The four most talented politicians in the country, in order:
1. Michelle Obama
2. Barack Obama
3. Bill Clinton
4. Hillary Clinton
What are the chances that they would come from just two families?
I think that is just insane. If Michelle Obama wants to be president, she will be president. If she doesn’t, Hillary will.
An incredible speech by the First Lady. She owned the place tonight.
If you say so, dude. As much as her last few paragraphs might give me the slightest bit of pause for the first time, I can’t imagine from what we know about her that she’s up for anything more than four more years of Washington politics.
Hilary is out of electoral politics, and I don’t think Michelle has any interest in it (sigh). I thought Deval Patrick gave the best speech of the night.
I was made VERY happy by the entire main program of speakers tonight, but Michelle was particularly outstanding.
Yeah, who was that guy, and what did he do with the real Deval Patrick?
That was extraordinary. He blew the doors off that place.
What criteria are you using?
Raw talent.
You make a great point but I’m not taking you literally on any of this. Michelle gave a phenomenal speech. Better politician than her husband? I doubt it.
The Dems had a lot of talent on the floor tonight. If Michelle truly has political ambitions, I could see her perhaps becoming the first female nominee and possibly the first female president too. She would clean up with African-Americans and women, making her hard to beat.
I haven’t watched the speech, but every reaction I’ve seen has said the same thing as Booman. Including Jonah “Liberal Fascism” Goldberg…
Booman is the best judge of political talent in the blogosphere, imo, and I’m going to defer to his judgment here.
It was a great speech but she didn’t write it. The delivery started off slow and got stronger as the speech ran on. By the end, it was excellent. But is she a better politician than Castro or Strickland (the two who gave the best speeches of the night in my opinion)?
Michelle will have name recognition and access to money if she chooses to run. I don’t doubt that she would have a great shot at the nomination.
Actually it has been reported that she did write it. She spent the better part of a month working on it bit by bit as she had time.
Yes, I read that somewhere but I’m skeptical. If she really did write it, she deserves a lot of credit because it hit the right notes in the right tone, taking down Romney with the effectiveness of a scythe without ever once calling him out by name.
Why on earth would you be skeptical? I have heard her speak off-the-cuff many times and she touches on many of the same themes.
We have two brilliant minds in the white house with our President and First Lady.
Problem I have with that scenario is that Michelle’s speech was clearly crafted as an answer to Ann Romney’s that was delivered but a week ago. Or maybe the “I’m a son of a mill worker” was in the ether as the theme for the 2012 conventions.
I don’t think so actually. Having heard her speak many, many times it seemed like the same themes she always brings up–an insight into how the person her husband is influences the executive/president/champion he is for other people.
Agree wrt Strickland’s speech and delivery but have to say that both Lilly Ledbetter’s and Deval Patrick’s speeches were better than Castro’s. Perhaps it signified nothing but citing the opinion/assessment of the Milken Institute for anything other than the greed and criminality of its founder would be like FDR praising the Mellon Institute. FDR wouldn’t have gone there; Castro did.
And education, experience, skill, assistants, and handlers have nothing to do with what the public sees? How do you extract all that to determine the raw talent quotient?
For “raw talent” at giving a speech, I’d have to say that Lilly Ledbetter was the best last night. Of course being a talented politician is more than giving good speech. And as much as it pains me to admit it, when it comes to enacting one’s agenda, GWB was one of the best.
His social security privatization idea ended up dead in the water. He passed Medicare Part D because that is what the Democrats wanted as well. Sure it is far from perfect but it is better than nothing.
More alive and kicking in the water than dead. Considering how even team Obama talks about the need to “reform” it. The last time that notion of reforming Social Security took hold was when Reagan was in the WH. What did that accomplish? All workers and employers paying more in payroll (regressive) taxation to build up a surplus for retirement of the Boomers. And where was that surplus parked for the past thirty years? Mostly in the pockets of those that earn enough to pay income taxes except nobody told them or structured it as a loan and have no intention of paying it back.
So wait a second: we’re supposed to ignore the history of Bush Social Security reform effort – the one that never even got a vote in Congress, after weeks of the newly-elected President and his entire party flogging it, including a cross-country bus tour, the one that most people point to as the beginning of the collapse of his presidency – because there is still talk about reforming Social Security in some manner by some unnamed people in Washington? That doesn’t even include a privatization proposal among any national figure?
Her ability tonight to obliterate Mitt Romney in the smoothest, smartest, most personable way possible. She was about as perfect as it gets.*
*The only hangup is the continued weird thing where she always avoids any mention of her…y’know career of her own over the years, which is always a bit of a bummer in a speech where she brings up glass ceilings and women having to put aside their own ambitions.
She aint dead yet.
And they’re all on our side!
Reports are Michelle wrote the speech too. I don’t think she has any interest in politics but she has as lucrative a post-presidency career in speech making as any former president. 😉
The lineup prior to her taking the stage was pretty damn impressive and then the first few moments of her speech where the crowd had to come down off the high of the last speeches were almost unnerving to me.
But then she moved the story along and I’m not sure I would say it was raw talent because she is so fluid that she makes it look natural, but the woman is powerful and she reminded everyone of what First Class is made up of.
The mom in her told us to do our homework and get out there to do the hard work and get her husband 4 more years. She’s earned respect for her title of First Lady.
I lack the proper superlatives for Michelle Obama – I’m speechless…
I find your order interesting and true.
