Hail to the Queen!
(NewsOK) — President Obama famously claimed to know more about policy than his policy directors, but he didn’t mention First Lady Michelle Obama, who comprises one half of a “stealth co-presidency” according to a new book on the Obamas.
Michelle Obama practically vetoed the choice of Hillary Clinton serving as vice president. “Do you really want Bill and Hillary just down the hall from you in the White House?” she asked Barack Obama, according to Edward Klein’s The Amateur, who says that a New York State Democratic Party official told him “‘Michelle certainly played a role’ in selecting Joe Biden.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor owes a debt of gratitude to Mrs. Obama, as well. “The First Lady thought Sotomayor had all those . . . qualities her husband was looking for in an appointee,” Klein quotes “a confidant” as saying. “Barack has always listened to what she has to say.”
Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was almost forced out of his job by the first lady after Obama sustained the embarrassment of campaigning for a doomed Martha Coakley in Massachusetts, whose loss to Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., cost the Democrats their super-majority in the Senate.
“Michelle told the president that he needed a new team of advisers, starting with Rahm Emanuel,” Klein writes. “‘She feels as if our rudder isn’t set right,’ the president told his aides. When Emanuel heard that, he strode into the Oval Office and submitted his resignation. It was turned down. But by then Emanuel’s days were numbered.”