It is the country’s most scrutinized - and often thankless - volunteer job. Say too much and you are labeled a loudmouth. Say too little and you’re a robot.
It is the job of first lady, and Michelle Obama, wife of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, is trying to find the happy medium for her image during this long campaign season.
The role is a help-wanted ad with a changing definition, said Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, author of the book “What Women Really Want: How American Women Are Quietly Erasing Political, Racial, Class and Religious Lines to Change the Way We Live.”
“Most political wives are accidental politicians,” Mrs. Conway said. “Their husbands made the decision to enter politics at this level long after they were married. Most of them didn’t ask for this.”
Reluctant leader or not, the first lady still has an important job, said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
“The first lady is, in some ways, more influential than the secretary of state,” he said. “She has the president’s ear and knows all the secrets.”
Impressive resume
If first ladies were judged by resumes, Michelle Robinson Obama, who addresses the Democratic National Convention on Monday, would seem well-qualified for the job. The daughter of a city worker and a homemaker, she grew up in a two-family bungalow in a black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. She attended public schools - skipping second grade - and went on to Princeton University. Mrs. Obama was one of 94 black freshmen in a class of more than 1,100.
After Princeton came Harvard Law, then a job at Sidley Austin, a Chicago corporate law firm. It was there she was asked to mentor Mr. Obama, a fellow Harvard Law graduate and a new associate. The couple married in 1992.
Eventually, Mrs. Obama left the firm for the staff of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, where she worked with service agencies to help the disadvantaged. Along the way, the couple had two daughters - Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7 - and Mrs. Obama went to work as vice president of community affairs for the University of Chicago Medical Center.
It is the intangibles, though, that make Mrs. Obama far from the traditional first lady and more of a hard sell to some.
Critics have suggested favoritism as Mr. Obama’s political influence rose, as when Mrs. Obama took a board seat for TreeHouse Foods. The family’s association with controversial pastor the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. also has earned her criticism, bringing up racial stereotypes the family has long tried to overcome.
Taking a hit
Then came remarks made at a February campaign stop in Madison, Wis.
“For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country,” Mrs. Obama told the crowd. “Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change.”
Add “unpatriotic” to the list of potential negatives. Cindy McCain, wife of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, countered with, “I have, and always will be, proud of my country.”
Mrs. Obama explained herself a few days later.
“What I was clearly talking about was that I’m proud how Americans are engaging in the political process,” she told reporters. “For the first time in my lifetime, I am seeing people rolling up their sleeves in a way that I haven’t seen. That’s the source of pride that I was talking about.”
An unlikely source rallied to Mrs. Obama’s defense: first lady Laura Bush.
“I think she probably meant I’m ’more proud,’ you know, is what she really meant,” Mrs. Bush told ABC News. “You have to be very careful in what you say. I mean, I know that. That’s one of the things you learn, and that’s one of the really difficult parts both of running for president and for being the spouse of the president, and that is, everything you say is looked at and in many cases misconstrued.”
The damage was done, though.
A Rasmussen Reports survey in early June found that 42 percent of voters viewed Mrs. Obama unfavorably, while 29 percent viewed Mrs. McCain unfavorably. The same poll showed that 61 percent of voters said their perceptions of a candidate’s spouse were at least somewhat important to their choice in November.
However, an ABC News poll taken a week later gave Mrs. Obama a nine-point edge in favorable opinion
“The ’proud of her country’ comment is going to follow her constantly,” said Myra Gutin, professor of communication at Rider University and author of the book “The President’s Partner: The First Lady in the Twentieth Century.”
“It gave people a certain take on her,” she said.
Since the gaffe, Obama campaign staffers have paid more attention to what Mrs. Obama is going to say and to whom she is going to say it. Observers note she is speaking less off the cuff and more from scripted remarks. She co-hosted ABC’s “The View” and has given interviews to Good Housekeeping, Ebony, and People magazines highlighting her role as a busy working mother.
A mother’s workload
*Mrs. Obama noted in People that much of her life mirrors most women who are trying to be many things to many people.
The couple does not have a full-time nanny, and Mrs. Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, pitches in to watch the girls - running them to soccer, dance, tennis and piano lessons - when the Obamas are on the campaign trail.
Mrs. Obama tries to fit in a couple of 90-minute workouts a week to maintain her enviable muscle tone, noticeable in the sleeveless sheaths she wears at campaign appearances. She worries about the food her girls eat and what the future holds for them.
Mrs. Obama has been speaking to smaller groups and is reaching out to other working mothers. She met with military wives in Norfolk and in Hopkinsville, Ky., in early August.
“I know that, too often, it seems like you’re doing it all on your own,” she told the Norfolk group, assuring them she is there to listen and to relay concerns back to Mr. Obama.
Mrs. Obama is also trying to head off speculation that she will be a “co-president” in the tradition of Hillary Rodham Clinton during her husband’s White House years. Her first priority, should her husband win the election, will be the well-being of her daughters, she has said.
She said last year that “no one can predict what Americans will need from their first lady a year from now, so I will be whatever I need to be for the country. My sense is that being first lady is a full-time job, but I will know more about that when the time comes.”
Mrs. Obama expanded on the theme more recently.
“My primary focus will be making sure my girls are whole and healthy,” she said at the Norfolk appearance, “but once we deal with our readjustment period, I want to be productive and engaged as much as possible.”
No matter what role Mrs. Obama takes on if she is first lady, don’t expect the criticism to abate, Mr. Sabato said.
“It is a shame, really,” he said. “We trivialize first lady candidates and make them papier-mache when they are complicated human beings.”
Added Ms. Gutin, “Scrutinizing the first lady goes back as far as Martha Washington. It goes along with Americans are very much divided on what they want. In the final analysis, first ladies are only a small part of our election decision, but they may be important as a measure of a candidate’s character.”
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