Michelle Obama's speech last night in Denver was quite skillfully executed. I would describe it as "a refreshing secular surprise." Surprising because of late we have come to expect nothing less than sermons and homilies from the 2008 Democrats. Refreshing because she managed to speak about family, community and country without quoting First Thessalonians, or mentioning her personal relation with Jesus Christ, or asking us to praise Him.
She didn't need to do any of that. Her party, after all, has so ramped up the God Talk that they no longer need to rehearse their religious bona fides at every turn. Too, there might have been other motivations for tamping down the faith-based stuff: the Obamas' messy divorce from their controversial church of two decades necessitated that she say little about her formative religious experiences.
In terms of target audiences, and in deference to the Democrats' love of 70s pop, let's refer to this evening as "Ladies Night." Cleverly, Ms. Obama interpreted Hillary Clinton's 18 million votes as a victory for the gals. From there she played countless arpeggios on the theme of her identity as a Family Woman.
The references to her status as a daughter, a sister, a wife, but especially a mother, hit their mark. I very much liked her line about her girls being "the heart of my heart and the center of my world. . . . . .Their future is my stake in this election." Here Ms. Obama "connected" in a positive way with all sorts of Americans (Her husband routinely does so as well. The question that remains is whether he can connect via negative politicking--to this point his campaign has been suspect in this regard).
And there were some moments of high drama too. When Senator Obama, somewhat anti-climactically, appeared via video after her speech it became immediately evident that their littlest daughter was somehow holding the microphone. And not shy about using it.
One has to be a parent to truly appreciate the terrifying possibilities raised by that scenario. The thought of my six-year-old clutching an instrument that would permit him to share his unique insights with representatives of the national and international media as well as a couple of million Americans worked its way into my nightmares this past morning.
But Malia Ann Obama performed superbly. As did her mom, who apparently was quite the fan of the Brady Bunch as a child. (If Republicans wish to paint Michelle Obama as a radical, then they now better be ready to take incoming from an entire generation raised on Bobby and Cindy).
So the first night of the convention is over and we have received a glowing portrait of the Obama family. There was remarkably little negative campaigning and one imagines that this deficit will be made up for tonight.
Senator Clinton, incidentally, will be speaking. That would be the same Senator Clinton who was not selected by Barack Obama for vice president. Now Democrats seem generally happy with the choice of Joe Biden. As do Republicans, though for very different reasons. So everyone's happy. And that's good.
But ultimately the metric by which we decide whether this decision was a wise one may be the Hillary test. In other words, can Senator Biden deliver to the Democratic Party the 18 million votes that Senator Clinton would have brought with her had she been named as vice-president?
In any case, were she to explicitly repudiate, reject and renounce Senator McCain's astonishment (as reflected in his "Passed Over" and "Debra" ads) that she was not selected, she would go a long way toward delivering those 18 million votes.
Jacques Berlinerblau is the Rabbi Harold White Chair in Jewish Civilization in Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service and senior advisor to the Center for Jewish Civilization, where he was director from 2006 to June 2020. Berlinerblau has published on a wide variety of issues ranging from the sociology of heresy and modern Jewish intellectuals to African-American and Jewish-American relations.
