Having thought about it overnight, it seems clearer to me that those who complain that Michelle Obama's speech was vapid Brady-Bunchery are badly mistaken. It was Brady-Bunchery, but it needed to be that. She successfully, I think, relaunched her brand. The Obama children are beautiful and sweet, and the impression left with a viewer coming more or less cold to the campaign is that the Obamas are about as normal a family as you can expect in politics. Which is probably the truth. Carl Cameron of Fox, I believe it was, observed last night that the Michelle we saw last night was not the Michelle we've been shown on the campaign trail. Fine, I get that. But if she can hold on to this new persona, however false its construct, she'll do her husband's campaign a world of good. She was an immensely appealing figure last night on the air.
I hope, really hope, that the Republicans don't feel obliged to put Cindy McCain in the same position. I don't have a good feeling about her ability to match what Michelle Obama did, or even to come close. That's not necessarily a reflection of the kind of wife and mother she is, but simply about the kind of speaker and public personality I imagine her to be. I hope I'm wrong about that.
Overall, though, what a pity it is that our therapeutic politics practically demands that our politicians involve their wives and children as props in their theater. I have no idea how happy, or unhappy, the McCain family is, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if they weren't the Huxtables. Rich and powerful people usually aren't. And frankly, I don't care how good their marriage is, or how good the Obamas' marriage is, as long as the spouses are faithful to each other. I don't care how well the US president and First Lady get along with their children. As with any family, I'd hope for the best, but ultimately this doesn't have a thing to do with how they govern. Winston Churchill's son Randolph was a drunk and a wastrel. Churchill may well have been a bad father, I dunno. But he was a peerless leader. And so forth.
Anyway, I hate how American politics and its conventions make it difficult for a candidate to build a shield of privacy around his or her family. I think the Clintons did as good a job with Chelsea during their White House years as can be expected. Think, though, of the tragedy of the John Edwards family. That cad made his wife and kids a big part of his campaign, in selling his personality to the public. And it was fraudulent. Surely Elizabeth Edwards and the Edwards children would have suffered intense pain from John's trashy extramarital behavior even if they had been only in the background of the campaign. But having held them up in the spotlight, Edwards set his wife and kids up for even worse suffering.
But: would it even be possible in this Oprahfied day and age for a man or woman to be elected president without showcasing their families, and putting voters in the position of judging them in part on the basis of their role as a marital partner and parent? How fair is that? More to the point: how wise?
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I totally agree with the guy's point about Ben Franklin, but AFA we know, he had one illegitimate son, William Temple Franklin, not 17. He was one of 17 kids himself.
Also, he and his wife Deborah had a common law marriage. She had married a worthless wastrel who abandoned her and disappeared. She heard he was dead, that he even had another wife in England, but she had no proof and no money to find out. Bigamy was a crime with severe punishment, so she and Ben started living together and she started calling herself Deborah Franklin not Deborah Reed. Franklin always referred to her as "Mrs. F" to his friends and "My dear child" even though they spent much time apart. The worthless bum never reappeared but even after a number of years the Franklins never had an official wedding.
And let's not even get started on Thomas Jefferson and the whole Sally Hemings thing....did that make Jefferson a louse? Or just a lonely widower who had promised his wife never to remarry, who took up with her half sister? Well, either way, did it take away from his greatness as a leader? I think not. I do understand the idea that if a guy will lie to his wife he will lie to us, but as far as I can see George Bush has been an entirely faithful husband and a good father (just about the only thing about him I find admirable) and he is still a lousy president, as was Jimmy Carter. So I don't know, I wouldn't say a person should not be prez if they have never messed up.
And what about McCain? He married Cindy immediately after his divorce from his 1st wife and the Reagans were cool to him after that. Was he an adulterer during his first marriage? Do I care? No. Will I vote for him? No, but not because of that.
Ronald Reagan and Nancy did their best to NOT 'showcase' their family. Since the second marriage kids were either a male ballet dancer or a rebel-w/o a cause daughter who blew their cover when she posed naked for Playboy. And they REALLY hid the two kids initially from the first marriage.... for a long time Maureen and Michael were non-kids, estranged from their mother and aliens to their dad. Maureen ultimately bonded with Nancy primarily after Mr. Reagan's Alzheimer's became a serious issue. So there is today's memory-like-an-elephant recant. All true.
