WASHINGTON — First Lady Michelle Obama is staging picture-perfect photo ops on her tour of China — but back home, her East Wing office is fraught with tension and anxiety, according to a new insider account.
Her office “can be a confining, frustrating, even miserable place to work,” writes former White House press assistant Reid Cherlin in an article in The New Republic.
“Jealousy and discontentment have festered, as courtiers squabble over the allocation of responsibility and access to Mrs. Obama, both of which can be aggravatingly scarce,” he continues.
Michelle Obama has a strong approval rating (69 percent in a February Gallup poll), is a fundraising asset, and has generated considerable publicity for her pet causes, which include healthy eating and exercise, and finding jobs for returning vets.
But Cherlin, who also worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, describes a strong measure of discord behind the feel-good initiatives. He compares the rollout of her “Drink Up” initiative encouraging people to imbibe more water to an episode of the TV show “Veep” for its hiccups.
An unidentified former aide says of the level of staff anxiety: “There’s no barometer: The first lady having the wrong pencil skirt on Monday is just as big of a f–k-up as someone speaking on the record when they didn’t mean to or a policy initiative that completely failed.”
A White House official blasted “tiresome” palace intrigue, without addressing the substance of the accusation.
“The first lady is focused on making progress on the issues that matter to our families in a way that yields results — whether it’s education, keeping our kids healthy and seeing childhood obesity rates drop, or making sure our veterans and their families are supported as hundreds of thousands of vets get employed again,” said the official.
“We will keep focusing on helping her implement that agenda, and leave the uninformed opinions and tiresome palace intrigue portrayals to others,” the official added.
One problem Cherlin identified — not usually considered a glaring flaw in politics — is a strain of perfectionism in the ways of the Princeton/Harvard Law-trained former hospital exec.
Obama told her staff, according to people familiar with the meeting: “We don’t have to do anything, so anything we decide to do, we need to do really, really well.”
An ex-staffer said, “It would take a really creative staffer to work within that environment and be successful.”
The account mentions chief of staff Tina Tchen, who is traveling with Obama in China this week, along with her predecessor, Susan Sher, as both having emphasized “competence and conflict-avoidance over grand vision.”
“Most important, both were comfortable taking orders from Valerie Jarrett, the first lady’s self-appointed enforcer and avatar,” he writes.
In China Tuesday, Obama dined on hot pot cuisine at a traditional Sichuan restaurant and viewed performances of Sichuan opera and traditional dance.
Meeting with students in Chengdu, she participated in a tai chi demonstration.
