Cherie Blair's Advice for Michelle

CB: Yeah. So you might as well do. [LAUGHS] One of the things that will make it easier for Michelle is actually that Hillary and Laura [Bush] have gone before. Because the role develops all the time and it reflects society. And so the more that we have women educated as men, women engaged in speaking out as much as men, the more the system will adapt to that.

And if you really want to do something about it, the only way you can ever get that equality is to stand for power yourself and then defeat your husband in the next presidential election. [LAUGHTER]

LS: Michelle Obama is facing four years. What do you say to her?

CB: Don’t rush into anything. On the other hand, you want to hit the ground running so you need to have something that’s fairly soft and easy to do so that you can establish an identity without setting yourself in concrete or straitjacketing yourself in such a way that you can’t develop that as you find your feet.

LS: What should she be prepared to give up?

CB: Oh, privacy. [LAUGHS] I mean literally privacy because she won’t be on her own anymore. And yet in some ways she’ll also be lonely. When I interviewed the previous prime ministers’ wives, all of them felt lonely in Number 10 at times. Because they were separated from their friends and they were in a system which was geared around their husband—a system which took their husbands away from them. You know, absorbed a lot of his energies.

LS: How can she keep her own sense of herself in that goldfish bowl?

CB: Well the best thing for me, the salvation for me, actually, was the fact that I had my children with me, too. And being together as a family is the most important thing. Because that not only grounds her but it will ground him, as well.

LS: What about the kids?

CB: She must do everything she can to have as normal a life as possible. Help them understand that their father is an exceptional person, but that their time to be exceptional persons will come in the future and not now.

LS: Do you envy her or feel sorry for her right now?

CB: Neither. I’m sure she’ll do a fantastic job. She’s got the intelligence, she’s got the charm, she’s got all the capacity to make a brilliant first lady. And it is exciting and it’s draining and it’s hard work. But you know, I’d do it all again tomorrow. And I’m sure at the end of her time in the White House she would say the same.

Lynn Sherr is a former ABC News correspondent, author of Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words and Tall Blondes, a book about giraffes. She is also co-editor of Peter Jennings: A Reporter's Life. At ABC’s 20/20 news program, Sherr specialized in women's issues and social change, as well as investigative reports. Her most recent book, a memoir—Outside the Box: My Unscripted Life of Love, Loss and Television News—is just out in paperback.