Michelle Obama

by Peter Slevin

  Michelle often saw herself as a woman talking to women about matters that, more often than not, fell to women to accomplish. When she spoke of expanded health insurance, she described it as a benefit to the women who typically bore responsibility for family health care decisions. When she talked about children’s nutrition, ditto. And it was the same thing when she appealed to the fourteen thousand female listeners at the Women’s Conference, her largest audience since the campaign. She asked them to put themselves in the shoes of military women, wondering aloud how to find balance when one partner is in a dangerous job half a world away, and how to crack the glass ceiling: “Try doing that when you don’t live anywhere long enough to get promoted or gain seniority in your job.” She pointed to a study that indicated military spouses made $10,500 less annually than their civilian counterparts, yet military families made time for community service at far higher rates than the general population. What she wanted to give military spouses, she said, were opportunities to use their skills “and the support they need to juggle their responsibilities.”

  Michelle suggested that government could help. But, sounding a note that echoed the Let’s Move! approach and the playbook that said officialdom was never the complete answer, she said a little girlfriend-to-girlfriend assist would make a difference. “You see,” she said, “this is what we do for each other as women.… We show up. We show up at the door with some food. We show up at the door with some chocolate. And if things are really bad, we show up at the door with a bottle of wine, right? We take that shift in the carpool. We say, ‘Hey, send the kids over to my house right now. I’ll take them off your hands for a day, a night, a weekend, whatever you need.’ ” The soldiers and their families were doing their part to defend the country and help the world. “It’s not enough just to feel grateful,” she said, the closest she came to an admonishment. “It’s time for each of us to act.”

  JOINING FORCES WAS NOT glamorous. Much of the early work, in fact, was mundane, a matter of tedious bureaucratic troubleshooting. At the time of its April 2011 launch, for example, one in three military spouses worked in professions that required state licenses, perhaps a nursing or teaching credential. When a soldier was transferred, it often took months before his wife could work. Yet fewer than a dozen states had regulations on the books to correct the problem. Or, when the army moved a soldier from, say, Fort Drum, New York, to Fort Benning, Georgia, would his daughter’s new high school grant credit for a history class taken in New York? “At this point, it has affected millions of kids,” said navy captain Brad Cooper, imported from the Defense Department to manage one stage of the project. “There’s not a voice for this. It often can’t rise above the noise.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Jason Dempsey, an infantry officer and West Point graduate recently back from Afghanistan, served as something of a coach and translator, explaining military culture to the first lady and a staff largely inexperienced in such matters. “The families just don’t have a sense that anybody else understands what they’re going through,” he said near the end of his assignment as a White House fellow. “They don’t want a pity party. They don’t want people to just give them a free car.” The military community, he knew, was ever watchful for false sincerity, particularly in service to political ambition. Michelle and her partner, Jill Biden, a college English professor, army mother, and wife of the vice president, were willing to do something to help. Yet in the East Wing’s eyes, the military bureaucracy was moving too slowly. “Was the first lady frustrated? Absolutely, and rightly so,” said Jackie Norris. “She felt like she wanted to do more than a public service announcement that raises visibility. She saw this as ‘How can I do something that’s more sustainable?’ ”

  Yet Michelle did not want to run the policy herself. That was not her role, and as everyone around her recognized, such a strategy could create as many problems as it might solve. What she could do, she reasoned, was to use her voice and her convening power. Dempsey, in visits to sometimes skeptical Pentagon brass, argued in favor of the project’s potential and defended Michelle’s authenticity. “Listen,” he recalled saying, “you’re right that this is not necessarily going to be perfect, it’s not going to be all-encompassing, and we’re not going to solve all of everybody’s problems. But you know what? This is the first and only time that the first lady of the United States has been interested in this issue.… Any first lady can come in and choose any issue—autism, hunger. This first lady has decided she’s going to dedicate her time to the needs and concerns of the military community, so we’ve got to take full advantage.” He said Michelle was quick to understand the complexities and careful to tread lightly. “Very cognizant that she doesn’t have all the answers,” he said.

  As the program developed, the White House staff labored to understand mental health needs, a significant and growing concern of veterans and their families. They collected pledges from medical schools to improve the training of doctors and nurses in treating veterans. They wrangled promises from American companies to hire veterans returning home to unemployment rates higher than those faced by civilians. Michelle appealed directly to the nation’s governors, asking them to make professional credentials more portable and find ways to help soldiers translate their military skills into civilian licenses, and jobs. Little noticed by commentators inclined to dismiss her work as mere mom and apple pie was the fact that many returning military personnel belonged to the nation’s hard-pressed working class. In 2012, roughly 80 percent of the nation’s active duty military lacked a college degree. Among enlisted men and women, the figure was 93 percent. Joining Forces working groups asked how to help veterans find steady jobs in such roles as drivers or meter readers, then reached out to utilities, delivery companies, and large retailers. “It was in the discussions we had, who we needed to help,” said Matthew McGuire, a senior Commerce Department official who had known the Obamas in Chicago. “We cared about everyone who was coming home, of course, but we knew that the gunnery sergeant with just a high school degree was going to need more help reentering the civilian labor market than the commander of a nuclear submarine who went to the Naval Academy.”

