Michelle and Barack Obama’s Views from 1996

While writing a book about “Couples in America,” a photographer held an interview with the young couple 12 years ago. But the publisher showed little interest, and the interview was never published. “Le Monde” is printing it exclusively.

Could you state you name and age?

Michelle Obama: My name is Michelle Obama, and I’m 32 years old.

This project is called “couples in America”. I’m trying to re-place the couple’s interpersonal relationships in broader sociological context. If you could tell me more about your social and family background, how you met Barack and your goals in life.

M.O.: I come from a very conservative African-American environment. I grew up in Chicago in the South Side neighborhood, not very far from Hyde Park where we live today. I’m very close to my family. I have an older brother and our parents are working-class. They transmitted their values onto us. We went to private schools here in Chicago, and after high school, I studied at several East Coast universities, at Princeton and at Harvard’s law school.

To get a degree first?

M.O.: Yes.

What did your father do for a living?

M.O.: He was a public servant, a fireman responsible for watching a water-treatment plant.

Did you mother work?

M.O.: Yes, until I started college. After that, she was a housewife in a neighborhood where only two mothers didn’t work, including her.

Which is unusual.

M.O.:Yes.

But going to Princeton was also extraordinary.

M.O.:Yes.

You must have been a very good student.

M.O.: I managed pretty well. And I was lucky to be sponsored by the Ivy League (the most prestigious universities being Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania and Portsmouth). My brother, two years older, had a scholarship and played basketball rather well. He had good grades and was a good athlete, and he was sponsored to get into Princeton, where he had been admitted. Therefore, I thought I could make it, too. That familiarized me with the Ivy League.

And made it more accessible?

M.O.: That wasn’t what I was after, but I didn’t know it. When I got out of law school, I worked for a big law firm. I stayed there for 3 years, but I didn’t enjoy it. I thought: What’s the point in studying this if it’s to be unhappy?

In every way, I was isolated from my community. The clients and cases that I dealt with didn’t motivate me. When I woke up in the morning, I wasn’t happy to go to work. So I decided to get away from the legal practice. I worked as an assistant to the mayor of Chicago for two years at the city administration, then I became assistant to the Planning and Economic Development director.

Meeting ordinary people and dealing with real issues concerning the city gave me a taste of politics. Then I managed a program called “Public Allies,” which is a group of managerial development that I created here in Chicago, which put me in contact with young people and forced me to take on something by myself, to manage it and make it live. So I set up this project. It has existed for three years and is doing quite well.

Now I’m going to join the university community where I intend to offer the same kind of activities to a different population. That sums up where I come from. I’m a Chicago girl, I was born and raised here and I like this city. As to how Barack and I met, it happened at the law firm where he worked during the summer.

Was it at Sidney and Austin’s?

M.O.: It was at Sidney and Austin’s (in 1989). He had been hired for a summer internship. I had just been promoted to partner. I had been asked to be his mentor: I had to take a student under my wing and I was assigned Barack. I took my job very seriously, I gave him advice, I walked him around everywhere, I made sure that everything was going well for him, I found interesting assignments for him and after a month of this treatment, he asked me on a date, but I was very reluctant.

I thought: “No, I’m your mentor, it would be wrong to go out on a date with you,” but my hesitations didn’t last long, and that summer we started dating. Once he got his law degree, he came back several summers. We got engaged the summer after he graduated.

He was fresh out of law school?

M.O.: Yes, exactly. That’s the short story of our meeting and our mutual engagement.

What did you think of him when you were showing him the ropes of the law firm?

M.O: It was strange, all this fuss around this freshman, so smart, so handsome, it was all about Barack… Me, I’m pretty skeptical, I thought, ‘OK, I’m sure he’s an idiot,’ well…-I was skeptical because I’ve always believed that when lawyers are ecstatic about someone, they neglect the social qualities, so I thought he’s a genius, but I’m sure he’s quite ordinary.

And it turns out that he arrives late on his first day. He was late because of the rain! Then he came into the office and we got on straight away because he is very charming and handsome, well, I found him handsome. I think we were attracted to each other because we didn’t take our roles very seriously, unlike some other people.

He appreciated my dry sense of humor and sarcastic remarks. I thought he was a good man, interesting and I was fascinated by his personal story, so different from mine.

In what sense?

M.O.: Well, Barack grew up in a multiracial environment. His mother was white and his father Kenyan, he lived in Hawaii, where he was born and he spent a good part of his teenage years in Indonesia because his mother was an anthropologist. It’s not often that a South Side girl gets to meet a guy who speaks Indonesian, who has traveled and seen all these fascinating things.

That set him aside in this upper-class workplace. Usually those people are all from the same mold, but he came from somewhere else. He had a good level of conversation while being a normal guy. He had had an amazing life, but was still down to earth and loved playing basketball. That’s what attracted me to him. Our relationship was based on friendship at first. We took it from there.

Have you got a vision – you are both young, do you have a vision of the future? Of your life together?

M.O.:Well, there is a great chance that Barack will pursue a political career, even if it’s not quite certain. It’s an interesting test, Illinois’ Senate, even if we argue a bit about it. When you get into politics, your life becomes public and the people who are interested in it don’t always have the best intentions. I’m quite secretive and I like to have people I appreciate around and who I know I can trust.

In politics, you have to talk to many kinds of people. It is possible that we go in that direction, even though I also want to have children, travel, devote time to my family and friends. It’s not certain that we succeed. But we’ll have many things to achieve and it will be interesting to see what life has to offer. We are ready for the adventure for many reasons, if only for the opportunities it will bring us. The more experience you have, the easier it is to act on different levels.

