Michelle Obama Resurrects Hope
Analysis: The former first lady displays the power of her influence long after leaving the White House.
Michelle Obama walked on the convention stage Tuesday, electrified the audience, paid homage to her mother, saluted Vice President Kamala Harris’s character and credentials and took on Donald Trump in blistering attacks.
But not before she told Americans “hope is making a comeback,” compelling voters to take action.
In a throwback to the Obama presidency from Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago, the couple’s hometown, the former first lady spoke of “the anticipation, the energy, the exhilaration of once again being on the cusp of a brighter day.”
She also warned voters, however, not to become complacent in the weeks ahead if a lie takes hold or if something goes wrong.
“We cannot get a ‘Goldilocks’ complex about whether everything is just right,” she said. “And we cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala, instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected.”
Scholars who study presidential spouses believe that the post-White House Michelle Obama oratory strength is in breaking through to the American people about the issues at hand, especially for women.
“Former first ladies have showed their use of the podium does not stop when they leave their role,” said Nancy Kegan Smith, president of First Ladies Association for Research and Education and co-author of the new textbook U.S. First Ladies: Making History and Leaving Legacies and companion tradebook Remember the First Ladies: The Legacies of America’s History-Making Women. “This convention season and election really focuses on the crucial role of women in society and in political life more than at any other time I can think of in my life.”
“This convention season and election really focuses on the crucial role of women in society and in political life more than at any other time I can think of in my life.”
— Nancy Kegan Smith
In her speech, Obama spoke to the harm that would be caused by efforts to cut healthcare; to take away women’s freedom to control their bodies; to take away infertility treatments—like what the Obamas used—to help start families; to ban books; to shut down the Department of Education; and to demonize children “for being who they are and loving who they love.”
Obama went on to tell Americans not to complain if no one from the campaign specifically reaches out to them for their support. Reiterating the sage advice of Kamala Harris’s mother to her daughter: “Don’t just sit around and complain. Do something!”
Midway through the former first lady’s speech the phrase caught on.
“So if they lie about her, and they will, we’ve got to do something. If we see a bad poll, and we will, we’ve got to put down that phone, and do something,” Obama said. “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 face and what?”
“Do something!” The convention hall chanted back.
Elizabeth Natalle, a professor emerita in communication from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and co-editor of the book Michelle Obama: First Lady, American Rhetor, described Obama as “one of the smartest, best, modern first ladies in history.”
“Like her campaign speeches in 2016, she turned her full attention to the audience present and at home by exhorting us to ‘do something!’ And, of course, the action step is to vote—something that Michelle Obama has been involved with since leaving the White House,” Natalle told East Wing Magazine.
Notable about the former first lady’s address, added Natalle, was how it echoed the speeches she made in 2016 for Hillary Clinton. Then, Obama recalled the “pit in her stomach” and her “dread of the future,” which harkened back to the campaign trail when Obama tried her best to get people out to vote against Donald Trump. From the outset of Obama’s speech, “she found strength through her mother and Kamala Harris's mother to lay out the kind of values that characterize a world when people work hard, love others, pull themselves up, and give more than they take,” Natalle said.
Looking back through history, Diana Carlin, professor emerita of communication at Saint Louis University and co-author of Remember the First Ladies: The Legacies of America’s History-Making Women, said a hallmark of presidential spouses' convention speeches is a grounding in what is known as "republican motherhood and wifehood." The phrase, she said, refers to the post-revolutionary role cut out for women to provide the grounding for their children in American values and to support their husbands in their direct pursuit of building and maintaining a country.
“Michelle Obama remembered her recently deceased mother and Kamala Harris’s deceased mother as passing along a set of values that is American in nature,” Carlin said. “In much the same way she introduced Barack Obama in 2008 as coming from a middle-class background rooted in traditional values, she did the same for Harris as a way of projecting her leadership style and priorities if she is president. Just as Hillary Clinton alluded to her past as first lady with her reference to ‘it takes a village,’ Michelle Obama resurrected the 2008 mantra of hope.”
Not restrained by the expectations of holding a political office for a spouse, Obama confronted Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump by name in searing remarks that called out his lies and distortions.
“My husband and I, sadly, know a little something about this,” Obama said, adding how for years Trump tried to make people fear them.
“See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black,” Obama said. “I want to know who’s going to tell him … that the job he is currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?”
“See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black,” Obama said. “I want to know who’s going to tell him … that the job he is currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?”
Unlike 2016, Natalle said, when Obama did not want to repeat Donald Trump's name in her speeches, in this speech, she boldly laid her cards on the table calling Trump “the same old con.”
The contrast between a weak Trump and a strong Harris worked well as a comparison, Natalle said.
“Michelle Obama is a studied and mature public speaker who can persuade just by walking on a stage,” Natalle said. “She is a role model for all Americans because she calls the shots in a direct and true arc.”
Obama’s speech also had elements of many speeches she gave as first lady encouraging others to believe in themselves and to not let anyone else define them, Carlin added.
“Where her speech differed from the type of speech Emhoff gave is that she has the freedom as a former first lady to be more directly political just as she was at the 2016 convention when she took on Donald Trump directly with her line, ‘When they go low, we go high,’” Carlin said. “Her current speech was even more political with multiple references to the former president.”
Obama reminded Americans of the shrinking timeline remaining in the 74 days leading up to Election Day and to expect the “joy” from the convention to fade into “an uphill battle.”
While spouses encourage the delegates and those viewing the convention to work hard, Carlin said Obama’s speech also addressed the need to remember that “the euphoria of a convention dies out as the campaign heats up and particularly the rapidly changing tide of the campaign in Harris’s favor will turn again.”
Obama’s remedy, just before introducing her husband, went like this:
“We cannot afford for anyone … in America to sit on their hands and wait to be called … There is simply no time for that kind of foolishness. You know what you need to do,” Obama said. “So consider this to be your official ask. Michelle Obama is asking you—no, I’m telling y’all—to do something.”
Time will tell how many heed the former first lady’s blunt call for action.