  Michelle took note of the hardships and the country’s economic and political divide in remarks in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, six weeks into Barack’s presidency: “I think many people were like me, not realizing so many of our military families are living right at the poverty line. Not realizing that it is hard for spouses to get jobs when they move, or that they can’t often transfer credits and finish their education, and they’re struggling with the high cost of quality and affordable childcare.” Barack, echoing the order he issued when Michelle launched Let’s Move! the year before, issued a presidential directive to federal agencies demanding coordinated improvements in the way military families were treated. Michelle publicly promised to tell Barack what she had learned at roundtables around the country.

  For all of the personal connection that Michelle felt to the families, Joining Forces also fulfilled her goal of boosting Barack’s agenda. As a U.S. senator, Barack had served on the Veterans Affairs Committee, chairing town hall meetings in Illinois, proposing legislation, and quietly visiting wounded warriors in military hospitals, something he would continue to do as president. During the presidential campaign, he not only criticized the decision to wage a preventive war in Iraq, but blasted the Bush administration for failing to live up to the country’s obligation to veterans, especially the wounded. “We’ve heard rhetoric that hasn’t been matched by resources,” he told a gathering at a Houston VFW hall in February 2008. In time, the Veterans Administration in Barack’s administration would have its own grievous failings, but Michelle worked on the issue, and her focus also served an electoral purpose. Military votes could be helpful against a Republican candidate in 2012. In a toss-up state like Virginia, North Carolina, or Colorado, it could even make the difference between a win and a loss.

  ON JANUARY 8, 2011, a wild-eyed shooter named Jared Loughner ope
ned fire at an outdoor political event in Tucson, killing six people, including a federal judge, and piercing the brain of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a Democratic member of Congress. Giffords, remarkably, survived. While it was not immediately clear why Loughner targeted Giffords at one of her trademark Congress on Your Corner gatherings, the national conversation turned to the bitterness of American political discourse. Four days later, Barack spoke before thousands of people in the University of Arizona field house and, in cadences that echoed the best of his political speeches, urged Americans to listen to one another more carefully and deepen their capacity for empathy. “Let’s use this occasion to expand our moral universe,” he said in an address that could be filed in the category of Obama essentialism. “We recognize our own mortality and we are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth or status or power or fame. But, rather, how well we have loved and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better. And that process of reflection, of making sure we align our values with our actions—that, I believe, is what a tragedy like this requires.” Barack quoted scripture as Michelle sat in the front row, next to Giffords’s husband, astronaut Mark Kelly. As the president announced that Giffords had opened her eyes for the first time since the shooting, Michelle gripped Kelly’s right hand with her left and cupped her right hand reassuringly on his forearm. As the crowd cheered and everyone stood, she gave him a hug. It was a natural gesture, simple and warm.

  The shooting got the country’s attention only partly because Loughner fired thirty-one shots in less than thirty seconds from a 9mm Glock 19, a semi-automatic handgun widely available for legal purchase. Giffords herself owned one. Other madmen had done the same, and worse. The Tucson case also hit home because of who was shot. The six dead and the 12 wounded offered stories and symbols that would have made Norman Rockwell pull out his palette. The federal judge. The congressional aide. The church volunteer who tried save his friend. The retired marine, wounded as he tried in vain to shield his wife. And, perhaps most of all, nine-year-old Christina Green, a swimmer, a dancer, a gymnast, an A student recently elected to the student council. Improbably, she was born on September 11, 2001. “She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted,” Barack said. “I want to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it.” After he ended his remarks, a choir sang “Simple Gifts,” a nineteenth-century Shaker song also performed during his inauguration.

  Michelle and Barack pictured their children in Christina, who was just three months younger than Sasha when she died. Seeing a role for herself as a mother who had a platform as first lady, Michelle wanted to make a public statement. She wrote a letter and taped a video, but the West Wing preferred the president to take the lead, and to be seen as taking it. The video was never released. The day after Barack’s speech in Tucson, the White House did release, in Michelle’s name, an “open letter to parents.” As parents, she said, the assault and its aftermath “makes us think about what an event like this says about the world we live in—and the world in which our children will grow up.… The question my daughters have asked are the same ones that many of your children will have—and they don’t have easy answers.” In echoes of the lessons of her childhood, she urged parents to teach their children “about the values we hold dear, about finding hope at a time when it seems far away.” And, too, ways of “assuming the best, rather than the worst, about those around us.”

