Michelle Obama Seeks to Put Early Campaign Tempests Behind Her

Ironically, Mrs. Obama shows every sign of being more like Sen. Clinton than Mrs. Bush as a First Lady. Both were accomplished big-firm lawyers in their early careers and far more interested in weighty policy matters than in the benign, nurturing issues that so many political wives take on. You can well imagine Mrs. Obama, like Sen. Clinton, one day running for political office herself.

Her credentials are certainly strong. She graduated from Harvard Law School but decided that the practice of corporate law was not for her. She joined the University of Chicago in 1996 as an associate dean of student services, and then in 2001, became vice president of community affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center. There she plunged into the intense racial and class issues faced by many urban hospitals.

It is unlikely that Obama would thrust herself into the forefront of administration policy-making to the extent Clinton did on health care. But she does have strongly held beliefs that she has advocated during the campaign and would no doubt continue to press as First Lady.

She has been outspoken on women’s issues, particularly on the challenge of helping working women balance their jobs and careers with the demands of family — a challenge she has faced in her own life.

“The attention that he’s focused on work-family balance. . . . That is our life. To the extent that we have challenges, and struggles, headaches that everybody else is going through . . . those are our conversations,” she told the New Yorker Magazine in March.

She has also focused particularly on military families in this regard and, during the campaign, has visited with military spouses and spoke of the need to develop program that ensure support for their families.

Mrs. Obama’s true role behind the scenes in her husband’s campaign is somewhat of a mystery. She has repeatedly denied being “a senior adviser,” but Barack Obama himself has often referred to advice she has given that implies a more influential role than the campaign now prefers to acknowledge.

Another switch from the early days of the campaign is how Mrs. Obama backed away from a tendency toward making cracks about her husband, which had apparently been an effort to humanize him. But, for some voters, it was simply too much information. In a Glamour magazine article last year, for instance, she talked about his body odor, disclosing that their two girls refuse to cuddle with him in the morning because he is too “snore-y and stinky.”

The Obama camp’s sensitivity to adjusting Michelle’s image stems from Mrs. Bush’s past eight years as the ultimate seen-but-seldom-heard First Lady. Following Mrs. Clinton’s two high-profile terms in the East Wing she reconditioned Americans to old-school ideas about the role of “First Lady.”

The safe choice for the Obamas has been for Michelle to tone it down and steer away from the limelight. She appears to have realized she was a bit hot for prime time in the opening months of the nomination campaign. And she chose to avoid showing public anger about the criticism of her, saying, “I just take it in stride, and at the end of the day, I know that it comes with the territory.”

A Product Rollout

Mrs. Obama’s relatively quiet summer appears headed for a change tonight. Her starring role on the convention’s first night is nothing short of a product rollout for whatever she plans to be in the coming general election campaign. And it likely will be someone who will not “fuel the fire,” as she pointedly observed about Mrs. Bush’s tranquil style.

To what extent she will talk about the issues she most cares about is not known, but what is probably more important is the opportunity to introduce her husband to the country in a personal way and perhaps defuse the “patriotism” issue that emerged after some of her early campaign remarks.

Michelle Obama Seeks to Put Early Campaign Tempests Behind Her

Balancing a more nurturing and politically acceptable role with her powerful intellect and obvious passion will be Mrs. Obama’s challenge in this speech and in the weeks ahead. In short, she must find a comfort zone between Sen. Clinton’s polarizing manner and Mrs. Bush’s soothing ways.

Tonight is Michelle Obama’s opportunity to reach those who have felt uncomfortable about her and, more importantly, for those voters who might be seeing her in full for the first time.

Video: The Michelle Obama Makeover Myth