worship, anytime we try to advance.
For me, Trump’s comments were another blow. I couldn’t let his message stand. Working with Sarah Hurwitz, the deft speechwriter who’d been with me since 2008, I channeled my fury into words, and then—after my mother had recovered from surgery—I delivered them one October day in Manchester, New Hampshire. Speaking to a high-energy crowd, I made my feelings clear. “This is not normal,” I said. “This is not politics as usual. This is disgraceful. It is intolerable.” I articulated my rage and my fear, along with my faith that with this election Americans understood the true nature of what they were choosing between. I put my whole heart into giving that speech.