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Michelle, Barack, and the Audacity of Struggle: Unsolicited Advice for the Obama Campaign
There's been much bloviating in the blogosphere concerning a profile of Michelle Obama that ran in this morning's New York Times. The fuss has centered on the tone of the piece, perhaps best encapsulated in this passage:
Outspoken, strong-willed, funny, gutsy and sometimes sarcastic, Michelle Obama is playing a pivotal role in her husband’s campaign...
I'll confess that I was unimpressed by the critics. This is a genre piece. The Times is in the habit of running treacley profiles of public figures new to the national stage, and they regularly verge on the hagiographic. That tendency is, in this piece, perhaps exaggerated by the fact that there's not much controversy in Michelle's public life, no two sides ready to offer contrasting opinions. That, alas, will resolve itself as the campaign progresses. So I read the piece, shrugged, and went on with my life.
Then, this afternoon, I received an e-mail from a friend who had read the piece. Let me quote it at some length:
[A middle-aged woman in New York who shall remain anonymous] claims that she voted for Obama because, a few days before the primary she was flipping through the channels looking for campaign coverage and happened on Michelle Obama speaking. What got her was that Mrs. Obama was talking about the difficulty of paying back student loans, rearing children when you have to have a full-time job, and her worry that her children will never be able to afford to buy a house in this market. These are the things [our unnamed woman] worries about all the time, and it occurred to her that these two are the only ones in the race who have had to deal with the real pressures of being middle-class in America.
Now my first reaction was a derisive snort. Only in Manhattan can you listen to a woman who holds a $212,000 job as a hospital executive talk about her life, and find in her a fellow, struggling member of the middle class. But then it struck me that she was absolutely right. Alone among the major candidates, the Obamas remember what it is to struggle financially. Their security is a recent thing, an artifact of Barack's sudden celebrity (and specifically, his book sales). They remember vividly what it's like when your costs exceed your income; when loan payments are due each month; when you lie awake at night, worried that your children may not share the same blessings you've enjoyed. That's the world the rest of us live in, too.
So I went back to the article, and decided that I'd identified the wrong quote as the nut graf:
Mrs. Obama’s nickname inside the campaign is “the closer” because she is skilled at persuading undecided voters to sign pledge cards. But as a smooth orator, she is also known as a connector, volunteering her own life lessons from working-class roots and discussing her confrontation with a culture of low expectations. She has been transparent about more mundane things, too, like leaning on her mother for child care while she is on the road.
My first time through the piece, I read that with skepticism. Michelle Obama is the campaign's Closer? I thought. Isn't it Barack who's won the nation to his side through powerful oratory? Just what is it she's supposed to have figured out that he hasn't?
My second time through, I noticed the answer. What are presented here as two contrasting facets of Michelle's personality - her ability to sway undecided voters, and her willingness to connect with audiences by sharing her personal struggles - are, in fact, cause and effect.
Compare that with her husband's rhetoric. Barack's narrative is, if anything, more compelling than Michelle's; indeed, it's been the foundation of his candidacy. Yet when Barack talks about his personal history, he presents it as a direct instantiation of the American Dream. Every obstacle he's faced is transformed into another example of the possibilities of this great land, that one so disadvantaged could have come so far. This is moving. Indeed, it is inspirational. Uplifting. But somehow, to working Americans, it has remained largely unconvincing.
Even when he discusses the problems of America, he frames them in terms of moral uplift, and illustrates them with other people's lives. Barack talks about "families struggling paycheck to paycheck despite working as hard as they can," the need to "make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life," and his concern "that so many are in debt." Michelle talks about trying to care for her family when she needs to work, worrying that her daughters won't enjoy the same opportunities she has had, and taking years to pay off her student loans. And the campaign calls her The Closer.
There's something fundamental at play here. When working Americans say that Obama is long on promises and short on specifics, they don't mean that he hasn't posted enough essay-length policy proposals on his website. Let's face it: only TPM Cafe readers peruse those things, anyway. What they're saying is some version of: I find your speeches inspirational. I want to believe in the America that you describe, a land of opportunity in which all things are possible. But that vision keeps colliding with the hard realities of my own life. With the bills I can't pay, with the debt that keeps mounting, with the opportunities being foreclosed for my children. So prove to me that you understand that not all American Dreams come true, that you're familiar with the specific obstacles I face, and then maybe I'll trust you to try to make things better.
