The new First Lady has tempered her radical outbursts, but as she moves into the White House she's ready to assume her role as a modern-day Jackie O, writes Róisín Ingle
SHE CALLS the President elect "babe" and "buddy" and "my honey". She has grumbled about his snoring and having to pick up his socks. For the past 21 months the world has watched as Michelle Obama brought her fresh, straight-talking style to the job of being the woman behind the most powerful man in the free world, and now the White House is getting ready to welcome Mrs O.
The comparisons to Jackie Kennedy are already coming thick and fast.
Obama's flair for fashion and the bob haircut she favours are the more superficial markers. Throw in the fact that her husband's victory is seen as ground-breaking in the JFK style, and that the couple's two adorable children Malia (10) and Sasha (7) are around the same age Caroline and John Kennedy were when they entered the White House, and it's a neat comparison for commentators.
But, given her humble background and the significant role she has already played in her husband's campaign, it's more likely that Michelle Obama will have a different take on the role of America's First Lady, albeit within the strict protocol of the White House. One of her first tasks, for example, will involve picking out the presidential china - Nancy Reagan reportedly spent €1 million on the delf - and this job may prove an indicator of how she intends to proceed.
Because, above all else, Michelle Obama has been keen throughout the campaign to highlight the "ornery" credentials of herself, her husband and their children. At various stages we got to hear about Barack Obama's smelly morning breath, his inability to remember to secure household groceries properly and his less than diligent approach to taking out the bins. "See?" the Michelle Obama approach has been, "he's just like your husband, we're just like your family." When it came to the popular image of Barack Obama as Great Black Hope for change in the US, she has always been quick to contrast the political rock star with the man she wakes up with in bed.
"That guy's not as impressive," she has said. "He still has trouble putting his socks actually in the dirty clothes basket and he still doesn't do a better job than our daughter Sasha at making his bed so you'll have to forgive me if I'm a little stunned at this whole Barack Obama thing".
What's described as her "unfiltered" side was reported to be a concern in the Democrat camp but in the end it may have proved more of a secret weapon.
Her only real faux pas came in a speech last February when, reflecting on her husband's nomination, she revealed that "for the first time in my adult life time I am really proud of my country". It was seized on by Republicans, who called into question Obama's patriotism, while other speeches peppered with condemnations of contemporary American society encouraged an early caricature of Michelle Obama as the archetypal Angry Black Woman or "Mrs Grievance" as she was dubbed by one US publication.
These powerful speeches, often delivered without notes, where she spoke of America as being "just downright mean" were absent from the latter stages of the campaign when it appeared her radical side was being deliberately toned down. But it's worth noting that her earlier rhetoric had its roots in her working-class background on the wrong side of the tracks, characterised by her parents struggle to raise both her and her older brother Craig on the mainly black South Shore suburb of Chicago's South Side. (A South Side characterised by ugg boots and skinny lattes it most certainly was not.) Fraser Robinson, her father, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in his early 30s but managed to hold down a job at the local water plant, earning just enough money so his wife Marion could stay at home with their two children.
Born in 1964, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson lived with her family in the top floor of a rented one-bedroom apartment. The sitting-room was divided into three by thin wooden partitions. There was a small space for her bedroom and another for her brother's sleeping quarters, with the third tiny space used as a study for the children. Bright and inquisitive, Obama did well at school and followed her brother to Ivy League Princeton University on a scholarship.
Having his über-confident younger sister at the same college wasn't always a joy, according to Craig Robinson, who, during the campaign, recounted the story of phoning his mother to say that Michelle was complaining to officials about how French was taught at the college. "She is telling them it should be more conversational," he protested to his Mother. "Just pretend you don't know her," was his mother's advice.
MAKING IT TO Princeton on a scholarship was a huge achievement for the South Side girl. When she arrived at the New Jersey campus in 1981 she was one of 94 black first-year students in a class of 1,100. At the time, affirmative action admissions policies were under attack and some African students felt marginalised in the elite educational facility. While she graduated with honours, her four years at Princeton were uncomfortable and this racial divide formed the basis of her thesis.
"My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before," she wrote in her thesis entitled Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community. "I have found that, at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I don't really belong."
She added that her goal initially in attending university was to use her education to benefit the black community but that these goals gradually shifted. "As I enter my final year at Princeton," she wrote, "I find myself striving for many of the same goals as my white classmates - acceptance to a prestigious graduate or professional school or a high-paying position in a successful corporation. Thus, my goals after Princeton are not as clear as before."
