Michelle Obama Is a Master of Politics Because She Hates Politics

When Barack Obama took to the stage at the Democratic National Convention late Tuesday, he was quick to pay tribute to the woman who had just charmed the audience. The former president described himself as “the only person stupid enough to speak after Michelle Obama.” This could be dismissed as the kind of husbandly bravado that politicians indulge in too often, but in fact, Barack Obama was speaking a simple truth. While he himself is widely regarded as the most gifted American speaker of his generation, Michelle Obama is at least as good. Both Obamas delivered first-rate speeches, their rhetorical mastery and development of ideas in sharp contrast to the plodding, hackneyed language of people like Sen. Chuck Schumer and New York Governor Kathy Hockal. Of the two Obamas, however, Michelle’s speech was the more profound and the one that stayed with the audience the longest.

The rumor about Michelle Obama is that she hates politics. She was never happy about her husband running for office, and she was often noticeably uncomfortable around the vulgar people who dominated it, including her husband’s successor as president, Donald Trump. Many Democrats have dreamed of Michelle Obama running for high office, a natural fantasy, given her widespread popularity and overwhelming public presence. But this fantasy will never come true, because, for all her talent, she has no love for the game of politics.

But this aversion to politics, combined with a recognition of the need for political activism, also explains why Michelle Obama is such a persuasive speaker: She can appeal to ordinary people who aren’t political nerds or die-hard partisans, because she shares their outsider perspective.

Michelle Obama’s speech was as much about psychology as it was politics, speaking about the despair and depression that Trump’s rise has brought to many, and the self-destructive mindsets that prevent people from throwing themselves into the political fight that is needed. She touched on personal matters at various points (the death of her mother, her use of IVF to conceive a child), which served to underscore that she was speaking about the election from a place of personal anguish.

A recurring theme of the Harris/Waltz campaign is that the Democratic candidate comes from a middle-class background, as opposed to Donald Trump, who is a child of wealth and privilege. Many speakers have taken up this theme, but none have done it more effectively than Michelle Obama, because she combined it with a story of middle-class people who have seen their own struggles while watching a privileged figure like Trump commit countless crimes and wrongs with impunity. Summarizing this argument, Michelle Obama said:

“[Kamala Harris] We understand that most of us will never be given the benefit of learning from failure, never have the benefit of affirmative action for generational wealth. We don’t get a second, third or fourth chance when our business goes bankrupt or we’re in crisis. We can’t afford to complain or cheat others to get further when things don’t go our way. No. We can’t bend the rules and win all the time. When we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there’s an escalator waiting to take us to the top. No. We put our heads down. We work. In America, we do things.

With a simple, elegant phrase (“affirmative action for generational wealth”), Michelle Obama found a novel way to expose the lie at the heart of Trump’s politics.

But Michelle Obama wasn’t content to simply make her case against Trump. She also called on Democrats to confront their own self-defeating insecurities that often paralyze them. In another highlight of her speech, she said:

“So no matter how good you feel tonight, tomorrow, the day after, this is going to be an uphill battle, folks. We can’t be our own worst enemy. No. The moment something starts to go wrong, the moment lies start to spread, folks, we can’t just sit back and do nothing. We can’t have a Goldilocks complex about whether everything is OK. Instead of worrying about whether this country is going to elect someone like Kamala, we should be doing everything in our power to make sure that someone like Kamala is elected.”

Michelle Obama spoke openly about “anxiety,” venturing into territory no other speaker at the Democratic National Convention had dared to tread. Since Donald Trump narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016, many Democrats have understandably concluded that the country is too sexist to elect a woman president, much less a black woman president. Added to this anxiety is a larger anxiety about the future of American democracy, given the Republican Party’s embrace of Trumpism, an authoritarian impulse that has already resulted in one abortive insurrection. By wisely pointing out that this anxiety exists, Michelle Obama gave Democrats the words to address and overcome this emotional paralysis.

Barack Obama has delivered key speeches that have become staples of American political discourse, such as his 2004 speech in which he affirmed that there is no division between “Red America” ​​and “Blue America” ​​and his 2008 speech on race relations. But in her speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Michelle Obama herself delivered a message that will resonate not only through this election but for years to come.