Michelle Obama Must Avoid Taking Position on Potentially Controversial Issues
March 1, 2008
Category: Analyses & Opinions, Keys to Victory
Watching Michelle Obama taking position in the past few days on the controversy over Barack Obama’s “Hussein” middle name, I got a small hunch. And the hunch said: Michelle Obama must avoid taking position on potentially controversial issues.
Speaking in Canton, Ohio, on Thursday, Michelle Obama, commenting on the “Hussein” middle name issue, said, “They threw in the obvious, ultimate fear bomb” [this was in reference to her husband's 2004 Senate race when his middle name was first used as a "scare bomb"; then she added:]. “We’re even hearing [the same] now. … When all else fails, be afraid of his name, and what that could stand for, because it’s different.”
While all this is all true, my belief is that Michelle Obama must stay away from comments on issues that are controversial by nature. The potential of a slippage is too great, especially in today’s politics when the parsing of words has become a potentially “lethal” and divisive game for campaigns, and every word, gesture, photo, and innuendo is carefully watched, analyzed, weighed, and compared.
Michelle Obama currently carries more negatives than her husband not only on the campaign trail, but also in general public perception. She has a number of things stacked against her. For example:
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Her comments on “being really proud of her country for the first time” were not very well perceived by the American pundits, who convinced the public that such comments were not welcome in a George Bush America where any criticism of one’s country has come to amount to unpatriotic insult and betrayal. I defended Michelle Obama on this one in a previous article, but it is specifically because such a mild opinion was able to elicit such a national outrage that I am now recommending that Michelle Obama stay away from topics that are potentially controversial.
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Her Princeton thesis is said to contain such statements as: “My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‘blackness’ than ever before,” the future Mrs. Obama wrote in her thesis introduction” or “I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong. Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second.” Now, while these types of statements are comprehensible from an intellectual point of view, and intellectuals are able to understand them as writings made in the context of the 1980s when the racial divide was still poignant in America, there is real doubt as to the ability of rural and blue-collar America to do so today, especially at a time when white America seems to have moved beyond race in the current Barack Obama unlikely journey. But there is more: in a context in which Barack Obama is trying to promote racial unity, anything that would come from her entourage as potentially divisive or “too black” must be banned. Barack Obama is winning because he was able to stay away from the politics of race. Michelle Obama must not pull him down with issues that bring back to the stage issues that could potentially hurt her husband.
My recommendation to the Obama campaign is, therefore, to simply limit Michelle Obama’s speeches to those aspects that can lift America and take them away from any type of racial or controversial discourse.
Michelle Obama can help her husband if she would not only stay away from controversial issues, but also start to build herself as the First Lady of American unity, the First Lady of feel-good America. Listening to her on CNN’s Larry King Live the other day, I was incredibly impressed by how deep this woman was. She had real mastery of the issues, was incredibly articulate and even potentially more knowledgeable and articulate than her own husband. She stood out as a very bright woman who would, perhaps, be, someday, and providing her husband becomes the president, ranked among the most truly-intellectual first ladies this country has ever known.
It is during this Larry King performance of hers that she said a number of interesting things about families and how important rebuilding America’s families was to her. And I said to myself: “There we go!”
What I saw in her words was what I perceived as her outlining of what would potentially be her agenda as First Lady of the United States of America: She talked about the need to rebuild the crumbled fabric of America’s society, which must begin with rebuilding the families and re-instilling in them a sense of purpose for our children, for education, for achievement and for a common purpose.
I truly believe that these are the issues that Michelle Obama must concentrate on addressing: family values, children, education. These are the issues that most inner-city children and families all across are facing, these are the issues that most of America is facing. And when her husband, the other day, alluded to the fact that it was about time American families started to play a role again in their own rehabilitation, by telling their children to drop the video games, stay off the streets, and go to bed early, I said to myself, these are the issues Michelle Obama must appropriate as her own, and address in her stumping during the campaign trail in support to her husband. Not only would she be helpful, she could help to clarify Barack Obama’s agenda when it comes to family values, and build a positive image of herself as someone who stays away and above petty debates and the pettiness of those who want to suppress her husband’s candidacy. By exuding only positive images and building her discourse around those sole issues that promise the lifting of America beyond the divisions of today, Michele Obama would help her campaign and project herself as the First Lady of unity. She must not allow her current discourses to be linked with her past ones. She must force people to look into her future as opposed to her past.
Therefore, Michelle Obama must begin, now, to outline her vision as potential First Lady of the United States of America. She must do so around the agenda of “Rebuilding America’s Family”. She will not help her husband by becoming another Bill Clinton, and by tackling issues that are controversial by nature and that can only continue to link her to her past and to her negatives, and ultimately, wreck the campaign of her husband.
And as she expounds over her agenda, she must keep smiling and display a positive and upbeat image of herself. This is especially true of her because when she speaks of negative issues, her face expresses negativity. When she talks positive, her smile is devastating and the beauty of her soul comes out. Which is one more reason why she must confine herself to talking about positive changes for America, and outlining her potential agenda for America should she, somehow, someday, become First Lady of the United States of America.
By doing so, and by promoting herself as an agent of change for American families, she will begin to change the perception against her, and contradict the negatives that have been building against her in recent weeks. A discourse and agenda on family values and the future of America will go a long way helping her become the unity and family First Lady. It will also fit nicely within the framework of Barack Obama’s agenda for change.
Dr. Daniel Mengara
The author is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Montclair State University (New Jersey). He is also the leader of Bongo Doit Partir (Bongo Must Go), a movement of expatriated Gabonese citizens opposed and seeking an end to the 40-year-old dictatorial regime of Omar Bongo in Gabon.
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I to feel Mrs Obama would do well to stay out of this for now. She is very well spoken and quite stunning but for now she should be seen and not heard. that will come later when she is first lady.