Reporting political profiles is like giving birth: You forget how painful it is until you go through it again. And the minute you do, you think, "Somebody make it stop now." The begging for access, the plaintive calls to sources, the "no comments," the lunches with people who manage not to say anything, and did I mention the begging for access? As a feature writer, I thought I'd achieved nadirs of debasement doing profiles of Hillary Clinton (who never talked to me) and Al Gore (who finally did). But now I realize I never knew what reporting pain was until I set out to write a journalistic biography of Michelle Obama.
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So, in the end, I talked to enough people to write a biography I found interesting and enjoyed doing. And because the campaign did not cough up the same 12 people they usually make available, there are new voices in it. The point, however, is that the campaign made writing a book about Michelle Obama harder, I would argue, than it should have. In an Obama administration, we the press will have our work cut out for us.