Obama's First Lady

Michelle Obama is very private, very busy, and very disciplined. She doesn't give many interviews. Washington logic has it that the press punishes political figures who don't grant access. But that is just one more piece of conventional wisdom the Obama campaign's hope bombs have blown away.
Michelle seems to have intrigued the press corps as much as her husband has, albeit in a less obvious way. She is treated like a combination of a misbehaving movie star and a lottery winner: exceptionally stylish, slightly annoying, and obviously lucky. She is both the celebrity on Oprah's couch and the lady in the audience going home with a brand new car. We are rapt.
She has generated more than twice the volume of news stories Cindy McCain has. In part that's because she's on the cusp of becoming an adjunct historical figure: the first black president's first black first lady. But she is also a tantalizing conundrum. With the exception of Hillary, first ladies have spoken on their husbands' behalf with bland platitudes and knowing good-wife smiles.
But Michelle Obama doesn't play by those rules. The vision she offers of Barack is uniquely prosaic: His breath stinks, he doesn't put away the butter, he snores. She warns, "He will not be able to move you to tears with every word that he says."
She gives us her vision but not her positions. Unlike Hillary, she doesn't push a policy agenda. Her stump speech offers more of a world view. She speaks wistfully about the America that produced a hard-working man like her father, sadly about the country today (conservatives tend to focus on this aspect), and ecstatically about the future. We know she wants us to elect her husband, but we suspect she wants something from us, personally.
We know she's opinionated, and we suspect we haven't heard them all. She is fiercely public about being fiercely private. She is neither the shrewish lady in pantsuits (Hillary) nor the pretty, if also practical, accessory that generations of political wives have been.
And so the stacks of profiles and puff pieces about the striking would-be first lady have to make do with scraps of information about her diet, her health, and her favorite things, wrapping up the Michelle paradox in the comforting costume of celebrity. -Radar 2008