Abe, the problem with the Obama campaign’s effort to remake Michelle Obama goes beyond her gaffes and attacks on America. Another problem for the campaign is that Michelle Obama’s life story runs counter to Barack Obama’s effort to defuse race as an issue. Where he proclaimed in his 2004 Democratic convention keynote address that “[t]here’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America,” she does not see America as one nation or Americans as one people. Race is the centerpiece of her self-identification. With no apparent irony, the Times notes

. . . she has spent much of her adult life trying to address racial resentment.

In her freshman year at Princeton, a white roommate’s mother agitated for her daughter to swap rooms. Mrs. Obama was among a handful of blacks at a prestigious Chicago law firm. As a hospital executive, she navigated the often tense line between a predominantly white-run institution and a suspicious black community.

In fact, Michelle Obama’s life is a case study in affirmative action. I don’t mean that as an insult, at all–I think Michelle would admit as much and proponents would point to her as a shining example of affirmative action’s success. At every step of her career, race has been central to her own identification and upward mobility. Judging from the quality of thinking and writing exhibited in her Princeton thesis, Michelle would not likely have been admitted to Princeton (and later Harvard Law) had she been white. And of course affirmative action opened up jobs, first in a prestigious law firm and later as the vice president of community affairs at the University of Chicago medical center-earning $300,000 a year. She made it her first task at the hospital to steer more contracts to minority contractors. “She revised the contracting system, sending so much business to firms owned by women and other minorities that the hospital won awards,” the Times says.

But Michelle’s story may not sit well with the very voters her husband must win in order to become president. Affirmative action, though well-entrenched in American society, is still controversial. Only 27% of whites now support affirmative action if it means giving preference to minorities, while 57% of blacks favor such support, according to an analysis of polling data by Pew Research. And the gap between white disapproval and black support for affirmative action preferences has remained wide for decades. It will take more than

a subtle makeover, with a new speech in the works to emphasize her humble roots and a tough new chief of staff

to turn Michelle Obama from a symbol of affirmative action into her husband’s partner in transcending race.

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