Michelle has found a way to answer that need, by inflecting her husband's uplifting vision with a hard-bitten sense of reality. The campaign needs to take advantage of her ability to connect with working Americans, particularly with women. It could start by airing a 30-second spot, in which she describes her struggles and concerns, and why she trusts her husband to make things better. It might also go beyond the boilerplate biography offered on the campaign website, and post clips of Michelle on the stump, transcripts of her speeches, and perhaps even blog entries. If they really believe she can convince undecided voters, and the evidence is suggestive, then they've got to do more to ensure that undecided voters hear her voice.
But perhaps more importantly, Michelle offers an answer to the riddle that has puzzled the campaign over the past month - how to break through to the working-class voters who have been most skeptical of its message. It's not enough for Barack to sound more wonkish on the stump, to lard his speeches with specific proposals. He must show voters, in the immortal words of another candidate, that he feels their pain. Barack must demonstrate that he understands that opportunities are always counterpoised with dangers and that the difference between success and failure is sometimes marked not by effort but by happenstance. He must do more than acknowledge this academically. He must speak movingly of his own struggles, not as parables of possibility, but as vivid illustrations of just how hard it is out there. That he, too, worries about his daughters' future. That he's struggled with paying his debts and his bills. That he wants to make this country better because he knows, firsthand, how flawed it can be. The peculiar genius of America is not that we always succeed, it is that in the face of failure we continue to aspire to better things.
Michelle, it seems, is capable of framing her argument in such personal terms, in a manner that inspires the trust and empathy of her audience. Hillary's struggles have been legion (although they are not economic), and she has been strongest as a candidate when she has dared to disclose her own vulnerability. If Barack learns to do the same, if he becomes capable of linking his empathy for those who are struggling to his own trials and travails, then perhaps he, too, can earn the sobriquet of "Closer."
If you've enjoyed this, please share it with other readers by clicking the 'recommend this' link. You can find more analysis on my blog. As always, I welcome comments and corrections. And thanks to all who have contributed to the remarkably civil (and occasionally humorous) conversations that have ensued.
Comments (39)
I wrote the Obama folks a couple of weeks ago about the power of a campaign anecdote I'd heard. Apparently Obama was paying for something somewhere, standing near an aid/volunteer, and when he pulled out his credit card he said something to the effect of: "You know, in 2000 I was broke..." referencing the fact that he'd come quite a ways from that moment.
Anyway, I wrote the campaign (you know, me and all half million others writing the campaign) and told them what a powerful and recognizable image this offers voters. I wish they'd heard me.
February 14, 2008 7:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
doh! here's what I was referencing:
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0742632720080108
February 14, 2008 7:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for an insightful post.
Michele Obama has impressed me from the minute I heard her speak. She offers a great measure of terra firma to the esoteric vision inspired by Barack. In her tales, we are reminded of the hard work (and hope...faith) required of all of us in order to obtain the lofty future that Barack creates so eloquently in the minds-eye.
February 14, 2008 8:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's funny her racism is what turned me off. I might have been willing to support her if she didn;t come off as a know it all and self-rightous to boot. For me she reminded me too much a girl I went to school with some of her comments and it took everything I had not to walk up and punch that twit in the face.
In the interview were she made the famous "my husband could get shot line" I seen right through her. It put me in mind of the Laura and Goerge interview. Snotty, pathetic, and down right rude.
February 14, 2008 10:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Obamas are definitely and infinitely more acquainted with real-life than the Clintons. Barack's Illinois Senate district on the South Side encompassed middle class and poor neighborhoods--NOT wealthy people. Even their much publicized "mansion" is in a neighborhood where the median income is less than $45,000.00 a year. Until Barack's book success when they bought that "mansion," they lived in a Condo in a cramped university neighborhood decidedly not notable for the luxuriousness of its housing. The neighborhoods Obama represented in the Illinois Senate included one of the poorest in the city--Englewood--with a median income of $18,000.00 a year, and South Shore--median income of $30,000.00 a year. Michelle Obama almost certainly made more at her $200,000.00 a year hospital job (in the Hyde Park neighborhood, where the median income is $44,000.00 a year) than Barack made as a State Senator and part-time lecturer in Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago. These are not people who have been insulated by wealth.
