The wifing up of Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama shows a lot of promise as our next First Lady.  I’ll admit that I was turned off by her at first.  She slammed Hillary Clinton in an early magazine interview, saying that if a woman couldn’t control what went on in her own house (meaning letting Bill off-leash), she doubted that she could be in control in the White House.  Or something to that effect.  It was catty in the old fashioned unfeminist way that women are still catty to one another, and the comment was unbefitting an admirable woman like Michelle Obama.  But she has since proven herself to be more of a true partner in a modern political marriage than anyone since, well, Hillary Clinton.  When Barack Obama was in Hawaii with his ailing grandmother, it was his wife who filled his shoes on the campaign trail.  All throughout the campaign, Michelle was strategically deployed to speak with voters who would connect with her plainspoken manner and Midwestern working class roots.  One senses that she is as much a staffer as an architect of Team Obama.

In Michelle and Barack Obama’s recent interview with Barbara Walters, I got a little alarmed at both the questions being asked and the line that Michelle towed in her answers.  Walters peppered her with lots of inane questions about the “burden” of being the First Family, the hardships of the White House, and other women’s magazine of yesteryear drivel.  Walters took on her trademark concerned look with questions about how Michelle would handle giving up her Chicago-based job as a healthcare executive, and the “burden” of taking a back seat to her husband as he assumed the duties of the presidency.  Michelle replied that she’s never defined herself by a specific job, so giving up her career would not bother her.  Focusing on her role as a mother, she told Walters that she was concerned with the normal mother stuff – finding a pediatrician, school for her children.

I don’t doubt that she is concerned foremost with settling her family into Washington and the White House.  And perhaps putting her career on the back burner for the last two years has made her truly adopt the easy-come, easy-go attitude towards her career as an attorney and an executive that she claimed to Walters.  But it’s hard to believe that a middle-class woman of color, educated in the finest American universities, could so easily shrug off what I’m guessing were some hard-won achievements.  I would have been more interested in hearing about a plan to reinvent the job of First Lady to better reflect contemporary reality.  But I surmise that Team Obama is still on message in terms of presenting themselves as a safe choice for leading America, and therefore Michelle was in no position to put forth any radical-sounding ideas about being her husband’s right-hand person.  That would harken back too strongly to the early Bill Clinton debacle of a Hillary Clinton-led attempt to reform health care.

As admirable as literacy programs and other such ladylike projects are, I would hope to have a First Lady who takes on the plight of women and children in a more meaningful and not necessarily congenial capacity.  What if we had a First Lady who was a passionate advocate of Planned Parenthood?  Or the plight of Afghan women and the resurgence of the Taliban?  Or a vocal advocate for equalizing men’s and women’s wages in the U.S.?

It would have been refreshing in the Barbara Walters interview to at least ‘fess up to what I imagine she must feel — ambivalent feelings about not working in the job that she was trained to do, but an understanding that she may yet have her chance to use her training and experience as the First Lady or post-White House.  I guess that Michelle and Barack Obama and their advisors must have decided that such bracing candor could turn off the cadre of women (and men) who viewed Sarah Palin as an ideal candidate and woman but Hillary Clinton as a castrating careerist.

If Michelle Obama is the person she seems to be, I’m looking for a First Lady who will not go gently into that purgatory of interior decorating and speaking at ladies’ luncheons.  She will shore up personal support as part of a broader Obama goal to unite the country, and then she will roll out her radical agenda of being a woman with moxy and a brain in the White House.  The strength and respect the Obamas showed each other in the Walters interview was genuine, and I would be surprised if Barack Obama didn’t rely on his wife’s expertise and intelligence on a regular basis.

We will know that all is lost if Michelle Obama puts out a chocolate chip cookie recipe anytime soon.