John Feinstein: Obama's Brother-in-Law a Court Authority

The conversation happened 17 years ago, but Oregon State Coach Craig Robinson still remembers it clearly. He was talking to his future brother-in-law at a family party and decided it was time to, as he put it, "do the obnoxious big-brother thing."

His little sister, Michelle, was clearly serious about Barack Obama, and Robinson had already decided he was a pretty good guy. He had played pickup basketball with him -- "He could always shoot and, like most lefties, he was very creative," Robinson said -- and had spent enough time talking to him to know he was bright, as if having been president of the Harvard Law Review wasn't enough evidence already.

But now things were clearly serious, so he decided to do his due diligence. "Being a Wall Street guy, giving someone a hard time kind of came naturally to me," he said, laughing.

So, given a moment alone with the skinny young man with the sweet lefty jump shot, he asked the question: "What do you want to do with your life?" -- as in, if you're going to marry my sister, how do you intend to support her?

Obama smiled and said quietly that he hoped someday to run for public office. Robinson thought that made sense. Obama was bright, articulate, outgoing.

"So you might run for alderman or something like that someday?" Robinson asked.

Obama shook his head. "I was really thinking more on a national scale," he answered. "Maybe run for Congress or the Senate." He paused a second. "Who knows? If I did a good job, I might even run for president someday."

Robinson immediately began looking around the room. "Don't say that too loud," he counseled. "Someone might hear you and think you were nuts."

* * *

On Tuesday, Craig Robinson will be standing a few feet from Barack Obama when he takes the oath of office to become the 44th president of the United States.

"There are still times when I pick up the paper and read something like, 'Michelle Obama is talking about how she'd like to redecorate the White House,' and I find myself waiting for the punch line," he said Friday afternoon, the day after his team had lost in overtime to Washington State. "I have moments where I feel like I'm getting used to it. I hear people call me the first brother-in-law and I say, 'Yeah, that's me.' But then there are other moments where I still can't believe I'm getting on a plane Monday to go and see my brother-in-law become president. It just starts to feel wacky, to be honest."

His trip to Washington will be brief because Robinson is in the middle of his first season at Oregon State, trying to rebuild a program that was 0-18 in the Pacific-10 a season ago. The fact that the Beavers already have a conference victory over Southern California is evidence that they're progressing.