The Moment This Summer When Barack Obama Felt (Almost) Like He Was a Normal Person Again

1 min read

No president — past, present or future — can ever totally feel like themselves again: Even outside of the White House, there’s the permanent Secret Service detail and the perpetual fascination of the public.

But one can dream.

In his new memoir, A Promised Land, former President Barack Obama writes of that recurring possibility, however remote, of being an average citizen again.

As he tells PEOPLE in an hour-long conversation for this week’s cover story: “It used to come to me once every couple months, of me just walking down a street or occasionally taking a bike ride down the street and nobody knows who I am and I don’t have any Secret Service around me. And I sit down in a park or at a café bench and have a tea or a coffee or a soda and just watch the world go by.”

If only it were that easy. “Michelle jokes that I think I had a little bit of a fantasy — it was unrealistic, that somehow once the presidency was over, I could go back to strolling through Central Park,” Obama, 59, says with a laugh. “I was disabused of that fairly quickly.”

Barack Obama

While the dream may have passed, Obama says he has found new pleasures in some passing anonymity — just as he imagined it.

“There are aspects of my life that I can’t get back, now as much by virtue of celebrity as it is security. But there are things that I can do that I couldn’t do as president,” he says. “When we were in Martha’s Vineyard this summer [where the couple bought a home in 2019], Michelle and I would go take bike rides.”

The precautions amid the novel coronavirus pandemic provided an unexpected silver lining.

“Particularly now that we have masks on, we could ride through town and people wouldn’t know who we were,” Obama says. “And it felt pretty close to what I had imagined — that sense of freedom, that sense of being able to go wherever you wanted.”

“So it’s not all the way back, but, 70, 75 percent back,” he says. “That’s not bad.”

Oh hi there 👋
It’s nice to meet you.

Sign up to receive awesome & exclusive content in your inbox, every week.

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

insiderblm

InsiderBLM is a fast-growing business site with deep financial, media, tech, and other industry verticals.

Leave a Reply

Previous Story

Bigblue wants to automate e-commerce fulfillment in Europe

Next Story

Five Basic Habits That Will Give You a More Prosperous Day