No public speaker would relish the task of taking the microphone after Barack Obama. On Tuesday, at the start of the first state dinner of the Obama presidency, the challenge fell to the prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh.

Obama had just given a toast in the Indian's honour. Singh, a diffident man half-a-head shorter than his American counterpart, did his best.

His initial tribute to the "distinguished" president elicited no spontaneous applause from the crowd. Moments later, when he praised the "grace and charm" of the First Lady, Michelle Obama, it came in a wave.

In its way, that was fitting. The state dinner was Michelle's night -- more than her husband's -- and it was she who would have faced the harsher criticism if anything had gone wrong. As it turned out, the press seemed to give both her hostessing touches and her fashion choices -- a gold, sleeveless gown from an Indian-American designer -- the thumbs-up.

(The only red faces belonged to the Secret Service when it emerged afterwards, to widespread astonishment, that two would-be reality TV stars had gatecrashed the event.)

The glamour of the occasion -- much needed, in the midst of so much economic gloom -- triggered yet another round of comparisons between Michelle and the only other first lady with comparable charisma in the modern era, Jacqueline Kennedy.

The comparison has been made again and again, in glossy magazines like Vanity Fair and by serious news outlets such as CBS. On the internet, bloggers have grown fond of referring to the current first lady as "Shelly O", a not-so-subtle allusion to Jackie O, as Kennedy became known after her second marriage to shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.

The parallels between the two are real -- both exuded a freshness that was unusual in the typically fusty White House; both drew feverish attention for their idiosyncratic sense of style. But, in truth, the differences are more numerous and more important than the similarities.

Kennedy came to prominence at a time when women were expected to be meek in their manner of offering support to their husbands.

There is nothing reserved about Michelle Obama's advocacy. The first time I saw her at close quarters was in a small hall in New Hampshire just before that state's Democratic primary in January 2008. She exhorted supporters to "drag about eight people" with them to vote for Barack Obama when they went to the polls. "Kick 'em out of bed," she implored.

Obama's forthrightness has sometimes caused trouble.

She remarked last year that her husband's campaign had made her "proud" of her country "for the first time in my adult life". Conservatives seized on the remark to suggest she lacked patriotism.

More amusingly, when a reporter asked if she was offended by a harsh attack made upon her husband by Bill Clinton, she shot back "I want to rip his eyes out!" Spotting the look of nervousness on the face of one of her media 'handlers', she hurriedly added: "Kidding!"

The daughter of a stockbroker, Jacqueline Kennedy was born Jacqueline Bouvier in the Hamptons, a fashionable getaway for wealthy New Yorkers. Her family's main home was an 11-room apartment on Manhattan's luxurious Park Avenue. The entire building was owned by her maternal grandfather.

Michelle Obama was brought up in a different world. Her father, Fraser Robinson, worked most of his life in the City of Chicago's Water Department.

The Robinsons -- Fraser, his wife Marian, Michelle and her brother, Craig -- lived in a modest bungalow on the city's working-class south side. Fraser was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis while still a young man. His daughter has spoken movingly of watching him struggle to keep working even as his body betrayed him. He died in 1991, aged 55.

Bouvier glided through polite society, a demure debutante who went on to spend a year studying abroad at Paris's elite Sorbonne. Michelle Robinson won a scholarship that enabled her to attend Princeton University. The mother of one of her room-mates, who was white, agitated behind the scenes to have her daughter moved to different accommodation, appalled by the notion of her sharing with an African-American.

Jacqueline and John F Kennedy were married by the Archbishop of Boston, Richard Cushing, and their reception was held on the sprawling estate of Jacqueline's stepfather, Hugh Auchincloss, an heir to the Standard Oil fortune. Michelle and Barack Obama were wed by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the controversial firebrand preacher based in a gritty Chicago neighbourhood.

Yet it is Michelle's background that, in adulthood, has become her strongest card. Jacqueline's calm, almost aloof, persona met the approval of the WASP-ish America of her generation. Michelle's tactile warmth and capacity for empathy are better suited to these times.

The current First Lady often expresses concern about the metaphorical distance between the grandeur of the White House and the many Washington, DC neighbourhoods that are scorched by poverty.

She does what she can to close the gap. Earlier this month, she launched a mentoring programme in which girls from local high schools will be taken under the wing of senior female White House staff members.

She told the first meeting of the group about her early days as a lawyer at a big firm in Chicago, fresh out of Harvard Law School. She worked in a skyscraper from which she could see the streets on which she grew up.

"There were kids who were just as smart, just as funny, just as capable, but they missed an opportunity by a hair," she said. "Maybe they didn't have the right parent. Maybe they just didn't have that teacher who pushed them. Maybe it was money.

"But it's such a small set of possibilities that could make the difference between me and thousands of other kids. And I realised that when those opportunities don't come, that gap just gets wider and wider and wider."

Obama spoke those words with the moral authority of someone who had lived them.

Michelle Obama is no Jacqueline Kennedy. Her strength resides in just how far from the precincts of Park Avenue she was raised.

- Niall Stanage

Irish Independent