Michelle Obama Makes First Official Visit

First Lady Michelle Obama took a first step in bringing working-family issues into the White House yesterday. She made her first official trip outside the White House to visit the Department of Education. If you somehow thought she was going to be a first lady focused on designer dresses and hairstyles think again. This is the first step of a woman who is focused on much more serious issues.

She has put together a veteran team of family oriented and seasoned policy advocates, including her chief of staff Jackie Norris who helped organize and win the Iowa campaign. Norris is described as fair-minded and tough, and a skillful multitasker who can send an e-mail, talk on the phone and play with her three young boys all at once; deputy chief of staff David Medina who served as political director of John Edward’s presidential campaign; Jocelyn Frye, director of policy and projects and a former general counsel at the National Partnership for Women & Families, a nonpartisan group that has championed equal opportunity issues; and Trooper Sanders, deputy director of policy and projects and former policy aide to Vice President Al Gore. Sanders also led and developed mentoring and entrepreneurship programs for low-income neighborhoods, as well as efforts at the Clinton Foundation to highlight the problem of childhood obesity. He also advised former President Bill Clinton on domestic policy matters.

First Lady Obama has been working to shape her new role and now appears poised to resume some of the outreach she did during the campaign — to women, especially, to working women. She did small “girlfriend” forums with women and also held roundtables with military families. In brief remarks to a group of Department of Education workers, the theme revolved around good jobs and education in the public schools. The first lady said that the administration is going to be making investments by creating good jobs while renovating and modernizing more than 10,000 schools and improve the learning environment.

Aides said she will visit every Cabinet-level federal agency in the coming weeks in a kind of get-to-know-you tour. She plans to expand her role as a listener on the national stage, but her first stop is her local community and getting to know Washington, D.C. She will have more of a local focus, working to make the White House more of the “people’s house” and find ways to open it up to tourists
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The Obamas are the first White House occupants to come from an urban environment and seem to not be so reluctant to venture out among the people of Washington, D.C. They have called to unite the “two halves” of the capital, the well-to-do government sections and the economically stressed residential parts of the city. The first lady dined last week with Mayor Adrian Fenty at Georgia Brown’s, a popular D.C. restaurant. And President recently ate with Mayor Fenty recently at Ben’s Chili Bowl. You can not really know what is going on in the outside world if you keep yourself hidden behind the confines of the White House and listening to aides who also do not venture outside its gates.