Michelle Obama Covers New York Magazine's March 2009 Issue

Until fairly recently, it looked like Michelle Obama was destined for the same public drubbing as Hillary Clinton, the only other First Lady to enter the White House with a law degree. It’s hard to remember this now, but the two have an awful lot in common. Michelle grew up just 25 miles from where Hillary did, also in a modest home with a homemaker mother. In high school, she too was ambitious and straitlaced, working hard enough to attend both a fancy college and law school (Princeton followed by Harvard, rather than Wellesley followed by Yale). She too became known as the family hard-ass (Michelle’s friends nicknamed her “the Taskmaster”). She too drew a higher salary in the private sector than her husband did in the public.

And like Hillary, Michelle discovered that any frank expression of her opinions on the campaign trail would instantly boomerang. When she ribbed her husband for his morning breath and all-around hopelessness when it came to putting away the perishables, Maureen Dowd wrote that some found her jokes “emasculating.” When Michelle told an audience in Milwaukee, “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country,” the observation was regarded as only a shade less apple pie than Hillary’s “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies,” and with the added valence of racial suspicion: Michelle was an “angry black woman,” in the words of syndicated columnist Cal Thomas; “Mrs. Grievance” according to the cover of the National Review.

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