Michelle Obama and the Evolution of a First Lady
by Jodi Kantor
Michelle Obama has been an anxious spouse, eager to help President Obama succeed.
Michelle Obama in 2009 at the Congressional Black Caucus dinner in
Washington. Interviews with more than 30 current and former aides, as
well as some of the first couple’s closest friends, show that Michelle
Obama has been a little-recognized force in her husband’s administration
and that her story has been one first of struggle, then turnaround and
greater fulfillment.
Michelle Obama was privately fuming, not only at the president’s team, but also at her husband.
In the days after the Democrats lost Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat in
January 2010, Barack Obama was even-keeled as usual in meetings,
refusing to dwell on the failure or lash out at his staff. The first
lady, however, could not fathom how the White House had allowed the
crucial seat, needed to help pass the president’s health care
legislation and the rest of his agenda, to slip away, several current
and former aides said.
To her, the loss was more evidence of what she had been saying for a
long time: Mr. Obama’s advisers were too insular and not strategic
enough. She cherished the idea of her husband as a transformational
figure, but thanks in part to the health care deals the administration
had cut, many voters were beginning to view him as an ordinary
politician.
The first lady never confronted the advisers directly — that was not her
way — but they found out about her displeasure from the president. “She
feels as if our rudder isn’t set right,” Mr. Obama confided, according
to aides.
Rahm Emanuel, then chief of staff, repeated the first lady’s criticisms
to colleagues with indignation, according to three of them. Mr. Emanuel,
in a brief interview, denied that he had grown frustrated with Mrs.
Obama, but other advisers described a grim situation: a president whose
agenda had hit the rocks, a first lady who disapproved of the turn the
White House had taken, and a chief of staff who chafed against her
influence.
The Michelle Obama of January 2012 is an expert motivator and charmer, a
champion of safe causes like helping military families and ending
childhood obesity, an increasingly canny political player eager to pour
her popularity into her husband’s re-election campaign. But interviews
with more than 30 current and former aides, as well as some of the first
couple’s closest friends, conducted for “The Obamas,” a new book, show
that she has been an unrecognized force in her husband’s administration
and that her story has been one first of struggle, then turnaround and
greater fulfillment.
Mrs. Obama is a supportive but often anxious spouse, suspicious of
conventional political thinking, a groundbreaking figure who has acutely
felt the pressures and possibilities of being the first
African-American in her position and a first lady who has worked to make
her role more meaningful.
Initially, she had considered postponing her move to the White House for
months; after arriving, she bristled at its confinements and
obligations — unable to walk her dog without risking being photographed,
and monitored by her husband’s aides for everything from how she
decorated the family’s private quarters to whether she took makeup
artists on overseas trips.
New to the ways of Washington but impassioned about what her husband had
been elected to do, she saw herself as a guardian of values. She was
sometimes harder on her husband’s team than he was, eventually urging
him to replace them, and the tensions grew so severe that one top
adviser erupted in a meeting in 2010, cursing the absent first lady.
“She has very much got his back,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s
longtime strategist, in an interview. “When she thinks things have been
mishandled or when things are off the track,” he continued, “she’ll
raise it, because she’s hugely invested in him and has a sense of how
hard he’s working, and wants to make sure everybody is doing their work
properly.”
Mrs. Obama’s difficulties illuminate some of the president’s central
challenges in the White House, including how the Obamas’ freshness to
political life, a selling point in 2008, became a liability in office.
Her worries about his staff point to a chief executive with little
management experience who clung to an inner circle less united than it
appeared. (Mr. Emanuel’s relationship with the president grew so
strained that the chief of staff secretly offered to resign in early
2010; Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, had a tense
relationship with Mrs. Obama and with Valerie Jarrett, another adviser).
She shared the president’s ambivalence about political chores and the
back-patting and schmoozing that can help get things done in Washington.
Like many of the president’s supporters, Mrs. Obama was anxious about
the gap between her vision of her husband’s presidency and the reality
of what he could deliver. Her strains with the advisers were part of a
continuing debate over what sort of president Mr. Obama should be, with
Mrs. Obama reinforcing his instincts for ambitious but unpopular
initiatives like the overhaul of health care and immigration laws, casting herself as a foil to aides more intent on preserving Congressional seats and poll numbers.
“She does think there are worse things than losing an election,” Susan
S. Sher, the first lady’s former chief of staff, said shortly after the
2010 midterm elections. “Being true to yourself, for her, is definitely
more important.” Back then, Mrs. Obama sometimes talked about what would
happen if her husband lost in 2012. “I know we’ll be fine,” she told
Ms. Sher.
