The last nine months have been great for First Lady Michelle Obama. She's been raising Sasha and Malia, traveling, working just a few days a week, swelling in stature, doing no heavy lifting. Long gone are the days from the campaign when Mrs. Obama worried about being a drag on her husband's quest for the White House.

The European press the last few days has been giving Mrs. Obama credit for a slick move when she literally kept Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at arms length during the Thursday opening reception at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh. No hugs for the sex-scandalized Berlusconi at the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden, just a stiff handshake where he was kept at a distance.

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But that's small-time diplomacy compared to Mrs. Obama's week ahead, where she will find herself in the midst of some big-time international lobbying to land the 2016 summer Olympics for Chicago, her home town.

For the first time in a long time, Mrs. Obama has taken on an assignment where she is under pressure to deliver. She's leading the U.S. delegation to Copenhagen to lobby the 106-member International Olympic Committee to vote Friday for Chicago as the host city for the 2016 Summer Games. She will be the chief advocate when Chicago makes its final sales presentation to the IOC.

Her speech, I am told, will draw on her life growing up on the South Side of Chicago, near where many of the Olympic venues are planned. What I don't know is if Mrs. Obama will be wearing the Chicago team uniform. Chicago's very own Hart Schaffner Marx is stitching suits for the men in the U.S. Olympic delegation, while Maria Pinto, the Chicago designer whose clothes Mrs. Obama wears, is outfitting the women.

Going into the Friday vote, no city is a clear frontrunner. The Web sites that handicap the odds put Chicago and Rio de Janeiro ahead of Madrid and Tokyo. Rio's backers are working a reasonable angle: No Olympic Games have ever been held in the Southern Hemisphere -- hard to explain for an organization that is supposed to be global. The winning city has to clinch a majority of the votes, and that could entail several rounds of secret balloting. The 2016 host city could be picked with just some 50-plus votes.

Winning the Games is something of an obsession for Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Daley, the longest-serving mayor in the city's history -- his tenure exceeds his father's time in office -- sees the 2016 Olympics as his legacy. White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett was the co-chair of Chicago's Olympic bid committee before joining the Obama administration. Jarrett is now overseeing the White House end of the Olympics drive.

Mrs. Obama and Jarrett land in Copenhagen on Sept. 30, with lobbying lists in hand of undecided IOC members. They will be bringing in reinforcements on this trip: Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who once played pro basketball in Australia, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and perhaps the most famous woman in the world, Oprah Winfrey.

Winfrey, like a young Barack Obama, picked Chicago as her home, and the city gave back, providing a launching pad for a storybook career.

Chicago organizers long hoped that President Obama would be the star of their Copenhagen lobbying blitz and presentation, believing that his stature alone could clinch the deal for Chicago. They were disappointed when Obama said earlier this month that he may not make it to Copenhagen because he wanted to stay in Washington and press his battle with Congress over health care legislation.

The president had tapped Michelle to take his place, saying she is a bigger superstar than he is. Jarrett told the Chicago Sun-Times on Friday she has been "working hard preparing the first lady for her presentation. I have reviewed her speech and I will say to you without signaling our strategy that is deeply, a deeply personal appeal to the . . . International Olympic Committee."


"Obviously the first lady is front and center. If the president determines that he will go, he will be front and center as well," Jarrett said.

Winfrey, too, will be getting lobbying assignments. "Oprah will have a full schedule from the time she hits the ground as well. I think that she is an international icon, widely respected throughout the world, and her presence and her willingness to put her reputation behind Chicago, a city she both calls home and loves and knows so well, I think will have a very significant impact on the IOC," Jarrett told the Sun-Times.

America has no royalty to help bolster Chicago's bid. King Carlos and Queen Sophia from Spain are expected, as is Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero, and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Japan may be sending Crown Prince Naruhito and the new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama. Still, the Obamas are a global brand -- and these other world leaders and royalty are not.

Jarrett spent an hour last week huddling with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in New York, looking for advice. Blair personally lobbied IOC officials in 2005 in Singapore, and the prestige of some schmooze time with Britain's then-prime minister is credited with helping London win the 2012 Summer Games.


Many Olympic pursuits have a defined metric: a game score, a race time, a throw or leap of so many feet; personality and fame just do not matter. Wooing an IOC member is more like competing in one of those sports where judges from around the globe grade on technical merit as well as poise and style.

If Chicago does not get the Games with both Obamas in Copenhagen, I bet the City of Big Shoulders will shrug it off. If the president does not show and Chicago looses, Mrs. Obama will have to deal with not being able to deliver for the team. I bet she'll play a good game. Remember, during the presidential campaign, Mrs. Obama was called "the closer."


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