Chronicling the President's Better Half

January 20, 2012 at 2:51 AM UTC

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This article is part of the January 23, 2012 issue of businessweek.

A new book by New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor portrays Michelle Obama as a conflicted, and at times, iron-fisted First Lady. The press has long depicted the spouse of the President as loved and loathed, feared and revered. A paint-by-numbers guide to profiling the President’s wife.

“I think I am more like a state prisoner than anything else …”
— Martha Washington, confiding to a niece

“[Jacqueline Kennedy] was a quintessentially private person, poised and glamorous, but shy and aloof.”
— New York Times, 1994

“[Barbara Bush] has had to adjust to … the more structured aspects of her new life.”
— Washington Post, 1989

“Mrs. Clinton is not the first president’s wife to find the White House stifling …”
— New York Times, 1999

“[Laura] Bush has chafed at the confining nature of the first lady’s role …”
— New York Times, 2007

“The confinement of the White House was also a shock [to Michelle Obama] …”
— New York Times excerpt of The Obamas, 2012