Michelle Obama: A Life Read online

  MICHELLE OBAMA, A LIFE

  NEW WORD CITY

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  MICHELLE OBAMA, A LIFE

  It’s the summer of 1860 on the Friendfield plantation in Georgetown, South Carolina - coastal low country whose snake- and mosquito-infested fields produce half of America’s rice crop. A young African slave by the name of Jim Robinson is working there. Owned by another man, Robinson has no freedom, no choices, no opportunities. It’s hard to imagine his dreams include a vision of his great-great-granddaughter as First Lady of the United States, living in the White House, hosting state dinners, an inspiration to her own country, and one of the most admired women in the world. But it happened. Her name is Michelle Obama - and we can be sure that Jim Robinson would be as proud of his descendant as she is of him.

  After the Civil War, Robinson became a sharecropper on the plantation. He married and in 1884 had a son, Fraser, who lost an arm to an infection when he was 10. A local white man took a liking to the boy and got permission from his family to raise him. Although he didn’t send Fraser to school, his own children went, and education was stressed in the household. This made a lasting impression on Fraser - who grew up to be a successful small-time entrepreneur - and education has been a cornerstone of the Robinson family ever since.

  Fraser married and had a son. Fraser Jr., Michelle’s grandfather, was a smart child, but opportunities were few - when it came to racial equality the south was regressing in the aftermath of Reconstruction. He moved to Chicago as part of the great black Diaspora in the early twentieth century, when millions of blacks from the rural South moved to northern cities in search of opportunity. He took a job at the post office, and met and married LaVaughn Johnson. Their son, Fraser Robinson III, was born on August 1, 1935. He was a handsome, intelligent man, and in 1960 he met and married the Marian Shields, then a secretary at Spiegel’s catalogue store. Marian’s family came from Alabama and her great-great-grandfather was the child of a white man. Fraser and Marian’s first child, Craig, arrived in 1962. On January 17, 1964, Michelle came into the world - the fruit of a uniquely American family tree, one whose roots run deep and strong.

  Character To The Fore

  The Robinson family lived in an apartment on Chicago’s South Side. Michelle’s father worked for the city’s water department, tending a boiler. Her mother left her job and stayed at home until Michelle was in high school. Marian was a doting mother, but the family was dominated by Fraser. He had been a talented athlete as a boy, but was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in his twenties. He never complained about his fate, but it made him even more determined to see his children succeed and to some extent he lived vicariously through their accomplishments. The Robinson household was all about education and discipline.

  Craig was undeniably the young star of the family, bright and charming, able to ace tests with little study (today he is the men’s basketball coach at Oregon State). There was a touch of sibling rivalry, with Michelle in his shadow, and she had to study hard to earn her good grades and her father’s praise. But it paid off - in the sixth grade she joined a gifted class at her elementary school. She went on Whitney Young Magnet High School, Chicago’s first magnet high school, a commute that took 90 minutes each way. She took advanced placement classes, was a member of the National Honor Society, and graduated in 1981 as salutatorian.

  Craig went to Princeton University, and Michelle followed him there. Princeton was one of the more conservative Ivy League schools at the time, overwhelmingly white and privileged. It was a serious adjustment for a young woman from the inner city. “I remember being shocked by college students who drove BMWs. I didn’t even know parents who drove BMWs,” she told Vogue. There was a subtle attitude among a lot of the white students that their black classmates were affirmative-action recipients who didn’t really deserve to be there. The school held a special orientation for African-American and Hispanic freshmen, but it only served to reinforce their feeling of being outsiders.

  Michelle was acutely sensitive to the racial tension and dichotomy, so much so that she made it the subject of her senior thesis - “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.” The paper is now under lock and key, but, according to Newsweek, Michelle wrote that “My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‘blackness’ than ever before” and that she felt like a visitor on the supposedly open-minded campus. “Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with Whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second.” Michelle was part of an in-between generation of successful African-Americans - post the civil-rights movement but before real acceptance. In some ways this period was especially challenging, for these best and brightest were facing far more subtle expressions of prejudice. Her full-frontal acknowledgment and dissection of this truth is revealing of her character: Michelle Obama is a one-woman, no-B.S. zone.

  Two other aspects of Michelle’s character came to the fore at Princeton. Her feisty confidence was on display when she challenged the way that the school taught undergraduate French, arguing for a more conversational approach. And her practical, results-oriented attitude was evident in the way she worked to level the playing field for less privileged children - not by running for student government, but by helping to run a literacy program for kids from local neighborhoods.

  All in all, Michelle’s Princeton career was a success - she graduated cum laude with a B.A. in sociology and was accepted at the Harvard Law School. Her pattern continued there; while she took part in demonstrations calling for the hiring of more minority professors, she also worked quietly to recruit more African-American students. She wasn’t prone to lofty oratory or self-aggrandizement. One of her professors, Charles Ogletree, has confirmed that for Michelle politics wasn’t about inspiration, it was about results. She was diligent and hardworking and earned her law degree in June 1988.

