Differing with Dana Milbank . . .

Garden season is here. It's time to plant early spring vegetables, peas, greens, broccoli. Yesterday, Michelle Obama was out digging up the White House lawn again and planting seeds with a bunch of school children.

You go, First Lady! I thought.

So this morning, when I read Dana Milbank's "Washington Sketch," I scratched my head. He called it Michelle Obama's garden-variety agenda, and he seemed to me to be taking the First Lady to task for futzing around and not jumping into more controversial topics.

Here's an excerpt:

Also hard to imagine is that this is the same Michelle Obama so many feared when her husband ran for the presidency in 2008. Then, many predicted that she would be an angry and divisive presence in the White House, based largely on unfounded racial accusations on the Internet and her poorly worded boast during the primaries that "for the first time in my adult life, I'm really proud of my country."

Compared with those expectations of a fiery first lady, Obama, beginning her second spring in the White House, has turned out to be Michelle Milquetoast.. . .She has shied from controversy, made relatively few public appearances, and stuck to an unobjectionable agenda of nutrition, exercise and good parenting. It is a domestic agenda -- extremely domestic. . . . Obama has been almost demure in her pronouncements.. . .

Avoiding controversy helps Obama keep her sky-high public standing. An Associated Press poll this month found her favorability rating at 71 percent -- substantially better than those of her husband and her two predecessors as first lady. But her low profile also means that she's been underutilized as an advocate of the president's agenda.

Wednesday, with two public events on her schedule, was a relatively big day for Obama. The issues were laudable -- workplace flexibility for parents and healthy eating for children -- but offered no possibility that the first lady would make news. 

October 20, 20092009 - Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images North America 

Hmmmmmm.
Mr. Milbank, a couple of things I'd like to take issue with. . . .

1. In your column you seem to be finding fault with an agenda comprised of  "nutrition, exercise and good parenting." And, with respect, I'd like to ask you if you've poked your head inside a public school recently and seen the physical shape a lot (not all, by any means) of the next generation of Americans is in? Don't they need someone to tell them to quit eating junk food and get moving.
2. As for  making an issue out of "good parenting,"  Mrs. Obama can either travel around making speeches about it or do it. From a great distance away from the private life of the First Family, it seems to me Mrs. Obama leads in that department by example.
3. Doesn't your finding fault with her for not speaking out on more controversial topics that would make the news, speak more to our American addiction to controversy than to Mrs. Obama's good use of her time? 
4. And finally, we didn't elect her President, we elected her husband. Could it not be that, in these (hopefully) liberated days, rather than appearing in public as a kind of husband stand-in and political agenda cheerleader, Mrs. Obama wants to carry on as much the same person she was before the election. Which, in my opinion, sounds pretty durn healthy.

And finally, as a personal aside, and speaking as a card-carrying Boomer feminist, who builds a busy schedule around her "sacred gym time," because she considers it an investment in her health and productivity, I cannot tell you how good it is to have a President's wife who's unashamed to be physically strong and fit.

Anyone else want to chime in?

Michelle Obama's right to bare arms and other stylish questions. . .

A year ago, when we were all still getting comfortable with President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama’s personal style, there was quite a lot of journalistic clucking about Michelle Obama’s arms; that they were so strong and so often on display.

And this clucking came not just from narrowly focused fashionistas, but from the astutely focused pundit—and frequent NPR presence—David Brooks. His discomfort with Ms. Obama’s public display of biceps was ratted out by fellow New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd in a Sunday column she titled "Should Michelle Cover Up?" Ms. Dowd and Mr. Brooks were on their way to the British Embassy . . .

In the taxi, when I asked David Brooks about her [Mrs. Obama's] amazing arms, he indicated it was time for her to cover up. “She’s made her point,” he said. “Now she should put away Thunder and Lightning.”

So what, exactly, was our initial problem with Ms. Obama’s naked arms? Could it have been that we, the American people, were being asked to cope with one style adjustment too many?

Barack Obama, as a candidate, had famously declared America wanted change. Obviously, we voters agreed with him, having had enough of being governed by sartorially conservative, rather prudish people. The Bush Tribe was nothing, if not predictable in their personal style. Remember Attorney General John Ashcroft draping the semi-nude statues in the Great Hall of Justice because he wasn’t comfortable being photographed with them?

First Lady Laura Bush dressed perfectly for her role as that administration’s head spouse -- no non-traditionally naked arms on display for her! Indeed, Mrs. Bush presented us with no fashion surprises of any kind. She understood First Ladies as institutions on two feet, not as fashion forward women who use clothes to give us some sense of who they are.

Of course, we didn't elect Michelle Obama, we elected her husband. And Barack Obama comes with a personal style as well; not so much in what he wears as in how he goes about doing business. We threw out a President who many thought shot from his hip (and was famously ill at ease listening to contrary opinions), for one who has positioned himself as a consensus builder, one who asks us all to be patient while he takes time to be well-informed himself and gives others time to become equally well-informed. President Barack Obama seems to really expect politicians to stop worrying about re-election long enough to actually accomplish things.

Dana Millbank, whom I think watched the entire Health Care Summit, has an interesting column in this morning's Washington Post, called "Obama needs to flex his political muscle," in which he contrasts Gordon Brown's and Bush II's political style (which he sees as bullying) with President Obama's more measured approach:

Here in America, however, we can only watch this [Gordon Brown's bullying] behavior with envy. Our president is not a bully; in fact, he is the victim of bullying. He is bullied by Republicans on health care. He is bullied by congressional Democrats on everything. He is bullied by his own Cabinet. Dick Cheney pauses in his bullying of Obama only for the occasional heart attack.

Admittedly, the allegations against Brown have only hastened his political decline, and there's no need for Obama to start kicking furniture and throwing BlackBerrys at people, as Brown stands accused of doing. Still, it wouldn't hurt for the occupant of the bully pulpit to show some force of will.

His predecessor got a narrowly divided Congress to pass his tax cuts, authorize the Iraq war and give him the Patriot Act, not through logic or eloquence but by bludgeoning, intimidating and threatening holdouts (remember Jim Jeffords or Max Cleland?). Lawmakers weren't swayed by George W. Bush's arguments; they feared retribution.

The problems that plague this country are terribly complex and terribly serious. It seems evident that "talking point" politics are unhelpful in addressing them, yet we Americans seem drastically uncomfortable with anything else. Obama's popularity numbers continue to plummet as he continues to try to work with the people who oppose his ideas, often (it seems) for purely political reasons. He began the year with a 50% approval rating down from 68% last March.

It's a given that we are all worried and all concerned about the country's future as well as our own. My question is what, exactly, do we want this President to do that he is not doing? Are we simply uncomfortable with Barack Obama's consensus-building style?  Do we really want government by political bullying?

Michelle Obama, by the way, has a 78% approval rating. Which means, I guess, that we have gotten quite comfortable with "Thunder and Lightning."