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On Not Watching Michelle Obama

August 26th, 2008
By JAZZ SHAW, Assistant Editor

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I did not stay up past my bedtime on a school-night on Monday, and thus missed out on the opportunity to hear Michelle Obama address the nation from the Democratic Convention in Denver. And, if I may give my apologies in advance, should Cindy McCain address the GOP convention in Minneapolis (as I assume she will) I will be busy washing my hair. Why? Because it simply doesn’t matter to me who the candidates are married to or, for that matter, if they are married at all. Spouses of presidents have no place in running the country, and when either Michelle or Cindy show up in the West Wing, I’d best not hear anything about them crafting legislation, making policy or getting their hands on the workings of our government.

Why? Because the voters have no control over them. You can’t remove them from the artificial “office” of First Lady (at term which does not appear anywhere in the constitution) nor can you control their ascension to such an “office.” What if the president gets a divorce while in office? Must he or she leave? No. It is not a position in our government, which is why I will always maintain that Hillary Clinton’s eight years of “experience” as First Lady does not count for diddly-squat. Similarly, I see that Cindy McCain is heading to Georgia. Why? She is a private citizen and not running for any office. (John Cole is spot on to call this “absurd.”) I’m sure Chelsea Clinton had a grand time during her eight years in the White House, but I don’t want our next president nominating her for the Supreme Court. Does Michelle Obama have anti-American feelings? Was Cindy McCain involved in shady business deals? I don’t care. I’m not electing either one of them.

The conventions, far from the “bad old days” of smoke-filled rooms and actual votes and decisions, have become nothing but carefully orchestrated dog-and-pony shows. This year’s Democratic convention offers the novelty of the Hillary supporters looking to cause mischief, which provides a movable feast for the media, but matters not a whit in terms of the process. Obama and McCain are the nominees. The vote is a formality and could have been done in a conference call.

“But Jazz,” I can hear some complaining, “a spouse has the ear of the president every day. And doesn’t their choice of whom to marry speak to their judgment?” Ha! Judgment, smudgment, blah blah blah. I was a registered Republican from 1976 until 2005. In the 90’s I married a very liberal Democrat. That action changed my political ideology not at all, aside from yearly fights to steal each other’s lawn signs.

If you really want to use your convention coverage for something useful, what say we have a meeting of the rules committees and talk about the seriously broken primary process in both parties and how to fix it? Have we all so quickly forgotten what a sordid mess the whole affair turned into this spring? Now that would be some useful news and worthy of coverage and debate. The rest of this nonsense is nothing that couldn’t be done by any of the speakers in any location by simply calling a press conference.



This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 7:46 am and is filed under Chelsea Clinton, Newsweek Blogitics, Republican Party, Conventions, Cindy McCain, Denver Democratic National Convention, Michelle Obama, Campaign Reform, Democratic Party, Republicans, 2008 Elections, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 4 Comments

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    Jazz

    If only more voters thought as you (& I ) do. However, where would this country be without it's MSM's in- depth analysis of "are they pretty enough" or "what about those facial tics", or "was that a Terrorist Fist Jab"?
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    I listened to her speak. The thing that has struck me as the cameras walked the floors of the convention is that their is no excitement. It seems to be as if the entire convention is waiting for something to go wrong.

    I have this dire sense from the people cheering politely that this is a football game and that they are 40 points behind and they just scored a touchdown. Exciting but hardly significant. Michelle Obama's speech was met with a muted respect. A tacit applause. A subtle lack of fire and rain from the rabid fans that normally attend these conventions.

    It is as one spoke to me last night. "We are all afraid something is going to happen and we don't know what."
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    Neocon,
    I didn't see that at all.I saw tons of teary eyes and transfixed expressions. Michelle's speech was not a rabble rouser. It was a heart warmer. To jump and down and cheer would have been out of place considering the speech.
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    This was the extra-feel-good "warmup" first night (start of the show -- this year it won't merely merit the derogatory term "circus," such as the Dems 1992 convention) and the Dems appeal anyway to emotion over reason so much of the time. It was meant to be touchy-feely. (I wanted to know what an Obama administration will do starting next year and want Michelle Obama's insight into her husband's specific political and economic goals rather than hear her talk mainly about herself and her husband as people accompanied by a little Dem-party-general touchy-feely stuff.)

    You realize that the Clintons' role has to be strongly touchy-feely as well.

    Obama's outdoor speech will be an obvious spectacle.

    But maybe sometime during this convention we will hear concrete (not emotive) attacks on the GOP _plus_ mention of specific agenda items on which we can better evaluate the candidates and the parties.
 
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