“Everything we do is by choice,” she will tell me.
Obama will point out to me later, a role that is surprisingly malleable, shaped by the personality, style, and interests (or lack thereof) of the person occupying it. She has a job with no salary, a platform with no power, an East Wing filled with staff but no budget. It is a reminder of just how peculiar the role of First Lady is in American public life. At the bottom of her portrait, her disembodied hands engage in various tasks: knitting, holding a pair of reading glasses, and, inexplicably, fidgeting with her wedding ring, as if she were about to take it off to wash a sinkful of dishes. But it is Eleanor Roosevelt’s that really raises an eyebrow. There’s Lady Bird in yellow chiffon Pat Nixon looking forlorn and trapped Laura and Barbara Bush, both in somber black. Hillary Clinton’s portrait looks less like Hillary than Kate McKinnon in a pantsuit doing Hillary. Jackie Kennedy’s has a pastels-in-soft-focus aspect.
Today, with no one around, I feel compelled to take another look. We were at a reception, drinks in hand, going from one to the next, when I judged Nancy Reagan’s-purely as a fashion artifact-to be my favorite. Obama’s tall, glamorous press secretary, took me on a spin past the First Lady portraits that hang in the Center Hall on the ground floor. It was during that visit two years ago that Joanna Rosholm, Mrs. “I understand you’re going to be with us for a while.” She paused as a look crossed her face, that ornery one she makes when she’s about to deliver a line: “We’re doin’ a deep dive.” Wearing a purple-and-white striped sleeveless Laura Smalls dress, she enveloped me in one of her customary hugs. Obama, I arrived around ten o’clock and had to “hold” in a reception room for ten minutes then move to a hallway to hold again then another spot, hold until at last I was ushered into the Map Room because the First Lady wanted to say hello before we went off to Howard University. There is usually so much high-stakes, highly choreographed pageantry unfolding that it’s hard to shake the feeling that if you made a move without permission you might get tackled. Obama in her motorcade and head out to an event on her schedule. I have been here every week for a month, sometimes twice a day, to interview people on the First Lady’s staff or to join Mrs. When I arrive at the White House on a hot afternoon in late September to interview Michelle Obama, the place is so eerily quiet I worry for a second that I have come on the wrong day. On the eve of her departure from the White House, First Lady Michelle Obama has never been a more inspiring figure-America’s conscience, role model, and mother in chief. “And that’s a wonderful gift of freedom.” Atelier Versace dress. She is currently a senior adviser to the Obama Foundation and Attn and a senior distinguished fellow at the University of Chicago Law School.“Any First Lady, rightfully, gets to define her role,” says Mrs. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981. from Stanford University in 1978 and her J.D.
Jarrett has received numerous awards and honorary degrees, including Time’s “100 Most Influential People.” She received her B.A. Before joining the White House, she served as the chief executive officer of The Habitat Company in Chicago, chairman of the Chicago Transit Board, commissioner of Planning and Development, and deputy chief of staff for Chicago mayor Richard M. She oversaw the Offices of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs and chaired the White House Council on Women and Girls. She is currently a senior adviser to the Obama Foundation Valerie Jarrett was the longest serving senior adviser to President Barack Obama. Valerie Jarrett was the longest serving senior adviser to President Barack Obama.
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