Can Michelle Obama really rescue Barack's toxic legacy?

Barack Obama might be electoral strychnine to many Democrats hoping to keep their seats in next months’ mid-term elections, but the Obama name is not so toxic when attached to the other half of the duo that once re-made the face of American politics.

At least that is what Democrat strategists fervently hope as Michelle Obama hits the campaign trail ahead of polling day in next month’s midterm elections, where Democrats are desperately trying to cling onto control of the US Senate.

Mrs Obama has never made any secret of her low opinion of America’s big-money, schoolyard politics.

But she has taken to the stump with renewed vigour this month as she seeks to defend her husband’s embattled presidency.

But will it be enough to save the Democratic majority in the Senate and – perhaps more importantly to Michelle – her husband’s reputation for delivering change?

-Photo:AP

It’s still all about Barack…

The pundits might have dismissed Barack Obama as the electoral liability that dare not speak its name, but Michelle is not keeping quiet. She clearly feels some people need reminding about her husband’s achievements in dragging the country back from the brink of a new Great Depression.

“By almost every economic measure, we are better off today than when Barack first took office,” she tells a crowd in Denver, “And while, yes, I’m his wife - I love him, I am proud of my husband, he’s doing a phenomenal job - I say this because I have some facts. So let me share some facts with you, because sometimes we don’t deal in facts.”

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Unfortunately people hear the 'facts', but do not feel them...

Cue a laundry list of economic achievements culled from Mr Obama’s own recent series of speech on the economy – 10 million new jobs created since 2010; taxes cut for tens of millions of working families; unemployment down from 10 per cent to 6 per cent...

But she omits the facts that matter to ordinary Americans, who know that median household incomes are down 4 per cent, whose jobs come with few benefits and whose university education costs are soaring… while the dividend a university degree pays is dwindling.

-Photo:Getty

And some nostalgia for the good times lost...

Mrs Obama was always a reluctant campaigner and has never hidden her disdain for the big-money politics that create permanent gridlock in Washington and – as she sees it - thwart her husband’s dreams for America.

Her husband’s presidency might have two years to run, but already there is a note of wistfulness in her voice. Mrs Obama can’t help but hark back to a time, not so long ago, when it felt so different.

“I’m here because I want to thank all of you. Really. So many of you have been with us from the very beginning - back when we were talking about hope and change, and getting fired up and ready to go…”

Fires that Mrs Obama is trying to rekindle...

The First Lady has attended 14 campaign events in nine different states in October, bringing her celebrity to bear on Democrat efforts to drum up turnout among the key Obama constituencies: women, minorities and young people.

And while Barack’s 40 per cent approval rating means his stock is at an all-time low, Mrs Obama’s still rides high at more than 60 per cent, making her one of the most popular figures in American politics.

In Senate races like Colorado, where the 2010 Senate election was settled by just 14,000 votes, Mrs Obama’s ability to draw a crowd and fire up Democrat voters could make all the difference according to Peter Hanson, professor of politics at Denver University.

“The Democrats’ ability to win in Colorado right now depends on their ability to mobilise voters,” says Prof Hanson, “And Mrs Obama is extraordinarily effective in mobilizing the Democratic base, because if they lose on turn out, then they lose the election.”

But there have been some slip-ups along the way…

She’s passionate about Barack, but doesn’t always appear to have done her homework on the lesser mortals – like Representative Bruce Braley, an accident-prone candidate for Senate in Iowa, the state whose caucuses have an outsized impact on presidential elections.

Short of name-recognition and lagging behind in a race that could decide who controls the Senate for the last two years of Mr Obama’s presidency, Mr Braley must have been overjoyed to see a bit of star-power come to the rescue of his troubled campaign.

Until, that is, Mrs Obama spent an entire event calling him “Bruce Bailey”

She's not the first First Lady to go to bat for her man...

Historically speaking, Mrs Obama is following something of a tradition being the more palatable face of an unpopular presidency.

Back in 1998 Hillary Clinton vented her fury at her husband’s sordid affair with Monica Lewinsky by campaigning in 20 states that year’s midterms when Bill was fighting impeachment back in Washington. She earned both sympathy and respect.

Less high profile, but equally dogged, Laura Bush performed similarly for an unpopular George W. Bush in 2006 as he struggled with the fallout from the war in Iraq.

-Photo: Reuters

And she has managed to preserve her own popularity...

In a polity as divided as America these days there will always be Michelle Obama haters. Her better eating programmes have won widespread admiration, but not always from the kids forced to eat her healthy school dinners.

They call her a ‘food cop’ – and worse – for taking away their French fries, and tweet out sympathy-seeking pictures of their miserable-looking dinners, which Conservatives cite as evidence that the First Mom has gone a step too far.

But in a country where childhood obesity has doubled in a generation, it’s hard to really argue against the need to get America in shape. And Mrs O has a knack for looking pretty cool as she does it – cool, that is, for a 50-year-old mom.

And speaking of staying fit...

Michelle has also practiced what she preached, putting in the hours at the Solidcore total body workouts in the Adams Morgan district of Washington DC, which is just as well for in her line of work, the fashion police are always out to get you…

But it isn't all about cosmetics...

Listen to Michelle Obama and – love her or hate her (as some do) – it is clear that while she might disparage the business of politics, she still cares about the change to people’s lives that the vote business can bring.

On the stump she tells the story of children like “Lawrence” who lost both his parents before he was 12 but fought to better himself, waking up early to “take the long route to school to avoid the gangs”, juggling afterschool jobs and still staying up late to get his homework done…

“If you want to know the thing that keeps me and Barack going, it’s thinking about our kids in this country,” she says, “Because we know these kids. They’re everywhere, and they’re counting on us.”

-Photo: Getty

Facing the last election of her husband’s presidency, Mrs Obama promises to fight on and fight to win. But more and more her speech is tinged with bitterness and regret these days: bitterness at the deadlock and regret that the great promise of “hope and change” could not deliver more.

Curated for the web by David Lawler