Novem­ber 2, 2010—I knew we were head­ed for a bad night. I watched the returns come in from the Treaty Room, my usu­al elec­tion-night perch, Valerie and Axe and Gibbs with me. It was not the blood­bath that some had predicted—thank you, consistency!—but as the evening wore on, it was clear that we were los­ing the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. By the time I went to bed, Repub­li­cans had picked up at least six­ty-three seats, more than enough for a major­i­ty.

To say I was dis­cour­aged would be an under­state­ment. Yes, we had man­aged to hold on to the Sen­ate, but just bare­ly, los­ing six seats to end up with a slim fifty-three-to-forty-sev­en major­i­ty. And while we’d picked up a few gov­er­nor­ships in key states, the Repub­li­cans’ gains were wide­spread and deep, giv­ing them full con­trol of at least twen­ty-one state leg­is­la­tures.

As I lay awake in the ear­ly hours of Novem­ber 3, run­ning through what I could have done dif­fer­ent­ly, what my admin­is­tra­tion might have accom­plished if we’d had two more years with Democ­rats in con­trol of Congress—how much more dif­fi­cult it was going to be to move any part of our agen­da forward—I couldn’t shake the feel­ing that I had let down mil­lions of Amer­i­cans who had invest­ed their hopes in me. And there was no get­ting around the harsh truth: With Repub­li­cans now run­ning the House, and their lead­ers appar­ent­ly deter­mined to oppose and obstruct our ideas at every turn, it was going to be a long, tough slog to the end of my first term.

The next day, I stood before the cam­eras in the East Room to address the elec­tion results. Reporters seemed to take sat­is­fac­tion in point­ing out that we’d expe­ri­enced a “shel­lack­ing.” I didn’t blame them; that’s how it felt to me too. I acknowl­edged the anger and frus­tra­tion that vot­ers had expressed, and I took respon­si­bil­i­ty for not doing a good enough job in deliv­er­ing the changes they had hoped for. I spoke about the need for both par­ties to find com­mon ground, to work togeth­er in the best inter­ests of the Amer­i­can peo­ple.

It all sound­ed rea­son­able enough. Yet as I field­ed ques­tions, I had to work not to let my frus­tra­tion show. Not just with the inane premise of so many ques­tions being hurled at me—that some­how this elec­tion had been a ref­er­en­dum on Big Gov­ern­ment, when it was clear to any­one who had fol­lowed these past two years close­ly that our biggest prob­lem hadn’t been an over­abun­dance of gov­ern­ment activism but rather our inabil­i­ty to do more to direct­ly help ordi­nary people—but also with myself, for all the oppor­tu­ni­ties I felt I had squan­dered and all the polit­i­cal cap­i­tal I had let slip away in the after­glow of our elec­tion, for how slow I had been to adjust to the pace of change in this hyper­con­nect­ed, hyper­po­lar­ized cli­mate. I felt as if I had reached a dead end, with­out a clear sense of how to move for­ward.

“No dra­ma Oba­ma,” Axe would remind me when­ev­er he saw me brood­ing fol­low­ing a set­back. True to form, by the time I’d retreat­ed to the Oval after the press con­fer­ence, I had start­ed to regain my equi­lib­ri­um. Maybe we’d lost the House, but we still had the Sen­ate; maybe progress would be slow­er than I would have liked, but there was still plen­ty that could get done—an immi­gra­tion bill, per­haps, or a mod­est infra­struc­ture pro­gram. Who knew? Maybe there were enough Repub­li­cans who, now that they shared gov­ern­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties, would be more will­ing to bar­gain.

More than any­thing, though, look­ing out the Oval’s win­dows onto the sun­lit South Lawn, what con­soled me was some­thing Michelle had said to me not long after the elec­tion results had come in. It was what I always tell myself when­ev­er life around the White House starts feel­ing a bit too heavy.

“For bet­ter or worse,” she’d said, tak­ing my hand, her eyes bright and teas­ing, “we still have each oth­er.”

Michelle always knows just what to say.