What Will Michelle Obama, America’s Celebrity First Lady, Do After the White House?
Michelle Obama has achieved a lot in her historic term as the nation’s inaugural African-American First Lady a banner that arguably earned her greater scrutiny than previous title holders.
She overcame food industry giants like Walmart and McDonald’s to enact concrete changes as part of her Let’s Move! initiative, even strong-arming the F.D.A. into making the first significant innovation to its nutritional labels in over 20 years.She founded other initiatives like Reach Higher, Joining Forces, and Let Girls Learn, and embraced social-media platforms to spread her messages farther than any previous FLOTUS was capable. She also modernized the First Lady position by making herself more relatable to the public she serves wearing J. Crew, shopping at Target, and quipping about the President’s bad habits.
Beyond these triumphs, though, Michelle Obama has earned an ephemeral quality that separates her from previous First Ladies—the kind of je-ne-sais-quoi cool that has allowed this FLOTUS to eclipse her role as a political spouse and become a full-on celebrity or, as the Harvard Business Review crowed, “a hit, a star in her own right.” She has the style and poise of Jackie Kennedy but with the empathy of Oprah and the easy charisma of Julia Roberts.
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What Will Michelle Obama, America’s Celebrity First Lady, Do After the White House?
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And while most First Ladies tend to stay First Ladies for the rest of their lives—weirdly frozen in the amber of their husband’s presidency—Michelle Obama does not seem a likely candidate for shrinking into Secret-Service-protected retirement. And now that she has fulfilled her historically significant supporting role, gathering a worthy social-media following in the process, what will this already trailblazing First Lady do once she steps into the spotlight?
Practically speaking, she literally can’t afford not to pursue a lucrative next step. “She has no income right now,” points out Kate Andersen Brower, the author of First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies. While the President earns a six-digit, Congress-stipulated salary each year, the First Lady is the nation’s most glaring example of wage-gap inequity, earning no money in spite of her tireless schedule and the fact that the First Couple pays for myriad White House expenses including food for themselves and guests, dry cleaning, and staff members’ overtime.
Hillary Clinton controversially told Diane Sawyer that she and her husband left the White House “not only dead broke but in debt.” And the Obamas, without the family fortunes of other former White House residents like the Bushes, will likely be in a similar financial situation.
According to Brower, though, even without the financial impetus, Obama would have likely rejoined the paid working ranks anyway considering that she was not especially thrilled to halt her own high-powered career as a hospital executive to become First Lady.
“That’s one thing people told me she was very upset about: Michelle worked her entire adult life and then had to give it all up,” said Brower, who spoke to many Obama insiders while researching her book. “It’s really frustrating and isolating in the White House, and a lot of these women are really unhappy there.
I think partially it’s because, especially for modern first ladies, they can’t continue their jobs . . . I think she spent eight years feeling like she was in this prison.” (Indeed, Obama was so thrilled to be allowed in a car without Secret Service to film James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke” that she said she told the talk-show host, ‘Let’s keep driving!’ I think we drove around the South Lawn about 100 times.”)
The first career venture Obama (the White House declined to comment for this story) will likely announce once she leaves the White House is a memoir, following in the footsteps of every First Woman since Betty Ford. “I’m sure she will write a best-selling book, and I can almost bet that she has picked a ghostwriter and is ready to go,” says Brower, who has heard that Joe Biden has locked up a book deal that is ready to be announced come January. “I would be shocked if she didn’t have a book in the works already.
The money that she could generate would be astounding.” (Because of ethics rules, the president, vice president, and FLOTUS are prohibited from formally mulling over post-White House career options while in office. They can, however, have theoretical discussions with various agents and political power brokers who can help steer the next chapter of their professional lives.)
Indeed, the New York Times reported that the Obamas’ post-presidency book contracts “could amount to $20 million to $45 million” combined. Raphael Sagalyn of ICM/Sagalyn Literary Agency also forecasted that FLOTUS “has the opportunity to sell the most valuable first lady memoir in history.” She could also outsell her husband’s memoir, which would not be the first time a First Lady did so but would be the first time a First Lady was allowed to broadcast that she did so. Says Brower, “Betty Ford’s book outsold her husband’s and they actually even had to bundle the book deal together so that no one would know that the advance she got was more than her husband’s.”
“I just don’t think she can ever return to any semblance of a normal life.”
The variable with the memoir, says Brower, is not if Obama will write one but how forthcoming she will be about her experience—a careful line to toe between maintaining her authenticity and preserving her husband’s legacy. Last year, Obama ventured into more candid territory, delivering a powerful and personal commencement speech about the frustrations of race and the struggles she and her husband faced, even once reaching the White House.
This past July, Obama delivered the Democratic National Convention’s most moving speech, memorably declaring, “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. And I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent black young women, playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.” According to Brower, Obama may have only scratched the surface of her true feelings in those rousing monologues.
“In my book I talk a lot about how she couldn’t relate to a lot of other first ladies because she is this historic first African-American first lady,” says Brower. “She didn’t feel that their experiences were the same and that people were looking to her to make a mistake. I think she will always be protective of her husband’s legacy though, and I don’t think you will see her say anything really controversial.”
As Obama’s star has grown, however, it seems as though the First Lady has more and more embraced her public platform. Following her D.N.C. speech, CNN’s David Axelrod noted Obama’s incredible progression from “a reluctant conscript on the public scene” to a woman capable of “command[ing] the stage.”
NPR similarly praised her transition “from political spouse to pop culture icon,” a sentiment supported by her consistently high approval ratings and popularity. Indicating how much control Obama has over the zeitgeist, even with her husband’s partisan affiliation, Forbes determined this year that FLOTUS still ranks higher than Oprah, Anna Wintour, and Queen Elizabeth in its annual list of most powerful women.
