Senator Michelle?

Increasingly Mrs. Obama is moving into more contentious realms of public policy. She is emerging as a woman with a large appetite and shrewd eye for power.

Is Michelle Obama stumping her way to a future US Senate seat from Illinois?

On June 22, the president’s wife delivered remarks on voluntarism outside an elementary school in San Francisco. Mrs. Obama was joined by “her good friend” Maria Shriver and an audience of 500 volunteers who would later help her build a playground for the school. The tableau seemed tailor-made for a candidate.

Since the inauguration, Michelle Obama has played the role of a very traditional first lady, emphasizing family, fashion and uncontroversial good works (voluntarism, healthier eating, assistance to military families.) Increasingly, however, Mrs. Obama’s is moving into more contentious realms of public policy.

This week she announced $851 million in economic stimulus support for community health clinics and called our current healthcare system “economically unsustainable.” Her announcement occurred two days before President Obama’s July 1^st healthcare town hall meeting in Virginia.

In her San Francisco talk, Mrs. Obama stated “United We Serve is going to focus on key strategies: Education, health, energy, the environment and community renewal.”

She added: “As the President and Congress begin to tackle healthcare reform, which is coming up, we will begin to see the costly effects of unhealthy habits that burden our healthcare system. We’re going to see the costs it’s going to become more clear to us. Obesity Diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure are all diet related health issues that cost this country more than $120 billion a year and that’ s a conservative figure. While that dollar amount is shocking the effect on our children should be even more shocking.”

A media event to promote voluntarism quickly morphed into a political stump speech.

While Mrs. Obama declared “there’s nothing like watching kids play,” it seems she has other ambitions.

Now read Lois Romano’s profile of Michelle Obama in the June 25 Washington Post. It informs us that Michelle Obama “doesn’t like being relegated to the role” of First Lady and won’t be. Unlike Hillary Clinton, Michelle knows better than to assert a demanding public persona to unelected position of power. She wants the public to see her as an intelligent, caring, mother of two who just happens to share her president’s policy agenda.

And yet between the lines there emerges a compelling portrait of a woman with a large appetite and shrewd eye for power. She recently fired her first chief of staff for and replaced her with a Chicago friend with a mandate to be “be more forceful about getting her and her team on the West Wing’s radar screen.” She also expects her East Wing staff to “work on a parallel tract” with the West Wing at all times.

This is all campaigning by another name. As she enthusiastically exclaimed to the crowd in San Francisco last week:

“Today is just the beginning. Let me stop talking and let’s get to work!”

Sounds like a rallying cry for a campaign of her own.