WASHINGTON — In a Wednesday afternoon interview that informally marked the beginning of her second year in the White House, first lady Michelle Obama declared her intent in 2010 to lead the administration’s efforts to tackle the epidemic of childhood obesity.
With a combination of advocacy and outreach to businesses, nonprofit organizations and government officials, she intends to lead the nation in making children healthier.
“I want to leave something behind,” she said. “I hope that will be in the area of childhood obesity.”
And if she has to go to Capitol Hill, lobby lawmakers and delve into policy, she will do it. She will begin her campaign by addressing the nation’s mayors on the subject next week when they gather in Washington.
During a conversation in the old family dining room with a group of seven print reporters, she described the security breach that marred her debut as the nation’s hostess as a “footnote” to an otherwise outstanding state dinner. And, she waded into the contretemps caused by the recently published remarks by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in which he described then-candidate Barack Obama’s presidential chances as much improved because he was a “light-skinned” African-American who had “no Negro dialect.”
But of the approximately 200 events she hosted or attended over the course of her first year, of all the experiences to be logged into a journal or inscribed in history, she was proudest and happiest that “my kids are sane.”
“I’m happy that when I look at my daughters, I recognize them as the kids that they were before we got here.”
Looking back over her first year, she noted that, given the opportunity, there was nothing she’d like to have a chance to do over.
Not the shorts at the Grand Canyon. Not her unsuccessful efforts on behalf of Chicago’s Olympic bid. Not even the state dinner honoring India that was marked by two uninvited guests — and possibly a third — and that has drawn mea culpas from the Secret Service, launched a grand jury investigation and sparked criticism of social secretary Desiree Rogers, a longtime Chicago confidante of the first couple.
“The state dinner was an outstanding success. It’s just the follow-up after it. I look at the reporting on the state dinner and go, ‘Is that all that happened?’ Really. Because I sat in a phenomenal dinner where the prime minister and his wife were, felt, so connected to the United States, and they were so proud to be there. And the evening was so wonderful and it was so well orchestrated,” she said.
“For me the other stuff that everyone is talking about is a footnote to what the state dinner actually was. So I wouldn’t do that over.”
The first lady dismissed the suggestion that the security breach had left her especially unnerved.
“We have dealt with the Secret Service for many years now, because, I mean, Barack got Secret Service during the course of the campaign,” she said. “These folks are good at what they do. But, with that said, the White House and the Secret Service are working to ensure that processes are in place so that something like that never happens again. And you know, I agree.”
That work includes close scrutiny of the Office of the Social Secretary.
“When I say the White House, I mean everyone in the White House,” she said.
She also played down Reid’s remarks.
“Harry Reid had no need to apologize to me. Because I know Harry Reid. I measure people more so on what they do, rather than the things that they say,” she said.
But issues related to race, particularly relating to her historic role as the nation’s first African-American first lady, are not something she takes lightly. “You feel this palpability of the change throughout the house and throughout the country,” she said. It’s all part of the ongoing conversation about race that didn’t end with the election of an African-American president, she said.
“The problems aren’t solved,” she said. “But we’re still new at this. Civil rights, the movement, happened in my lifetime. It feels like it’s been a long time, but it hasn’t.
“My great-great-great-grandmother was actually a slave. We’re still very connected to slavery in a way that’s very powerful. . . . That’s my grandfather’s grandmother. That’s not very far away. I could have known that woman.
“We need to keep having conversations until we get it right.”
