Well, he may be a celebrity, but he's no Angelina Jolie--at least when it comes to the readers of People magazine. The New York Post reports that the Obama family's recent warm and fuzzy cover story wasn't the expected newsstand hit:

While Barack Obama has been newsstand gold for some publications, People magazine isn't one of them, as its Obama and family cover turned out to sell at slightly below its usual newsstand average.

People normally sells 1.45 million copies a week on newsstands. The latest estimates put the sales figure for last week's Obama cover at 1.4 million.

However, Obama's handler's needn't despair:

It is believed to be one of the first covers featuring Obama that has not sold above normal. When Time had Obama on the cover in 2006 it was the second-best-selling cover of the year.

In the competitive set, Us Weekly's June cover with Obama achieved a sale jump of over 10 percent above average, selling close to one million. Its average weekly sales figure for most of the year is below 900,000.

So who does move copies of People magazine? Tim Russert's widow, Maureen Orth, had one answer on a recent broadcast of the Today show:

Orth, a high-profile journalist who was promoting her latest in-depth feature - a cover story on France's controversial first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, in the September issue of Vanity Fair - said Russert would have been tickled with how media coverage of his passing impacted today's popular culture.

"You have to know that his People magazine cover knocked off the Summer's Hottest Bachelors," Orth said with a laugh. "He broke Britney Spears' record for most hits on People.com. So this would make Tim so happy and make him laugh so hard."