We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

The year 2008 marked a period of change in Coates’s professional life and in the political scene. Obama’s campaign was in full swing, and no one—not even the political reporters—knew what to make of Obama. The problem was that people were not accustomed to talking about Black people as presidents. Rather than accept the reality that Obama was qualified, reporters and commentators tended to describe Obama as a mixed-race, unicorn-like outlier, despite Obama’s self-identification as a Black man. Seeing this trend, Coates was pleasantly surprised after the Iowa caucuses when Obama managed to get large numbers of white people to vote for him.

Obama was in the ascendant, but things were tricky in the Coates household. Coates was not sure if he would be able to provide the financial support his family needed. Coates received the good news that The Atlantic wanted him to do a profile on Michelle Obama. Coates’s blog was also taking off, especially with financial support from his father and The Atlantic’s decision to take it over. The increase in income from these ventures validated Coates’s belief that he could be a good provider as a writer.