This has always come through to my Midwestern born and bred ear--which I think explains why Obama has done so well in the Upper Midwest.
February 14, 2008 10:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
"You had me at bloviating."
Great post and message. I haven't taken much opportunity to listen to Michelle speak. I'll be checking YouTube. Will add anything good I find to the comments. Thanks Fly!
February 14, 2008 10:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I could be that middleaged woman, except that I live in CA.
In the same way, I found a youtube of Michelle Obama speaking in South Carolina. Before listening to her, I felt that her husband's charisma was bright but the underlying policy was light.
But when face to face with "marrying" the Clintons or the Obamas for the next 4 years, the choice was clear.
February 14, 2008 10:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
great read
February 14, 2008 10:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
This shows you how Obama supporters will ignore facts and claim stuff that is not true. The Obama's are not the only ones to know what its like to struggle.
First off the Obamas' lives are not that much different from the Clintons. The Clintons were broke and in debt in 2000 until they had success with their books.
Bill Clinton grew up with a single mother who was a hair dresser. He lived with his grandmother while his mother worked to support them. Hillary'c childhood will better was not upperclass but more middle class because her father was lucky enough to have moderate success with a small business. Then after they go married they lived mediocre and in fact Hillary was the main breadwinner of the family. The most Bill had made prior to his presidental salary was as Goverenor which was around 50,000. The Obama is the only candidate that knows what its like to struggle is BS. Painting the Clintons as rich elites doesn't wash. Then add in the abusive homelife Bill had and Obama's childhood comes out rosey. The Clinton's have not lived a charmed life and have only recently gained the wealth that have today.
February 14, 2008 10:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thomas,
Thank you for your response.
I did not intend to engage in a calculus of comparative suffering. I would not begin to know how to measure such things. It is indisputable that both couples built themselves from humble origins by their commitment to public service.
But I do think it significant that Bill Clinton was first elected Governor of Arkansas in 1979. I suppose the case could be made that the Clintons were, in some way, financially insecure through the 1980s, although I would not care to make it. I would certainly agree, however, that in 1992 the experience was still fresh enough in their minds to infuse their rhetoric on the trail, and to facilitate the connection they forged with their audiences and with voters. Sixteen years later, that's simply not so. (The Clintons were insolvent when they left the White House, not indigent - there's an important distinction.)
But the key difference here is one of timing. Although the trajectories of their rises are remarkably similar, the Clintons ascended two and half decades earlier than the Obamas. The economic world has changed immeasurably since the Clintons first moved into the governor's mansion in Little Rock. I'd still maintain that the Obamas have, at their disposal, a well of experience that is both fresher and qualitatively different than that available to their rivals.
Of course, the other point to make is that it's not Hillary who's been struggling to connect on the trail with working class voters. This was intended as a reflection on the Obama campaign, not as an indictment of anything Hillary has or has not done. She remains adept at drawing on her roots and her experiences to build connections with working-class voters. It's one area where Barack still has a ways to go to catch her.
February 15, 2008 7:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
My wife listened to Michelle speak for a few minutes recently and said she was the one that should be running for president. Oddly neither of us have been wildly impressed by Barack's speeches though we both support him.
Good post. It rings a bell.
Best, Terry
February 14, 2008 11:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thomas, Bill Clinton did come from a family with financial problems. He and Hillary are two different people though. And the suggestion that the Clintons were struggling financially in 2000 is...a little hard to believe.
I'm sure Michelle really does worry about her husband being shot. If I were her, I'd be terrified.
Another nice post, Fly. The Obama campaign uses Michelle a lot, though. She was an important part of their efforts in South Carolina, and also, I believe, in Delaware. I have no doubt she'll be stumping hard in Wisconsin, TX, and Ohio.