  AS SHE CAST her mind over the possibilities for her White House years, Michelle told her staff that the goal was to “move the ball.” That meant building something enduring, leaving a legacy. Yet in a role that was forever neither-nor, she had neither a big budget nor a large staff, and turnover was frequent. Anything she wanted to build, the East Wing would have to piece together on its own. “It’s not up to her to go from cabinet department to cabinet department saying, ‘I’m working on this, I’m doing this, you need to help me.’ They don’t work for her,” said Katie McCormick Lelyveld, her press secretary. Michelle searched for allies and dispatched her aides to do the same. For Let’s Move! she wanted support from doctors, business leaders, parents, the president’s cabinet—and “certainly, West Wing oomph,” Lelyveld said. The staff reached out to federal agencies and courted mayors and governors, inviting them to the White House or onto stages across the country, where they could stand with a first lady consistently more popular than her beleaguered husband. “The power she has,” said Norris, “is that most people want to make the first lady happy.”

  To get the word out, Michelle turned to celebrities, none more prominent than Beyoncé Knowles, a performer with a big voice and a flashy stage presence. With her husband, Shawn Carter, better known as the rapper Jay Z, she was savvy in the ways of music and marketing. Beyoncé reconfigured her song “Get Me Bodied” to create “Move Your Body,” a catchy, kid-friendly tune: “A little sweat ain’t never hurt nobody. Don’t just stand there on the wall! Everybody just move your body.” A video staged as if done by a high school flash mob, would register vast numbers of views—more than 30 million by early 2015. Separate videos of Beyoncé doing the dance at P.S. 161 in Harlem and Michelle dancing the Dougie at Alice Deal Middle School in Washington garnered millions more. Soon, schools and public health departments across the country did their own versions. Michelle’s staff admitted, somewhat sheepishly, to practicing the dance step in the carpeted confines of the East Wing.

  Michelle drew on tennis champion Serena Williams, and other big names from the professional sports ranks. Gymnasts Dominique Dawes and Gabby Douglas. Quarterbacks Drew Brees and Colin Kaepernick. Ice skater Michelle Kwan. Basketball player Grant Hill. Runner Allyson Felix. She also included Cornell McClellan, the Obamas’ longtime personal trainer, who moved from Chicago to lead workouts in the White House gym. Barack named McClellan to the revamped president’s fitness council, which became the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition in honor of Let’s Move! Michelle also matched famous chefs with school kitchens and did her own turns on television cooking shows.

  Nearly four years into the project, Michelle corralled the Miami Heat into making an irreverent video in praise of healthy eating. When the team visited the White House to celebrate its latest NBA title, head coach Eric Spoelstra staged mock interviews with all-star Heat players Dwyane Wade and Ray Allen, while in the background, LeBron James held up a backboard and hoop. Michelle darted in and dunked, then did a guttural laugh worthy of a preening young street hoops player. Later, Michelle and the players nonchalantly munched apples. This was not Jackie Kennedy’s White House. Or Hillary Clinton’s. “LOL LOL I love her,” one netizen wrote in response to the video, which got big play on television and the Web. Another posted, “That is so funny.… Mrs. O is a cool lady.” But there were many other reactions, too. Among the more printable ones: “Disgusting is putting it mildly. Not very dignified. She’s still got that fat ass.” And “Too many monkeys.” Plus “God she makes me sick.”

  THE SECRET SERVICE RECORDED significantly more threats against Barack than against any of his predecessors. The risk accounted for the ubiquity of the security bubble and justified the fact that Barack had received Secret Service protection earlier than any previous presidential candidate. The seriousness of threats was sometimes difficult to assess, but on a November night in 2011, the danger was all too real and the performance of the Secret Service none too impressive. That night, a gunman named Oscar R. Ortega-Hernandez, believing that Barack “had to be stopped,” parked his car on Constitution Avenue and fired a Romanian-made semi-automatic rifle at the White House residence, hitting the building at least seven times.

  A bullet pierced the antique White House glass but was stopped by a layer of bulletproof glass that protected the residence. Another bullet lodged in a wooden windowsill on the Truman Balcony. When Ortega-Hernandez opened fire at ab
out 8:30 p.m. on a Friday night, only Sasha and Marian were home. Michelle and Barack were away and Malia returned to the residence about an hour later, escorted by her security detail. Although several Secret Service officers felt sure they had heard shots, as did others nearby, a supervisor told his colleagues to stand down, apparently believing a car had backfired. It would be four days before the agency realized that shots had hit the White House. When Michelle learned of the shooting from an assistant White House usher, not the Secret Service, she was “aghast—and then quickly furious,” Carol Leonnig of The Washington Post reported. Michelle later challenged the Secret Service chief directly. Not only had the Secret Service failed to recognize or stop the attack, but bullets fired from seven hundred yards away had slammed into a part of the residence the Obamas used often. They sat outdoors on the Truman Balcony on warm days and mild nights. They entertained there. And, on the other side of the bulletproof glass, the Yellow Oval Room was Michelle’s favorite room in the house.