Satisfied the benefits outweigh the risks, the White House is deploying first lady Michelle Obama to raise money and campaign for embattled Democrats.
It’s a tricky move for a first lady — Michelle Obama has maintained her popularity in part by avoiding politics and partisanship.
Starting Oct. 13, she will start a round of fundraisers for candidates that include Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California and Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, among several others.
“She is very popular and she doesn’t seem to polarize people,” said Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University. “You go with every arrow in your quiver, and right now the president is running out of arrows.”
With President Obama’s popularity taking a nose dive in key battleground states, deploying the first lady is an easy choice for the West Wing. She is expected to stay busy and traveling right up to the election.
The Bush administration used first lady Laura Bush sparingly on the campaign trail. Among other things, she famously disliked making political speeches.
But when she left office with her husband, many attributed Bush’s lasting public approval to her distance from the political fray.
Michelle Obama in many ways has followed Bush’s example. But Goldford noted that it was the trail blazed by former first lady Hillary Clinton that makes it easier for Obama to campaign this year.
“Of course, Hillary Clinton took a lot of flack for it,” Goldford said.
Appearing with his wife at a Clinton Foundation event in New York last week, Obama said he was glad he never had to run against her for office.
“Pretty much everybody I know who’s met her at some point comes up to me and says, ‘You know, Barack, you’re great and all, I like you, but your wife, now, she’s really something,’ ” Obama said.
A recent AP poll measured Michelle Obama’s favorability rating at 68 percent — about 25 percentage points higher than the president.
“She hasn’t shown much interest in the political chatter,” the president said. “She doesn’t think about who’s winning or losing, what the polls say, or who gets the best headline in the papers.”
But her real benefit to the White House now is her ability to raise money and generate enthusiasm in a moribund campaign year for Democrats.
In a tossup Senate race like Colorado, appearing with the first lady is less of a risk for a candidate like Bennet than being photographed with the president, whose popularity in the state is not strong.
One thing Michelle Obama is not expected to do is go negative or get too partisan in promoting candidates. Staying upbeat would help preserve her status as an asset for the West Wing. Instead, she is expected to focus on health care, family issues and similar topics.
“People will expect her to be apolitical, and sometimes it’s almost like Americans feel threatened by a very political first lady,” said Cindy Rugeley, a political scientist at Texas Tech University. “I don’t think she is going to be the bomb thrower.”
