Michelle Obama has never exactly been lacking in poise. It’s hard to think of a single moment since she arrived on the national stage nearly 20 years ago that she visibly fumbled. No doubt in private the former first lady has once or twice lost her cool, no doubt her children have pushed her to the brink on occasion—or so we can hope, in our hapless attempts to believe she’s human like the rest of us—but in her public appearances she has shown nothing less than preternatural self-possession and singular grace. So is it really possible that in Tuesday night’s speech before the Democratic National Convention she could eclipse her own spotless history?
It is. In skillfully written and masterfully delivered remarks, she acknowledged the sense of premature defeat that had plagued the party until just weeks ago, connecting the extraordinary enthusiasm Kamala Harris has managed to trigger with a “familiar feeling that has been buried too deep for far too long”: “the contagious power of hope” that her husband campaigned on. “You know what I’m talking about!” she practically sang, and the crowd signaled, Oh yes, we do.
It was a deft move. Without even the hint of a dig at President Biden, she looked her audience in the eye and admitted to a “palpable sense of dread,” a “deep pit in her stomach.” Maybe we, like her, had been feeling that?
Yup, we had.
The rest of the speech was equally masterful, although it would cheapen her poignant invocation of her mother, Marian Robinson, who died in May, to call it a “move.” Still, even that somber bit evidenced her rhetorical prowess. She said she’d been uncertain she had it in her to speak so soon after her mother’s death. She stumbled over a word, suppressed a shadow of tears, and brought home her point: It was her mother who taught her the power of her own voice. So here she was—and here we were, in thrall to that very power.
It feels good,
every now and again, to let the critical poses drop—to have a chance to cease being disappointed in the people calling the shots and, for a minute, relax into something like worship. But you only get that chance when someone gives it to you.
