It's About Time

One of Mastromonaco's jobs was to call voters in the Northeast Kingdom, the most conservative part of the state. It wasn't an easy sell, but the small-town girl with a head full of Baudelaire found this all fascinating. "I became obsessed with Bernie Sanders and politics," she said.

She transferred to the University of Wisconsin and changed her major to political science, and in 2000 -- after a pleading letter and three interviews -- Mastromonaco persuaded Sen. John Kerry's Boston office to hire her as a $19,000-per-year staff assistant.

It was not a glamorous job, but it was revealing. She learned she could keep a secret when Kerry landed on Al Gore's vice presidential short list and Mastromonaco helped to see Kerry through the selection process, without feeling compelled to tell all her friends. And with her amazing memory and unflappable demeanor, she was a natural at logistics. Sending Kerry around the country to campaign for Gore, she found it thrilling to inform him, "This FedEx plane is going to pick you up in Miami and take you to Pittsburgh."

After Kerry's presidential campaign, Obama hired her to be his Senate scheduler, said Rouse, because the freshman senator sensed her political astuteness. Obama already had a high profile, and everyone wanted a piece of him. Mastromonaco's job was to turn down almost every request.

A year later, she became political director of Hopefund, Obama's political action committee, and dispatched both money and the senator to particular candidates for the 2006 congressional races. At every stop on the trail, Mastromonaco would line up a local official or two for her boss to meet -- just in case.

After that election, Obama started to think seriously about running for president, and Mastromonaco was part of the small group called together to walk him through the process. She created a mock three-month schedule to show Barack and Michelle Obama what a campaign would entail. When the senator decided to proceed, Mastromonaco was among his first hires. At first, Mastromonaco and Obama weren't an obvious match. She can be a bossy micromanager. She played flute growing up, not sports. And she carried the baggage of Kerry's losing campaign, with all of its leaks and infighting. "He's not D.C., and I seemed very D.C. to him," said Mastromonaco of Obama. "He would say, 'Why would you even want to do this job?' We didn't know each other at all. I had to convince him that I was a real person."

Their bond was forged when they started traveling together in 2006, and spent hours driving through congressional districts and to book-tour events. They would eat meals at Subway, stop for gas station snacks, and tangle over radio stations and the temperature (Obama likes the car warm). Eventually, Mastromonaco felt comfortable enough that she stopped carrying a Time magazine to disguise what she was really reading: Us Weekly, or Star, or some other celebrity rag. Soon they were flipping through the magazines together.

When her White House job became official last month, Obama issued an unusually effusive personal statement, describing Mastromonaco as a "talented and dynamic individual" with "diverse skills" who is "ready to work hard in service to the American people."

But starting Jan. 20, the formalities begin, and it's all fodder for the White House diarist.

"You always have to remind yourself, he's the president-elect," Mastromonaco said. "I used to call him Barack. He wants me to keep calling him Barack. But it doesn't feel right anymore."