Leading Lady.(first lady Michelle Obama on running the White House)

Byline: Portraits by Annie Leibovitz.

From envisioning a more inclusive White House to embracing fearless fashion, Michelle Obama is poised to become the most transformative First Lady in history. AndrA[c] Leon Talley reports.

Do you see our new house?" Michelle Obama asks, walking to a corner window of the reception suite at the Hay-Adams and drawing back the white curtains. It is a wet, chilly Tuesday afternoon in Washington, D.C., two weeks before the Inauguration, and the Obamas have just moved into the hotel so their daughters can begin the new semester at Sidwell Friends. Through the window we can see armed security men in black walking around on the White House roof.

"They tell me they do that a lot," she says.

Mrs. Obama has a huga sincere and friendly embracethat has become familiar to countless supporters from coast to coast. And when she talks to you, she focuses all her calm attention on your face. For a passionate supporter like me (someone who, like millions of regular American citizens, volunteered in the campaign trenches and basked in the glow of glory at the Inauguration), being the focus of this reassuring gaze is akin to hearing a chord from John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme." Or maybe Ralph Vaughan Williams's "The Lark Ascending": All is well and right and real.

With her long, lean, athletic frame, she moves as if she could have danced with Alvin Ailey in another life. Curled up in the corner of a huge taupe velvet sofa, wearing knee-high boots as she nestles into the cushions, she almost seems like any other mom recently relocated to a city because of her husband's new job.

The work-life balance that this particular mother struggles with is not typical, but the early-days challenges she faces are remarkably ordinary. Getting her bearings, checking out churches to join, helping her kids adjust to unfamiliar surroundingsthese are her top priorities and preoccupations. The First Lady puts her family first.