First Principles

It was very interesting to see Michelle Obama give two speeches at the same time last night at the DNC.  One was actually full of hope, while the other one claimed that mantle while actually espousing a philosophy that is grounded and mired in bleak hopelessness.

The first third discussed her family, and it was truly inspiring in the way that all quintesentially American success stories are – someone with very little works very hard, refuses to be daunted by obstacles, and through his hard work and individual grit, he makes good for him and his family.

I love stories like this.  They remind us that it’s possible in this country to succeed no matter what, that boundless opportunities exist for all of us, and that we live in a good and great nation.  But even more importantly, at least for me, stories like this are the quickest way to make lazy excuses dissolve like a vampire at dawn.  If Michelle Obama’s father had so much personal pride and integrity that he insisted on clothing himself and working a full day to support his family and allow his wife to stay home with his children, despite his debilitating disease, who am I to complain when my alarm goes off?

She didn’t talk about how her father begged for handouts.  She didn’t talk about how he blamed other people for his misfortune.  She didn’t talk about their family’s standard of living continued to fall because of the neglect of the three Republicans who occupied the White House during the course of her childhood.

Now, perhaps those things were true about her father, although I doubt it.  And if her father had been a beggar and a complainer and a blamer, he wouldn’t have made it into her speech, because that’s not an inspirational story to anyone.

Instead, she discussed how her father worked hard, improved his family’s lot in life, and set his children up for more success than he had by paying for her and her brother to go to college.  It was a very, very pro-individual, conservative message.  And then she capped it off with this:

And thanks to their faith and their hard work, we both were able to go to college, so I know firsthand from their lives and mine that the American dream endures.

***

And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values and to pass them onto the next generation, because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work hard for them.

That is a hopeful message.  It’s an inspiring message.  It says, “You already have the tools, and live in a place where you’re allowed to use them if you choose.  You can not only hope for success, but you can achieve it.  It’s all up to you.  Now stop waiting around for someone to do it for you – get off your butt!”  And if her father – a black man in the ’60s suffering from MS – could do it, any of us can.

And then she went and flipped the whole thing on its head.

—

She said this about some of the people her husband Saved:

You see, instead of going to Wall Street, Barack went to work in neighborhoods that had been devastated by the closing of steel plants. Jobs dried up. And Barack Obama was invited back to speak to people from those neighborhoods about how to rebuild their community.

And the people gathered there together that day were ordinary folks doing the best they could to build a good life. See, they were parents trying to get by from paycheck to paycheck; grandparents trying to get it together on a fixed income; men frustrated that they couldn’t support their families after jobs had disappeared.

“And Lo, the people gathered to be taught by The One…”

But the messianic language aside, note the passive tone.  Men “were frustrated.”  The jobs dried up in Chicago, as if liberal economic policies and a city controlled by a corrupt, one-party machine that her husband was already becoming a part of had nothing to do with it.  No mention was made of the personal choices that have become so sadly acceptable and so destructive to the black community – fathers abandoning their families, drugs, crime, dropping out of school.  But most importantly, without her husband, the people no longer had any apparent ability to help themselves.  They needed the wise outsider.

How hopeless.  How pathetic.  How embarassingly lazy, to not acknowledge at all that those folks had choices and options and responsibilities of their own.  How condescending that they were helpless without her husband coming in and telling them what to do and how to live.

The Obamas’ message relies on first convincing at least half of America that they are, individually, completely devoid of hope.  If Barack Obama is the restoration of hope, then none of the rest of us have it.  What they must convince us of is that we no longer have the ability to take care of our own affairs, and that we no longer have any choice except to bow to the Almighty State, which is the only way out of our horrible, miserable existences.

“Just give up,” they say.  “You can’t do it on your own, there’s no point in trying.  Just give us your money, and we’ll do it for you.”

If only the “giving” were voluntary.

The most telling – and frightening – part of this was where she talked about working to make America as it should be, not as it was.  There is always something to be said for improving the government, or passing laws that are more fair.  But if America is already a place where hard work and a dream can get you where you need to go, as she had just a few moments before declared, shouldn’t then our focus mainly be on improving our own lives and our own personal circumstances?  If we need “change,” why does it need to be mandated from the government?  Can’t we just do it on our own?

But that starts the loop over again.  The two speeches cannot be reconciled.  Only one is the true Obama message, and looking at their history to date, it’s not the one that honors and is demanding of the individual.

—

Monday’s speech was pretty mild, really, compared to Ms. Obama’s past performances.  What was almost more interesting than the speech, though, was her non-verbals.

Michelle Obama is an angry, angry woman.  You can see it in the way she stands, with her head slightly lowered with her shoulders down, as if she’s about to body check you.  You could see it in the way she pursed her lips so tightly that all the color left them completely at times.  Her tongue would get jammed into her bottom lip as she endured the applause lines.  And the applause lines!  She would be taken by surprise at some of them, and glower at the crowd for interupting her before she remembered that it was a good thing.

I hope Michelle doesn’t share her husband’s love of poker, because she certainly wouldn’t make much money at it.

You could see it tonight, too, when Hillary was speaking.  The camera kept cutting to her, and she was never, ever smiling.  There’s a lot of bad blood there, and there’s not a lot of hiding it.  I didn’t think of it earlier, but I think Michelle probably had a lot to do with preventing an Obama-Clinton ticket.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, though.  If I lived my life thinking that I could never get ahead until someone from the government came to save me, I’d be pretty angry and miserable, too.

Maybe she can re-listen to the first half of her speech, and get the same inspiration I did.  Life’s pretty good.  We can overcome.  And we don’t even have to wait for a messiah to be elected President.