February 14, 2008 11:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
It not something to believe but rather FACT!!! When Bill CLinton left office He was over MILLIONS in DEBT due to legal expenses! There is no assumption. My arguement is that Hillary is also not from a Wealthy background and they both started with very little and have worked to achieve what they have. They started out thier marriage not unlike the Obama's. Both with Law degrees that they had paid for by scholarships and yes STUDENT LOANS. They struggled with maritial fincicial problems the same way the OBAMA'S did. My compliant is that you are so willing to see the Obama's as better than the CLINTONS because they lived like the rest of American. My point is that the CLINTONS were not much different and have only prospered the same as the OBAMA. The Clintons DIDN't even have a home when is BILL was elected. Their only residance was the AK GOV Mansion then the WH. They bought a home in NY- the first they had since the small house they lived in before moving into the GOV Mansion.
If you cannot see that then I have a feeling you are not looking at this objectively.
Yes when Clinton left office he had enormance earning potential as a former president and If OBAMA is elected will face the same. - just saying that it wrong to state the they are the only ones who know what is like to be average American families trying to pay the bill when their lives are not much different than the CLintons-
February 14, 2008 11:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Saw somewhere recently the net worth of each of the candidates, and the Obamas were notably at the bottom-- the numbers that stick in my mind were, Clintons, $34 million; Obamas, $1.5 million. Romney and McCain, much higher, as well as Edwards (can't remember about Huckabee).
Yes, I believe the Clintons left office in debt, but with enormous prospects, each with a huge book contract, no trouble buying the big fancy house, etc. It's been 16 years since the Clintons left Arkansas, where maybe their income was comparable to that of the Obamas.
I certainly relate to Michelle as a working mom, worrying about child care and college costs; and while their income is substantially higher than that of my family, it's not in a whole different ballpark, like the Bushes and McCains and Romneys, and yes, nowadays, the Clintons.
February 15, 2008 12:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
So the Clintons are bad because they are rich now-- And I remind you that Hillary was a working mom too and as a working class mom who struggled beneath the poverty line that I can tell you that Many of the support services I used to climb out in the 90's I owe to the CLINTON adm.
Besides What about OBAMA's prospests of earning huge money now. He will be worth several Million after this whole thing is over regradless of how it turns out......
February 15, 2008 12:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why do you continually read this is an attack on the Clinton's?
Stop it. This piece has NOTHING to do with the Clinton's and it is not a zero sum game. That because Michelle Obama understands what ti is like to be in a financial hole, that it makes Clinton not also able to relate to that.
This is not about comparisons or of denigration of anyone (particularly Clinton). Your attitude in this is precisely the sort of knee-jerk attack mentality that is the problem with politics.
Stop it.
February 15, 2008 5:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Also ann I understand where your at. This is the same position I took in 92 just different characters. I am just pointing out that it unfair to classify the Obama's this way. In a few years they will be the CLINTONS as the CLINTONS were them a few years ago. NO difference but the place in time
February 15, 2008 12:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
More great work fly.
For those who haven't seen or heard her, I thought I'd paste a link here of Michelle Obama giving a speech in Orangeburg, SC last November:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid353515028/bctid1321284026
It's deceptively powerful. She's reading it from cards, but you get the sense that she's almost finished internalizing it as her stump speech. It's imperfect, but strong. She's unpolished in places, but magnetic throughout. She's a natural communicator.
February 15, 2008 1:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bottom Line: One does not have to struggle more or less to understand what people need in this country. One must be able to empathize pertaining the lives of others. The Obamas, esp. Barack has this quality ingrained in from his upbring to the choices and values he has stood by.
Lastly, I saw Michelle Obama over 2 weeks on C-SPAN and I was blown away. The Mauren Dowdiness of the Times can be ridiculous--certainly Mauren--though as much it takes Michelle out of context and labels her w/ various tags, these two individual have proven you cannot take the authenticity out of them. You feel it.
FOTW, you make excellent points. And I will pass it on so that the MSM does not pick try to caricature Michelle Obama.
February 15, 2008 3:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Clinton fans are so touchy!