If I had stayed at a law firm as a partner, my life would have been very different. I wouldn’t know the people I know, I would be less exposed and wouldn’t take as many risks. Barack helped me overcome my shyness, to take risks, then take a safer path, just to see what happens, because that’s how he was raised. So he is the boldest in our couple, I am more conservative.

The most adventurous?

M.O.: Yes, I’m more cautious. I think it shows in the photographs. He is more extroverted, more expressive, I prefer to play it safe and see what happens.

I think it’s a good way to behave. Very good, it’s perfect.

M.O.: OK.

Thanks.

M.O.: You’re welcome.

The tape breaks.

The project is called “Couples in America.” So I am trying to establish interpersonal relationships with American couples and I don’t really know how to do it, there’s no method, but I’m trying to paint a picture of this country. Does it bother you to talk about your origins? Who you are?

Barack Obama: Then you’ll ask me some questions.

Yes, exactly.

B.O.:You’ll get me started again.

Yes.

B.O.: My story is a little unusual, because as I said my father was a black African and my mother was a white American. Their relationship only lasted two years in Hawaii when they were students. So I didn’t have a normal family life. Then my mother remarried and I lived for a while in Indonesia, then I moved back to Hawaii.

Were your parents married?

B.O.: Yes, for two years, then they divorced. I think that all my life, I have been trying to make up a family for myself through stories, memories, friends or ideas. Michelle’s family background was different, very stable, with both parents, a housewife, a brother, a dog, that kind of thing. They lived in the same house all their life.

And I think that in a way we complete each other. We represent two of the typical family lives of this country. One was very stable and solid, and the other which frees itself from the constraints of the conservative family, travels and is very mobile.

Does the idea of forming a stable family appeal to you?

B.O.: A part of me was asking what a stable and secure family life would be like, whereas Michelle, in a certain way, wanted to break away from that model. Only in a certain way, because family values are important to her, but I guess she sees in me a more adventurous way of life, more exotic and in this sense we are complementary.

What did your father do for a living?

B.O.: He was an Economist and did a lot of work for the government.

The American government?

B.O.: No, the Kenyan government. He returned to Kenya and ended up in a difficult situation. He belonged to that generation of black Africans who came here to study then went back to their country.

He studied Economics?

B.O.: He studied Economics in the United States at the university of Hawaii and Harvard. He wanted to contribute to Kenya’s development, and in the end was very disappointed He got involved in the political struggle and the government put him on its black list because he was against nepotism and tribalism. He had a bitter life and died young. Michelle’s father also took on a few challenges and was struck by sclerosis. He also died young, but I think he had a more normal life and had been better established.

Your mother was an Anthropologist?

B.O.: Not when my parents first met. She became one later and moved to Indonesia. She died recently, about a year ago.

I’m sorry, she must have been young.

B.O.:Yes she was only 53, and when you belong to a small family whose members are all very united…it was a difficult period for me.

Do you have any brothers and sisters?

B.O.: I have one sister on my mother’s side, she’s part-Indonesian like my mother’s second husband, and I also have brothers and sisters on the Kenyan side. They are scattered, some live in Germany, some in Kenya, others are here in the United States.

What did you feel when you met Michelle for the first time? What did you think?

B.O.: Well, I thought she had great looks, I liked that. Besides, Michelle is a strong person, she knows who she is and where she comes from.

But if you look her in the eyes, you can perceive a certain vulnerability. Anyway, I see it, even though most people don’t notice it: she goes about the world, tall, beautiful,

self- confident, very competent…There is a part of her that is fragile, young, sometimes frightened and I think those are the contradictions which made me feel attracted to her. And she makes me very happy. She’s familiar, so I can be myself around her, I trust her totally, but at the same time, in some ways, she remains a mystery to me.

Sometimes, when we are lying in bed, I look at her and I suddenly feel dizzy, when I realize there is a separate person lying beside me, with memories, origins, thoughts, different feelings from mine. This tension between familiarity and mystery weaves something solid between us. Even if you build a life based on trust, attention and helping each other, I believe it’s important that the other continues to surprise you and astonish you.

What do you expect of your future and your life together?

Children are an important priority. We can’t wait to have them. I think the problem will be to find a balance between our private and public lives, which will counterbalance my risk-taking and ambitious personality with Michelle’s instinct for stability, family and safe values. The way we go about these points will be vital.

What do you hope to accomplish when you become a politician? I wouldn’t like to…but you must have plans or a quality of life to…

B.O.: You mean the others. You know, I’d like to…what worries me the most are the children and the way they are treated. As an African-American, I’m very concerned about children in the poor neighborhoods, the difficulties they are going through, the total lack of a stable environment in which they can grow and develop. It has to do with the economy, to the chances and possibilities that are offered to them, for example, the family values that we talk about all the time, that politicians refer to all the time.

But the values aren’t only individual, they are collective. Children find the values around them, and if they find out that their parents’ and their community’s lives aren’t valued, if their schools and homes are falling apart, and at the same time people’s lives because they are unemployed or don’t have interesting prospects, how can children build values out of nothing?

My priority is to bring back public or collective values to the core of the debate, because we all belong to a big family, beyond racial and social differences, and we have obligations and responsibilities to others. Maybe that’s where the private and the public meet when it comes to couples, relationships or tribes. Empathy is the priority, conscience of shared responsibility, ability to put yourself in other people’s shoes. That is how my marriage with Michelle stays alive, because we are able to imagine hopes, pains and others’ battles and everyone’s challenge is to bring that from the family to the public domain.