Who is Michelle Obama?

When the primaries started, I sent my colleague Karl Wendl an email: “Obama’s wife radiates something. She’s got more sex appeal in her little finger than all the first ladies since Jackie Kennedy put together.”

I admit I had personally decided during the course of the campaign in favor of Hillary Clinton and her First Husband, Bill. But since the Democrats pulled a switch on me, now my eyes, ears and heart have opened to the Obamas. My future vision: if they actually make it to the White House, Michelle Obama will define the role of First Lady anew, just as Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and Hillary Rodham Clinton did before her.

In so doing, she will combine the virtues of both those former First Ladies: the elegance and magic of Jackie, who today remains a style idol for millions of American women, and the intellect, will power and influence of Hillary Clinton, who catapulted the political role of American women to new heights.

After the Puerto Rican primary, it finally became clear to me just how charismatic Michelle Obama is. Before her husband’s victory speech in Minnesota, she strode onstage (at near 5’–11” she has the aura of a fashion model) in a figure-accentuating, sleeveless dress and reached out to him with a fist-bump. They looked deeply into one another’s eyes, smiled mischievously at each other and embraced. Intimate moments during which a whole movie played out between the two of them.

America talked about the fist bump for days. The New York newspaper Daily News opined, “They’re head over heels in love.” The usually serious Time magazine went searching for the origin of the fist bump. Presumably, African-American basketball players first used it in the 1970s.

Personally, I first witnessed this fist bump in the early 1990s in Jamaica. Then, the gesture was always accompanied by the spoken word “Respect.” And I sensed exactly that between these two: mutual respect. Pride. And ambition. Motto: Go get the White House!”

The fact is, it’s a youthful, cool and confident gesture. Exactly what Obama fans like. Another fact is that Michelle Obama is her husband’s most important advisor.

Allegedly, she was originally against her husband’s candidacy. She admitted she wanted to safeguard him from the brutal attacks during a campaign. I don’t believe that. I think she wanted to be the first African-American First Lady as badly as Hillary Clinton wanted to be America’s first female president.

Like her husband, she worked her way up from a middle-class family in a Chicago suburb and into America’s white, educational elite. She studied law at Princeton and Harvard, two of the most expensive and prestigious universities in the world. She later met her future husband in an office where he was an intern.

They were immediately attracted to one another. When Barack, who also studied law at Harvard, decided on a career in politics, Michelle bore him two children, Melia and Sasha, and earned a living as a hotel manager.

When her husband entered the primary race against Hillary Clinton, Hillary quickly got a taste of what sort of woman stood behind her rival. In April, 2007, Michelle said, “If you don’t have your own house in order, you can’t organize anything in the White House.” That hit home. Americans immediately took this as an allusion to the Lewinski affair. At that point, Hillary was still 21 percentage points ahead of Obama.

Michelle made only one error during the primary campaign, a mistake that revealed that racial conflict was still alive in the USA and had a role to play. She was quoted as saying, “For the first time in my life, I’m proud to be an American,” an allusion to the possibility that for the first time a person of color could be elected president. She was quickly criticized by American conservatives. She wasn’t patriotic. Republican candidate John McCain immediately replied, “I’m proud to be an American every day.” White America nodded its head: “Exactly. God bless America!” Black America shook its head: “Michelle was referring to something else.”

The US media has long since forgiven her and now concentrates on her sex appeal and feminine radiance. In its latest edition, the fashion bible Vogue called her “The It-Girl,” meaning the trend-setting woman of today. The New York Times dedicated an entire page in its fashion section last weekend to her wardrobe. The caption: “Dressed to Win.” Experts analyze her outfits: she loves cultured pearls (like the wives of both Bush, Sr. and George W. Bush, by the way.) Her dresses are often sleeveless and accent her long legs and arms as well as her wasp-waist. Her outfits are always simple, almost conservatively elegant, leaving the impression that they could well belong to a New York career woman.

Amy Fine Collins, style expert for the high-gloss American magazine, Vanity Fair, put Michelle’s appearances in a nutshell by saying, “This woman knows exactly what effect she has.”

If everything goes according to her plan, America and the rest of the world will be seeing much more of that effect.