As first lady Michelle Obama raises her profile on issues of importance to her husband's administration, Jocelyn Frye is likely to be at the center of the action. Frye, who went to Harvard Law School with Mrs. Obama in the 1980s, is the first lady's policy chief, with an office in the East Wing, but she also has a seat on the president's Domestic Policy Council with other West Wing officials.
Frye sat down last month with National Journal's James A. Barnes to talk about her dual roles, her friend Mrs. Obama and how to think "outside the box". Below is an edited transcript of that interview. Visit the archives page for more Insider Interviews.
NJ: Did you look at this woman back at Harvard Law School and say, "She's going to be at the White House one of these days"?
Frye: I thought she was fabulous; she was a great person, a good friend.... Many of the things that struck people about her now were things that I knew then: She's down to earth; she's warm, she's a real person, engaging, good sense of humor, all those things. So I think, as is the case with a lot of people like that you meet, you think they're going to do great things and they're extraordinary people and they're impressive people. I'm not sure anybody imagines this. This is really a step beyond what anybody expects for themselves.
NJ: How do your two jobs in the White House mesh?
Frye: Well, they're connected, and part of the reason I have one is because I have the other. I think the whole point of the policy director for the first lady is that we help to shape some of the policy initiatives that she's interested in and try to implement that in a way that's consistent with the broader administration's goals. And at the same time, our work is connected to what the rest of the White House is doing. She's helping to advance the president's agenda. So the reason that my job has those two components is because part of what I do is really connected to the overall goals of the administration and the president's overall policy agenda.... And basically what we all do is make sure that we're pretty closely connected to the rest of the policy staff, who are working more generally on the president's issues, and then try to talk through what piece of this can we be helpful with: where is it appropriate, helpful for us to help amplify the broader policy objectives.
NJ: Talk about utilizing the first lady for administration priorities.
Frye: What she can do that really nobody else can do except the president is help put a real face on an issue.... Sometimes we can go to an event and take that opportunity to really talk about the importance of why SCHIP is important and go to a Mary's Center, or talk about the importance of child nutrition and go to a Miriam's Kitchen -- that she can use those events to highlight some of the policy goals that we have in the administration. It's sometimes thinking a little bit outside the box about how can we achieve the policy goals in a lot of different ways. We can certainly do it by putting out a piece of paper or making the phone call, but sometimes there's nothing like the visual. She's often one of the best assets of trying to bring an issue to life.
NJ: Can you give me an example of thinking out of the box or how particularly effective you think she's been on a policy issue?
Frye: I think clearly on national service -- she and the president have spoken a lot about that issue, and you know, I think she was able to talk about her own experience, about the importance of serving in the communities. And she does that everywhere she goes. Part of what she's done every time she's gone to an agency, on all her agency visits, is that she's talked about the importance of service and public service....
The other piece of that, with service, was a lot of the outreach to the D.C. community. And one of the things that she was clear about from the beginning is that she didn't want this experience in the White House to be one where she and the family are sort of sitting behind four walls -- that they want to become part of the D.C. community, and I think use the opportunity of their coming to D.C.... to talk about how people can get engaged in their own community. So in a way, her going out to all these different places, whether it's Mary's Center or Anacostia High School, was her modeling hopefully what anybody could do to get engaged in their community, to find out something about what's going on in their community and to get involved. So it's service, but in a slightly different way. It's taking this outreach and showing, hopefully being an example to others about how they can get engaged.
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