A day like no other; for Obama, just another day

Through the highs and lows of his unlikely rise to the presidency, Obama has maintained a steady equilibrium. He treated Election Day like any other. Breakfast with his wife and daughters. A business trip to Indiana. A basketball game with friends at a gym on Chicago’s West Side. A quiet evening watching TV at home.

At the basketball game, his friends thought to check on his state of mind. How was he holding up?

“Doing fine, doing fine,” Obama said. “Let’s play.”

“When you get on the basketball court with him, he’s telling jokes, laughing, arguing for fouls like there’s nothing else in the world going on,” said Alexi Giannoulias, the Illinois state treasurer and a longtime friend. “He makes it seem normal. You have to step back from it to think: ‘Wait. He’s playing with us? Right now?’ ”

On Tuesday, Obama woke up before 6 a.m., after the latest three-hour sleep, and dressed in his campaign uniform: dark suit, white shirt, black sunglasses. At 7.40 a.m., he stepped into a voting booth, and cast his vote for the first black president of the United States as his youngest daughter, Sasha, clung to his right leg. “You know, I’m happy I got to vote with my daughters,” he said later. “That was a big deal.”

In Indianapolis for a short campaign trip mid-morning, he strived for normalcy, cocooning within the protective circle of best friends Marty Nesbitt, Eric Whitaker and Valerie Jarrett. He read two morning newspapers and talked with Nesbitt about potential teams for the afternoon basketball game. Later, Nesbitt walked around the plane dribbling a ball while Obama watched.

On the tarmac at Indianapolis airport, he knelt to pose for a picture with media members and security staff. He coaxed the group to smile for the camera, “OK, now everybody say ‘tequila’.”

“It’s like being in the last 120 metres of the 400-metre sprint,” Nesbitt said. “Yeah, there’s a lot going on around you, but you’re trying to keep your head down and not worry about it too much. You’re almost finished, and you have to do what you’ve been doing all along.”

During the final days of the campaign, Obama revealed only an occasional hint of stress. He took his daughters with him on the road last weekend — a first since the Democratic convention — because he was tired of being away from them. During a speech Monday in Florida, he mistakenly referenced “here in Ohio,” before correcting himself and telling the crowd, “I’ve been travelling too much.”

Obama has never been one to celebrate too much. Becoming president satisfied but did not surprise him, said his friends. He has summarized his immediate plans, starting Wednesday, as catching up on sleep and moving quickly to his next task — governing.

He has no plans for a major vacation. He studied briefing books on plane rides this week and read Ghost Wars, a book about Afghanistan by Steve Coll.

“I would expect that he will begin moving on from this campaign right after midnight,” said Charles Ogletree, one of Obama’s professors at Harvard. “But I’m going to try to tell him, ‘This is a historic night. It’s yours. Please, enjoy it.’ ”