Chicago: Whoever set the schedule for the second night of the Democratic National Convention certainly did Barack Obama no favors. As the former president admitted when he took the stage Tuesday night, "I am the only person stupid enough to speak after Michelle Obama."
Not to say that the Democrats gathered in the United Center in Chicago were unappreciative of their onetime favorite son. Barack Obama delivered the kind of rousing yes-we-can speech that 20 years ago vaulted him from obscurity toward the White House. But following Michelle Obama? He has demonstrated better judgment.
The his-and-hers marquee convention speeches by the 44th president of the United States and the former first lady fired up the partisan crowd. Speaking back-to-back over the course of an hour, the Obamas reminded Democrats of a past era of hope and change while electrifying a convention after a ceremonial roll call nominated Vice President Kamala Harris for president and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota for vice president.
But while the delegates loved Barack Obama, they really loved Michelle Obama. From the minute she entered to a Stevie Wonder song to the end when she introduced her husband, she had the hall wrapped in her hand. No wonder Barack Obama did not want to go next. No wonder former President Donald Trump over the years has repeatedly expressed a feverish worry that the Democrats would turn to her as their next nominee in some kind of bizarre conspiratorial plot.
From the stage at the United Center on Tuesday, Michelle Obama eviscerated Trump as a product of "the affirmative action of generational wealth" who nonetheless enjoyed the "grace of failing forward" while moaning that he was somehow a victim. She described him as a racist and misogynist who exploited fears and lies, a huckster and a hatemonger still playing "the same old con game" on America.
"If we bankrupt a business or choke in a crisis, we don't get a second, third or fourth chance," she said. "If things don't go our way, we don't have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead. No. We don't get to change the rules so we always win. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don't expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top."
In offering her support for Harris, who would be America's second Black president if she wins and the first woman in the Oval Office, Obama summoned her own grievances about the way Trump regularly attacked her husband along racial lines. The birther lie that Trump relentlessly promoted still burns in the Obama household.
"We know folks are going to do everything they can to distort her truth," Obama said of Harris. "My husband and I sadly know a little something about this. For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who happened to be Black."
As the hall erupted in cheers, she added a knowing reference to a recent phrase he used about employment supposedly taken by immigrants in the country without authorization: "I want to know," she said, "who's going to tell him, who's going to tell him that the job he's currently seeking might just be one of those 'Black jobs'?"
In his subsequent speech, Barack Obama continued the attack, comparing Trump to "the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day," constantly obsessed about his own needs, his own desires, his own hardships and not those of the people he wants to represent.
"Here's a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago," the former president said. "It has been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that's actually been getting worse now that he's afraid of losing to Kamala."
Obama scorned his successor's fixation with "childish nicknames" and his "crazy conspiracy theories" and "this weird obsession with crowd sizes." At that point, Obama held his hands together in a way that implied a certain concern over masculine proportions. When the crowd roared with laughter, he made a I-don't-know-what-you're-talking-about face of faux innocence.
The delegates and guests ate it all up. But it seemed clear that Michelle Obama gave them a little extra thrill. Famously turned off by politics, she nonetheless is seen by Democrats and Republicans alike as one of the country's most skilled political speakers. But she does not do it often, so when she does, her admirers respond.
Among those who have long respected Obama's political chops is Trump. As far back as 2020, he was gripped by fear that Democrats would ditch their nominee, Joe Biden, and name a stronger ticket with Obama on it. No matter how much his advisers told him that it would never happen and that she hated politics, he would not listen. They resorted to flying Karl Rove, the longtime Republican strategist, to Washington to get him to dispel the theory to Trump.
Barack Obama, known himself as one of the most eloquent orators of the modern era, had never before faced the kind of challenge he confronted Tuesday night. Usually, the speakers he has followed over the years were not on his level. He was nearly always the star of any event he addressed.
At the previous Democratic conventions where both Obamas spoke, in 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020, they appeared on separate nights, never one after the other. He did not have to worry about the immediate comparison.
Not that it matters. But Obama has been known to be a little competitive when it comes to his wife. He could not help feeling a little daunted, friends have said, when her memoir, "Becoming," became the biggest release of 2018 and one of the bestselling books of all time. At that point, he was still mired in trying to finish what became the first volume of a now-planned two-volume autobiography of his own. The Atlantic quoted people close to him saying privately that he was writing his book himself while she used a ghostwriter.
Such comments may be what he was referring to Tuesday night when he obliquely mentioned that he sometimes got in trouble with his wife. He noted that he loved Marian Robinson, Michelle Obama's mother, who died in May, in part because "she always defended me with Michelle when I messed up." He added, "I'd hide behind her," and then pantomimed cowering behind his mother-in-law.
The Obama rhetoric on display Tuesday night was intriguing not just for the inevitable spousal comparisons that it invited but for the evolution it underscored.
Barack Obama's first address to a Democratic convention, in 2004 when he was an Illinois state senator running for the U.S. Senate, made a mark with its rejection of a separate blue America and red America. Twenty years later, he lamented that "our politics have become so polarized these days that all of us across the political spectrum seem so quick to assume the worst in others unless they agree with us on every single issue."
Likewise, Michelle Obama in 2016, with Trump on the ballot for the first time, memorably warned against matching petty politics tit for tat. "Whey they go low, we go high," she said then. That was a formulation that many Democrats have since rejected, fearing that it amounts to weakness against a bully like Trump.
Eight years later, Obama refrained from repeating her formulation at a convention where speakers earlier in the evening referred to Trump as a "five-time draft-dodging coward" who is "rich in only one thing: stupidity."
But she deplored the demonization of others, saying it did not make anyone's life better. "Instead, it only makes us small," she said. "And let me tell you this: Going small is never the answer. Going small is the opposite of what we teach our kids. Going small is petty, it's unhealthy and quite frankly it's unpresidential."
The former first lady finished by introducing her husband. He appeared onstage and gave her a hug, the two of them rocking back and forth momentarily. With a broad grin, he pointed at her to invite more cheers from the crowd. He clearly knew he had a hard act to follow.
"I don't know about you," he then began, "but I'm feeling fired up! I am feeling ready to go!" Going last is not always the easiest path. But he knew what he was getting into.