WASHINGTON — Vogue magazine, the fashion world’s chronicler of first ladies, bedecked Hillary Rodham Clinton in black velvet and Laura Bush in blue silk. But not Michelle Obama. She insisted on choosing her own dress (a sleeveless, magenta silk number) and using her own hair and makeup stylists for the glossy photograph splashed across Vogue’s March cover.

This was nothing new for Mrs. Obama, who has pointedly controlled her look on the covers of People, Essence, More and O, Oprah Winfrey’s magazine. Editors at Essence, who suggested colors, styles and accessories, said her staff did not call to acknowledge their overtures. Editors at More said they were dumbfounded when, after painstaking negotiations, Mrs. Obama showed up at the photo shoot with a different dress from the one she had promised to wear. (She ultimately agreed to go back to her first choice, a pink Maria Pinto sheath.)

“We were like, ‘Excuse me, we tell you what to wear,’ ” said Lesley Jane Seymour, the editor-in-chief of More, who said Mrs. Obama refused to wear anything other than her own clothes for their October cover. “She wanted none of that. She was creating the cover. She was creating the image. There’s definitely a will of steel there.”

Indeed, the new first lady is methodically shaping her public image, and in ways that extend far beyond fashion.

She has given coveted interviews primarily to women’s magazines and news outlets that have allowed her to highlight her domestic side: her focus on motherhood and her efforts to settle her family in the White House; her interest in gardening and healthy living; her affinity for mixing off-the-rack and designer goods; and her efforts to open up the White House to ordinary Americans.

Mrs. Obama’s aides meet regularly with the president’s senior communications team and select public events that will maximize her message. She sticks closely to her script, delivering lively, brief speeches that rarely stray from her prepared remarks and steer clear of controversy. She talks about her support for volunteerism and military families, but seldom discusses race, her keen interest in influencing public policy or her place in history as the first African-American first lady.

By focusing on her domestic persona and harnessing the fascination with her family, the first lady and her communications team have emerged as the key architects of one of the most remarkable political transformations in years. Only 10 months ago, Mrs. Obama was described as an angry black woman by some conservatives and as a liability to her husband. Now, she is widely admired for her warmth, and her vibrant and accessible manner, and her race seems almost an afterthought to many Americans. She has the highest favorability ratings of any incoming first lady since 1980, and is even more popular than the president.

Obama administration officials say this shift has occurred organically as more people have had the opportunity to see and hear the first lady for themselves rather than through the lenses of her critics.

But David Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser, does not deny that the efforts of the first lady’s team — headed by communications director Camille Johnston and press secretary Katie McCormick Lelyveld — have also influenced perceptions.

“I wouldn’t say we’re trying to soften her,” Mr. Axelrod said. “But is there an effort to get people to know her? Yes. We want people to know her. There were caricatures of her during part of the campaign.”

“Those interviews are valuable,” he said of Mrs. Obama’s conversations with celebrity and women’s magazines, “because they tend to focus on her as a person and that’s important for people to know.”

The image that Mrs. Obama is projecting, however, fails to fully reflect the multifaceted first lady. A Harvard-trained lawyer and former hospital vice president, she is also a tough-minded professional who cares deeply about influencing public policy and sometimes promotes legislation at her events. Her top aides, for example, are often immersed in policy discussions in the West Wing that are not publicized by the White House.

Mrs. Obama’s chief of staff attends the morning meeting run by Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, and her policy director often sits in on weekly briefings with the president’s domestic policy adviser.

Mrs. Obama’s aides are working with the president’s domestic policy team to help develop strategies to support working parents. And they weighed in on the selection of the recently nominated chief executive of Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, the national service agency that has been allotted $1.1 billion in the president’s budget, administration officials say.

In fact, Mrs. Obama is so passionate about national service that she recently buttonholed a senior lawmaker at a White House dinner and urged him to move quickly out of committee the legislation intended to expand AmeriCorps. (The president signed that legislation into law this week.)

Some people who know Mrs. Obama lament that this side of her is so rarely on public display. Some blame the news media for being more interested in her exercise routines than in her thinking on big issues. Others believe that her aides are placating those voters who prefer more traditional first ladies.

“We’re not getting all of Michelle Obama, and that’s a shame,” said Connie Schultz, a journalist and author whose husband, Senator Sherrod Brown, the Ohio Democrat, is friendly with the president.

“It’s the softer, domestic side that we’re seeing, which appeals to a lot of people,” Ms. Schultz said. “But a lot of us are cheering her on and hoping we’re going to hear more from that public policy side of Michelle Obama. Maybe it’s the old-fashioned feminist in me. I want to keep celebrating that brain.”

Mrs. Obama has declined to sit for wide-ranging interviews with several newspapers, including this one, preferring to focus on particular themes. (She gave The New York Times an exclusive interview about the White House vegetable garden, for instance.)

Some political analysts believe Mrs. Obama hopes that her surging popularity will ultimately allow her greater latitude to operate more openly in policy realms that she cares about.

“She’s building up enormous goodwill,” said Paul Costello, who served as an adviser to the former first lady Rosalynn Carter. With such strong support, Mr. Costello said, she might ultimately feel confident enough to “push the envelope.”

For now, Mrs. Obama seems perfectly comfortable with her public persona.

After joking in January that her new job “doesn’t pay much,” Mrs. Obama now typically describes the job of first lady as the best in the White House, saying that even her husband is often jealous of what she gets to do.

“I don’t have to deal with the hard problems every day,” she told a group of schoolchildren this week. “I get to do the fun stuff.”

The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
Published: April 24, 2009