It's all about priorities for Michelle Obama

It's all about priorities for Michelle Obama
L.A. Times | August 22, 2007
By Maria L. La Ganga

The candidate's wife with a six-figure income and two Ivy League degrees connects with women on the campaign trail over shared struggles.

Chicago -- The young professional woman was in a bind. She had a job interview scheduled with a prospective boss, but she didn't have a baby-sitter. Not even her Harvard law degree could help her.

So Michelle Obama -- still in maternity clothes -- strapped her newborn daughter, Sasha, in the stroller and headed out to meet Michael E. Riordan, president and chief executive of the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Luckily, Sasha kept her little mouth shut, but her presence that day in 2001 "was more than symbolic. It was significant," Riordan said in a recent interview. Obama "had her priorities in line. She really wanted to make that known to me. . . that family came first."

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, 43, is not your mother's political spouse.

She is 5-feet-11 in her stocking feet, earned more than $300,000 last year -- husband's paycheck not included -- has two Ivy League degrees and was just named to Vanity Fair's 68th annual international best-dressed list.

But on the campaign trail, she has carved out a niche connecting with women over shared daily struggles: to get the kids up, their hair brushed, their lunch packed and out the door; to have a job and a family and not go crazy; to hope for better things for their daughters when they grow up and are off on their own.

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