I've learned that the best political reporters never make predictions!

People who face too many demands - two careers, two children - often scale back somehow. The Obamas scaled up.

Michelle Obama is somebody who really wants to take the high road.

Michelle Obama has mostly stuck to pretty anodyne topics. She's anti-childhood obesity, she's pro-veteran.

Candidates' wives are supposed to sit cheerfully through their husbands' appearances.

The Michelle Obama that her old friends remember, that people knew in Chicago, she was a really incisive social critic. She knew how to drive an argument home. People liked her both in the workplace and socially because she was so frank.

You make real progress when somebody is honest enough to say something that's really uncomfortable. Of course when you're a candidate's wife and when you're first lady and the first African-American first lady to boot, that is very, very hard to do.