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Michelle Obama comes on strong, but what's next?

Maria Puente, USA TODAY
First lady Michelle Obama champions one of her key causes — fighting childhood obesity — Friday at a summit held in Washington by the Partnership for a Healthier America. She is the group's honorary chairwoman.
  • Michelle Obama was first-term success but what about the next%3F
  • Some say she is overexposed%2C appearing everywhere from TV talk shows to the Oscars
  • It%27s clear she%27ll continue to support military families and the fight against childhood obesity

She's already danced on TV with Jimmy Fallon. She's dropped in at the Oscars, worked out on the White House lawn, sparkled at state dinners, become a fashion trendsetter. She's even gotten Americans to think more about what they eat. What's next for first lady Michelle Obama?

From her new bangs-and-bob hairstyle to her dance moves to her couture gowns, people can't stop talking about her — and she kind of can't be avoided. She's a master of Twitter, a star of TV talk shows, a crowd-pleaser wherever she goes.

But is she overexposed? Are we going to see even more of her on our screens in the next four years?

Granted, she did not attend Saturday night's Gridiron Dinner with the president and the Washington press corps. But no less than Saturday Night Live is joking about her ubiquity, teasing in a recent skit that the sequester budget cuts would force her to make "four television appearances a week, down from her usual 75."

Obama, who just turned 49, is fully aware of the intensity of attention to everything she does. "My bangs set off a national conversation," Obama told reporters on a recent trip, after she had joked that the bangs were her "midlife crisis." "We've got a lot of talking going on. Everybody's kitchen-table conversation is now accessible to everybody else. It's absolutely not surprising."

According to the White House, she and her staff are in the midst of strategizing how the next four years might differ, or might not, from her first term as FLOTUS, generally hailed as a rousing success with her clever blending of conventional and unconventional.

"I can't think of too much to criticize," says Anita McBride, former chief of staff to Laura Bush and now director of first-lady studies at American University in Washington. "Is she pushing the envelope? Not for her. I think she's clearly found her footing."

It's not as if Obama had a lot of training. A lawyer and non-profit executive, she was not a longtime political wife, never lived in Washington, didn't do politics, didn't even much want her husband to run for president.Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker writes that Obama is having fun as the star of her own movie. "She isn't just breaking the mold; she's shattering the good china. The Madonna of first ladies, she is emerging as an iconoclastic, self-reinventing woman who clearly doesn't mind shaking the firmament."

Since 2009, her East Wing has undergone typical staff upheavals: She is on her third chief of staff, her second press secretary, her second communications director and her third social secretary (who is, for the first time, a man).

But she adapted to the undefined job of first lady like a pro, say those who have watched her. Polls show she's become one of the most popular, admired women in the world, able to persuade kids to eat their vegetables or make an unknown fashion designer like Jason Wu a global star.

"She's been a tremendous success. I don't know of any who had more success with a White House initiative," says Myra Gutin, a dean of first-lady historians and professor of communication at Rider University in New Jersey.

Obama has done all the traditional, popular first-lady things — adopted causes, hosted the grand, good and glittery at the White House, raised millions for her husband. But she has gone, repeatedly, where no first lady has gone before, especially on social media, which largely didn't exist for her predecessors, and on TV, which did.

She has embraced media in ways her predecessors did not. At the same time, she maintains a loyal, non-leaking, highly controlled operation that is at least as non-transparent as the White House press corps says the West Wing is. (Except no one is complaining about it.)

Michelle Obama goes through the "Evolution of Mom-Dancing" with host Jimmy Fallon during a 'Late Night' appearance in February.

Meanwhile, she's tweeting, and even does Twitter Q&As. She hangs out on Google Hangout, has about 9.5 million "likes" on her Facebook page, and live-streams with first pooch Bo, greeting surprised tourists or reading stories to kids at the White House. The video of her wacky "Evolution of Mom-Dancing" with Fallon has more than 14.5 million views on YouTube. She tells funny stories when she goes on Jay Leno's or David Letterman's late-night chat show.

Once, Obama went to Target, to the shock of fellow shoppers.

She says she misses that freedom. ​"Going to Target for me is like a dream, you know?" she told Robin Roberts in a recent Good Morning America interview. "That one time I went, you noticed it created a stir. I'm gonna do it again, doggone it. Next four years, I'm going out. I'm breaking out. I'm gonna disguise Bo. I'm gonna put on a coat. I'm gonna take a walk, and my agents won't know a thing. Don't tell 'em!"​

This sort of thing is irresistible, say Obama trackers. "In real-life America, this woman is genuinely admired and, in an odd way, genuinely liked, even if people don't know her — she's not just a remote figure from afar," says Elizabeth Mehren, a former journalist who is now a journalism professor at Boston University. "There is a likability factor — the sense that if you sat down and had coffee with her, you'd like her."

