I’ve shot Michelle Obama a few times now.
And every time I see her through the magnifying eye of my camera lens I’m left with the impression of a shy, physically awkward girl --girl, that’s a deliberate choice -- forced into the spotlight. If asked why, I’d say it wasn’t so much in what she said or how she said it, it was in the way she carried herself. Maybe it’s just because she’s so tall, but, then again, maybe it’s because she feels that her husband has gotten himself into some pretty deep water -- water that he will survive only if fate turns favorably toward him and the Secret Service continues to do the outstanding job it has of keeping him alive.
Indeed, who but the Kennedy's was he implicitly compared to last night on the stage of the Pepsi Center in Denver?
Which is why Michele Obama’s speech there was so extraordinary. It was near-perfect grace under fire. It was powerfully delivered, at times in something akin to what poets call meter and what we call rhythm. It was tough. It was soft. But above all it was moving. As a lawyer, she is trained in oral argument. But what we heard last night was far from a sterile analysis of law and facts. No, what we heard last night came from somewhere else. Some cherished, magnificent place inside of her where all is as it should be and the peace and power emanating from there allows a person to be all she can be, all she wants to be.
And from this place Michelle Obama reached across and touched the same place inside of you, a part that perhaps, like me, you felt no longer existed.
She makes a convincing case for her husband to be President. I mean, if this is the kind of woman -- woman, that’s a deliberate choice -- that Barack Obama lays down next to every night he must be as good as she is. They’re the kind of smart, serious, sincere people that you know, you just know, will succeed if given the chance. They just work like that. More than this, though, you want them to succeed. They’re the kind of couple you hope for. They’re the kind of couple you want to hang out with. They’re the kind of couple you wish to be and, in a perfect world, the kind of couple you would be.
But the world’s far from perfect and, hope, wish, pray, whatever we do, or don’t, that world is about to come crashing down on them, and on us.
We see it descending now. Domestically, two Bush terms have left this country rotting from the inside out. Mortgage foreclosures blanket the Nation. Debt of all kind, from college to credit cards, including the National Debt, holds all of us down. Gasoline is $4 a gallon. Cynicism and malaise infect everyone, young and old alike. Internationally, we are in two win-less wars, earning us the enmity of folks around the world -- and some motherfucking Bedouins from the Seventh Century want to set off a nuclear bomb in New York City, my goddamned hometown. And, if this weren’t bad enough, the time to do something about global warming may have past.
Of course there’s always hope. So it’s a good thing the Obamas have more to offer than just that.
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