First Friends, Barack Style

It was past midnight on Inauguration Day, after the balls and all of the other events had ended. It had been an exhilarating and exhausting day. Michelle and the kids headed to bed. Barack Obama, the new president, was still up. Right there with him were the people who for years had been such a big part of his life. He was with his friends. His time with them was the capstone of this personally profound and historically significant day.

Back when Obama was a state senator, the next wish on his list -- becoming a United States senator -- seemed highly unlikely to come true. (He had just lost an election.) But Barack thought he could do it, and he knew whom he had to persuade. He called his closest friend Valerie Jarrett, invited himself to her place, and asked her to invite his closest friends. That, in a way, is how Obama's ascension to the United States Senate, and then the Presidency, began.

Years later, as the Presidential primary season would drag on longer than anyone had anticipated, Obama's friends were concerned about him. Three of the closest among them -- Jarrett, Martin Nesbitt, and Eric Whitaker -- decided that one of them should try to be with him on the road as often as possible until the Democrats finally had a candidate.

Of course, what the Democrats also had was a winner. Between the day of the election and the day of the inauguration, meetings about policy, planning, and personnel piled up, one atop another atop still another. Psychologically, one of the most significant meetings [continue reading here at the Living Single blog at Psychology Today].