OK: they didn't own a house for close to two decades because they lived in the Governer's mansion then in the White House.
The first deal they tried to make on their Chappaqua house involved Terry McAuliffe, (the DNC fundraiser) putting up $1.35 million in "collateral" to purchase their $1.7 million (in 1999) house in Chappaqu, NY. in a deal that was structured specifically to avoid financial disclosure rules that might come up during Hillary's Senate run. After the outcry over that, they secured a mortgage that no other couple on earth with their stated assets and liabilities would EVER have gotten. A downpayment 10% below what would normally have been acceptable given the other terms of the mortgage, no points, etc...Judicial Watch (a right wing monster, for sure)filed an ethics lawsuit, but I don't think it went anywhere.
Check out the whole saga here:
http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&n=10&srcht=s&query=Clintons+house+purchase&srchst=nyt&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&submit=sub&hdlquery=&bylquery=&daterange=full&mon1=01&day1=01&year1=1981&mon2=02&day2=15&year2=2008
And. About that Westchester County Address: Median income in Westchester County is $64,000 a year. Median House price: $326,000.
This is about as insulated from the economics of average Americans as you can get.
Yes, they had legal expenses. $13 million in legal fees from Whitewater, Paula Jones, etc. Yes, that was a witch hunt of the first order and a general waste of taxpayer monies. (thank you, Republicans)
But, the same fundraiser who was going to finance their Chappaqua home raised $7 million in donations to pay their legal expenses before they left the White House. The Clintons went to court in 2002 to ask the Feds (aka: taxpayers)to pay the outstanding legal debt of $5 million, since he was a sitting president when that debt accumulated and he was not indicted. The year they sought federal relief for the debt was in a year in which Bill made $9 million in Speaking fees and Hillary was paid $2.8 million of an $8 million advance for her autobiography.
The Obamas--We've read about Michelle's $212,000 Hospital Job--where her purpose was to make the University of Chicago Hospital more responsive to the needs of the community surrounding it. Barack made around $55,000. a year as an Illinois State Senator. I don't know how much part time lecturers are paid at the University of Chicago, but I know it's not a fortune. His book advance in 2005 was $1.9 million--after which they bought the house in Kenwood. Before that, they lived in a condo in neighboring Hyde Park--a highly integrated university neighborhood that is stubbornly NOT luxurious in its housing stock.
The neighborhood where they now live is 75% African American. It is gentrified on the margins where the Hyde Park (where the University of Chicago is located) spills over into Kenwood. Those two neighborhoods have median incomes of $45,000.00--give or take a thousand. The neighborhoods around them: Washington Park, Englewood, Oakland--Under $20,000. Douglas & South Shore --under $30,000. These are the neighborhoods Barack represented in the State Senate and the neighborhoods Michelle did community outreach to from the UC Hospital.
Cook County, IL--median income is $43,500. Median house price is $157,500. Pretty much in line with the country as a whole.
February 15, 2008 3:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think this is superb analysis of what Obama needs to do for lower income voters to identify with him. Most American voters trust the personal experiences of candidates more than their universal ideas, even when those personal attributes are largely fabrications of image creators, as in Bush's case.
Someone should get this to the top of the Obama campaign to encourage him to express his inspirational ideas more often in terms of his _own_ life experiences.
February 15, 2008 3:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Damn you Fly! Now I have to get my dictionary and look up "hagiographic."
Cheers on another great post.
February 15, 2008 7:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh my, you got those HTML tags to actually work.
February 15, 2008 8:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
The fact of Michelle is part of Obama, and I am unsurprised, upon learning more about her, that she is a exceptional person.
February 15, 2008 9:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Here here. One more comment on this: What struck me in listening BO's victory speech after the Potomac primaries was that he threw in several personal anectdotes (e.g. the teacher who has to work at Dunkin Donuts as a second job, etc.), but none of them actually identified REAL people. Unlike Bill C., Edwards, and others who have effectively used a single person's story to get across an idea, BO talks about anonymous people. That, to me, looks detached and has got to be fixed moving forward.
