Portrait of the woman who 'almost' became former President Obama's wife

In order to pursue his political ambitions, Obama had to endure a lot of suffering before breaking up with the woman he once proposed to.

Obama gives an interview after becoming president of the magazine at Harvard in 1990

Former US President Barack Obama was a man who revealed his political ambitions from a very young age and had to sacrifice many things, including his love, to pursue his big goal, author David J. Garrow recounted in his newly published biography "Rising Star" about Obama's life and career, according toWashington Post.

Before entering politics, Obama was an active member of the community in Chicago. Inspired by Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago, Obama began to talk about his political ambitions with friends and colleagues. This young man wanted to become the city's mayor, a US senator, governor of Illinois, or even become the US president.

During this time, Obama had a girlfriend whom he loved very much, many years before he met Michelle. That was Sheila Miyoshi Jager, now a professor of anthropology at Oberlin College. With Dutch-Japanese blood, Jager was very suitable for Obama's multicultural world, making them a "match made in heaven".

Speaking to Garrow, Jager said she soon realized Obama was a man with a "deep need to be loved and admired." She described their time together as a distant memory, an "island of our own" where Obama "clearly divided work and family." The two hadmeet both families and discuss marriage soon.

"In the winter of 1986, when he came to visit my parents, he proposed to me," Jager told Garrow. But Obama's mother was adamantly against the marriage, not because of race, but because she feared it would affect his career. His mother thought Jager, who was two years younger than Obama, was too young to marry. "Not yet," Jager replied to Obama. But they stayed together.

Professor Sheila Miyoshi Jager. Photo: Toronto Star

By early 1987, when Obama was 25, Jager sensed a profound change in him. “He suddenly became very ambitious,” she told Garrow. “I remember very clearly the moment it happened, and I also remember that around our first anniversary, he was aiming to become president.”

Garrow writes that Obama believed he was hearing a "calling" from destiny, and that ambition was tied to the realization that to achieve his goal of becoming president, he had to identify with his constituents as African Americans.

But to do so, he was forced to make trade-offs, especially in marrying a woman of non-African descent. There have been many examples of this, such as Richard H. Newhouse Jr., the famous African-American senator from Illinois, who married a white woman and was often whispered about as "talking about black people but sleeping with white people."

Carol Moseley Braun, who served as the first African-American female senator and whose husband is white, has admitted that "interracial marriage really limits your political options."

Debates about race and politics suddenly loomed large over Obama and Jager’s relationship. “The marriage was delayed, overshadowed by Obama’s struggles with the central issues of his life: race and identity,” Jager recalls. “His determination to remain black was directly linked to his decision to pursue a political career,” she says.

A mutual friend of the two said that Obama once admitted that "if I dated a white girl, I wouldn't be here." At a gathering of friends at the resort, Obama and Jager argued bitterly about the subject all afternoon. "That's wrong, that's wrong. That's not why," friends heard Jager shout from inside the room.

According to Garrow, Obama cared deeply for Jager, but he felt caught between the woman he loved and the destiny he was pursuing. In late 1988, just days before Obama transferred to Harvard Law School, when their relationship was on the verge of breaking down, Obama asked Jager to follow him and marry him. At this time, Jager was on her way to Korea to do her thesis, and she thought Obama wanted her to end her research career to follow him, so she continued to argue with him. Eventually, the two went their separate ways.

At Harvard, Obama’s image as a future president became more apparent. He frequently volunteered to participate in class debates and summarize his classmates’ arguments. “In law school, the only thing I wanted Obama to do was shut up,” one former student told Garrow. Classmates created an “Obama Scale” to rate the overconfidence of his class speeches.

Yet Obama was admired by everyone, including his professors, who even set exams based on his comments in class. His election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, after a tense election, showed the respect that the students of this prestigious school had for him. This information was published in many newspapers, marking the rise of Obama's star.

After a year there, Obama went to work at a law firm in Chicago and met Michelle Robinson. The two quickly became serious about each other. However, Jager was not completely out of his life, as she later came to Harvard on a faculty exchange program.

Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson when they were young. Photo: Wikipedia

"Barack and Sheila continued to see each other during the 1990-1991 school year, despite Barack's increasingly intense relationship with Michelle," Garrow wrote. After marrying Michelle, Obama continued to occasionally communicate with Jager through letters or phone calls.

According to the Washington Post, Garrow's biography "Rising Star" partly depicts Obama's difficult choice between personal feelings and political ambitions, before he decided to pursue his life's goal and become US President in 2008. "To temper one's iron will, the mold must be empty in the middle," Garrow concluded about Obama's destiny.

According to VNE