Her Heart's in the Race

Obama, during two hours of jawing, convinced them he could win but could not do it without them. Michelle's willingness to accept anew the harried life of political spouse made possible the race that launched his national career.

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He roared from behind to capture the 2004 Democratic primary and the general election, calculating during one stretch that he had taken seven days off in 18 months. Just two years later, when he aimed for the Oval Office, Michelle made some calculations of her own. She knew the work of shepherding the girls to school, soccer, dance, tennis, ballet and music would fall largely to her.

"Okay, how are we going to do this?" she recalls asking. "How's this going to look? What am I going to do about my job? How will we manage the kids? What's our financial position going to be?

"Once I got a sense of how this could work not just for me or him but for our family and the people in our lives . . . I could say, okay, we can do this, I can manage this."

Life as a Stump Speaker

Managing it means cutting her University of Chicago hours to nearly none. It means replacing any dream of a "Leave It to Beaver" life in the Obamas' $1.6 million Hyde Park home with a new extended family of Secret Service agents, whom Sasha calls "the secret people." It means taking day trips when possible, giving her time to wake the girls in the morning and kiss them good night. Her mother, who retired this year as an administrative assistant at a bank, and close friends pitch in. On days when she is not traveling or working at campaign headquarters, aides try not to call.

"She takes this so seriously," says Melissa Winter, her chief of staff, "because every moment she's not with the girls has to be validated."

On the campaign trail, the response is strong.

"She's so dynamic, but she speaks from the heart and that's what I'm looking for," says Del Turner, 59, a Waterloo writer. "I'm so tired of hearing the politicians speak these days. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't sound real. They don't fool me."

With the race on the line, Michelle is spending two or three days on the road each week. Occasionally, she spots an event where the girls can have some fun and she takes them along, as she did to a campaign stop at a New Hampshire children's fair.

Mostly, she juggles, backing her husband and the political vision they have come to share.

A sequence of decisions stretching back nearly 20 years led to moments like the one in Iowa Falls, where she says, "I've felt so disconnected from my government for so long. . . . We need a leader who can touch our souls." And the one in Fort Dodge, where she tells an audience, "We need someone who understands and respects the Constitution, particularly as we have seen it obliterated."

And the scene in a library in rural Rockwell City, where Obama tells a hard-to-read audience of her husband's early opposition to the Iraq war, his success at ethics reform, his health-care work, his willingness to level with people. She says the United States is in Iraq because leaders "were not willing to tell us the truth," and she urges her listeners to imagine a president who has worked in church basements and walked picket lines.

"Just dream," she says as she finishes. "If you reach into your hearts and act without fear, we can do something special."

The hitherto silent group delivers a standing ovation.

"I guarantee you," she declares with a grin, "if I could talk to everybody in this state, they would vote for Barack Obama. I'm pretty convincing."