Sasha Obama ran ahead of President Obama and Mrs. Obama after their
Christmas vacation in Hawaii at the White House in 2010. As Michelle
Obama realized over the summer and fall of 2008 that she was likely to
become first lady, she asked a question that probably would have
surprised outsiders: could she and her children delay moving to the
White House?
Deep Frustrations
As Michelle Obama realized over the summer and fall of 2008 that she was
likely to become first lady, she asked a question that probably would
have surprised outsiders: could she and her children delay moving to the
White House? Perhaps it was better, she told aides and friends, to
remain in Chicago until the end of the school year, giving her children
more time to adjust, rather than coming right at the inauguration.
Her notion, though short-lived, was telling: she didn’t understand or
care what sort of message it would send to a public enthralled by the
new first family, and she had trepidations about life in the spotlight,
let alone the prospect of residing in a monument-museum-office-military
compound-terrorist target-home.
She ultimately decided to go to Washington immediately, not because of
the obligations of office, but because of “wanting her family to be
together,” Ms. Jarrett said.
Even as Mrs. Obama dazzled Americans with her warmth, glamour and
hospitality early in the presidency, she was also deeply frustrated and
insecure about her place in the White House, said aides who spoke on the
condition of anonymity, out of concern about discussing internal
strife.
The first couple declined to be interviewed.
A Harvard-trained lawyer, she had given up her career for what initially
seemed to her a shapeless post, and she tried to wriggle out of some
ceremonial events that she saw as not having much purpose, including the
annual luncheon for Congressional spouses held by the first lady since
1912. She tried to limit her public exposure, saying she would work only
two days a week; inside the White House, the difficulty of getting Mrs.
Obama to agree to doing an event became a running joke.
Mrs. Obama received hugs after she read to third grade students who
participated in an after-school program at the Ferebee-Hope Elementary
School in Washington in 2009. As first lady she has championed safe
causes like helping military families and ending childhood obesity.
The confinement of the White House was also a shock; suddenly she was
cut off from her old life and rituals, and she hesitated even to take
her daughters to school or some soccer games for fear of causing a fuss.
The family had intended to return to Chicago frequently, but their
first attempt was so complicated — their brick-front home was shrouded
in black curtains to foil snipers, and because they couldn’t just buy
groceries anymore, Navy stewards fed them in their own home — they
seldom returned. While the president found Camp David artificial and cut
off, the first lady loved it because she could roam free of prying
photographers.
“I don’t think any of us contemplated how isolating this whole
experience would be,” Dr. Eric Whitaker, a close friend from Chicago,
said in an interview. “I don’t think this is a fun part about being the
first family for any of them.”
Mrs. Obama often found herself caught in an internal debate about how
the Obamas should look and live, travel and entertain. As the first
African-American first lady, she wanted everything to be flawless and
sophisticated; she felt “everyone was waiting for a black woman to make a
mistake,” a former aide said.
Mr. and Mrs. Obama walked across the White House South Lawn after a trip
back from Texas in 2009. For all of the first lady’s newness, she was
quick to identify problems. From the start she worried that the White
House was not presenting a clear, compelling story of the president’s
actions to the public, a former aide said. She also told her own
advisers that she wanted a more central role in communicating the
administration’s message.
But her husband’s advisers — in particular, Mr. Gibbs — were worried
that the White House might appear oblivious to public anger about
joblessness, banker bailouts and bonuses. The result was constant,
anxious give-and-take between the East and West Wings about vacations,
décor, entertainment, even matters as small as whether to announce the
hiring of a new florist.
“We all have watched what happens when people get caricatured,” Mr.
Gibbs said in an interview, explaining why he policed such personal
matters. With a mistake like John Edwards’s $400 haircut in 2007,
“there’s no way to correct that.” Other aides said there was a reason
Mr. Gibbs became the main enforcer of the rules of political life:
because Mr. Obama, all too aware that his wife never wanted that life,
would not.
For all of the first lady’s newness, she was quick to identify problems.
From the start she worried that the White House was not presenting a
clear, compelling story of the president’s actions to the public, a
former aide said. She also told her own advisers that she wanted a more
central role in communicating the administration’s message; the West
Wing failed to consider how she fit in with her husband’s broader
narrative, she protested.
She particularly wanted to help sell the health care overhaul
in spring 2009. “Figure out how to use me effectively,” she told her
aides. “This is my priority.” But West Wing advisers, recalling the
public resentment of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s involvement in health care
as first lady, mostly declined her offer.
Mrs. Obama waited to greet Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of
Edinburgh, during a dinner at Winfield House in London. Those
concerned with protocol faulted Mrs. Obama for putting her arm around
the waist of Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to London, and British
commentators sniffed at the gifts the Obamas brought.
