First Ladies
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But, in Michelle Robinson’s case, race added a powerful component to the mix, raising what seemed to her an insurmountable barrier between her and white students. “My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my Blackness than ever before,” she wrote in her thesis, adding, “[I]t often seems as if, to [Whites at Princeton], I will always be Black first and a student second.”42
Although Michelle understood she and her white classmates shared identical goals—“acceptance to a prestigious graduate or professional school … [and] a high-paying position in a successful corporation”—she worried about how she could ever fit into a “White cultural and social structure [that kept her] on the periphery.”43 And how would she reconcile her personal success with the obligation instilled by her parents to give back to the working-class community of Chicago’s South Side where she grew up? More than a survey of alumni attitudes, the thesis shows a thoughtful young woman pondering life choices.
Following graduation from Princeton, the “prestigious graduate school” Michelle Robinson chose was Harvard Law, and after receiving her J.D. in 1988, she headed back to Chicago and a job at the Sidley Austin law firm. At twenty-four, she was already collecting a larger salary than her father ever hoped to earn, yet she continued to question whether it was the life she wanted. Michelle shortly decided to change course. She left Sidley Austin in 1991 to join the staff of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Then she moved on to hold various executive positions at the University of Chicago and its hospital.
It would be easy to attribute Michelle Robinson’s career change to the influence of Barack Obama, whom she met when he came to work as a summer intern at Sidley Austin in 1989. His focus on community organizing offered a stark contrast to the views of many of her colleagues in corporate law, and their courtship and marriage (in October 1992) pulled her into his world. But Michelle had already indicated her wish to “give back” to the community by working at the Legal Aid Society while at Harvard, and her directorship of a Chicago youth program, Public Allies, continued that dedication.
When asked about her reasons for leaving Sidley Austin, she often pointed to the deaths of two persons close to her—her father, in March 1991, and a college friend who died of cancer a few months later at age twenty-five. “All of a sudden,” she later told a reporter, “I was on this path … sitting as a second-year associate at Sidley Austin and I hadn’t really thought about how I got there.” Her coworkers showed no special pleasure in their jobs, she noticed, “and the longer you stayed, the harder it was to get out. The golden handcuffs.”44
Regardless of the kind of work Michelle did, both she and her husband struggled to balance careers and family responsibilities. Neither claimed it was easy, and both admitted the bulk of their household’s management fell to her, especially after his election to the Illinois State Senate, which required him to spend several days a week in Springfield. Even earlier, during the time when he was writing Dreams from My Father, the book that would later make them rich, and teaching law, he had little energy left over for mundane household matters. The birth of their first daughter, Malia, in 1998, brought immense joy but it also complicated scheduling and led to tough bargaining on how to handle childcare. In 2000, Barack’s failed race for Congress soured Michelle on politics, and by the time Sasha was born in 2001, their marriage was “strained,” according to Richard Wolffe, a journalist who came to know both Obamas well.45
According to Wolffe, Michelle Robinson “had fallen in love with an idealistic young man who spoke about the difference between the ‘world as it is and the world that can be.’ “46 But his political career had given him little chance to work toward his vision. In her view, politics seemed “like a waste of energy” and holding elective office could do little to achieve that world “that can be.” Much more likely to produce change, she believed, were nonelective jobs in public service.
For her part, Michelle did not want to quit working—she took great pleasure solving “problems that have nothing to do with my husband and children.”47 But she felt frustrated and angry by conflicting demands on her time, and she perceived her husband’s political aspirations as “selfishness and careerism.”48 Only when she decided to call on other resources—her mother and a good babysitter—to fill in when Barack could not be there, did she make peace with her situation. As she explained, she had spent a lot of time expecting her husband “to fix things but then I came to realize that he was there in the ways he could be. If he wasn’t there, it didn’t mean he wasn’t a good father or didn’t care…. Once I was OK with that, my marriage got better.”49
Yet Michelle was not fond of the idea of Barack entering the 2004 race for a U.S. Senate seat. His election would keep him in Washington, D.C., several days a week, leaving her with two little girls and a full-time job back in Chicago. Nonetheless, she was convinced of his competence and commitment and reluctantly joined his campaign—an experience that helped prepare her for the 2008 presidential race.
By that time Michelle had become a lively public speaker who was comfortable in front of large audiences, and she frequently reached out to women in the audience by revealing her own struggles to combine job and family. “If a toilet overflows,” she would say, “we women are the ones rescheduling our meetings to be there when the plumber comes.”50 As First Lady, she would of course never have to wait for plumbers, but she promised to continue her efforts to find ways to help all women juggle work and family responsibilities more easily.51
Accustomed to speaking her mind, Michelle accumulated critics during her husband’s presidential race. After she told an audience that she finally felt proud of her country “for the first time in my adult life,” unfriendly media zeroed in on what they described as her “angry” attitude. The National Review put her picture on its cover and dubbed her “Mrs. Grievance.”52 In contrast to her husband’s cool, unruffled demeanor, Michelle’s exuberance gave her an unsettled look, and her frankness was sometimes interpreted as carrying a “chip on her shoulder.”
