Did you know Barack Obama proposed marriage to a woman before he married Michelle? For quite a few years, Obama’s love was Sheila Miyoshi Jager, now a professor at Oberlin College.
.. In early 1987, when Obama was 25, she sensed a change. “He became. . . so very ambitious” quite suddenly, she told Garrow. “I remember very clearly when this transformation happened, and I remember very specifically that by 1987, about a year into our relationship, he already had his sights on becoming president.”
… Discussions of race and politics suddenly overwhelmed Sheila and Barack’s relationship. “The marriage discussions dragged on and on,” but now they were clouded by Obama’s “torment over this central issue of his life…race and identity,” Jager recalls. The “resolution of his black identity was directly linked to his decision to pursue a political career,” she said.
In Garrow’s telling, Obama made emotional judgments on political grounds. A close mutual friend of the couple recalls Obama explaining that “the lines are very clearly drawn. . . . If I am going out with a white woman, I have no standing here.
.. “When it comes to fulfilling his campaign promise to appoint strong, principled judges, Trump is knocking it out of the park.”