Mr. Emanuel, who told colleagues that his battles as a staffer with Mrs.
Clinton back then had taught him to steer clear of first ladies, mostly
avoided Mrs. Obama. The tense relationship between the East and West
Wings remained a muted matter, but the strains eventually became deep
enough that the first lady’s team held a retreat in the winter of 2010
to discuss the problem. Ms. Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president,
served as an envoy and tried to smooth relations. But Ms. Jarrett’s mix
of roles — she had her own West Wing portfolio, acted as Michelle
Obama’s advocate, and was so close to the Obamas that she vacationed
with them — created its own tensions.
That summer, in exchange for a key vote on an energy bill, Mr. Emanuel,
without asking the first lady’s permission, promised Allen Boyd, a
Florida congressman, that she would appear at an event. Annoyed, she
attended the event, but registered her broader disapproval by refusing
to commit to campaigning for the midterms. She eventually withheld
agreement for nearly a year, according to former East and West Wing
advisers. Instead she focused on an agenda of her own.
Her reluctance to campaign left Mr. Emanuel incredulous, according to
two aides: The elections were already looking like a potential
bloodbath, and the White House was going to face them without the
president’s popular spouse?
Mrs. Obama made remarks on the need for health insurance reform and its
impact on women and children during an event at the White House in
2009. She particularly wanted to help sell the health care overhaul.
“Figure out how to use me effectively,” she told her aides. “This is my
priority.”
Stuck on the Sidelines
Michelle Obama never wanted to be the kind of first lady who interfered
with West Wing business, she told her aides. It was her husband’s
administration, not hers, she sometimes said. She had little appetite or
expertise for policy detail, and she knew the history of first ladies
—like Nancy Reagan and Mrs. Clinton — who had been deemed meddlers,
unelected figures who wielded unearned power.
And yet as the administration hit obstacle after obstacle in 2010 —Scott
Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, a health care law that squeaked
through Congress yet remained unpopular, the Gulf oil spill and the approach of the midterm elections — Mrs. Obama became increasingly concerned.
Later Mr. Emanuel would glide into the Chicago mayor’s office, partly on
the basis of his strong ties to Mr. Obama, but by a year into the
administration, his relationship with the president had grown strained.
While he relied heavily on Mr. Emanuel, especially in dealing with
Congress, Mr. Obama told advisers that he had concerns about his chief
of staff’s overall management and planning skills, along with his
outbursts toward staff members. Mr. Emanuel openly said that he thought
the health care overhaul had been a bad idea, and after accounts of his
views began to surface in the news media in early 2010, he went into the
Oval Office and offered his resignation to Mr. Obama, according to
several colleagues.
The chief of staff “understood that the stories were an embarrassment
and felt like he owed it to him to offer his resignation,” Mr. Axelrod
said. The president declined to accept it, telling Mr. Emanuel that his
punishment was to stay and push through the health care measure,
according to Mr. Axelrod and others. Mr. Emanuel declined to comment on
the matter.
Mrs. Obama planted a vegetable garden on the South Lawn in 2010, the
first at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in
World War II.
But that spring, Mrs. Obama made it clear that she thought her husband
needed a new team, according to her aides. When the president decided to
deliver a lofty speech about overhauling immigration laws in June 2010,
even though there was no legislation on the table and the effort could
hurt vulnerable Democrats, Mr. Emanuel objected. Aides did not produce
the speech he wanted and the president stayed up much of the night
rewriting — but the address drew a flat reception. Mr. Obama was
irritated, two advisers said, and told Ms. Jarrett to keep an eye on
other top staff members to make sure that they delivered what he wanted.
Several West Wing aides said they had heard secondhand that Mrs. Obama
was angry about the incident. Later, they said they wondered: was the
president using his wife to convey what he felt?
In September 2010, after a summer of infighting throughout the West Wing, things finally exploded.
Early on Sept. 16, Robert Gibbs was scanning the news when a story
stopped him short: according to a new French book, Michelle Obama had
told Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the French first lady, that living in the
White House was “hell.” It was a potential disaster — the equivalent of
the $400 haircut, Mr. Gibbs feared, coming just weeks before election
day and on the heels of a vacation in Spain that had drawn accusations
of lavish spending.
Mr. Gibbs asked her aides to find out if she had said anything even
close (no, the answer came back), and then fought the story back for
hours, having the book translated and convincing the Élysée Palace to
issue a denial. By noon the potential crisis had been averted.
But at Mr. Emanuel’s 7:30 a.m. staff meeting the next day, Ms. Jarrett
announced that the first lady had concerns about the White House’s
response to the book, according to several people present. All eyes
turned to Mr. Gibbs, who started to steam.
