There's a long article in today's Washington Post that has been adapted from "Michelle: A Biography," which is being published this week by Simon & Schuster. The Washington Post It's very interesting because it tells us more details about Michelle's career at Sidley & Austin and some tidbits about Barack and Michelle's blossoming romance. I think it's cute that perhaps Barack didn't have to work as hard as they now tell us he did in their 'polished for public consumption' speeches and interviews. (I always wondered how Michelle could possibly have played hard to get for a man like Obama! LOL)
And the truth is, if Michelle resisted, it wasn't for long. Andrew Goldstein, a Sidley attorney who worked with Michelle, says he had the impression that Michelle was pursuing Barack as much as he was pursuing her, and with plenty of resources. She was tall, poised, very put-together, with an air of strength and a dazzling smile. "She is just as charismatic as he is," he says.
Another colleague, Mary Carragher, who at the time was a more senior associate assigned to work with Michelle, remembers how smitten Barack and Michelle seemed with each other. Sometimes, in the slow hours around 5:30 p.m., Carragher would go to Michelle's office to talk about a case or drop off some work, and, through the half-open door, she would see Barack, sitting on one corner of the desk. Michelle would be seated, the two of them rapt, oblivious, chatting.
[snip]
Far from resistant, Carragher says, "she was falling hard." But Michelle..... was careful to maintain her professional demeanor. When Carragher saw them interact, "she was not falling all over him. She was very cool."
I hadn't realized that Michelle was such an ambitious and driven person. We all know that she's very very smart and capable and successful but I found this part interesting.
But Michelle could also frustrate her supervisors. Quincy White, the partner who helped recruit Michelle and who headed the marketing group, remembers finding her a challenge to manage. White, who is now retired from the firm, says he gave her the most interesting work he could find, in part because he wanted to see her advance, but also because she seemed perennially dissatisfied.
She was, White recalls, "quite possibly the most ambitious associate that I've ever seen." She wanted significant responsibility right away and was not afraid to object if she wasn't getting what she felt she deserved, he says.
Abner Mikva, a former congressman and federal judge who is close to the Obamas and was an early mentor to Barack, finds that account of Michelle's 20-something impatience amusing. "It doesn't surprise me at all," he says. Michelle is "clearly somebody who likes to make decisions and likes to be involved in exciting and important stuff. I can imagine writing memos for other lawyers -- I don't think that would have been her favorite dish of tea."
In that sense, she had much in common with Barack Obama, whose political ambition was already very apparent to those who knew him at Harvard. They were both driven, both eager to have an impact. And they wanted to do it right away.
Turns out that Michelle and Barack were also very similar in their dreams of doing work that matters and were both ambitious to achieve their goals. While at Harvard, Michelle spent many many hours working at Harvard's legal aid bureau where, much like Barack, she helped underprivileged people get the legal aid they couldn't afford. Not surprisingly, there's much more to these two people than we have been privy to. I'm looking forward to the biography and if it's as interesting as this excerpt, we might be able to get to know Michelle a lot better. I hope there's some media coverage of it so that people who have such a skewed idea of who she is get a better picture of this woman we adore.
The second article is from a week or so ago in Time Magazine. From the first paragraph, I knew I was going to enjoy it.
Michelle Obama is tall, smart, funny, relaxed and basically so glowy and poised — if she's attractive in pictures, she's flat-out gorgeous in person — that it almost seems as if she already is the First Lady.
It's from an interview the author had with Michelle at the Democratic Convention.
If all that hadn't quite convinced me (it was the Democratic Convention, after all), I'd guess it took roughly the first 30 seconds of our interview for me to fall for her. It happened when I asked whether she gets bored giving the same speech over and over, and she cheerfully replied, "Yeah, absolutely."
Very touching are some answers she gave him that related to how she handles being such a prominent black woman who is different from the picture that so many Americans unfortunately have. It reinforced for me what a magnificent job Michelle is doing representing Barack and, in fact, a whole segment of our society that hasn't gotten enough credit through the years.
He thinks Michelle will be a terrific First Lady and so do I!