Michelle Obama’s office is a “confining, frustrating, even miserable place to work”, former aides to the First Lady have revealed.
In a rare account of the inner workings of her East Wing office, ex-employees criticise Mrs Obama for a “rigid” leadership style that fails to account for changing events and make it difficult to satisfy her demands.
“Former staffers describe a high-stress, high-stakes workplace, in which Mrs. Obama scrutinized the smallest facets of her schedule,” writes Reid Cherlin, a former White House press aide. The First Lady, he discloses, citing former colleagues who worked for her, “insists on planning every move months in advance and finalising speeches weeks ahead of time – a rigidity nearly unheard of in today’s chaotic political environment.”
One unnamed aide to Mrs Obama said: “For her, trust is huge, really feeling like people were protecting and thinking about her. Also, she’s a lawyer. She’s really disciplined. She cares about the details. She’s never going to wing it.”
The account, published in the New Republic, reveals how many staff struggle to even get in the same room as the First Lady. That, in turn, leads to a culture of “jealousy and discontentment…as courtiers squabble over the allocation of responsibility and access…both of which can be aggravatingly scarce”.
Meetings with Mrs Obama “became a vital status symbol, a way for staffers to measure their worth,” writes Mr Cherlin
One former aide said: “Every meeting was like an identity crisis, whether you got invited or not”.
Another added: “Everyone sort of stands at attention in a different way, or they try to make the joke, or they try to be the one noticed, or they try to get the smile. And that’s in part a yearning for acknowledgment that you’re part of this, something bigger, and that she knows who you are.”
Mrs Obama preferred to liaise with aides she has known for years, the piece adds. “She’s the kind of person who, if you know her a long time, you get to the point with her where you’re loved, but it’s really hard at first,” said one ex-aide.
The stark assessment jars with the public presentation of Mrs Obama, who is at the end of tour of China with her mother Marian Robinson and her daughters, Malia and Sasha, as a personable and warm First Lady.
She has won repeated praise for the ease with which she can work a crowd and engage in activities hardly typical of a First Lady, from showing off her basketball skills to performing a “Mom” dance that went viral on the internet.
But, for all her seeming spontaneity, former aides said she insisted on meticulous planning of every engagement – less so than her husband, who is known to enjoy improvising.
Mrs Obama also carefully limits the number of events she is prepared to be involved in. She “made it clear to her staff that … her time was a valuable asset and requests to use it would have to meet an exceptionally high bar,” writes Mr Cherlin.
“She would only be available for official duties two or three days a week; the remainder would be devoted to family responsibilities. One ex-employee observed, diplomatically, ‘It would take a really creative staffer to work within that environment and be successful.”
The pressure on her small staff of about 30 people to avoid any mishaps, however small, was immense. “There’s no barometer: The First Lady having the wrong pencil skirt on Monday is just as big of a f***-up as someone speaking on the record when they didn’t mean to or a policy initiative that completely failed,” said one aide. “It just made you super anxious.”
Source: TIMES
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