“Don’t go there, Robert, don’t do it,” Mr. Emanuel warned.
“That’s not right, I’ve been killing myself on this, where’s this coming
from?” Mr. Gibbs yelled, adding expletives. He interrogated Ms.
Jarrett, whose calm only seemed to frustrate him more. The two went back
and forth, Ms. Jarrett unruffled, Mr. Gibbs shaking with rage. Finally,
several staff members said, Mr. Gibbs cursed the first lady —
colleagues stared down at the table, shocked — and stormed out.
Mr. Gibbs later acknowledged the outburst but said he had misdirected
his rage and accused Ms. Jarrett of making up the complaint. After the
book incident, he “stopped taking her at all seriously as an adviser to
the president,” Mr. Gibbs said, adding, “Her viewpoint in advising the
president is that she has to be up and the rest of the White House has
to be down.”
Ms. Jarrett declined to discuss the incident; two East Wing aides said
she had misspoken, and that Mrs. Obama had not made any criticism.
Colleagues defended both parties. Mr. Gibbs had devoted years to the
Obama cause, some said. Ms. Jarrett was trustworthy, said others,
including Peter M. Rouse, another senior adviser. The blowup proved not
only the fractures in the once-unified Obama team, but just how
complicated the nexus between the first couple and staff members in the
White House had become.
Mrs. Obama helped the children of military families decorate cookies in
the State Dining Room of the White House in 2011. Impassioned about
what her husband had been elected to do, Mrs. Obama saw herself as a
guardian of values.
Forging a New Role
By then, Michelle Obama’s trajectory in the White House was changing.
She was mastering and subtly redefining the role that had once seemed
formless to her, and becoming more acclimated to her new life.
Sometimes her work seemed like an answer, in miniature, to what was
going wrong with the presidency. If her husband’s health care law was
unpopular and at risk of being reversed, she would throw herself into
her campaign on nutrition and exercise, which had similar end goals —
improving health, lowering costs. If her husband wasn’t connecting with
audiences, she would win them over with vibrant speeches.
Her popularity, combined with her husband’s eroding support, gave her
more leverage than she had early in the administration. An Oval Office
meeting a few weeks before the 2010 midterms captured her changing
position.
The location was the president’s domain, but the meeting was held to
appease the first lady, who was finally agreeing to campaign for the
midterm elections. One by one, members of the political team came before
the Obamas, laying out arguments, details, statistics about how the
first lady could help capture votes. In an interview the year before,
the first couple had rejected the idea that they were using their
marriage for political gain. (Most photos of them are “ somebody else’s
images,” the first lady had said.) Now they absorbed polling data that
showed that Democratic voters loved seeing them together, according to
several participants at the meeting.
“This is a great presentation,” the president said with an
I-never-get-this-treatment grin: aides were now doing things on his
wife’s terms, with planning and precision.
Still, Mrs. Obama agreed to only eight campaign stops, fewer than the
political team had wanted. “She basically agreed to do nothing,” one
aide said.
The Obamas at the White House in 2010. After arriving, Mrs. Obama
bristled at its confinements — she was monitored by her husband’s aides
for everything from how she decorated family quarters to whether she
took makeup artists on overseas trips. But if Mrs. Obama has sometimes
been an internal critic, she is also her husband’s most determined
advocate.
Now that her husband faces a tough re-election fight, that tentativeness
has vanished: She is all in, she has told aides. If Mrs. Obama has
sometimes been an internal critic, she is also her husband’s most
determined advocate. Though she still avoids detailed policy or strategy
discussions, she now has the role she sought in amplifying his message,
speaking alongside him at Fort Bragg, N.C., about the end of the Iraq
war, spotlighting her veteran hiring initiatives to push his stalled
jobs bills, even sharing his weekly radio address. “To me, she seems
more content than I’ve seen her throughout this process since he’s been
running for president, which is a very good thing,” Mr. Axelrod said.
The worse things got for her husband in 2011, the more she rallied to
his side, buoying him personally and politically. In August, after the debt ceiling
negotiations in Washington reached their painful conclusion, Mrs. Obama
gave a party for his 50th birthday, warning guests not to leave early
and delivering a stemwinder of a toast in praise of her husband.
As the sun faded, the 150 guests — friends, celebrities, officials — sat
on the South Lawn, listening to the first lady describe her version of
Barack Obama: a tireless, upright leader who rose above Washington
games, killed the world’s most wanted terrorist and still managed to
coach his daughter Sasha’s basketball team. The president, looking
embarrassed, tried to cut her off, several guests said, but she told him
he had to sit and listen.
She also thanked him for putting up with how hard she had been on him.
At that line, a few of the advisers glanced at each other in
recognition.
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