February 15, 2008 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hillary became a partner at the Rose Law Firm at the same time Bill became governor in AR. They didn't suffer financially while Bill was governor even though the job paid about $35,000, the lowest among the 50 US states. She wanted to build a pool at the governor's mansion (Arkansas summers are as steamy as anywhere else in the South in the summer) and was quoted as being upset when the idea was shot down for being too elite. I don't know if it was the legislature, Bill or his advisers that put the kabosh on her plan but she had the cash and thought it unfair she couldn't spend it the way she wanted to. In hindsight after all the flack the Clintons have taken for being the Clintons my guess is she now thinks it was the right decision.
February 15, 2008 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
LBJ had a saying that if you took care of all the little things, the details, the big things would fall into place. I see a lot of that in Obama. Not so much as a strategy, it's not what he's doing so much as what he's "being" as that Dartmouth prof said before NH.
If a black son of an immigrant father who left after two years and single white mom can reach the very highest office in the land then each of us, most of whom haven't started at low rungs on the ladder with as many obstacles in the way can achieve our dreams. That's not just an aspiration for Americans but billions the world over. It is what he represents to us and everybody else. Yeah most of us don't have the pure intellect it takes to make president of Harvard law review or teach constitutional law at U of Chi. but the fact that he can rise from the where he was to where we hope he goes shows that any kid can rise as far as his ambitions and brains can carry him or her. There's a very real sense that he won't let us down because he and his have lived the story.
Bill C. has a lot of the same qualities and back story. Hillary? Well she married a guy like that. Not sure it would really count and regardless she hasn't played up her beginnings anyway.
February 15, 2008 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the info. Now I see why they developed such a close rewarding friendship with Rezko.
February 15, 2008 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Want to provide some proof for that comment? Because the Chicago newspapers all frame that quite a bit differently than your camp Clinton talking point.
February 15, 2008 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
"In June 2005, Obama and Rezko purchased adjoining parcels in Kenwood. The state's junior senator paid $1.65 million for a Georgian revival mansion, while Rezko paid $625,000 for the adjacent, undeveloped lot. Both closed on their properties on the same day.
Last January, aiming to increase the size of his sideyard, Obama paid Rezko $104,500 for a strip of his land.
The transaction occurred at a time when it was widely known Tony Rezko was under investigation by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and as other Illinois politicians befriended by Rezko distanced themselves from him."
From: http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/124171,CST-NWS-obama05.article
Sounds like a profitable relationship to me!
February 15, 2008 4:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
You may, perhaps, mean that in spite, but there's a core of truth there. Like many people of humble origins who find themselves ascending through social classes, I think it's fairly clear that the Obamas didn't always make the best decisions. Wealth was new to them, their status and position tenuous at best, and the opportunities suddenly before them tempting and overwhelming. And, unlike those born to such a social station, they lacked a large number of relatives with similar experiences, and whose counsel they might rely.
It is, I think, instructive that the Rezko entanglement came just as the Obamas gained some measure of disposable wealth for the first time in their lives. The parallel with the Clintons is clear - their entanglement with Whitewater came just as Mr. Clinton was elected governor. In neither case do I detect nefarious intent; just inexperience coupled with poor judgment. The two episodes are, of course, entirely different matters - but they share this common connection.
There are two ways of responding to such incidents. One is to insist that our leaders be reared to wealth and privilege (although that hardly innoculates them against corruption and insider dealing). The other is to attempt to exercise some discrimination in judging their mistakes, to differentiate between the indiscrete and the unethical.
February 15, 2008 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
It really boils down to one question, IMO: was there a quid pro quo? In other words, are the sleazeballs like Rezko simply currying favor, or are they attempting what amounts to a quasi-legal form of bribery. In both cases (Rezko and Whitewater) I don't see it.
Of course, the anti-Obama trolls on this website seem to think it's enough to say "Rezko the slumlord" and Obama in the same sentence, as if that proves anything. On the bright side, smear by innuendo seems to be the strongest dirt they have on Obama.
February 15, 2008 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
See, I'm different than you on that. I always feel sorry for people who are politicized by a candidate giving their name and sob story to the whole world. Here they opened up, in hopes of inspiring change from a candidate, and now their hardships are aired in public. I respect when a politician doesn't "out" someone like that.
