Michelle Obama's Juggling Act

Washington Post: Barack's Wife Tries To Balance The Campaign Trail And Her Own Life's Path

(Washingtonpost.com) 
Obama is mindful of her well-paid role on the inside. She describes her task as pulling opposing forces together, the kind of thing her husband talks about constantly.

"The truth is that having lived and experienced both sides of the situation, I know the community does not trust and understand the university and the university does not trust and understand the community. And until you can bridge those gaps and hear out both sides and understand why are they afraid, you can't really have a conversation," says Obama, who reports telling the university, "And until you can appreciate the assets of the community, and not just view it from a deficit, then you can't fully partner with it because you don't respect it."

One goal is to open a series of health clinics in the South Side's neediest neighborhoods -- home to the church basement where Barack so impressed Michelle.

The Juggling Act

Yet for all her drive, Michelle learned early that being married to Barack Obama often means that when he is gone chasing his dreams, she must cut back on her own -- in her work and especially in building a two-parent world for their two daughters, Malia, 9, and Sasha, 6.

"It's hard," Michelle Obama once said wryly, "and that's why Barack is such a grateful man."

Their struggles to manage their careers and home life have hardly been private, thanks to Barack Obama's two bestsellers. He writes guiltily about allowing his political career to crowd out his obligations as partner and parent. During one particularly bad stretch, he says, "my failure to clean up the kitchen suddenly seemed less endearing. . . . My wife's anger toward me seemed barely contained."

That was around the time he made the first serious mistake of his political career. He tried to grab a congressional seat from a successful incumbent, Rep. Bobby Rush (D). His ambition kept him largely absent from their Chicago family life and left the Obamas essentially broke. He lost the race by 31 percentage points.

"You only think about yourself," Michelle told him more than once. "I never thought I'd have to raise a family alone."

After the defeat, Obama retooled his efforts on the home front and in politics. Then, four years later, he launched what seemed to his close friends a crazily quixotic race for the U.S. Senate. When he made his pitch to Michelle, he told her it would be "up or out."

"No one thought that was a good idea," recalls Jarrett, who hosted a lunch to talk it through. "We were resolved we were going to talk him out of this . . . Michelle being the most clear that it was a bad idea."

Obama, during two hours of jawing, convinced them he could win but could not do it without them. Michelle's willingness to accept anew the harried life of political spouse made possible the race that launched his national career.

He roared from behind to capture the 2004 Democratic primary and the general election, calculating during one stretch that he had taken seven days off in 18 months. Just two years later, when he aimed for the Oval Office, Michelle made some calculations of her own. She knew the work of shepherding the girls to school, soccer, dance, tennis, ballet and music would fall largely to her.

"Okay, how are we going to do this?" she recalls asking. "How's this going to look? What am I going to do about my job? How will we manage the kids? What's our financial position going to be?

"Once I got a sense of how this could work not just for me or him but for our family and the people in our lives . . . I could say, okay, we can do this, I can manage this."

Life as a Stump Speaker

Managing it means cutting her University of Chicago hours to nearly none. It means replacing any dream of a "Leave It to Beaver" life in the Obamas' $1.6 million Hyde Park home with a new extended family of Secret Service agents, whom Sasha calls "the secret people." It means taking day trips when possible, giving her time to wake the girls in the morning and kiss them good night. Her mother, who retired this year as an administrative assistant at a bank, and close friends pitch in. On days when she is not traveling or working at campaign headquarters, aides try not to call.

"She takes this so seriously," says Melissa Winter, her chief of staff, "because every moment she's not with the girls has to be validated."

On the campaign trail, the response is strong.

"She's so dynamic, but she speaks from the heart and that's what I'm looking for," says Del Turner, 59, a Waterloo writer. "I'm so tired of hearing the politicians speak these days. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't sound real. They don't fool me."

With the race on the line, Michelle is spending two or three days on the road each week. Occasionally, she spots an event where the girls can have some fun and she takes them along, as she did to a campaign stop at a New Hampshire children's fair.

Mostly, she juggles, backing her husband and the political vision they have come to share.

A sequence of decisions stretching back nearly 20 years led to moments like the one in Iowa Falls, where she says, "I've felt so disconnected from my government for so long. . . . We need a leader who can touch our souls." And the one in Fort Dodge, where she tells an audience, "We need someone who understands and respects the Constitution, particularly as we have seen it obliterated."

And the scene in a library in rural Rockwell City, where Obama tells a hard-to-read audience of her husband's early opposition to the Iraq war, his success at ethics reform, his health-care work, his willingness to level with people. She says the United States is in Iraq because leaders "were not willing to tell us the truth," and she urges her listeners to imagine a president who has worked in church basements and walked picket lines.

"Just dream," she says as she finishes. "If you reach into your hearts and act without fear, we can do something special."

The hitherto silent group delivers a standing ovation.

"I guarantee you," she declares with a grin, "if I could talk to everybody in this state, they would vote for Barack Obama. I'm pretty convincing."

[tylenol6]

Sure must be nice making $275K a year. Poor Michele. By
the way Obama and Michele are CFR members. I would not
vote for anyone who is a CFR member. Do your own research and you will find out.

[xlib]

Is she still working for the Wal Mart!!