If I had my druthers, Michelle Obama would be the nominee for president of the Democratic Party. That’s not a knock on Kamala Harris, but an expression of my unbounded admiration and trust in Michelle’s political talent, experience, worldview and character. I’ve often said that the two best orators in America are married to each other and Barack is in second place. That proved true again last night at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, as the former president delivered what would ordinarily be considered a great speech, except that it was completely overshadowed by the speech by his wife which preceded it.
This was true even on the moral plane. Barack had his moments, particularly when he talked about people siloing themselves behind their phones, looking for approval from strangers, and then wondering why they’re so lonely. But Michelle spoke with total moral clarity and complete confidence in her authority and credibility. She was the clear leader of the convention and the party in ways that Barack and Hillary Clinton sometimes approached but never matched.
It’s astonishing that she has never run for office nor had a full-time public speaking job and that she can just walk up to a microphone in a sold-out arena in front of tens of millions of worldwide television viewers, and speak flawlessly and with unmatched timing and skill. And that doesn’t even get into the brilliant content of her speeches, which shows her collaborative skill with the writers.
Alas, she wants no part of running for public office, and I can’t blame her. And, yet, her aversion to the whole process just makes her effortless mastery of it all the more spectacular. By the time she was done, Democrats were ready to run through walls for Kamala Harris, and no doubt volunteerism will go through the roof over the 76 days remaining in the campaign.
A lot of the coverage will understandably focus on her digs at Donald Trump and her shift in tone from her previous “They go low, we go high” message, but the real heart of her theme asked us to be good to each other and not follow those who seek to divide us for their own cynical and selfish reasons. And it was a call to arms for people to “do something” rather than just observe and complain. She asked us not to seek or expect perfection in our leaders. We should have high standards, but we can’t get distracted or sidetracked by minor disagreements.
In the end, she spoke to the dread so many of us have felt about the future ever since Trump took power in 2017 and began setting us against each other and destroying everything he touched. We’re on the cusp of ending the era, and “If we start feeling tired, if we start feeling that dread creeping back in, we’ve got to pick ourselves up, throw water on our faces, and do something,”
It was a home run of a speech, and I’m so grateful that our country has a moral leader like Michelle.
