We have been fortunate in our First Ladies. Barbara and Laura Bush, Rosalynn Carter and Betty Ford were dignified and approachable women who put a human face on the often confusing world of politics. And Nancy Reagan, who often seemed rather imperial and stern, won our affection for her fierce and protective love of her husband, President Reagan.
Michelle Obama is cut from the same fine cloth as these other First Ladies and confirmed our affection by handily taming a fractious Democratic convention last week, thereby opening the gates to the nomination of Hillary Clinton. I will miss her, and the elegance, grace, and courage she and her husband have brought to the White House.
Mrs. Obama’s challenge to delegates, “when they go low, we go high” was mostly honored. There were no shouts to lock Trump up, and when he was referenced, it was done humorously, or with a sense of disbelief that someone like him, an unmistakable sociopath, is the GOP’s nominee. Republicans wouldn’t really do that to themselves – or to the American people – would they?
The oft-sung They Will Know We are Democrats by Our Love sounded awfully good, especially compared to the whining and fist pounding in Cleveland, but it didn’t mask the party’s policy and intellectual bankruptcy. The platform, and nearly all the rhetoric was Bernie Sanders’ gift to the convention, and without that substantive (but politically implausible) contribution, what remained was as purposeful as a Tom Clancy novel. The story is wonderful – the first woman President! – but the dreariness and familiarity of its composition underwhelms, and its first person narrative is hackneyed, banal, and forced. There isn’t any there there, and if you’ve read one Clancy novel, you’ve read them all.
Because Arkansas is a small and connected state I know several folks who know Hillary Clinton personally. They describe her as warm, funny, and caring. I’m sure she is, and I’m sure I would enjoy having her as a neighbor. Is that enough? In the race between a self-righteous but good neighbor, and a deluded and dangerous self-made man who ceaselessly worships at the throne of His own creator, I suppose that it is.
Nicely written. I’ve known Hillary since 1981. She was a nice, though not always soft spoken, person back then. She has been investigated for the past 30 years by the FBI, CIA, and ever self-serving political hack possible and not once has anything been discovered that would put her in prison or even make her a bad grandmother. She has this image because it was thrust upon her.