Some voters had trouble reconciling her “anger” with what they saw as an enormously privileged life. The Obamas reported a family income (his Senate salary, her hospital salary, and the royalties from his books) of $4.2 million in 2007, which put them in the very top echelon of American households.53 Michelle pointed out this was a recent development, and in fact, the bulk of their income that year ($3.9 million) came from book sales that were a result of his new popularity. Because their earnings had been considerably more modest in their earlier years together, Michelle explained that both she and Barack had struggled—like many other Americans—to pay off their student loans.
In other ways, Michelle Obama helped render her family “ordinary” and her husband “just like” other Americans. In her speech to the Democratic convention in August 2008, she melded her own very American family story, which included roots in South Carolina slavery, with that of her husband’s more exotic, international background. With one parent from Kansas and one from Kenya, he had grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia, raised by a single white mother and white grandparents. But his wife insisted he had a lot in common with the Robinsons in Chicago—who put a high value on hard work, held to the promises they made, and recognized the importance of treating everyone, whether you agreed with them or not, with dignity and respect. In the remaining weeks of the campaign, Michelle repeated this message as she traveled the country on her own and with her husband, but she made a point of getting back to her young daughters in Chicago after no more than one night’s absence. “I am a mother first,” she often said.
As the reality of the November 4 victory set in, millions of Americans could remember when the idea of African Americans residing in the White House was inconceivable. Black Americans, both enslaved and free, had helped construct the mansion in the 1790s, and they had staffed the building and grounds as butlers, maids, chauffeurs, and gardeners for more than two centuries.54 But getting on the guest list was something else. When President
Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington, whose book Up From Slavery had just appeared in 1901, to dine with him, newspapers treated it as front-page news, and some lambasted TR for defiling the White House.55
Michelle Obama took up residence almost exactly eighty years after another African-American woman from Chicago’s South Side helped write White House history on a much smaller scale. In June 1929, when First Lady Lou Hoover planned her traditional tea for the wives of congressmen, she included newcomer Jessie DePriest, whose husband, Oscar, had just become the first African American ever elected by a northern state to the House of Representatives. The elegant Mrs. DePriest had no way of knowing the extent of preparation necessary to guarantee she would not be embarrassed when she showed up at the White House gates. Staff had to be prompted not to turn her away or direct her to the service entrance. Other congressional wives had been sounded out so that only those agreeable to her presence would attend that day.56
But no amount of preparation could control what newspapers printed and how people reacted. Letters of protest came from men and women across the nation, including the DePriests’ hometown. One Chicago woman wrote Lou Hoover that “this nation of white people elected you and your husband to take care of the nation and … we did not think we would have to be ashamed of our actions later.”57
The eight decades separating the White House appearances of Jessie DePriest and Michelle Obama had seen many changes. It was no longer remarkable for African Americans to hold high government jobs or important elective offices. Those celebrities who came to Washington as guests of the presidential family merited no special attention. When Sammy Davis, Jr., famously chose to sleep in the Queen’s Bedroom rather than in the Lincoln Bedroom when President Nixon invited him to stay overnight in 1973, he quipped, “Now I don’t want [Lincoln] coming in here talking about ‘I freed ’em but I sure didn’t mean for ’em to sleep in my bed.’ “58 Little did Davis know that only thirty-six years later, an African-American family would be sleeping in the master suite.
Even before Michelle Obama took up residence in the nation’s capital, TV commentators liked to compare her to Jacqueline Kennedy. Both were attractive young mothers with two little children. Each showed a special flair for clothes and caught the imagination of Americans not previously interested in government or politics. In Michelle’s case, the iPod generation saw her as one of them, and her dedication to physical fitness, feisty comments, and high energy level all set her apart from previous First Ladies who had sometimes seemed stodgy, prim, and out of touch.
In fact, Michelle had more in common with Hillary Clinton than with Jackie Kennedy, who rarely felt at ease on the campaign trail, never earned a graduate degree, and made no secret of the fact that she preferred art to politics. While the Camelot First Lady ran up huge bills for clothing and jewelry, Michelle made a point of appearing in outfits from J. Crew, just like those worn by working women across the country.
As the first mother of two young children to preside over the White House in nearly fifty years, Michelle Obama’s first task was to choose a school. Amy Carter, nine years old when her father was inaugurated, had attended public school, and Caroline Kennedy, three years old in 1961, had taken classes on the top floor of the White House, along with a few other children her age. The Obama girls were already accustomed to the private University of Chicago lab school, and their parents followed the Clintons’ example in choosing Sidwell Friends. At least Sasha and Malia could count on seeing some familiar faces there, as they had already made friends with the vice president’s grandchildren who also attended Sidwell.
