The Obamas mix politics and romance in a way that no first couple quite have before

[HopeOverFear]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/magazine/01Obama-t.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all

The centrality of the Obama marriage to the president’s political brand opens a new chapter in the debate that has run through, even helped define, their union. Since he first began running for office in 1995, Barack and Michelle Obama have never really stopped struggling over how to combine politics and marriage: how to navigate the long absences, lack of privacy, ossified gender roles and generally stultifying rules that result when public opinion comes to bear on private relationships.

Along the way, they revised some of the standards for how a politician and spouse are supposed to behave. They have spoken more frankly about marriage than most intact couples, especially those running for office, usually do. (“The bumps happen to everybody all the time, and they are continuous,” the first lady told me in a let’s-get-real voice, discussing the lowest point in her marriage.) Candidates’ wives are supposed to sit cheerfully through their husbands’ appearances. But after helping run her husband’s first State Senate campaign in 1996, Michelle Obama largely withdrew from politics for years, fully re-engaging only for the presidential campaign. As a result, she has probably logged fewer total sitting-through-my-husband’s-speech hours than most of her recent predecessors. Even the go-for-broke quality of the president’s rise can be read, in some small part, as an attempt to vault over the forces that fray political marriages. People who face too many demands — two careers, two children — often scale back somehow. The Obamas scaled up.

“This is the first time in a long time in our marriage that we’ve lived seven days a week in the same household with the same schedule, with the same set of rituals,” Michelle Obama pointed out. (Until last November they had not shared a full-time roof since 1996, two years before Malia was born.) “That’s been more of a relief for me than I would have ever imagined.”

Friends who visit the White House describe occasionally turning corners to find the first couple mid-embrace. They also seem unusually willing, for a presidential couple, to kiss, touch and flirt in public. It may be that they are broadcasting their affection to the rest of us, an advertisement of their closeness. Or they may simply be holding tightly to each other as they navigate new and uncertain terrain. “Part of what they provide each other with is emotional safety,” Jarrett explained.

...Even the Obamas’ jokes seem like coping mechanisms for the epic changes in their lives. They are still in their 40s, and they appear to deal with the grandeur and ritual of their new home with a kind of satirical distance that is hard to imagine coming from first couples of a pre-Jon Stewart generation. The president playfully addresses his wife using her official acronym, “Flotus” (first lady of the United States). She keeps up a running commentary on her husband as he navigates his new home, according to friends and relatives. Seeing him in the Oval Office cracks Michelle Obama up, she told me. “It’s like, what are you doing there?” she said, gesturing to the president’s desk. “Get up from there!” In September, as they waited to greet a long, slow procession of foreign dignitaries and their spouses at the Group of 20 Summit in Pittsburgh, the first lady whispered in her husband’s ear about things “that I probably shouldn’t repeat,” he said.

“She can puncture the balloon of this,” he added, making him feel like the same person he was 5 or 10 years ago.

...Michelle Obama is also one of her husband’s chief interpreters of public sentiment. On almost every “domestic issue that’s come up — up and through health care,” the president told me, the first lady has offered “very helpful” insights on “how something is going to play or what’s important to people.”

“She’s like a one-person poll,” he explained. “Everyman!” the first lady called out.

“We’ll sit at the dinner table,” the president said. “If our arguments are not as crisp or we’re not addressing a particular criticism coming from the other side, Michelle will be quick to say, I just think the way this thing is getting filtered right now is putting you on the defensive in this way or that way.” (Sometimes, Sher says, when the president is describing some complicated issue, his wife interjects: “You know what? People don’t care about that.”)

[LiberalAndProud]

1. I love the photo. It captures so much.

[HopeOverFear]

2. excellent article too

[Cha]

6. Yes, it

is.

[madmax]

3. I love the Obama's n/t

[Cha]

4. They've been working long and hard

to be in a space where they could be together on a steady basis..and the country gets a President and a First Lady who are excellent for our times.

[saracat]

5. Very nice article, but it could have done without the slam at Hillary's marriage.

But other than that is presented a very human and warm portrait of the Obama marriage.

[Hekate]

7. I do like that family, starting with the Mr and Mrs. So grounded in each other...

... and as someone mentioned, so right for the times.

Hekate

[Karenina]

15. AND he LOVES his mother-in-law!

;-)

[uponit7771]

8. Obama is an overt romantic, explains some of his idealism.

[BrklynLiberal]

9. It would seem that they truly care for and respect each other. How unique!!

:thumbsup:

[annabanana]

10. What a nice article. . morining kick . . n/t

[alsame]

11. That G20 Summit....I was watching the live stream of them waiting

for their guests and you could tell by their body language and facial expressions that they were, uh, flirting. :)

[HopeOverFear]

16. Me too! I almost felt guilty like I was watching something I shouldn't be lol

[Bullet1987]

12. I actually like the fact that they show their love for each other in public

Instead of the First Lady standing in the background like some sort of prop or set piece.

[Beacool]

13. They seem to have a solid marriage.

Michelle grounds him, that's a good thing. Every president needs someone who brings him down to earth and tells him the truth. It usually has been the wife.

Nice article on the Obamas, but I wish they had skipped the Clinton comparisons. Every marriage is its own world and no one really knows what's going on in the relationship other than the two people involved in it.

:-)

[Hutzpa]

14. The difference

this President respects the office while others have become or are
fighting to become President of The United States just to be respected
as President with no knowledge of what the office entails.