The country has been seeing a lot of Michelle Obama, and she seems to be having the time of her life.
She already a fixture on everything from magazine covers to popular children’s television shows (“She’s meeting people where they are — young people watch Nickelodeon, so she wants to be on Nickelodeon,” says longtime friend and White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett) — and even the Academy Awards. Her 67 percent approval rating according to a mid-January Pew Research poll is considerably higher than the president’s. And Gallup ranks her the second most admired woman in America, behind only former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Mrs. Obama has her detractors, to be sure, who attack everything from her fashion choices to her bangs, to her focus on getting kids to put down the fried food, but little seems to have daunted the Chicago native, who says her mother taught her and her brothers that “you’d better do what you want to do and what you think is right, and have that be your guiding compass in your life” — rather than your “haters.”
“I’ve now known the first lady for 22 years,” Jarrett said. “And part of what has lifted her popularity not just as first lady, but throughout her life, was this sense of authenticity, this sense that if she takes on an issue it’s something she cares passionately about, and she throws herself completely into it, with the intent of making a difference.”
That energy was on display as the first lady barnstormed the country recently, promoting her “Let’s Move! Active Schools” initiative, which focuses on healthy eating and fitness goals that the White House hopes will be adopted by 50,000 U.S. schools. She danced and exercised with 6,000 school kids and a spate of sports celebrities inside Chicago’s McCormick Center after delivering a heartfelt speech about growing up on the south side; she and Food Network star Rachel Ray judged a “cafeteria cook-off” in Clinton, Mississippi that pitted two school lunch ladies, paired with celebrity chefs, in a healthy lunch cooking contest that will be televised on Ray’s cable show; and toured a Springfield, Missouri Wal-Mart Pantry supermarket with a group of local parents and a pair of company executives.
Last week, she held her first Google+ hangout, even getting participating third graders to do what could be considered be her signature dance move: the Dougie, which Mrs. Obama also used to close out her “mom dancing” routine with NBC late night host Jimmy Fallon — which has since become a Youtube hit.
It’s part fun — Michelle Obama knows how to let her much-discussed hair down, particularly when surrounded by kids. But the First Lady’s moves are also about business. She has amassed an impressive list of corporate partners for her “Let’s Move” initiatives including Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Darden’s Restaurants, and Nike, which put up $50 million to support fitness programs including “Let’s Move! Active Schools,” which will be administered outside the White House.
Good health, good P.R., and good business
For the companies, it’s good P.R. and good business. Healthy food products are selling well enough in the U.S. that even fast food retailers are jumping on the bandwagon. And it doesn’t hurt for companies like Wal-Mart, which has had to defend itself against accusations of unfair labor practices and below-average wages, to associate themselves with the positive image of the first lady.
Wal-Mart executive vice president of corporate affairs Leslie Dach deflected the question of whether associating with Mrs. Obama might take the sting off criticism of the company, saying the giant retailer, which serves some 200 million customers a week nationwide, was simply responding to their customers’ demands for healthy foods they could afford.
“I think when you’re a business that’s our size and scale you begin to understand that just like the first lady said, you can do these things, make a difference on the issues your customers tell you they want you to make a difference on, and still make your business stronger,” Dach said on the day Mrs. Obama toured the Springfield store. “So why not?”
“How this White House handles big business is really an expression of how the East Wing (the first lady) and The West Wing (the president) consider the nature of these relationships,” said Corey Ealons, a former White House Director of African-American Media. “Mrs. Obama’s team considers these relationships from the perspective of her brand image and ability to promote the issues she cares most about, mostly in the relatively safe areas of health and fitness. And as you said, being associated with the First Lady and her high approval ratings is a definite win for those companies.”
Ivory Johnson, founder of Delancey Wealth Management in Washington, D.C., agrees, saying of Mrs. Obama that she is “extremely popular,” and noting that except for those who are opposed to the Obamas on ideological grounds, “nutrition and exercise is a good message to sell.”
