“So, our view is that if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House”, Michelle Obama said from the campaign trail in the early state of Iowa in August of 2007. Eight years ago, he beat Hillary Clinton and took the White House.
Advertisement
First lady Michelle Obama, whose words were borrowed by Donald Trump’s wife at the Republican National Convention last week, responded Monday with an unusually political speech in which she took aim at the Republican nominee for being temperamentally unsuited to the job her husband now holds. She advocates a more hawkish foreign policy in the Middle East.
That authenticity got her into hot water in February 2008. And I’m sure, Jeffrey, you felt the same way when you heard Ronald Reagan speak.
“Don’t let anyone ever tell you that this country isn’t great, that somehow we need to make it great again, because this right now is the greatest country on earth”, she said, enthusiastically endorsing Democrat Hillary Clinton for president as delegates waved purple “Michelle” signs. And very quickly she was caricatured in some quarters as an angry black woman. She seems to have learned a lot from her husband.
Stephanie Cutter was brought in to help introduce her; she was the first lady’s chief of staff at the time and a longtime Democratic strategist.
“She has a relatability that few people have”, Cutter says.
“The America I know is decent and generous. It was an unfiltered opportunity”.
Obama described the U.S.as “this great country where a girl from the South Side of Chicago can go to college and law school. And the son of a single mother from Hawaii can go all the way to the White House”.
“We committed ourselves to building the world as it should be”, she added.
That speech was a resounding success. And under pressure from the party’s progressive wing, she has backed away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a cornerstone of the president’s pivot to Asia. Her public role has focused on supporting military families and reducing childhood obesity. And with confidence comes candor. Passionate, direct and clear, she gave an outstanding speech, one that will surely be remembered for years to come.
“I think Hillary Clinton is a phenomenal woman”, the first lady said when asked about her at a White House event in April, “and I’ve gotten to know her, and I think she’s made some pretty major contributions over the course of her life”. The first lady opened her speech by talking about her family, and especially her two lovely daughters.
“I was also the focus of another set of questions and speculations, conversation sometimes rooted in the fears and misperceptions of others”.
“It was a cartoon drawing of me with a huge Afro and a machine gun”, Obama said.
Advertisement
While many might astutely point out that her DNC speech offered a radically new and inspiring retelling of the history of the American presidency, insofar as from now on that history must begin with the labor and lives of the slaves who built the White House, and beautifully and justly passes through the African American family that has called the White House home for the past eight years.
