Like she often did during the just-completed presidential campaign, Michelle Obama will be back at home in Chicago on Monday evening after flying to a city for a few hours on behalf of her husband’s ambitions.
Except her visit to Washington is perhaps the most meaningful of the scores of jet-setting day trips Michelle Obama took over the past 21 months. A future first lady who has put raising her daughters above all else in her new role, she will get a tour of the place where Malia and Sasha Obama will grow up for at least the next four years.
Michelle Obama has been to the White House before, but she will no doubt approach this visit with a different eye. She will get a look at the private family residence in the White House while her husband, the president-elect, meets with President Bush in the Oval Office. First lady Laura Bush will give her the tour.
Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, will not be there. But they too have been to the White House before — although they were apparently unimpressed during their 2005 visit. Michelle Obama told People magazine this summer that the girls were bored until the Bushes’ dog Barney showed up and they got to play with the Scottish terrier on the South Lawn. It was a bit of foreshadowing, given that Malia and Sasha are in the market for their own first dog, which their dad called “a pressing issue on the Obama household” during his first press conference last Friday.
The new pup will join the girls and their parents in the family residence on the second floor of the White House. The wing includes four bedrooms and a dressing room for the first family. The President’s Dining Room, the Lincoln Bedroom and The Truman Balcony are also on the second floor.
Michelle Obama will get to survey it all Monday in a visit that is scheduled to begin around 2 p.m. Touching on Obama’s primary concern, Laura Bush, who has two daughters of her own, already assured her successor in a congratulatory phone call last Wednesday that the White House is a great place to raise a family.
The future First Lady will also get started Monday on a big decision the soon-to-be First Family faces: where Sasha and Malia will go to school. The Obamas have arranged a tour of at least one D.C. private school.
Copyright © 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC | Distributed by Noofangle Media
1 response so far ↓
1 movie fan // Nov 10, 2008 at 10:01 pm
I heard recently that, despite all the perks that come with living in the white house, the first family still has to pay for any food that their private guests consume
Leave a Comment