February 15, 2008 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I met Michelle Obama in October of 2004 after her speech to a Democratic Women's luncheon [yes, she blew us all away with her amazing wit and down-to-earth directness].
When I approached her for a handshake and picture, I blurted out, "I saw your husband come out on the stage at the Convention, and my first thought was 'hey, he looks like he's fourteen years old!'"
Not exactly the most brilliant thing to say to his wife, but my blurting that out was really ok and drew her laughter, too. There is something so comfortable about her..... it was as easy as talking to a long time neighbor.
I happen to really like her, and find her brilliant in her own right, but mostly I believe and appreciate that she is the ballast that allows his soaring.
February 15, 2008 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great post. FlyOnTheWall, I would like to share this on my blog/website www.wiseass.org
Can you let me know if that is ok, by emailing me at wiseass.org (at) mac.com that would be great.
February 15, 2008 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY WHITES CHOOSING NOT TO VOTE FOR OBAMA ARE RACISTS, WHILST BLACK CHOOSING TO VOTE FOR HIM BECAUSE HE IS BLACK ARE NOT?
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF OBAMA'S LATEST BILL TO MAKE THE US TAXPAYER RESPONSIBLE FOR ENDING THE WORLD'S POVERTY?
February 15, 2008 5:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY YOU ARE SHOUTING, JACKASS!
February 15, 2008 6:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rezko Rezko Rezko Rezko.....
It's like a mantra for some. Rezko, by the way, has also donated to the Clintons and I've seen a nice photo of Bill and Hillary posing with him floating around out there on the web...Rezko donates to everyone who runs in Illinois. He is one of the sleazy elements inherent in the process by which we fund politics in this country.
So...yes...the guy is a REAL ESTATE DEVELOPER and he bought a piece of property in a gentrifying neighborhood for $625,000. No news there. Developers have been buying lots WITH houses on them in neighborhoods all over town, knocking the houses down and building out multi-unit "luxury condo" buildings for the past 8 years. Those luxury condos go for half a million apiece up here on the N. Side.
So...Rezko bought this lot. Then he sold a ten foot strip of that property --Not the entire lot, but a ten foot strip--to the Obamas for $104,000.
$104,000. for a ten foot strip of residential real estate may or may not be a "deal." Hardly seems like one to me. I dunno...but I'm not sure what the issue is here, except that Rezko is unsavory.
He didn't GIVE them the lot. He didn't even sell them the lot at a loss..
They paid $104,000 for a 10 FOOT STRIP of it that runs adjacent to the lot their house sits on.
Ten feet is standard for a driveway and garage, which I am sure is what the Obamas had in mind.
Kenwood is a neighborhood that was built before automobiles. There are NO DRIVEWAYS. Houses were built with separate, stables/carriage houses off the alley--Obama says in the Trib piece that the carriage house has a tenant in it, so it's been converted. There may or may not be room for parking for more than one car off the alley.
If this is all about a driveway, the Obamas will also need to apply to the Alderman's office for a zoning variance in order to get a permit which will allow them to do a curb cut...All tedious and time-consuming procedures for which people pay their contractors extra fees to stand in the endless lines for permits, etc.... Why do I feel sure some clueless person will interpret the application for a zoning variance--as the basis for another scandal?
Off-Street Parking is the fondest dream of all Chicagoans with cars. Anyone who does not live in a big city cannot begin to appreciate this.
It may have been dumb for Obama to do a deal with Rezko, but it's hardly illegal. I'm not even sure how it can be construed as a scandal--except by association and insinuation. It's clear that most people who are inclined to resort to the Rezko Rezko Rezko chant do not seem inclined to actually READ the stories that disclose the details of the transaction that actually took place.
February 15, 2008 7:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Obamas earned almost $500 000 last year and live in a $1.6million house. What is their connection to the poor? They are both lawyers. The last type of people we need running the USA.
By the way could someone define 'the poor', 'the rich' and 'the middle class'.
I hope George W. signs an executive order ending all affirmative-action programs. The Obamas certainly won't.
February 22, 2008 9:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
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