While expectations are sky-high for her husband, Barack Obama—his first 100 days, boosters seem to say, will solve all the world’s problems—another set of expectations may be even higher: that First Lady Michelle Obama will reinvent American fashion in a way not seen since Jackie Kennedy.

Vogue called her fashion’s new “It Girl.” As for Michelle’s own fashion sense? As she told one interviewer, “I’m just a tomboy who likes to look pretty.”

Now that she’s in the White House, people will examine even more closely how she chooses her outfits. What has been the reaction to her campaign-trail attire? For the most part, adoring—the only question in most fashion critics’ minds seems to be whether she can out-icon French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Here’s a sample of the reviews.

On the campaign trail, the President tried a variety. He explained drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon at a bar in North Carolina this way: “When in PBR land, you drink PBR.” In Pennsylvania he had a Yuengling, in Indiana a Budweiser.

His first impulse as president could be to return to what he knows best—Chicago and its own Goose Island ales. But does a world leader want to be shown with a beer named Honker’s Ale?

President Obama presents himself as a man with a refined palate, so microbrews might be the way to go—although any microbrew pick comes with a geographic price. Pennsylvania is important politically, and tough-minded drinkers of Iron City in Pittsburgh could be turned off if Obama drinks Gaelic Ale from North Carolina.

Mass-market Budweiser might have been a no-brainer two years ago, but given his repeated promises to protect American jobs, it’s doubtful he’d drink Bud now that it’s part of the Belgian company InBev.

Jimmy Carter came up with the Camp David Accords. Bill Clinton did the Dayton Accords. Could Barack Obama give us the Borgo Accords?

When it comes time for Obama to seek out an exclusive retreat for a high-level summit, he need look no further than his traveling aide and spokesperson, Linda Douglass, whose husband, John Phillips, has spent the last seven years sprucing up a Tuscan villa.

The Borgo Finocchieto, outside the town of Buonconvento, was the last stop on a two-year search by Phillips—whose grandparents emigrated from Italy and whose name traces back to “Filippi”—for the perfect property to tie him to his Italian roots. When he first saw the five-acre spread, he was struck by the silence and the misty hills and vineyards it overlooked—a view, he says, that hasn’t changed much in the 1,000-year history of the estate. It took two years of negotiations with the Italian government before he could begin restoring the abandoned property, once an estate home for 60 people.

Ivan Carter The Washington Post’s Wizards-beat writer could share NBA gossip.

Mark Warner The newly elected Democratic senator—whose landslide November win helped Obama take Virginia—hosts pickup games and loves to trash talk.

Reggie Love Obama’s personal assistant and workout partner was a Duke football and basketball player.

Eric Holder Obama’s choice for attorney general captained his high-school basketball team in New York City. Former Bullets star Jeff Malone is his wife’s nephew.

Richard Danzig The Obama defense adviser and former secretary of the Navy was captain of the basketball team at Reed College, a liberal-arts school not known for sports. (“I think we played high-school teams,” Danzig says.) At 64, he still plays in Sunday pickup games at DC’s Sidwell Friends.

James Jones The leading candidate to be Obama’s national-security adviser is 65, but he’s also six-foot-five and played at Georgetown.

Bill Bradley Obama’s game mixes the cerebral cool and fiery competitiveness that are trademarks of the former senator and New York Knicks star.

Baron Hill The Indiana congressman’s high-school exploits put him in the state’s basketball hall of fame. A Blue Dog Democrat, he threw his support to Obama before the nomination was clinched.

John Thune Republican Thune, a former Senate colleague, will be a formidable roadblock for White House initiatives. Would a few friendly games blunt that opposition? The South Dakotan played hoops at a Christian college in California.

Steve Goins The University of Maryland freshman played high-school ball not far from Obama’s home in Chicago.

Rick Larsen The Washington-state Democrat is a regular in the House gym. He’s already pushed to join Obama on the court, saying, “There’s a short list of members of Congress who can go up and down the basketball court, and he should call me.”

Kristi Toliver At a campaign stop at the University of Maryland, Obama told the powerhouse women’s basketball team, “I’ve still got game.” Toliver, a senior guard, is the team’s star.

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This article first appeared in the January 2009 issue of The Washingtonian. For more articles from that issue, click here. 

Left, left, right, left. It might sound like a dance, but it’s actually the past four presidents picking up their pens.

For 20 of the past 28 years, a left-handed president has led the nation. Presidents Reagan, Bush 41, and Clinton were left-handed. President-elect Obama will continue the tradition.

A few generations ago, being left-handed was thought so undesirable that all schoolchildren were forced to write with their right hands. Today, left-handers make up about 10 percent of the US population—but six of the past 12 presidents, including Obama, have favored the left. Even among presidential aspirants the percentage is high, with the 1992 election featuring an all-southpaw choice of Bush, Clinton, or Ross Perot. This time around, Obama beat fellow leftie John McCain.

“Being right-handed has not exactly been a harbinger of presidential success,” says American University history professor Allan Lichtman. He says evidence shows left-handed people to be high achievers, deep thinkers, and skilled speakers and notes that right-handers Jimmy Carter and George W. were “two of the least-esteemed presidents in modern history.”

>> See all of Washingtonian.com's inauguration coverage.

This article first appeared in the January 2009 issue of The Washingtonian. For more articles from that issue, click here. 

President-elect Obama made hay on the campaign trail about ecofriendly vehicles. After criticism of his personal car, a gas-guzzling Chrysler 300, he traded it in for a hybrid Ford Escape. But after he takes office, the new president, code-named Renegade, will ride in a vehicle that gets only slightly better mileage than the M1A1 battle tank’s half mile to the gallon.

Spy photos show the secret testing of a new Cadillac-based presidential limo, presumably to be rolled out around the inaugural—as was the current version of the presidential limo, which first carried President Bush at his 2005 inaugural.

Presidents once rode around in unarmored vehicles that were mostly identical to regular luxury cars. Then in 1933 Giuseppe Zangara tried to shoot Franklin Roosevelt in Miami, and the Secret Service began to armor the presidential limos.

Sean Combs, a.k.a. Diddy, a.k.a. Puff Daddy, is launching a men’s cologne in honor of Barack Obama. Named I Am King, the fragrance is part of what Combs says is the redefinition of the successful black male brought about by Obama’s election. To find out what people think of it, we took the fragrance to Obama’s new residence and asked people walking by the White House to smell it.