The Obamas? Oh, they're just the first family next door

The pundits say the president took a beating at the polls, but Barack Obama won a very different kind of contest last week.

With his BlackBerry, his burger runs and his pickup basketball, "he and his family have brought dramatic social change to the nation's capital and to the country's collective image of its first family," USA Today declared.

Barack and Michelle "have spoken more frankly about marriage than most intact couples, especially those running for office, usually do," the New York Times Magazine reported, explaining how she was "seduced by his mind, his charm, his promise of social transformation." The first lady also dispensed dating advice in a Katie Couric sit-down for Glamour magazine, saying, "Cute's good, but cute only lasts for so long."

The president's health plan is stuck in the Senate, his Afghanistan strategy remains a muddle and Republicans captured the two off-year gubernatorial races. But he has shrewdly managed his personal image, an undeniable asset in this Oprahfied age. The more that media outlets highlight his lifestyle, his charismatic wife and their children, the more goodwill he is able to bank.

Whether it's granting the Times a nearly hour-long Oval Office interview about their marriage -- or allowing backstage access to their family for an HBO film that aired last week -- the Obamas are providing an unusually revealing glimpse of their life beyond politics. That is, if the two can really be separated.

By all appearances, they are a personable couple, with attractive young children, who are comfortable talking about themselves in ways that would have seemed foreign to most previous White House occupants (even the Kennedys, who cultivated a royal mystique). And their role as racial trailblazers has only fueled the public and media fascination. Had the election gone the other way, it is hard to imagine this sort of intimate coverage being lavished on John and Cindy McCain.

Mark McKinnon, a former adviser to George W. Bush, says of the Obamas, "By revealing problems in their marriage, they make themselves more human, more real, more accessible. And more likable. And ultimately, if voters find the president more likable, and more like themselves, they are more likely to support him."

In retrospect, says McKinnon, "I wish President Bush would have allowed the press behind the curtain more often," but the former president liked his privacy, was wary of the media and had an aversion "to anything that smacks of self-promotion."

Democratic strategist Mandy Grunwald, who showcased Bill Clinton's family during the 1992 campaign, says Obama "struggles with being seen as intellectual and a bit aloof. The more the focus is on his family and Michelle and his marriage, it makes him more accessible to people. The difficulty is that it's always a slippery slope. You want to protect what shreds of privacy you have left in your life."

As for the media's voracious appetite, Grunwald says, "I assume you guys would not stay interested if these stories weren't selling magazines and increasing ratings."

Most married politicians feature their families in campaign ads and rallies. Sarah Palin, who faced questions -- many of them unfair -- about juggling five kids and the vice presidency, rolled out the family, including her current archenemy Levi Johnston, at last year's Republican convention. In a Facebook world, voters want to see the whole wall of pictures.

But a cultural barrier has fallen when the first couple talks about the strains in their marriage, at least without being forced to do so by a Monica Lewinsky-type scandal. In the Times interview, the Obamas acknowledged that they struggled when he was an Illinois state senator spending much of his time in Springfield.