Jodi Kantor Quotes.
It’s not that Michelle Obama is trying to conceal her true feelings, it’s that she does not want to be a political liability to her husband.
Those close to Mr. Obama say he grows irritated at being misunderstood – not just by opponents who insinuate that he caters to African-Americans, but also by black lawmakers and intellectuals who fault him for not making his presidency an all-out assault on racial disparity.
Michelle Obama has gone from political skeptic to political partner to a woman with a White House agenda of her own, and an approval rating higher than the president’s.
Michelle has had to grapple with Hilary Clinton’s legacy as First Lady… Michelle Obama never wants to be seen as the kind of First Lady who is overly involved in the West Wing.
You make real progress when somebody is honest enough to say something that’s really uncomfortable. Of course when you’re a candidate’s wife and when you’re first lady and the first African-American first lady to boot, that is very, very hard to do.
One of my favorite stories is from Obama’s first campaign: Michelle Obama was out there every day, collecting signatures and supervising the other people who did. If you were supposed to get 300 signatures and you only got 299, you had to face the wrath of Michelle.
I really thought I wanted to be a lawyer, but then I had an epiphany when I was in law school and dropped out. I’d always been a journalism junkie, but I’d never had confidence to think that I could actually edit or write the stories.
When you work on a story like the Weinstein investigation, every other non-critical part of your life disappears. For months and months and months, my life basically consisted of my work and my kids, my work and my kids.
In interviews with dozens of black advisers, friends, donors and allies, few said they had ever heard Mr. Obama muse on the experience of being the first black president of the United States, a role in which every day he renders what was once extraordinary almost ordinary.
You make real progress when somebody is honest enough to say something that’s really uncomfortable.
Michelle Obama has mostly stuck to pretty anodyne topics. She’s anti-childhood obesity, she’s pro-veteran.
The prospect that I could actually be a journalist triggered a ‘Who do you think you are?’ reaction in me. It was only in going to law school and being unhappy there that I realized that I really, really had to try it.
The most profound lessons about journalism I’ve learned have been taught to me by the people I’ve covered.
Candidates’ wives are supposed to sit cheerfully through their husbands’ appearances.
Sometimes, when you look at an adviser’s failings or perceived failings, I think the tough question you have to ask as a journalist is, ‘What does this say about the president?’
Interpreting anyone’s marriage – a neighbor’s, let alone the president’s – is extremely difficult. And yet, examining the first couple’s relationship – their negotiations of public and private life, of conflicts and compromises – offers hints about Barack Obama the president, not just Barack Obama the husband.
I don’t like corporate diversity workshops.
Every presidential candidate highlights patriotism, but Mr. Romney’s is backed by the Mormon belief that the United States was chosen by God to play a special role in history, its Constitution divinely inspired.
The Michelle Obama that her old friends remember, that people knew in Chicago, she was a really incisive social critic. She knew how to drive an argument home. People liked her both in the workplace and socially because she was so frank.
