
In 1983, Genevieve Cook brought a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream to a Christmas party in the East Village. She left with 22-year-old Barack Obama’s phone number. The lithe Australian assistant teacher at a Brooklyn grade school was soon in a romance with the lithe future president. In the diary entries she shared with David Maraniss, whose new biography, “Barack Obama: The Story,” is excerpted in the June Vanity Fair, Cook presages Obama’s relationship with bedazzled American voters: passion cooling as he engages in a cerebral seminar and a delight in doubt. Sunday, Jan. 22, 1984: “A sadness, in a way, that we are both so questioning that original bliss is dissipated.” Thursday, Jan. 26: “Distance, distance, distance, and wariness.” Saturday, Feb. 25: “His warmth ...
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