But I saw a deeper bench among Democrats that what the Republicans could muster last week.
Deval Patrick has room to move after being governor. Would like him to replace Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education.
Martin O’Malley had a workmanlike presentation, solid, passionate, but not spectacular. Like Marcy, I cannot keep from guessing: elf, Vulcan, leprachaun?
Julian Castro and his twin brother Jaoquin are not quite 38. In 2024, they will still be in their prime at age 50. When do the demographics help him take the Texas Governorship or US Senator? Joaquin’s Congressional run this year will be an interesting test.
If she’d do it, I’d put Lily Ledbetter up aganst Jeff Sessions in 2014 just for the entertainment value. And the possibility that lightning would strike.
What’s the probability that Obama’s coattails can finally get Rahm’s protege Tammy Duckworth into office?
Joe Kennedy III has got the family public service culture and style down. And he’s 32 on election day.
And the guy who is Veterans Affairs officer for Xavier University and interned in Sherrod Brown’s office has potential.
But Wexler was awful. Thankfully, he was outside of the main cable time. He essentially declared that the US was a colony of Israel. I guess that politically it had to be done somewhere in the lineup. But Bibi is still going to be going after Obama on the Republican’s behalf.
And Michelle…did what Ryan wanted to do to Obama without mentioning Mitt’s name.
And did you catch the benediction? East Nashville TN missionary to Africa was inspired in a prophetic (in the call to accountability sense) prayer.
Would like him to replace Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education.
How about AG?
He ran the Civil Rights Division, after all.
That works too — if he has more of a prosecutorial tendency. Is Holder known to be leaving?
Run Michelle and Ann Romney’s speeches back to back, and tell me which one is a huge political asset for her husband, and which one spends her time doing dressage.
Even Laura Bush was a librarian.
And Hillary baked cookies.
as well as being a practicing lawyer, but then she’s a Dem.
Only until she married. Ann Romney, like Barbara Bush, just married at a much younger age than Laura did.
So why isn’t Michelle out there stumping for our Senate candidates? She may be mom-in-chief and have important duties, but if she doesn’t help retain the Senate Obamacare will be toast after the election and after the GOP senate passes reconciliation to defund it.
She could be a real help to Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, to Claire McCaskill, to just about all of them. Get her out there giving speeches for someone other than her husband, and then we’ll see if she’s the most talented pol in America.
Have other First Ladies ever campaigned for anybody other than their husband? I don’t think even Hillary did it during her time.
I don’t know of any, but it doesn’t seem all that odd compared to handing the job of health care reform over to FLOTUS like Bill Clinton did.
Plus, if Michelle Obama had any political ambitions of her own, it might be a good way to break into the game by doing some campaign appearances here and there, and possibly some stumping. It’d be a relatively risk-free way to test the waters; she’s well-liked enough that her presence certainly wouldn’t hurt any candidate she chose to support, and her talent is undeniable.
Yes, they have, and she has before (see below). This is explored in Kantor’s book about the Obamas. She needs to get over that and get out there in key states.
Because she doesn’t like doing it. Obama’s people try all the time. The last time they tricked her into doing it for someone who didn’t even support the president’s health care bill, and it pissed her off that no one told her about how this person voted.
Exactly. Which answers the question above–people have tried to get her to because that’s what presidential candidates’ wives do when they’re popular (we haven’t had one this popular in a while–neither HRC or THK was that popular).
I thought Michelle Obama gave a great speech last night, but count me out of this fetish for dreaming of American dynasties.
The chances that the most talented politicians in the country would come from just two families is small, but the odds that a political junkie would believe it are very high. You believe it, because these are the people in the spotlight. It’s no coincidence that they come from the two most recent Democratic presidential families. It’s no coincidence that Republicans are constantly talking up the next Bush, or that every Kennedy since John has been suggested for high office.
I doubt that either Obama would have made your list in 2002. Most people didn’t put Bill Clinton on the list just 2 years before he won his election. I thought Castro did a great job and I hadn’t heard his name before last night. In fact, I’ve been impressed with the caliber of the speeches so far.
I’m glad that Obama has enough self-confidence to allow some new talent to shine at his convention. We’re going to need it in just a few years.
Wonderful comment! One principle this country was founded on was a rejection of dynasties. The notion that self-government was incompatible with ruling families. Tres depressing that liberals/Democrats continue to advocate for that.
Good point.
The best politician in America is probably some city councillor somewhere who, though deeply in the minority, still manages to pass bill after bill.
I love our First Lady.
that is all.
I feel the same way. She is extraordinary.
There’s more to being a good politician than public speaking. What does Michelle Obama know about cajoling legislators? What does Hillary Clinton know about organizing? She didn’t exactly burn the house down with her strategic sense during the 2008 primaries.
The snippet from Ted Kennedy giving a speech in the tribute to him last night was a reminder of what good orators used to sound like. None of Booman’s four rise to that level IMHO.
Rhetorical styles have changed to be more pedestrian than booming. Teleprompters and microphones, I suspect.
Less talent, skill, and practice would be my guess. TV, teleprompters, and mics make it easy for those with zero public speaking chops to get a passing grade; so, few bother to stretch for more than that.
I think you’re just expressing a preference for a style. Yes, Kennedy’s speaking style was old-fashioned. Really good political speakers sounded like that decades ago.
It’s tough to compare across eras, but both Obamas and Bill Clinton are in the very elite tier of political speakers.