Cherie Blair's Advice for Michelle

Gareth Cattermole / Getty Images Life at No. 10 Downing Street was rough and lonely at times for Cherie Blair, but she says she’d do it all again. She offers tips for America’s first lady-in-waiting.

The job description would never make it into the feminist classifieds. Hours: 24/7. Duties: unspecified but unlimited. Official power: none. Risk of public criticism: excellent. Salary: zero.

You couldn’t blame Michelle Obama if her reaction to life after January 20 were a bewildered “Now what?” She’ll have no shortage of well-intentioned advisers, but she’d be hard pressed to find one more sympathetic than Cherie Blair, the first spouse of a British prime minister to have a career of her own. Like Obama, Blair took on her duties as a mother of young children with a professional life in the law, an equal partner with her husband who suddenly faced a decidedly secondary role. She helped rewrite the rules of modern first ladydom, even though, as she told me when I interviewed her for our “Memo to Michelle” in the February issue of More Magazine, the term “first lady” isn’t properly used in Britain.

“It’s what Hilary Clinton said to me: Remember there’s going to be some people who don’t like you, not because of anything you do, but just because of what you represent.”

“We don’t have a title as such,” she said. “In fact the first lady of Britain is Prince Philip.” That’s because the prime minister is head of government but not head of state, like our president. But that’s how the world—and Fleet Street—saw Cherie Blair, and it’s how she learned what she calls the most valuable lesson from her on-the-job-training: “A first lady can have influence but she cannot be seen to have power. You know there’s a difference? And influence is okay but power is wrong because power belongs to the person who’s elected.”

Blair offered some more tips to Obama about dealing with that newly unequal relationship, generously extending the very exclusive chain started by the former first lady who became her own role model: Hillary Rodham Clinton. Blair told me Clinton gave her a “master’s class” in the subject. But, she said, Tony Blair’s political opponents worried that Cherie she was just like her American counterpart—someone who was “stepping out of the traditional woman’s role.”

Lynn Sherr: And this was not seen as a good thing for the wife of British leader?

Cherie Blair: No, it was seen as a dangerous thing for him.

LS: Dangerous how?

CB: Because it was challenging the status quo. Because the whole system has sort of been geared around the idea that the husband works and the wife stays at home.

LS: So what does that mean? Does that mean you don’t listen to the criticism; you just do your own thing? Or does it mean you just choose very, very carefully?

CB: You choose very, very carefully. It’s what Hillary Clinton said to me: Remember there’s going to be some people who don’t like you, not because of anything you do, but just because of what you represent. So there will be some people for whom Michelle Obama will never be able to do the right thing because she shouldn’t be there at all because it should be a Republican, you know.

LS: You’ve said you felt that you’re damned if do, you’re damned if you don’t.