WASHINGTON (AP) — She's mingled barefoot among
Aspen's elite, stirred a Vermont utility executive to tears and bucked up
disenchanted New Yorkers.
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 $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:
—Barack Obama's day job is a lot more demanding
now, forcing him to rely more on others to press the case for his re-election.
During the debt crisis last summer, the president had to cancel 10 fundraisers
around the country. Mrs. Obama's schedule was unaffected.
—The first lady's popularity has remained high even
as the president's has slipped. Polls show she has broader appeal than her
husband with a number of groups that could be troublesome for Obama next year,
including senior citizens, whites and people in the West and Midwest. While she
is popular with both sexes, women express more deeply favorable views of Mrs.
Obama: 47 percent say they have "very favorable" opinions of her,
compared to 31 percent of men. A number of her fundraisers have been before
largely female audiences.
—Mrs. Obama is more at ease as a campaign surrogate
now, after years in the spotlight. At the start of each appearance she gives a
shout-out to prominent locals, singling out "amazing" politicians and
"favorite" people. Trying to humanize her husband, she tells audience
after audience about the quiet moments, after their daughters are asleep, when
Obama hunches over letters from struggling Americans. "I see the sadness
and the worry creasing his face," she tells her listeners.
Campaign manager Jim Messina says Mrs. Obama is a
unique ambassador for her husband because of her front-row seat during his
first term and her knowledge of his character. "She was an enormous asset
to the president traveling the country in 2008, and we expect that she'll play
just as critical a role in 2012," he said.
Mary Powell, a Vermont utility executive, said her
15-year-old daughter used some of the money she inherited after her
grandfather's recent death to attend the first lady's luncheon in Burlington
last summer, and both mother and daughter came away from the event moved.
"I found myself tearing up a couple of
times," Powell said. "She feels like the real deal."
Feminist leader Gloria Steinem, who appeared
alongside Mrs. Obama at a New York fundraiser last week, describes the scene
there as "a room full of New York women who are activists, who care deeply
about the issues, many of whom are feeling that the president could have been stronger
as a negotiator, that he's handcuffed by the right wing."
"You can imagine the feeling in a New York
room," Steinem said. "Well, by the end of her speech, people were
standing up cheering and ready to go to work. It was a transformation."
The first lady is constantly under a microscope.
She was criticized earlier this month for wearing diamond bracelets costing
tens of thousands of dollars to one of the New York fundraisers. (She had
borrowed the jewels from a store for the night.)
In general, though, first ladies are afforded more
respect and leeway in campaigning, and they speak in more controlled
environments than do the wives of presidential hopefuls, who are thrown into an
exhausting, rough-and-tumble political scene and can more easily fall victim to
gaffes.
"First ladies can scoop up considerable
amounts of cash and considerable amounts of good will," says GOP
strategist Rich Galen. "There's almost no downside."
In 2004, Laura Bush raised more than $15 million
for George W. Bush and the GOP and kept a busy separate political schedule.
White House aides say it's too early to set a goal
for Mrs. Obama, but she'll go wherever the campaign directs.
Associated Press Deputy Director of Polling
Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
(AP
Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
