His world is awash in powerful, conflicting emotions: the realization, presumably, that he may be about to become president; the huge optimism that he has unleashed, evident in the crowds he is drawing (and something he has told aides worries him a bit, given the expectations set for him); the weighty thinking he is gradually giving to how he would staff a government and deal with a transition in such a difficult time. All of this is taking place as a woman who played a large role in raising him, his grandmother, is approaching death.
“ ‘What if I disappoint people?’ ” Valerie Jarrett, a close friend and adviser, recalled Mr. Obama asking at several points throughout the campaign. “That’s what gives him the energy to keep getting up every day.”
If there is a feeling of nostalgia surrounding the Obama campaign in these final hours before the election, it does not seem to be coming from the candidate himself. He is eager to be finished campaigning, several of his friends said, and for months has been immersing himself in the work of the presidency, well before he knows if it will ever be his.
He spends far less time on the telephone these days making political calls to local Democratic chairmen. His call list now includes officials in Washington, including Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., with whom he spoke several times a day for weeks about the government rescue plan. And he is in frequent conversations with Congressional leaders over how to proceed should he win on Tuesday.
And probably the best part:
One of the greatest frustrations of his candidacy — being away from his wife, Michelle, and his two daughters, Malia and Sasha — will come to an end, win or lose. When his plane touched down on Saturday afternoon in Pueblo, Colo., his step carried an extra lilt. It was not because of the place that he finds himself in the closing moments of his campaign, but because his two daughters were standing on the breezy tarmac waiting to be scooped up by their father.
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