The idea of a sustained project for the first lady started in the early 1960s.
'It was Jacqueline Kennedy's work on refurbishing the White House, and that sort of set a bar early on,' says Myra Gutin of Rider University in New Jersey, who studies the history of first ladies. 'First ladies generally are dealing with less controversial or uncontroversial issues, but those which tend to benefit many people in the country.'
Lady Bird Johnson focused on highway beautification. Rosalynn Carter addressed mental health. Barbara Bush took on literacy. And in that respect, Gutin says, the Let's Move! initiative is right in line with what others have done.
But Gutin says Michelle Obama goes further than her predecessors: 'She has partners from Major League Baseball to Wal-Mart, and no other first lady initiative that I can think of had that kind of support from the corporate world.'
