Michelle Obama

from timesonline, london, june 22, 2008:

“Attractive female, tall, athletic, clever, GSOH. On paper, perhaps in the personal columns, Michelle Obama certainly fits the bill. Even for America’s potential first lady. The first black first lady.

Small wonder that her husband Barack’s right-wing opponents are busting a gut trying to make her appear his weakest link. Last week, Michelle was effectively forced to “reposition” herself with an appearance on The View, a daytime chat show presented by a panel of women.

At almost six feet tall in heels, Mrs. Obama, 44, cuts an athletic and authoritative figure in her tailored pantsuits and skirts. A Harvard-educated lawyer who had been earning $212,000 a year as a hospital executive before she took leave on Jan. 1, she delivers rousing 40-minute speeches — surveying topics as far-ranging as the specific failings of the federal No Child Left Behind education act and problems with the military strategy in Iraq — without the aid of even a notecard. (source nytimes.com)