Free First Women: The Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies by Kate Andersen Brower

New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor that his staff “worries a lot more about what the first lady thinks than they worry about what I think,” a sentiment echoed by Love. “He’s the leader of the free world and she’s his wife. I think even the leader of the free world has to figure out how to keep everyone happy.” Michelle is a cut-to-the-chase working mother who “doesn’t hold stuff back,” Love says. And if anyone wants to challenge her, she says simply, “I’m not running for anything.” She does not get angry at criticisms of her husband’s policies, but she becomes infuriated by personal attacks, a current Obama administration official said on the condition of anonymity. She also abhors leaks, and at the beginning of her husband’s first term, when stories leaked out about infighting, she wanted explanations. “How could this happen?” she wanted to know. “We could say it’s just the way Washington works,” the Obama official said, “but she has a way of letting you know that that is no excuse.”
    Michelle is keenly aware of what’s going on in her husband’s administration. One Obama staffer says that he worked for years in a less senior position, but when he got a much bigger job that brought him into daily contact with the President, he figured hehad to introduce himself to the First Lady. “Oh, I know you,” she said, and rattled off five things about him. According to former White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton, Michelle watches MSNBC’s Morning Joe when she works out (ninety minutes, up to five times a week) and talks with the Obamas’ closest friend and adviser in the White House, Valerie Jarrett, often. “She’s plugged in,” Burton said. “She’s a consumer and knows what’s going on.” (Michelle introduced her husband to Jarrett, who has been instrumental in his political career.)
    When her husband was a senator she dismissed the idea of leaving her girls, and her high-powered job, to fly to Washington for a luncheon with other Senate wives honoring then–First Lady Laura Bush. She still does not want to do anything without a specific purpose. When she became first lady she demanded that, in exchange for spending four hours at the annual Congressional Club luncheon—a tradition that began in 1912 in honor of the first lady—the well-to-do attendees commit to a day of volunteer work. “Whether it’s a food bank or a homeless shelter, there’s so much need out there,” she told the congressional wives clad in Lily Pulitzer dresses. During staff meetings, when advisers suggest she attend certain events, she will ask, “But why? I don’t want to just show up to show up.” She has always been absolutely clear to her staff that she is not Hillary Clinton. She laughs at the suggestion that she run for office herself one day, and she did not relish the battle to secure health-care reform and the fight to pass the President’s stimulus package. Unlike Hillary, whose feminism is so much a part of her identity, Michelle has said that while she agrees with much of the feminist agenda, she is “not that into labels” and would not identify herself as a feminist.
    For Michelle, it’s always been about her husband’s personal exceptionalism and not about party loyalty. In a way, she is likeNancy Reagan, who had little interest in getting to know other Republican first ladies and even had a bad relationship with Barbara Bush during the eight years that the latter was the wife of President Reagan’s vice president. Sometimes Michelle’s advisers forget that she is part of a much larger tradition. The Obamas held a mental health summit at the White House in 2013, but Rosalynn Carter, who brought about the passage of mental health legislation in 1980 and made it her signature issue as First Lady, was left off the guest list. “I got really mad,” a former Carter aide said. He called a friend who had worked for the Obamas and told her about the oversight. She then