Michelle Obama gets real

During a break between speeches, what she refers to as "our quality time," Obama talks by phone to her sister-in-law, who is also campaigning in Iowa; she discusses a pair of boots available at Neiman Marcus with one of her staffers; she debates the pros and cons of BlackBerry use. Then someone rousts her from her brief repose to get her to go to the next event. She sighs. "This is another example of the hat thing," she tells me. "You just settle into something and then you have to get up and go somewhere and put on a different hat. It's the same with events. You settle into one crowd, and just when you're like, 'I'm so into this,' it's like, 'Oh, you gotta go to a different event!'"

At the midpoint of Obama's trip, at an hour when she is ordinarily home with her girls, she is on fire in Dubuque. She has visited with UAW members who the next day will vote to support her husband, before addressing a fundraiser for local politician Pam Jochum.

Ron Hughes, a small-business owner in Dubuque, tells me that he's a Joe Biden man through and through, and his wife, next to him, is totally apathetic about the political process. "She just comes for the socializing," Hughes assures me. But as Obama begins the most rollicking rendition of the stump speech that I will see on this visit, Hughes leans in to me and acknowledges, "I do like her sense of humor."

By the time Obama gets into the part about how fear is used to bully and divide us, Hughes' purportedly apathetic wife is nodding in assent, and leans in to her husband to say, "She's right on."

Tonight, Obama lingers on the cowardice of her husband's opponents in their votes for the Iraq war, arguing that Barack, though he was not yet in the Senate to cast a vote of his own, acted courageously by coming out against the invasion during his tight Illinois primary race. "That race looked a lot like this race," she says. "He wasn't supposed to win. He had a funny name, he was too young. We've heard it! Been there! Done that! But even in the middle of all that, he said no, the war was a bad idea."

She remains insistent -- despite the flak she's received for minimizing her husband's deity-like status -- on being realistic. "It's not that we're going to elect a president who will deliver us from evil," she tells the Jochum fundraiser. "We are our own evil. We have to be engaged and passionate." Without courage, she says, we will never get anywhere.

"I think I found my candidate," says Hughes' wife, 59-year-old Suzette, a retired physical therapist, as Obama receives a standing ovation. "I hadn't felt the need to make a decision until tonight. I hadn't been moved until tonight."

The next morning, Michelle is about an hour north of Dubuque, in a restaurant that overlooks a broad, sinuous Mississippi River. She's taking a fresh dig at George Bush as she discusses her husband's respect and passion for the Constitution, "something that would be nice in a president these days." The crowd is nodding enthusiastically at her.

While Michelle is hugging after the speech, I overhear a group of four women gossiping about the Clintons, speculating rather ungenerously about why Hillary might be running for president. One of the women, who is wearing a precinct captain button, boils down the differences between the former first family and the Obamas: "Michelle and Barack are like us," she says.

Before the next event, we stop at a Hardee's in Allamakee County. As Obama is filling her medium soda cup, she is approached excitedly by an elderly couple, the woman wearing an American flag hoodie. They are on their way to see her speak down the road and are beside themselves to catch her here first. "We just love you," they tell her.

When I tell Michelle over lunch about my surprise that so many people who apparently have nothing in common with her manage to see themselves reflected in her, she looks utterly unsurprised. She nods, and swallows her bite of cheeseburger before saying, "That's what I've been saying. They see beyond the surface to the core. They know we're real. We are so close to each other." Here she makes a small gesture with her forefinger and thumb, a gesture that reminds me -- in tone and content -- of Bill Clinton, who has taken in recent years to holding forth on how genetic research has shown us how much biology all human beings have in common, regardless of their outward diversity.

Talk turns to the quality of the Hardee's. This is a McDonald's-loyal group, but everyone is impressed. They like the curly fries; they like the table service; they like the Hawaiian chicken sandwich. Michelle surveys the table and hoists her eyebrows to dry perfection, appraising her charges-slash-baby sitters with unhidden amusement, and says, "In summary, I think we can safely say that we are all very pleased with our Hardee's experience."

Then she puts her cheeseburger down. "I shouldn't get too stuffed," she says, prompting some staff fantasies about belching during a stump speech. "Talk about real," she says. "That's a little too real."

Story finder (3 ways to search Salon)

Search terms:

Salon the Web

Salon Directory (browse by topic)