After six months in the White House, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama are getting restless — he is finding solace in golf, and she wants a more substantive policy role.
Their escape routes are a direct departure from the deliberate roles they crafted for themselves as the busy president, defying critics who say he’s doing too much, and the first mom taking a break from corporate hassle to focus on her children.
“You feel almost normal in the sense that you’re not in the bubble,” the president told CBS News about his frequent golf game. “When you’re up there in the tee box and you’re hacking away and hitting some terrible shot and your friends are laughing at you, you know, it feels as though, you know, you’re out of the container.”
First families throughout history have disliked the gilded penitentiary quality of the White House. But the Obamas, with less experience in public life than many of their predecessors, are struggling with it more vividly. The first lady recently took some initial steps toward assuming a greater policy role, bringing in Susan Sher, who was vice president for legal and governmental affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center — and Michelle Obama’s former boss — to serve as chief of staff.
The first lady in recent weeks has spoken out on Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination and about health care reform.
“As a former health care professional and as a mother, I think she’s obviously had interest in wellness, prevention and things like childhood obesity,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. “And I would expect that she will continue to spend her time speaking out on the issues that she’s passionately interested in.” First ladies traditionally manage their own, largely noncontroversial portfolio of issues. What Michelle Obama is contemplating is trickier, and requires a not-always-successful crossing over from the East Wing of the White House to the policy domain of the presidency.
Jonathan Block, former assistant press secretary for first lady Laura Bush, said the transition was not impossible.
“There was a great deal of coordination between the East and West wings in the Bush White House,” Block said. “But as [Laura Bush] always said, she got to pick the issues for which she advocated, whereas the president’s job was to handle whatever crossed his desk.”
Michelle Obama’s timing is shrewd as well. Having dramatically improved her public standing since the campaign and garnered positive press with her vegetable garden, poetry slams and attractive family, she is in a position to take some chances.
“The first question you always hear is, ‘Who elected her?’ ” said Myra Gutin, a professor of communication at Rider University and an expert on first ladies. “Michelle Obama certainly wouldn’t be the first to chafe under what some see as the restrictiveness of that role.”
President Obama, meanwhile, who is spending this weekend in Washington, was expected to hit the links again.