Mrs. Obama traces her passion for health and fitness to her own childhood, growing up in a family with limited means.
“My brother and I, we didn’t grow up in a wealthy community,” she said during her Let’s Move tour. “Our parents didn’t have resources to put us in a lot of expensive programs and things like that. But we had the Park District Day Camp every summer. And we took the bus to Rainbow Beach and wore our little camp shirts. And almost every kid that couldn’t afford to go to a paid, structured summer program was in day camp. And that’s where I learned to play softball. And I ran track. And at the end of every year, we did a camp-wide Olympics. And then each team had a softball team, and you’d play a citywide league. And you learn to throw a ball and to catch a ball, and we swam in the lake, and we did that for a good part of the summer. And that kept us out of trouble and it showed us other aspects to our personalities and skill sets. You could be best camper. I still remember the year I wasn’t best camper.”
She has assembled a small, youthful team to put her passion to work, including fellow Chicago native Sam Kass, a former White House assistant chef and recently-named Executive Director of Let’s Move, and Julie Moreno, a senior White House adviser on urban affairs who provides policy support for the initiative. The team has not been shy about pursuing corporate partners, or touting companies’ participation, as the first lady did in an op-ed this month for the Wall Street Journal.
“Let’s Move is unique in that it’s a new way of looking at public-private partnerships,” Moreno said. “And it’s aggressively research focused, savvy about cultural relevance, and unconcerned about barriers” like Wal-Mart’s image.
It’s a far cry from the “anti-business” brush her husband’s administration has sometimes been painted with in the past, particularly by President Obama’s opponents on the right. Administration members dispute the accuracy of that characterization, with Kass calling partnerships with business the “heart and soul” of Let’s Move, and Jarrett chalking the meme up to the hard choices the administration needed to make in its first years due to the financial crisis. And she notes the administration’s alliances with business leaders on issues like the fiscal cliff.
“The president’s team is managing business relationships through the lenses of regulation, taxation and the state of the national economy,” Ealons said. “For Valerie Jarrett, Gene Sperling and others managing those relationships for the president, that has been a much tougher lift.”
For the First Lady and her team, the “lift” has increasingly been about visibility, both in media, and with political and industry leaders.
“Her office has been incredibly proactive,” Kat Cole, president of Cinnabon, said of Mrs. Obama. “[They have] reached out not only to private enterprise, but industry organizations that represent multiple private enterprise organizations, and asked them to be a part of the conversation; to have a seat at the table. And that’s been missing from past administrations.”
“Her focus is clear,” Cole said. “She certainly doesn’t waver in what she wants to see out of corporate America, but she and her group are open to the feedback of private enterprise, and how we can work together to create meaningful change, especially in the case of healthy living.”
Jarrett said the East and West wings work seamlessly on initiatives like Let’s Move, and that Mrs. Obama’s chief of staff even attends the president’s chief of staff’s daily meetings. But it’s clear that the health and fitness push, along with her and Dr. Jill Biden, the wife of the vice president’s, outreach to military families, are very personal to Mrs. Obama.
“I think because the first lady was very selective about the initiatives that she chose,” Jarrett said, adding that Mrs. Obama chose Let’s Move, the Joining Forces military family initiative and a mentoring program, “because she cared deeply about them, and she thought she could make a difference.”
“And she was very conscious of not spreading herself too thin because really her first priority which continues to this day of course is her daughters,” Jarrett said.
Jarrett added that the first lady recognized “that it isn’t enough for her just to talk about Let’s Move, from the White House; she has to engage a range of stakeholders, and she’s been aggressive about reaching out to the business community, she’s also done the same with our nation’s governors,” and with mayors and other stakeholders, the more of whom Jarrett says get involved “the more likely we are to be successful.”
As for Mrs. Obama herself, she said her and the president’s approach to the issues they care about have been grounded in pragmatism.