  Michelle had no shortage of job offers, and she went to work at Sidley Austin, a prominent corporate law firm in Chicago. Her salary was impressive, and she was on her way to becoming a partner. But something was missing from the dry trademark and copyright cases she handled: “I didn’t see a whole lot of people who were just thrilled to be there,” she told Newsweek. “I met people who thought this was a good life. But were people waking up just bounding out of bed to get to work? No.”

  Michelle thought about leaving the firm, but she stayed on. In the summer of 1989, she was asked to mentor a summer associate named Barack Obama. One day he walked up to her and said, “I think we should go out.” His confidence was disarming, but she initially resisted, thinking an office romance was inappropriate. He persevered, and she eventually consented to come to one of his community-organizing meetings, being held in a church basement.

  Obama delivered one of his signature inspiring speeches, this one about closing the gap between what the world was and what it could be. The die was cast. “I was, like, ‘This guy is different’. He is really different, in addition to being nice and funny and cute and all that,” she explained to a reporter from Newsweek. “He’s got a seriousness and a commitment that you don’t see every day.” She remembers thinking, “‘Well, you know, I’d like to be married to somebody who felt that deeply about things.”

  Obama went back to Harvard, and Michelle continued at the law firm; they saw each other whenever he was back in Chicago.

  Then, in 1991, two deaths rocked Michelle to the core. First her father succumbed to complications stemming from multiple sclerosis. Then a dear college friend died of lymphoma. Michelle knew the time had come to leave corporate law.

  She resigned from the law firm and began mentoring children from the South Side, whi
le she searched for a job in the public sector. It could not have been an easy call for a young woman from the South Side, who had worked as hard as she had to give up prestige and a path to wealth to contribute to her community.

  Michelle wrote letters to non-profits and city agencies. One landed on the desk of Valerie Jarrett, deputy chief of staff to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Jarrett says, “I interviewed Michelle, and an introductory session turned into an hour and a half. I offered her a job at the end of the interview, which was totally inappropriate since it was the mayor’s decision. She was so confident and committed and extremely open.” Michelle was flattered by the offer, but wasn’t sure the job was right for her. She asked Obama, by then her fiance, to meet with Jarrett. He was impressed and counseled her to accept the offer. (Today, Jarrett is a senior advisor to President Obama.)

  Jarrett became Michelle’s mentor, helping her understand how government works from the inside and introducing her to helpful people in both the public and private sectors. Michelle went to work untangling the complex web of rules, regulations, and paperwork that often strangles companies in their dealings with a large bureaucracy like the city of Chicago. It wasn’t the meaningful or exciting work Michelle yearned for, and the pay cut was significant, but she saw it as the first step in her new career in public service.

  From The South Side To The South Lawn

  Along with her new job, Michelle had another new commitment - on October 3, 1992, she and Barack Obama got married. They moved into a small apartment not far from where she had grown up. Their first daughter, Malia, was born on July 4, 1998, followed by Natasha (“Sasha”), on June 10, 2001. The girls went to the University of Chicago Laboratory School, a private school. As a member of its board, Michelle Obama fought for diversity when other board members wanted more slots reserved for children of the university’s faculty.

  Obama left her job with the city to become the Chicago director of Public Allies, a nonprofit that encourages young people to go into public service. “It sounded risky and just out there, but for some reason it just spoke to me,” she once said. “This was the first time I said, ‘This is what I say I care about.’”

  Obama worked at Public Allies for almost four years and proved herself a formidable fundraiser and administrator. In 1996, she became the Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago, where she developed the university’s Community Service Center. In 2002, she began working for the University of Chicago Hospitals, first as Executive Director for Community Affairs - where she set up a program that sent doctors into community hospitals and clinics - and then as Vice President for Community and External Affairs. She held that job until early in her husband’s campaign for president, when she took a leave of absence.

  After Barack Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, there were strains in the marriage. Michelle Obama and their daughters stayed in Chicago, and finding the right balance of work and family became an issue. Obama complained that she was having to raise the girls on her own, had become a de facto single parent. In The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama wrote: “Tired and stressed, we had little time for conversation, much less romance.” It was to deal with this tension that the Obamas began their famous date nights, a tradition they continue even now (to the delight of the Washington restaurant community). Fortunately they shared each other’s ambitions, and late-night talks about his political future were commonplace.

  Although Michelle Obama eventually became an adroit campaigner, it was a learning process, and in the early years she didn’t enjoy it. A colleague once asked her if there was anything that she liked about it, and she answered that visiting so many living rooms had given her some good decorating ideas.

