From an article on Michelle Obama’s speech at the DNC:
If the speech is effective beyond the power of well delivered rhetoric, it will be because the first lady took this description of Obama’s core self and linked it to policy. This is what Ann Romney and Mitt Romney never did. The message of the GOP convention was “Trust Mitt.” That was Michelle Obama’s message too: Her husband could be trusted because he came from a background and has lived a middle class life. But then she started connecting the biography to the policy. This was always Bill Clinton’s great gift. If this connection is successfully made, then that’s what will make this pitch more politically than just a pretty speech by a loving wife who thinks her husband deserves an A for effort.
I don’t want to criticize Michelle Obama because I understand that she made the speech she had to make. But it is very frustrating to see -yet again! – this pernicious idea that a president’s policies should be dictated by his “core self.” I don’t want to care about politicians’ biographies. I want them to act the role of hired managers who put in practice what their voters want them to do, not what a memory of their grandma tells them to do. I don’t want to hear about the politicians’ broken kitchen table, their dog, their grandfather, or their favorite brand of candy. I want to hear how a politician will put his or her personal interests, prejudices and foibles aside and do the job of representing the people.
We do not care about the “core selves” of any professional we hire to perform a service. My students don’t expect me to teach well because I come from a long life of female teachers. They expect me to teach well because that’s my job. Neither do I question whether a dentist will be able to treat me well based on her family experiences with Ukrainians, Jews or autistics. She has to do her job well, irrespective of what her life has been like and what her maternal aunt told her 40 years ago.
When will politics stop being turned into a cheap melodrama and become centered around elected representatives who do the will of their voters and avoid bugging us with their numerous relatives and difficult childhoods?
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