“One of the things I am just naturally is a strategic thinker,” she said. “Even when we embarked on the issues of military families and childhood obesity, we spent a lot of time really thinking about where can I uniquely have an impact. So it wasn’t just, what’s the hot issue. A lot of it was what I cared about and could speak passionately about and authentically about. But it was like, what’s linking up with what the president is going to be trying to do over the next four years; where is the country on the issue; are there gaps somewhere where my voice will add value so that we’re not being redundant.”
“In the end, after four years, after eight years, both Barack and I want to have done something. So … it takes a little bit of time and conversation sitting down the departments and agencies,” she said. “We also never come into an issue acting like we know everything already. So we spent a lot of time with experts and people who have been doing this, and non-profits.”
The First Lady demurred on whether she would eventually lend her popularity and brand to more controversial, potentially polarizing issues, like gun control. She attended the funeral of Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old girl who was killed soon after attending the president’s second inaugural with her marching band, and hosted Hadiya’s parents in her box during the State of the Union address. And Jarrett said that before the funeral, Mrs. Obama met with around 30 of Hadiya’s classmates, telling them about her own challenges growing up, and asking them to “honor Hadiya by trying to live out the life that she didn’t get to live.”
But there are no immediate plans, it seems, for a Michelle Obama barnstorming tour or media blitz pushing for an assault weapons ban.
“That’s a part of the strategic planning process, right?” Mrs. Obama said. “Once we pick the set of issues, then we drill down [and ask]: what’s going to be helpful. And I say, am I going to do an op-ed piece? It is going to be helpful? Can it move something? Will it advance something? So I can’t say yes, I can’t say no. We’re going to be looking to see — what I don’t do is just to do things to satisfy someone else’s definition of what’s controversial. So write an op-ed piece, go on the Hill. It’s like, well, let’s figure out whether that’s going to work. Is that going to add value? Is that going to take away value? It’s not really about me wanting to do a set of certain things. It’s really about what’s going to work.”
For now, Mrs. Obama has embraced an issue that unites blue and red states — not to mention the White House and corporate America.
“With childhood obesity, we really believe that creating partnerships with carrots rather than sticks in my position as First Lady is a better way to get results,” she said.
And the first lady said she hopes her initiative will also empower parents.
“As we’re seeing with companies, they’re going to look for what model are they going to make money on. And if they make money off of selling our kids chips and sodas, that’s what they’re going to do,” she said. “But if we demand convenient containers of healthy drinks that don’t have added sugars — that our kids enjoy but aren’t adding unnecessary calories or hidden calories — and if they make those products, then we have to buy them. And the more we buy them, the more we’ll generate demand, the more that will change the market. So I want to remind parents that we still have power in an open marketplace to set the agenda. We’re not powerless in this, but we have to lead with our pocketbooks and we have to show businesses that the healthier choice can be good business as well.”
But the most important element of any deal pursued by the East Wing is that it be a priority of Michelle the mom.
“I can guarantee you that what I will do will always involve kids in some way, shape or form,” Mrs. Obama said. “That is my passion. I think that’s the investment where I can uniquely have an impact.”
It’s that affinity for children that seems to put the spring in Mrs. Obama’s step.
“I have a special affinity for kids,” she said. “Barack — we were talking about this the other day, I don’t know, maybe — we love our kids so much, and it is very hard not to see our kids in every child we meet. So I am powerfully moved by children, and I need to have them in my life. They keep me focused. They keep me sort of directed so that any time anything else is going around if I’m in a room full of kids, they constantly bring you back to where you need to be.”
“She loves those daughters and she loves all of our daughters,” Jarrett said. “And I’ve watched her just touch so many hearts and when she’s around young people, particularly girls, she’ll just grab them and hug them, and I think that resonates deeply because they don’t see her up on a distant pedestal, they see her as someone within reach who could be their mom. And that makes her a terrific role model.”
Follow Joy Reid on Twitter at @TheReidReport.