Book: Becoming

Saw Michelle Obama on Ellen, she read a couple passages from her new book and it seemed like something I might want to read. Had to pick it up.

I don't usually care about celebrity tell-all books, but this isn't really one of those. I don't know if she had a ghost writer -- I suspect not -- but this is a really well-written book. She's a talented writer in her own right and probably penned the whole thing herself. It sounds like her voice.

I'm up to the point in her life where she meets Barack, and she perfectly conveys all that nervous excitement you get when you meet someone who "just smells right" (if you know what I mean).

I'll probably finish this thing in record time. I can't put it down.

Were the Obamas really as perfect as they seemed?  It seems impossible.

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There's an age-old maxim in the black community: You've got to be twice as good to get half as far.

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I tried, in my way, to loosen the protocol of the place. I made it clear to the housekeeping staff that our girls, as they had in Chicago, would make their own beds in the morning.  I also instructed Malia and Sacha to act as they'd always acted--to be polite and gracious and to not ask for anything more than what they absolutely needed or couldn't get for themselves.

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For the first few months in the White House, I felt the need to be watchful over everything. One of my earliest lessons was that it could be relatively costly to live there. While we stayed rent-free in the residence and had all our utilities and staffing paid for, we nonetheless covered all other living expenses, which seemed to add up quickly, especially given the fancy-hotel quality of everything. We got an itemized bill each month for every food item and roll of toilet paper. We paid for every guest who came for an overnight stay or joined us for a meal. And with a culinary staff that had Michelin-level standards and deep eagerness to please the president, I had to keep an eye on what got served.  When Barack offhandedly remarked that he liked the taste of some exotic fruit at breakfast or the sushi on his dinner plate, the kitchen staff took note and put them into regular rotation on the menu. Only later, inspecting the bill, would we realize that some of these items were being flown in at great expense from overseas.

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Barack, meanwhile, had managed to reverse the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression.  He'd helped to bolster the Paris Agreement on climate change, brought tens of thousands of troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, and led the effort to effectively shut down Iran's nuclear program.  Twenty million more people had the security of health insurance.  And we'd managed two terms in office without a major scandal.

How long since we'd had a scandal-free administration?

It SHOULD be the norm... and an unremarkable norm at that.  

But it isn't.  Ever since Nixon was pardoned, every administration has been rocked by major scandals of one sort or another, to the point where today weekly impeachable offenses pass by with barely any mention and certainly we've all become outrage-weary.