Politics
Michelle Obama: A not-so-secret 2012 campaign weapon
The 2012 presidential campaign is well under way for Michelle Obama, and the first lady is promising to put herself into the election effort like never before. More than a year out from Election Day, she is hauling in millions in campaign cash and sketching a portrait of her husband that is drawn with an intimacy that no one else could duplicate.
The first lady always ends her speeches to Democratic donors with two questions: “Are you in? Are you fired up?”
It’s a call to arms that the Obama campaign needs more than ever this election, when the combination of a weak economy and dampened enthusiasm for the president are creating a tougher climate for raising money.
Since mid-May, the first lady has headlined more than a dozen fundraisers for her husband and the Democratic Party, at sites from Burlington, Vt., to Berkeley, Calif. She’s cramming in three more events in Maine and Rhode Island within six hours on Friday, the last day of a closely watched reporting period for quarterly campaign fundraising. She’s also blasted out a number of mass emails to party faithful trying to recapture the energy that has waned since her husband’s 2008 campaign.
“He needs you to work like you’ve never worked before,” Mrs. Obama tells audience after audience. “Every day. And that’s what I plan on doing.”
On Thursday, the Obama campaign popped out an email from Mrs. Obama urging people to donate even as little as US$3 before Friday’s quarterly deadline to be in the running for dinner with her husband.
White House officials say the first lady’s political pace will pick up in coming months: She’s promised a “rigorous” schedule, without taking too much time away from the Obamas’ 10- and 13-year-old daughters. Inevitably, family obligations mean she’s not out there as much as some Democratic partisans would like for one of the party’s prime assets.
At the podium the first lady is both poised and cautious. She often speaks from a teleprompter and relies heavily on her stump speech, addressing largely sympathetic audiences at closed fundraisers. “My motto is: Do no harm,” she joked to reporters when asked about her political role.
Mrs. Obama surely has not forgotten the flak she caught during the 2008 campaign for her remark that for the first time in her adult life she was proud of the United States. She later issued a clarification saying she had always been proud of her country.
While Mrs. Obama campaigned for her husband’s election in 2008 (and participated in 30 midterm political events) there are different dynamics this time:
