Somewhere way back in the FR archives are several threads on the Obama marriage. Most reports were that it was strained at best. The entire time Obama was in the House or the Senate, Michelle never spent the night in DC.
My armchair analysis at the time was that the campaign was a perfect diversion and sooner or later the misery would return.
This explains the fly on the face, where he doesn't flinch. When you have a woman gnawing at your brain, you become numb to life.
But it was not always wedded bliss for the First Couple. A new book, Renegade, about Mr Obama’s unlikely run for the presidency, recounts a tense period in 2000 when the Obamas’ marriage was on the brink of collapse because of his restless political hunger and the family’s shattered finances.
“There was little conversation and even less romance,” wrote the Birmingham-born Mr Wolffe, who covered Obama’s campaign for Newsweek magazine. “She was angry at his selfishness and careerism; he thought she was cold and ungrateful.”
At the time, Mr Obama was stuck on the lowest step of the political ladder. As a mere state senator in Illinois, he had challenged a popular incumbent in a Democratic primary by running against Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther from Chicago. Mr Obama was trounced by a dismal 2-1 margin.
His wife was new to motherhood, at home with their first daughter Malia, just two years old at the time. “She hated the failed race for Congress in 2000, and their marriage was strained by the time their younger daughter, Sasha, was born. Politics seemed like a waste of time to Michelle,” the book says.
Mr Obama’s troubles were compounded when he discovered that he was not on the guest list for the 2000 Democratic National Convention that year, because he had annoyed party officials. With maxed out credit cards he took the cheapest flight to Los Angeles where he found himself excluded from the convention floor. That was a mere eight years ago.