While attached to a politically polarizing figure like the President, Michelle Obama also still has the kind of prestige influence—much like a Kate Middleton—to tangibly move markets. In 2010, New York University business professor David Yermack, calculated that Obama’s fashion choices alone have driven $2.7 billion to the retail sector—with companies seeing “a 2.3 percent stock gain when she dons their products—five times that of a typical celebrity endorsement.”
That statistic alone suggests Obama has the kind of impact to become a tastemaker on par with Oprah, or even a lifestyle-brand empress like Gwyneth Paltrow. Certainly there are enough members of the American public who aspire to be more like the First Lady in the fields of intelligence, style, and arm definition for her to build a successful lifestyle company. (She could even team up with the up-and-coming American fashion designers she championed while at the White House for a landmark—and not totally ludicrous-sounding, at least in this age of celebrity-branded overkill—FLOTUS-backed fashion line.)
But Obama has been clear that she will stay on a route befitting a former First Lady, telling Robin Roberts earlier this year that she will put her carefully cultivated clout to use civically—with the next chapter of her career being “mission-based, service-focused.” She and her husband have already announced the Obama Foundation, selected architects to build the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, and launched a Web site vowing that “eight years is only the beginning.”
Brower adds that, in addition to the causes Obama advocated during her White House term, insiders have told her that the first couple will likely “pursue urban issues that affect Chicago in particular and underserved communities like that—gun control being one of them . . . which is a really controversial issue and one that a First Lady could never touch. She cares a lot about nuclear nonproliferation.
I see them doing something akin to what the Carters did with the Carter Center and what the Clintons did with the Global Initiative—kind of a charity that also deals with urban issues in the U.S.” But what will Obama do in addition to her memoir and philanthropic work?
In acknowledgement of the First Lady’s unique on-camera ease, Marie Claire floated the idea that Obama might parlay her star power into a talk show earlier this year—envisioning a series that “would have the political/cultural commentary of Melissa Harris-Perry, the searing in-depth interviews of Barbara Walters, and a healthy dash of Michelle’s own talk show prowess.” As irresistible as that may seem, an agency insider with experience transitioning White House residents out of the capital who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the situation does not think such a professional pit stop is likely, even if Obama decides that is the route she wants to take.
“Could Michelle Obama do [a talk show]? She could,” the insider tells Vanity Fair. But her partisan affiliation might prevent a network from gambling on her.”
Brower concurs that this step, although tantalizing, is one best left to Michelle Obama fan-fiction writers. She has not heard any murmurs of such a possibility but admits, “I think [Obama] could do something like that if she wanted to . . . She’s so great on TV and so accessible and relatable and that’s what sets her apart from a Melania Trump.
She is just someone middle class women especially can relate to.” Other considerations preclude such a venture—for one, the couple is going to stay in D.C. for another two years until Sasha finishes school. (Brower has heard that the Obamas will then move to New York “because there will be more anonymity there for them.”) Frankly though, appearing as a regular talk-show host seems beneath a First Lady of the United States who seems to have the qualifications to run the entire channel. And, having found that sweet spot of celebrity that helps her causes but keeps her out of the tabloids, she has no need to set foot on some studio set—especially since she will likely have far more lucrative (and less time-consuming) job offers on the table.
In addition to the memoir, Obama will also likely embark on paid speaking tours to foreign governments, colleges, universities, and trade associations. Forbes estimates that Hillary Clinton was able to earn a tidy sum from such endeavors, grossing a reported $9 million from speaking in 2013 alone.
And, according to the aforementioned agency insider with knowledge of early conversations, Obama will be able to earn about $100,000 per speaking engagement—the same as her husband and roughly double Joe Biden’s. Post-presidential speaking circuits are cushy—comprising a 30- or 45-minute speech and question-and-answer session in exchange for the hefty fee, paid travel, and private-jet transportation each way for them and the staffers accompanying them.
If Obama is as successful as Clinton, she could still be making a lucrative income 15 or so years after leaving the White House. (The New York Times reported that Clinton earned “more than $5 million in royalties for her 2014 memoir, Hard Choices, and roughly $1.5 million delivering speeches in 2015.” While her job opportunities come January are rarified, prestigious, and lucrative, Obama—down-to-Earth celebrity that she is—is expertly communicating that the civilian perks are what she is looking forward to most, like those shopping trips to Target, open windows in the house, and the chance to sit on a lawn that is not a national park.
It is precisely this authenticity and relatability that helped her husband reach the White House and will only snowball her celebrity once she moves out. Although reclaiming normalcy is the only ambition Obama is really going on record with, though, it is also sadly the only impossibility for her. “Being a former First Lady is definitely easier, but you still have Secret Service,” says Brower. “Especially with the Obamas, who receive all of these crazy threats . . . I just don’t think she can ever return to any semblance of a normal life.”
She will however be a little freer, without the tricky constraints of First Lady-dom burdening her. And, as the hands-down coolest FLOTUS in American history exiting the White House at the apex of celebrity culture, her transition out of public office will be unprecedented.
She’s redefined and empowered a position that has lingered in the the shadow of the president for centuries. And, having ticked off her historically significant supporting role, she can trail-blaze in full leading-lady capacity—certainly giving Oprah and Beyoncé a run for their money in terms of influence, impact, and inspiration to young women encouraged by her example.
Says Brower, “People on her staff tell me that she is never more excited than when she is talking to girls from lower middle class and underserved communities,” says Brower. “She’s from a humble, working-class background . . . and being able to tell them that they can do whatever they want to in life too is incredibly fulfilling.”
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