Gutin says she first understood how much different Obama would be from her predecessors when Gutin was invited to the White House to watch her plant her now-world-famous kitchen garden with a group of Washington schoolchildren.

"There she was in her knee-level sweats, in the ground, talking to them about eating fruits and vegetables, getting dirty with everybody else," Gutin says. "I thought, well this is really pretty interesting."

Obama has been cautious, so she's made few mistakes. She's done and said nothing that could be seized as an effective cudgel against the Obama administration, along the lines of former first lady Hillary Clinton's highly contentious attempt to preside over health care policy in her husband's administration.

And yet, some people, mostly opponents of her husband, are asking, in the language of TV, has Michelle Obama jumped the shark?

"No, that's ridiculous. She's not playing a character in a '50s sitcom," scoffs Barbara Lippert, a MediaPost.com columnist who covers the intersection of the media and pop culture. Millions of viewers on YouTube can't be all wrong, Lippert adds.

"Only the worst curmudgeon would make fun of that — it was a wonderful way to show people to get moving. Plus, I bet JCrew sold a lot of that sweater set she was wearing," she says.

Obama herself says she's not bothered by criticism of her ubiquity. "I don't think about that stuff," she told reporters last week. "It doesn't have anything to do with me. Anyone in this position has a huge spotlight, and in modern-day media, the spotlight just gets more intense. I don't attribute this to me or Barack. The culture has just shifted."

It's not unusual for a first lady's comments and actions to be used against her husband, but Obama has not given opponents much to work with. Her remark during the 2008 campaign that for the first time she was "proud" of her country has faded into irrelevance, and her first-year expensive vacation in Spain with her daughters has not been repeated.

Then her drop-in at the Oscars ceremony on Feb. 24, when she announced the best-picture winner live from the White House, seemed at first to be promising for some critics: It made her vulnerable to claims that she is overexposed, Lippert says.

"It makes both the president and the first lady seem small and grasping," huffed The Washington Post's conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin. "In this case, it was just downright weird."

But not entirely unprecedented. President Reagan, a former movie star, once taped an appearance for the Oscars; former first lady Laura Bush once appeared on tape discussing movies at the Oscars; and President Franklin Roosevelt once spoke by radio at the Oscars. But never mind, even a few liberal pundits were miffed.

"Unbecoming frivolities," thundered the Post's popular metro columnist Courtland Milloy.

Elitist, declared MSNBC's Donny Deutsch, a Democrat, on CNN. "I just thought it was very, very tone-deaf, and I'm just surprised they did it."

Still, is this the best they've got?

"The people who are mean, the professional nasties — they don't have a case, so they're grasping for one," Mehren says.

But is there just ... well, too much of her? "Two billion people watched her at the Oscars, so her exposure is tremendous, and it's following on the heels of a very popular appearance on the Jimmy Fallon show, where she was clearly having fun," McBride says.

More to the point, she says, "a second term is very liberating because the campaigning is behind you," McBride says. "There is a recognition that this time period passes so quickly and there's lots to do. I think (the FLOTUS staffers) are going to evaluate the success of the programs they already have."​​

First-lady projects are designed to be non-controversial. Who could be against highway beautification or literacy? Obama chose to focus on military families and healthy eating and exercise to fight childhood obesity.

Michelle Obama announces the Best Picture Oscar from the White House during the Academy Awards telecast on Feb. 24.

She's been tireless in promoting these projects in ways that rivet public attention: She invited military families to dinners at the White House and a special inaugural ball just for them. She did push-ups with Ellen DeGeneres, cooked with Rachael Ray, goofed off at the White House with Big Bird, and donned workout togs to do jumping jacks with crowds of

kiddies on the White House lawn.

Right-wing pundits such as Rush Limbaugh have periodically assailed her anti-obesity campaign as government meddling and called her a hypocrite every time she's seen eating something tasty — pizza, short ribs, etc. — in public, but Limbaugh himself has battled to lose weight. In any case, few others have objected to her causes, even if they don't like her bangs or her fashion choices.

Obama can also point to being effective. Obesity rates among children are starting to decline, corporate titans such as Walmart have joined her crusade, healthier food options are turning up in neighborhoods where few have been spotted before. Now she's pushing to bring back more PE classes to public schools, and she enlisted Nike to provide $50 million in seed money. She's managed to sign up the likes of Beyoncé and Sesame Street to help her get kids moving.

She might adopt a new cause in the new term, but it's already clear she will continue to promote her current projects. And she'll have two teenage daughters to raise.

"But she doesn't need to come up with second act. She's doing a fine job," Mehren says.

"She's cracked the code on first ladies," says Lippert.

In her position, Obama was always going to be scrutinized. McBride says she figured out how to project a classy image at home and abroad, while "writing her own job description and being her own CEO.

"She can measure up to those who came before her."

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