Obama pursued post-graduate studies at Harvard Law School and, on graduating, has described how she stepped onto the corporate career path "almost without thinking". Later, she would go on to actively discourage young people from chasing the corporate dollar instead of taking jobs that would make a difference to society. But for now, with student loans to pay off, two parents living on a meagre monthly salary and blue chip Chicago law firm Sidley Austin knocking on her door, thoughts of a career in public service were put aside.
She met Barack Obama while working at the firm where two of the accounts she worked on were the children's character Barney and Coors beer. In 1989 she was charged with mentoring a first-year law student for a summer. The young man came with a sparkling reputation which put her immediately on guard.
"I had dated a lot of brothers who had this kind of reputation, so I figured he was one of these smooth brothers who could talk straight and impress people," she once said of going to meet her husband. "So we had lunch, and he had this bad sport jacket and a cigarette dangling from his mouth, and I thought: 'Oh, here you go. Here's this good-looking, smooth talking guy. I've been down this road before.'"
But she was immediately intrigued on meeting him. "I've got nothing in common with this guy," she told a group of woman voters speaking about that first encounter. "He grew up in Hawaii! Who grows up in Hawaii! He was bi-racial. I was like 'Ok, what's that about?' And then it's a funny name, Barack Obama. Who names their child Barack Obama?"
ACCORDING TO the story peddled during the campaign, Barack Obama was instantly smitten, but it took a while to convince Michelle Robinson of his credentials. His hard-won first date came after a company picnic when he asked her to join him for ice-cream. She later introduced him to the family and asked her brother Craig to take him out for a game of basketball to "test his character". The report came back from Craig that her beau was "confident but not a ball hog or a hotshot". This was good enough for Michelle and the relationship continued at a long-distance when her boyfriend returned to complete his studies at Harvard.
In interviews, she has recounted how, as the relationship got more serious, she began to pressure him about marriage even though he described it as "a meaningless institution". One night in 1991 at an expensive restaurant in Chicago, the conversation turned again to this topic, with Barack Obama rehearsing his usual anti-marriage tirade and his girlfriend piling on the pressure for commitment. When dessert came, the plate had a box on it which, when opened, revealed an engagement ring. "That kind of shuts you up, doesn't it," he said. "I was so shocked and a little embarrassed because he did sort of shut me up," Michelle Obama later told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Two losses affected her deeply around this time. Her father's death from complications with multiple sclerosis and that of a Princeton room-mate who died of cancer at the age of 25. Liza Mundy of the Washington Post, author of Michelle, a biography published this week by Simon and Schuster, says these developments influenced the gifted lawyer to carve a career "motivated by passion and not just by money". She left Sidley Austin for a job in the mayor's office which involved empowering young people in Chicago's more deprived areas. And, before Barack Obama's book royalties started rolling in, she was the family's main breadwinner with her €270,000-plus a year job as a senior administrator at the University of Chicago Hospital, a job she gave up to support her husband on the campaign trail.
THE THOUSANDS of tidbits published about Michelle Obama include the fact that she works out "like a gladiator", often during 4.30am sessions, is a massive fan of Stevie Wonder's oeuvre, likes watching re-runs of The Dick Van Dyke Show and shops at the discount store Target, one of the many ordinary activities she will now have to surrender as First Lady. It will be interesting to see if she is content to simply be "Mom-In-Chief" over the next four years or whether she can resist bringing something more meaty to the First Lady table.
One of the most telling pieces written about Michelle Obama came from the pen of her own husband in his book Audacity of Hope, in a passage which suggests that beneath all that poise, ambition, confidence and self-belief there is a vulnerable side to the First Lady in Waiting.
Her husband writes of noticing "a glimmer that danced across her round, dark eyes whenever I looked at her, the slightest hint of uncertainty, as if, deep inside, she knew how fragile things really were, and that if she ever let go, even for a moment, all her plans might quickly unravel." But even the implacable Michelle Obama must have allowed herself a moment of unbridled letting-go after this momentous week.
CV MICHELLE OBAMA
Who is she?Michelle Obama, wife of Barack Obama
Why is she in the news?She will become the first African-American first lady in US history
Most appealing characteristic:An ability to speak her mind and be open about her husband's domestic failings
Least appealing characteristic:Her fist-bumping attempts to get down with the kids
Most likely to say:"We might be in the White House, but you still have to take out the trash"
Least likely to say:"The Jackie O look is sooo over"