As first lady, Michelle Obama will guide her daughters, advise her husband and define her own public role
When Michelle Obama hit the campaign trail for her husband, she presented herself as a practical woman who rose from blue-collar roots to a high-powered career, even as she juggled motherhood with the political aspirations of a largely absent husband who forgot to put away the butter dish.
Her political appeal seemed to grow with each passing month. Campaign staffers called her “the closer” for her ability to seal the deal with wavering voters.
Now, just days after turning 45, she will become first lady of the United States. It’s not a job with a set description or even defined power, but it comes freighted with potential.
Will she be a Jackie Kennedy, bringing class and culture to the White House but little lasting policy? An Eleanor Roosevelt, who used the position to champion human rights? Or a Hillary Clinton, who kept a desk in the West Wing and infamously led a failed health care reform effort?
She will have a platform to initiate — and possibly change — public policy. At the same time, she must take care not to distract from the president’s own agenda. So far Michelle Obama has managed to avoid any detailed discussion of her plans for the role.
She has vaguely suggested that she’s interested in helping military families, focusing on work-family balance and contributing to the community where she will now be living. First, though, she has said she plans to be “mom-in-chief,” helping daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, make the transition to life in the White House. She declined, through her staff, to be interviewed for this story.
» Michele’s strenuous juggling act
From Ms. Robinson to
code name Renaissance
» Born in Chicago on Jan. 17, 1964, as Michelle LaVaughn Robinson.
» In 1981 followed her older brother Craig, an All-Ivy basketball player, to Princeton University. The mother of her freshman year roommate, a white woman from New Orleans, was shocked when she found out her daughter was rooming with a black woman and requested another room.
» Graduated cum laude from Princeton University in 1985, having studied sociology and African American studies. Her thesis was titled “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.”
» Earned a law degree in 1988 from Harvard Law School, where she worked in the school’s legal aid bureau giving free legal representation.
» Joined what is now called Sidley Austin, a top law firm in Chicago, handling marketing and intellectual property cases. During one summer she was assigned to mentor a law student named Barack Obama. She reportedly resisted his invitations for a date until finally agreeing to see Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” and get ice cream.
» Became an aide to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley in 1991 and was later named assistant commissioner of city planning and development.
» Married Barack Obama in 1992 in Chicago, with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright officiating, a year after her father died.
» Left city government in 1993 to lead Public Allies Chicago, a nonprofit geared toward helping young people pursue public service careers.
» Began working for the University of Chicago in 1996 as an associate dean of student services.
» Joined the University of Chicago Medical Center in 2002 as executive director for community affairs. She was later promoted to vice president, earning more than $300,000 annually. She cut back her work schedule in the early months of her husband’s presidential campaign, then took a leave of absence.
» Her Secret Service code name as first lady is Renaissance.
But there is at least some expectation that the next first lady will take on some type of public role, as she did during her husband’s campaigns. “We don’t want the first lady to hide out in the White House,” says Myra Gutin, a Rider University professor who has written about Obama’s predecessors.
By default, Michelle Obama will also take on a historic role, like her husband.
A descendent of slaves, she will soon be living in a house built by slaves. Obama is also the daughter of working-class parents who never went to college themselves, but, Gutin says, she is among just three first ladies with an advanced degree. She is the only one to earn two Ivy League diplomas.
She is leaving behind a job that paid more than $300,000 a year to assume a post that pays nothing but confers enormous prestige — and comes with a large staff. And she’s raising two daughters, the first time in decades such young children will have lived in the White House.
That has made her the subject of much scrutiny already. A biography has been published. Multiple blogs track her every move — and every new dress. Media reports speculate on who will do her hair and what she will wear to the inaugural balls. She has been questioned on her iPod selections (Beyoncé, Stevie Wonder and R&B artist Anthony David to name a few), and whether she wears panty hose (the 5-foot-11-inch woman has said she gave them up years ago).
Beyond her style, she’s known as an independent woman. So it was no surprise that her decision to leave her career to take a supporting role in the White House generated some heat from feminists and put her in the heart of the “mommy wars.”
But for some African-American women, Obama’s new life represents an affirmation, says Ange-Marie Hancock, an associate professor of political science at the University of Southern California. Historically many black women had to work outside of their homes to support their families, she says, and typically were characterized as bad mothers.
“It’s almost a feminist choice to choose to mother in the home,” says Hancock, who studies the societal role of African-American women.
Michelle Obama will be a role model, Hancock says, who can help change stereotypes stuck in place since the last time a professional African-American mother tried to juggle it all in front of mainstream eyes. That woman was the fictional Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show, which aired from 1984 to 1992. Huxtable, a married, upper-middle-class attorney like Obama, had a caring yet no-nonsense manner that kept everyone in line.
Obama’s new position comes with many demands that go beyond motherhood — even if she stays away from public policy.
The Office of the First Lady historically has handled social planning for the president and his family. The first lady also answers letters, gives speeches, plans schedules and travels overseas, both with the president and sometimes by herself. It’s only after those tasks are taken care of that she can turn to policy issues.
“The biggest misconception is that all we do is plan parties here,” says Laura Bush’s Chief of Staff Anita McBride, who has served in three presidential administrations.
The Office of the First Lady currently has a staff of 26, McBride said, not including interns and volunteers who sift through some 1,400 letters a month.
Barbara Bush, wife of President George H.W. Bush, received about 100 invitations each year to speak at commencements, says Gutin, who wrote “Barbara Bush: Presidential Matriarch.”
“The demands are going to be overwhelming,” Gutin warns.
Obama will also have the ear of the most powerful man in the country, serving as a trusted sounding board like the spouses of nearly all past presidents.
“The president knows she doesn’t have an ax to grind,” Gutin says. “She can be honest. She’s not beholden to him for a job.”
The Obamas have showed off their marital repartee on the campaign trail and in media interviews. The way they interact clearly shows he respects her intelligence and opinions, Hancock says.
They finished each other’s sentences, and joshed with each other about the vagaries of everyday life. Sometimes she left him looking like a scolded yet amused husband. She famously asked the nation to report to her if he broke his pledge to quit smoking.
It seems unlikely that a woman of Obama’s background would keep a low profile. Although she urged her husband not to run for office, she joined the political world before her husband did, accepting a job in Richard M. Daley’s mayoral office in 1991. She also grew up seeing politics in action because her father, who worked at the city water plant, was an active Democratic precinct chairman.
During her husband’s bid for the U.S. Senate in 2004, she joined the campaign trail in what news accounts at the time called an “unusually high profile role.”
She scaled back her own job when he launched his presidential bid so she could help him campaign. She gave stump speeches and rallied supporters, showing a natural political touch.
Even so, she will face a testing transition when she takes on her new role. Unlike many first ladies, she has not had to handle the full responsibilities of being a first spouse, Gutin says. Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, and others before them had been in governor’s mansions before coming to the White House.
Michelle Obama also has never lived in Washington, having chosen to stay in Chicago when her husband became a senator. She’s a Windy City native who spent her professional life there, and thus stayed clear of much of the Capital’s political and social maneuverings.
But she’s a driven, pragmatic woman who balanced a demanding job with 4:30 a.m. gym workouts, school potlucks, and dance recitals. She learned executive leadership from heading a nonprofit group, and honed her diplomatic skills from handling often-delicate community relations for the University of Chicago Medical Center.
“I’ve had to juggle being mom-in-chief and having a career for a long time,” she said on “60 Minutes” this fall.
Now she’ll get a little more parenting help because her husband will no longer be out on the campaign trail. Barack Obama, after all, will soon be working out of a new home office.
