The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Obamas on 60 Minutes

Yes, it is embarrassing, but I am going to say it, anyway: How glorious to have a president I can not only stand to see on television, but would have watched over Desperate Housewives, had it come to that. I kept trying to think of the last time such a thing had occurred—is it time yet? the president's going to be on!—but the answer is: never. ("For the first time in my adult life ...") A year from now, Obama will no doubt have to do more than show up and say true things grammatically, absent any mugging or winking. But tonight, he had me at "America doesn't torture.'' And when he declined to place sole blame for deregulation on Republicans. And when he said he was not very interested in having the same old tired left-right tug-of-war. So for as long as this lasts, I'm going with it.

I was a little surprised that he put Eisenhower up there with FDR and Lincoln on his list of presidential greats; Was this post-partisan politesse, or was it Eisenhower's lack of drama he admires? His warning about the military-industrial complex, maybe? Or the taste and vision of his granddaughter?  

It also came as news that the first couple's 60 Minutes interviewer, Steve Kroft, was such a T-Rex: "So, you have a new dog and your mother-in-law's moving in?'' (Right, it stinks to be Obama.) But 44 put the kibosh on that and on Kroft's suggestion that Michelle's whole mom-in-chief routine is going to get old in a hurry when she's "knocking around that big house'' on Pennsylvania Avenue. "Here's one thing I know about Michelle,'' the president-elect informed him. "She's serious when she talks about being a mom; that's why our girls are so wonderful.'' It doesn't happen by accident, in other words, or in five-minute snatches of quality time. So we shouldn't judge low-income families by one standard (stay home and read aloud all day; turn off that TV!) and Ivy League graduates by another (you're home with your kids? gosh, sorry to hear that). If parenting is so important, how come Kroft and Traister and maybe most of us at some point act as if no one who could get a decent job would spend their days doing it? Obama seems proud of his wife's accomplishments as a mother, among other things—and why wouldn't he be?

Michelle Still Has Feminist Cred

I am trying to decide why I don't share the distress that Rebecca Traister expresses on Salon in her thought-provoking essay about the "momification" of Michelle Obama. Traister criticizes the press for covering not her departure from her former job at the University of Chicago Hospitals, but her clothes and her kid-piloting and her propensity for domestic-art shortcuts. Traister blames the media for its lack of curiosity about what it's costing Michelle to become "an extension of her husband" and for assuming that she, not he, is the one sheperding her family through their actual move. Michelle Obama, Traister concludes, "will come to stand in more prominently than anyone could have imagined for the shortcomings of feminism."

For a bunch of reasons, this seems more off-base than on-target to me—and also premature. First of all, I don't buy the reflexive blaming of the media. Michelle Obama is putting her own motherhood and sisterhood and wifely virtue front and center. She did that in her speech at the Democratic Convention, she did it during the campaign, and she's doing it now. You can wish she didn't feel like she has to, but she surely knows what she's doing. To wit, Michelle Obama can't risk repeating Hillary Clinton's rocky first lady performance. And so she won't. The media is merely following her lead. To be fair, Traister acknowledges some of this. But she soft pedals Obama's own choices while kicking the press, which is a little convenient.

Also, don't we imagine that the Obamas made their bargain about their roles a while ago? Didn't Michelle Obama effectively stop working at her hospital job long before now? That is a real sacrifice, don't get me wrong, but on the other hand, her husband is president. That is an accomplishment with its own set of rules. It's also one that requires a team effort, and that gives Michelle Obama, as crack defensive end aka first lady, enormous power. A weird and retro form of power, to be sure, but power nonetheless. Before we knock all of that, let's give her a chance to wield it. She is promising to focus on the concerns of working women. Amen and hallelujah: If she does it and gets somewhere, that will be concretely groundbreaking in a way that all this image-obsession never is, and she'll come to represent not the shortcomings of feminism, but its strengths. Maybe Michelle Obama is the woman to channel Eleanor Roosevelt (without the misery of marital infidelity, of course).

And in the meantime, yes, she is the one honcho-ing their physical move, or at least whom to delegate it to. I hope so! Because I want my president-elect working on other pressing matters like our economic crisis. I am glad Traister reminded us that the Obamas used to have a different kind of partnership and that Michelle Obama had to work hard to make her peace with her current role. But hey, when quitting your day job gets you to the White House, how much can the rest of us rue the trade-off?