If you look at contemporaneous news accounts from 1980, you will note that Mr. Reagan's children were not a prominent part of the campaign. Mr. Carter's three sons were farily obscure as well. You will find in particular a profile of the family, with a discussion of all four children, in one of the issues of Time published in July or August of 1980. The older children were not 'hidden' and Maureen Reagan was a particularly vocal figure as an official of the Republican National Committee in 1983 and 1984. IIRC, Patti Reagan's severest vulgarities occurred after her father left office, and it was Patti, not the other children, who was estranged from her parents (though Michael Reagan was publicly critical at one point). None of the four of them had much of a vocation in life and they were all given to public indignities, which made them (one suspects) a liability in the opinion of Mr. Reagan's PR operation.
(Yet all I ever heard from this era when that fine man was the first divorced president to boot was that the Reagan's brought back 'family values'. After the lackluster Carter who was a serious born again Christian with a great family and a weird brother. Go figure.)
Mr. Reagan was the defendant in a divorce suit filed by his wife, whose grounds were vague ('mental cruelty'). Biographical accounts are fairly clear that she was the initiator de facto and de jure and that he hoped for a reconciliation with her for some time afterward. Jane Wyman contracted five civil marriages with four different men. Her marriage to Reagan (her third, his first) was the only one which lasted longer than four years and the only one which produced any issue.
I hope Cindy does speak, and I hope a video of her is presented, since she has SO MUCH more to offer the American people than Michelle does.
Cindy has been actively involved in charity work around the world (even in Viet Nam, where her husband was held and tortured) more than any other candidate's wife to date. She even brought home one of the children she traveled across the world to rescue, and they raised the little girl as their own.
The fact is, the McCain's are very quiet about their charity work and even about their sons' involvement with serving in the military, even in Iraq.
The proof is in the past history: The McCain's have the proof, the Obama's have 'just words' -- pretty words, but with NO substance of WORKS to show they mean what they're saying. 'Do as I say, not as I do' might be their mantra.
They gave a paltry amount to their church, even (although considering the hate and divisiveness from their church, maybe we should all be glad they were so disinclined to share their sudden good fortune and wealth with 'these the least' of the world). Just words. . . .
Look at Obama's relatives in Kenya -- his BLOOD relatives! Listen to their support for him, even at the same time as they say they are suffering and Obama had promised in 2006 to send help to them, but to date as done NOT ONE THING to help them in any way. Not even for the school that bears his name, and to which he promised help. Just words. . . .
I wish the Obamas were as good as their word, but it seems they want to tell America how to help others, while their own resources are spent on million dollar homes and costly ballet lessons for their daughters. And the fact that Michelle's job at the hospital was to see to it that those who could not afford to pay were sent to other facilities, just is too obvious that her words at the convention were just that: Just Words. . . .
I hope Cindy does speak, and I hope a video of her is presented, since she has SO MUCH more to offer the American people than Michelle does.
Cindy has been actively involved in charity work around the world (even in Viet Nam, where her husband was held and tortured) more than any other candidate's wife to date. She even brought home one of the children she traveled across the world to rescue, and they raised the little girl as their own.
The fact is, the McCain's are very quiet about their charity work and even about their sons' involvement with serving in the military, even in Iraq.
The proof is in the past history: The McCain's have the proof, the Obama's have 'just words' -- pretty words, but with NO substance of WORKS to show they mean what they're saying. 'Do as I say, not as I do' might be their mantra.
They gave a paltry amount to their church, even (although considering the hate and divisiveness from their church, maybe we should all be glad they were so disinclined to share their sudden good fortune and wealth with 'these the least' of the world). Just words. . . .
Look at Obama's relatives in Kenya -- his BLOOD relatives! Listen to their support for him, even at the same time as they say they are suffering and Obama had promised in 2006 to send help to them, but to date as done NOT ONE THING to help them in any way. Not even for the school that bears his name, and to which he promised help. Just words. . . .
I wish the Obamas were as good as their word, but it seems they want to tell America how to help others, while their own resources are spent on million dollar homes and costly ballet lessons for their daughters. And the fact that Michelle's job at the hospital was to see to it that those who could not afford to pay were sent to other facilities, is too obvious that her words at the convention were just that: Just Words. . . .
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