At a time when President Obama and his opponents are blamed for shrinking from painful remedies for a sluggish nation, Michelle Obama
is back on the road as a tireless, cheerful dispenser of them.
“You’ve got a lot of energy because you’re all eating your vegetables and exercising,” the first lady proclaimed to a crowd of 14,000 screaming children in Des Moines on Thursday.
“Thank you for eating your vegetables,” she told airmen at a mess hall in Little Rock, Ark., as several stared guiltily into half-eaten plates of broccoli. “We need you strong.”
And sitting down with parents for dinner at an Olive Garden restaurant in Fort Worth, she exclaimed, “I hope you’re hungry; I’m starving,” and then passed around a salad bowl.
Serving up leafy greens is easier, of course, than slicing $1 trillion out of the federal budget. But Mrs. Obama has managed to make her “eat your peas” message painless and even occasionally joyful, hamming it up through a three-day, four-state tour to mark the second anniversary of her childhood anti-obesity campaign, “Let’s Move!” The trip is a timely reminder of why the Obama campaign views her as such a potent weapon.
“This is a bit of a twofer,” Mrs. Obama said of the tour in an interview with reporters here on Friday. “It’s an issue that I care about, but it’s an issue that’s important to the country. And because it’s an issue that’s important to the country, it helps my husband.”
Mrs. Obama had just finished judging a “Top Chef” competition to pick the best school lunch. She and her co-judges — the celebrity chef Tom Colicchio and the Obamas’ personal cook and food policy adviser, Sam Kass — declared it a tie among the three entries. The first lady told the children at the taping that when it comes to healthy school lunches, “everybody wins.”
That’s certainly not true in politics, which is why Mrs. Obama is shouldering an increasingly busy schedule of appearances at fund-raisers — often in out-of-the-way destinations like Burlington, Vt., or Aspen, Colo. — where she delivers a fervent stump speech about why Mr. Obama deserves to beat his challenger in November.
She also visited the campaign headquarters in Chicago, which electrified the staff “because it was so clear how invested she was in this,” said David Axelrod, a senior strategist.
With poll ratings that consistently surpass those of her husband, Mrs. Obama can be deployed before virtually any audience, according to the president’s campaign advisers. Some conservatives criticize the first lady for trying to make Americans eat “cardboard and tofu,” in the words of Rush Limbaugh. But her message has resonated with many other people, including those she met this week.
“We may look back and say, ‘She saved more lives than anybody else in the administration,’ ” Mr. Axelrod said. “It’s obviously something she feels passionately about, and not just because she is beating the bejesus out of everybody in push-ups.”
Not just push-ups: she crushed the late-night television host Jimmy Fallon in dodge ball and a potato-sack race during a fitness contest filmed in the East Room of the White House. She also talked Jay Leno, an avowed vegetable-phobe, into eating an apple dipped in honey.
At the rally in Iowa, Mrs. Obama expertly led the crowd in the “Interlude,” an aerobic-style dance from the University of Northern Iowa that has become a YouTube sensation. Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, tried manfully to keep in step.
All the goofing around is in furtherance of a serious goal, Mrs. Obama said, and her willingness to act silly is not just a stunt. People know when “you’re not as passionate about it or you’re just doing it for political reasons,” she said. “People smell that out so easily.”
Mrs. Obama’s image of a happy warrior is miles from the frustration she expressed, in response to a new biography by a New York Times reporter, Jodi Kantor, that she could be perceived as an “angry black woman.” In the interview Friday, Mrs. Obama acknowledged she has struggled at times with pessimism, watching her husband grapple with a faltering economy and the trials of Washington.
“When times get tough, we all get worried,” she said. “We are Eeyore,” she said, referring to the downcast donkey in the Winnie the Pooh stories, and then offering an imitation of him: “ ‘We’ll never make it; we’ll never get out of here; it is horrible; we’re losing; it’s over.’ ”
But Mrs. Obama jokingly referred to her husband as “Mr. Happy Guy, seeing the glass half full,” which she said sustained her confidence in the future.
On this trip, the first lady has most come to life when discussing the work-life stresses faced by ordinary families. At the Olive Garden, she carried on an earnest conversation with eight parents about how to improve the eating habits and fitness of their families.
The first lady drew on her own family, telling stories about her daughters, Malia and Sasha, that hinted at their rarefied existence but stuck a common chord with her guests.
Sasha, she said, came home from an after-school cooking class, marveling about tomatoes they had grown. “They were ‘hair-something,’ ” Sasha said, according to her mother. “And I was like, ‘You mean heirloom,’ ” Mrs. Obama replied, noting that heirlooms also grow in the White House garden. “She’s like, ‘No, but these were different.’ ”
The first lady listened as Cassandra Leach, a teacher, spoke about growing up with a morbidly obese mother, who could not participate in any outdoor activities with her. Mrs. Obama replied that she sympathized because her father, Fraser Robinson, suffered from multiple sclerosis, which had robbed him of the ability to play sports with his children.
While she talked, she picked at a plate of Venetian apricot chicken with broccoli, asparagus and tomatoes. Afterward, she noted approvingly that the dish contained fewer than 500 calories.
The president’s campaign advisers said that they were well aware that Mrs. Obama drew strict limits on how much she would do for the campaign because of family obligations. Her message, she said, is “This is the time I have to give to the campaign, and whatever you do with that time is up to you, but when it’s over, don’t even look at me.”
“I’m absolutely fired up,” she insisted, “but I always have to have balance, because I’m a mother. When I’m out there, I’m fired up, but when I’m not, I have to be Malia and Sasha’s mom, and that can’t be as a fired-up campaigner. They’re like, ‘Where were you?’ ”
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