Michelle Obama Keeps Focus on Military Families

Michelle Obama has quietly carved out a niche that helps offset concerns about her husband's lack of military background: reaching out to spouses of service members. Rather than just delivering a speech, she's been hosting roundtable discussions, Politico reports. “I am here to listen and to do a lot of learning and then to transfer that information into the heart and mind of my husband,” she told attendees at one gathering.

Michelle Obama has called working with military families one of the “issues closest to my heart.” “If she becomes first lady, this will be her cause,” says a Marine wife who helped organize Blue Star Families for Obama, a “pro-military, pro-Obama” group. Says another: "We like Obama, but we love her. She gets what we are getting."