  When Barack Obama was considering his presidential run, his wife made her concerns known. She was worried about the effects on their daughters, of course, but she was also concerned about her husband’s safety. She held two meetings with him and his aides where she grilled them on the specifics, logistics, and odds of success - hope and change weren’t even on the table. What demands would the campaign place on their lives? Where would the money come from? Could they really take on the Clinton machine and win, or was this just an extended ego trip? This focus on the practical side of things was pure Michelle - commonsense, real world, results-focused.

  By the time the campaign officially began in early 2007, Michelle Obama was completely behind the effort. At first she limited her campaigning, but by 2008 she was averaging three or four events a day. She wrote her own speeches but often spoke without notes - and it was here that she ran into some self-inflicted trouble. While she was a polished, even stirring speaker, at times she came across as strident and lecturing; this was highlighted by Fox News and other right-leaning media and Web sites, which began calling her “an angry black woman.” Then on February 18, 2008, she committed a serious verbal gaffe.

  Speaking in Milwaukee, she said: “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.” The right-wing media leapt on those first two phrases, repeatedly playing footage that left off the end of her sentence - here it was, proof that the Obamas were something less than “real” Americans. The unrelenting 24-hour-news-and-net-cycle kicked into overdrive: Michelle Obama isn’t proud of her country! One blogger dubbed her “the bitter, anti-American, ungrateful, rude, crude, ghetto, angry Michelle Obama.” When asked to respond, she said, “Barack and I have been in the public eye for many years now, and we’ve developed a thick skin along the way.”

  The issue didn’t go away, the image of an angry black woman started to take hold, and her poll numbers plummeted. Obama may have a thick skin, but she also has a sharp head - and she wasn’t about to let her enemies define her. She quickly and carefully moderated her image. She appeared in more intimate settings, where she could ask voters questions and empathize with their concerns; she avoided news programs, instead making softball appearances on shows like The View and giving interviews to magazines like Ladies’ Home Journal, stressing her roles as a mother and wife. She talked less about the country’s problems and more about its promise. She even softened her wardrobe, wearing casual ensembles in soothing colors rather than dark suits or designer clothes. The issue slowly lost steam, and her poll numbers inched upward. This careful recalibration of her image shows Obama at her most effective.

  By the time of the Democratic convention in Denver in August, her charm offensive had succeeded - in one poll her favorability rating had soared to 76 percent. On the first night of the convention, Craig Robinson introduced his kid sister to wild cheers. She took the podium and delivered a speech that showed just how well she had mastered the rules of the game, presenting herself as a mom and wife, whose family was the embodiment of the American Dream. She said that both she and her husband believed “that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond, and you do what you say you’re going to do, that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.” It was a bravura performance, with her charisma, sincerity, and passion carrying the day. Conservative political commentator Andrew Sullivan described the speech as “one of the best, most moving, intimate, rousing, humble, and beautiful speeches I’ve heard from a convention platform.”

  Barack Obama came out of the convention with a lead over Republican nominee John McCain, and he never lost it. Michelle Obama sailed through the fall campaign without a misstep, and on election night her husband won a resounding victory, carrying numerous so-called red states and winning 52 percent of the popular vote. Their appearance with their daughters at a rally in Chicago’s Grant Park, attended by hundreds of thousands of jubilant supporters, even moved Republican commentators.

  At Home In The White House

  After the election, Michelle Obama met with Laura Bush and spoke with other former First Ladies, seeking their advice about life in the White House. She was particularly intere
sted in ideas from Rosalyn Carter, Hillary Clinton, and Laura Bush on raising children in that rarefied, pampered atmosphere. “The most unexpected and uniform advice that I got was: Go to Camp David early and often. It’s one place where you feel some level of freedom and an ability to breathe,” she was told. In one interview soon after the election, she was asked if her children would still be making their own beds, and she replied that they sure would, but the staff was more than welcome to make hers.

  Two days after her husband was inaugurated on January 20, 2009, Michelle Obama summoned her staff to a 3:00 P.M. meeting. They arrived to find a room filled with plumbers, electricians, maids, and kitchen crew, with the First Lady in a T-shirt and ponytail. “This is my team that came with me from Chicago,” Obama began, making introductions. “This is my team who works here already.” Many of the household staff had served for decades; some had postponed retirement because they wanted to serve President Obama. The two groups spent the next hour getting to know each other. The First Lady later warned her advisors: “I want you to know that you won’t be judged based on whether they know your name. You’ll be judged based on whether you know theirs.”

  Michelle Obama’s mother moved into the White House with the family to help keep an eye on the children and provide a sense of normalcy. (First grandmother Marian Robinson stays determinedly out of the public eye.) Obama also brought in old friends and colleagues to work in both the East and West wings; she understands the emotional and practical importance of a support system. The Obamas and their closest friends have a tradition of getting together on spring break; in 2009, they all rendezvoused at Camp David. There’s always a talent show, and everyone has to perform - President Obama sang “You Are the Sunshine of My Life”, and Michelle Obama swirled two hula hoops at once.