While the incoming First Lady focused on such matters as a school for her daughters, whether or not her mother would move to Washington, and what kind of dog the family should get, she showed little interest in taking a public role in her husband’s administration. Even with her law degree and executive experience, she gave no hint she wanted to schedule regular “working lunches” with the president or chair any important task forces. Apparently comfortable with the idea of putting her own career on hold, she caused feminists to squirm as she admitted to more than a casual interest in fashion and delighted in describing herself as “mom in chief.” Rather than old-fashioned or too traditional, her combination of choices appeared youthful and new to many Americans who looked to this 5’11” health enthusiast with an athletic gait to redefine the role of First Lady.
The second attorney to put her stamp on the job of First Lady stayed out of the spotlight for the first ten days of her White House tenure, leaving her husband to garner the bulk of attention with his plans for an economic stimulus, choice of advisers, and announcement on Guantanamo. The First Lady had plenty to do in order to get acquainted with the workings of the 132-room mansion and line up a staff of her own. But when time came for her first public event, Michelle Obama felt no need to follow Hillary Clinton’s example and emphasize her domestic side. She called in guests to applaud passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act extending workers’ rights.
Signed by President Obama on January 29, 2009, the law permitted workers more time to file discrimination suits against their employers. In introducing Ledbetter to the 180 White House guests, Michelle Obama said, “She knew unfairness when she saw it, and was willing to do something about it because it was the right thing to do, plain and simple.”59
In the weeks that followed, Internet blogs and major newspapers showed an active First Lady reaching out to D.C. residents as she visited schools, ladled out pasta in a soup kitchen, and took her friends to local pizzerias. Although she had never lived in Washington, she connected easily with youngsters in urban working-class neighborhoods much like the one she had known in Chicago’s South Side.60
When one young student queried her about her feelings on kitchen duty, now that she had a professional chef, she cheerfully admitted not missing cooking at all—the White House chef turned out “really good” food.61 That same candor marked her comments about balancing work and mothering, as she confessed to one audience, “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wonder or worry about whether I’m doing the right thing for myself, for my family, for the girls.”62
Such openness about private struggles was relatively new for a First Lady. Betty Ford had surprised reporters by releasing details of her breast cancer surgery, talking about her children’s possible use of marijuana, and admitting she took “a Valium every day.”63 Like Ford, Michelle Obama gained many fans because of her honesty about day-to-day frustrations and adjustments. Her popularity soared in the early months, and the Pew Research Center reported in April 2009 that Republican women had raised their opinions of her considerably. Fewer than half had admitted a favorable view before the inauguration but now two-thirds liked what they saw.64 A USA Today/ Gallup poll taken at about the same time reported that 79 percent of Americans approved of the way Michelle Obama was handling the job of First Lady while only 8 percent disapproved.65
Fashion and style media who covered the new First Lady found she had a mind of her own. Unlike her predecessors, Clinton and Bush, who had permitted media stylists to choose their clothes and supervise makeup for the photo shoots, Michelle Obama insisted on controlling her image—with clothes out of her own closet.66 Her Vogue cover photo made her look like a smiling, innocent schoolgirl.67 The topics covered in her interviews—children, dogs, gardens, and healthy eating—sounded a lot like those favored by Barbara Bush or Mamie Eisenhower. Reporters’ requests to talk with her about more substantial topics, such as health care reform, were politely turned down as the Obama team sought to turn the attorney/executive into a non-threatening, nonpartisan woman-next-door.68 She made a couple stops at federal agencies in early February to talk up the president’s stimulus package but these were more cheerleading, goodwill missions than activist promotion of policy.
The Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff declared the Obama White House press operation “the most brilliant and successful and certainly calculated” of any he
had observed.69 With a professional staff of fourteen in the press office and an additional forty-seven people working with them, the forty-fourth president employed a remarkably large PR machine. But its effectiveness had other explanations, according to Wolff: “It’s more central than in any previous administration, and run more knowledgeably” with a press secretary “personally closer to the president than any press secretary in history.”70
This careful image management extended to the First Lady, according to Wolff, and although her omnipresent photos and print coverage gave an impression she was “everywhere,” in fact she appeared in public only about three days a week in carefully managed events. She gave her only commencement speech in spring 2009 at University of California, Merced, after students staged a lovefest to get her there. For the New York Times, Michelle Obama chose to unveil her White House garden, not typically front-page news and a rather unlikely project for a woman raised in a city apartment. After the smiling First Lady was shown wielding a shovel, one journalist wondered if Laura Bush would have made the front page had she started a garden. Wolff concluded the Obama press team operated “pretty much at the levels of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.”71
Such management of the First Lady’s image was a long time coming. Many of Michelle Obama’s predecessors, having struggled unsuccessfully with the public’s insatiable curiosity about them, would have marveled at how she did it.72 From the nation’s founding, people have never seemed to get enough information about the chief executive’s family, and it is fair to point to George Washington as making decisions that accommodated them. When he arranged for Martha to join him in New York, the nation’s first capital city, he engaged the presidential barge and ordered a thirteen-gun salute as welcome. Then he ensconced her in living quarters connected to his office and invited New Yorkers to social events over which she presided. Such mixing of family and business inevitably involved spouses in their husbands’ jobs and, as more than one of the women pointed out, they could hardly avoid knowing something of the political maneuverings of the day.73