Who will Americans miss more, Barack or Michelle Obama? He needs her, it’s become clear, the way ivy needs an oak. As this estimable couple shift into private life, others may need her as well, and lonely eyes will increasingly turn in her direction.

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is all of 52. She has, you suspect, a memoir to write. And after that? Whether or not she ultimately enters politics, her every move will be political in a way it has rarely been for most of this country’s first ladies.

She will be watched for lessons in how to speak for certain values, in how to behave, in how to live a meaningful and expressive and nondull life. The most interesting things she has to offer might still be in front of us.

A new book, “The Meaning of Michelle,” collects essays from 16 writers, many of them African-American women, about what it’s been like to witness Michelle Obama in the White House. “Witness” is the correct word. The first thing most of these writers admit is that they’ve been unable to take their eyes off her.