Inside the Obama Family PR Machine

Charles Dharapak / AP Photo As the Obamas mastered the media again this week, thanks to the rollout of their dog, Richard Wolffe reveals how the president's instincts and the first lady's discipline—and staff—are creating an image juggernaut.

Of all the picture-perfect moments of the Obama White House, few compare to the young Obama family introducing their new dog Bo to the press. There were Malia and Sasha chatting about their new pet on the South Lawn. There was the first lady on her knees petting the new addition to the family. There was the commander in chief jogging in his suit alongside a Portuguese water dog.

“Puppy me!” urged Jon Stewart on Comedy Central’s Daily Show, as a respite to the president’s wonkish economic speech. Cue pictures of Obama running with his new dog, as Stewart applauded like a seal. “I really want to see the moment where he has to stop and pick up that dog’s shit. My guess is he will pull off even that in an elegant manner.”

Despite the iconic images that emanate from the White House each week, there is no Reaganesque Michael Deaver inside the West Wing.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the Obama White House is the most masterful image-making machine in politics since the Reagan era. And you’d be half right.

Despite the iconic images that emanate from the White House each week, there is no Reaganesque Michael Deaver inside the West Wing. While the president has two message guys in his inner circle—chief strategist David Axelrod and press secretary Robert Gibbs—neither of them are what you might call image-conscious, trading in words more than pictures. Their personal images underscore that point—Axelrod’s wardrobe in particular serving as a running joke inside the Obama campaign; he only started to wear a suit and tie on entering the White House.

Rather, the most memorable images are often the result of opportunism and the projection powers of one Barack Obama. And the place where image control is a more disciplined business is the East Wing, among Michelle Obama's staff.

The back story to Bo’s rollout is more revealing than you might expect, reflective of the ad-libbed nature of Obama’s image-making and the people who shape that image. Up until the moment of the press call, there was to be no first family in attendance. According to a senior White House aide, the initial plan was for just a staffer to walk “Bobama” in front of the cameras.

Even when the president and first lady decided to take the lead, there was no plan for their daughters to join them. Malia and Sasha wanted to take part themselves at the last minute. There were certainly no plans for the president to run with his dog across the South Lawn. It turns out that the memorable images came from the Obamas themselves, not their handlers.

Why the sensitivity and limited plans from the staff? One explanation lies in the painful experience of last July 4th, when the family sat down with NBC’s Access Hollywood for an interview. It was Malia’s 10th birthday and the family was feeling relaxed after a day of parades, hula-hoops and picnics in the small town of Butte, Montana. That was when the family let down their guard. The TV crew attached microphones to the Obama girls, saying innocently that they were just looking for some ambient sound like a laugh or sigh in response to their parents.