Buzz by Olumide Iyanda
Email: oiyanda@yahoo.com Twitter: @mightyng
This article was originally written in September 2012 when Barack Obama was campaigning to be re-elected American president. His wife, Michelle, had just given an outstanding speech which won many people over to his side. One wondered back then what would have been if Dame Patience Faka Jonathan was in Mrs Obama’s shoes. Elections are upon us, our dear first lady has been campaigning for her husband, and and she has been acting true to type. Enjoy this throwback article.
Perhaps the most popular female political figure in the United States of America right now is Michelle Obama. The Princeton University and Harvard Law School graduate once again proved that she is more substance than style at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Charlotte, North Carolina on Tuesday when she delivered one of the finest speeches at a political gathering. It has even been said that if incumbent Barack Obama is re-elected on November 6, he will owe more to his wife than any other president in American history.
The 48-year-old American first lady has come a long way from the ‘unpatriotic, pushy and loud’ woman whose comments almost derailed her husband’s election campaign in the beginning. Her initial displeasure at his political ambition was obvious to the discerning eyes when he began his push for the American presidency, but once she decided to back him, Michelle became Barack Obama’s strongest advocate. And the image of a dogged lawyer immediately gave way to that of a loving mother and wife.
When Mrs. Obama was introduced by her brother, Craig Robinson, at a convention in Denver in 2008 she gave a speech about her husband that has been described as warm, funny and loving. On inauguration day in January 2009 she came across, according to Katherine Jellison, who has studied first ladies as a professor of history at Ohio University, “as the kind of first lady that I think America is largely comfortable with – the devoted wife and mother.”
In the words of Allison Samuels, a senior writer at Newsweek and author of What Would Michelle Obama Do? “Once she got into office, she realised that this was about (Barack Obama) and it had to just be about him, or there was going to be problem. She focused on issues that did not put her in the forefront and did not overshadow him.”
While her husband’s approval ratings have dropped over the years, Michelle’s have risen. A poll which measured the couple head-to-head in May 2012 showed that the first lady had 66% to her husband’s 52. She did him a whole world of good on Tuesday with her speech which may have a greater impact on the country’s future than the president’s celebrated 2004 keynote address at the DNC in Boston.
Michelle Obama’s speech is the stuff for which theses are written. It told the story of the Obamas in a way that tied it directly to the lives of millions of voters. She told the people that “Barack knows the American Dream because he’s lived it,” reassuring them that he shares their values of hard work, perseverance and optimism.
Without mentioning names, she drew a contrast between her husband and Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, who grew up in a world of privilege and wealth. Nobody can accuse her of animosity.
She was not afraid to touch on policies for which her husband has received the cruellest knocks like health care overhaul, push for tax cuts for income earners and auto bailout. The economy may be the biggest sour point of Barack Obama’s presidency but his spouse argued that “he brought back the economy from the brink of collapse to creating jobs again.”
For a woman who has been “so in love, and so in debt” with the American president, who sees him eat dinner with his daughters nearly every night, this is a good mix of politics and everyday personal experience. She had to reach out to the American voters because her family and country’s future depends on it. Obama may be the president of America, but the election is one time when every citizen of God’s Own Country is as powerful as the man in the White House.
Things definitely would have been different if Obama was running for re-election in Nigeria. I am not one to run my country down in favour of another but comparing the educational qualification of Michelle Obama and that of the Nigerian first lady is likely to give the former an unfair advantage. To that end it might be wishful thinking to see anything close to Tuesday delivery at the Eagle Square anytime soon.
What you are likely to get when a Nigerian first lady campaign for her spouse is style over substance. While Mrs. Obama wowed her audience with her elocution and heartfelt message, her Nigerian counterpart would have relied more on owambe and political arm-twisting.
Picture, for example, our good Dame campaigning for her husband’s re-election. It goes without saying that wives of the vice president, governors, National Assembly members, service chiefs and heads of ministries departments and agencies would turn up in special ‘aso ebi’ with a smiling image of madam printed on it. Woe betides anybody, even if she is the wife of a former head of state, who may have booked the venue in advance. The minister of the Federal Capital Territory would simply order that such booking be cancelled.
Of course, there should be talk about the president and his achievements but such milestones would be only visible to those close to the corridors of power.
A professed man of God who is more interested in the offering coming to him at the end of the day would probably say a prayer that won’t go higher than the police helicopters hovering in the sky to keep Boko Haram suicide bombers at bay. There will also be rented women ferried in buses from different parts of the country who will stand in the sun not because of the promise of a better future but a chance to earn something as low as N2000.
In the end, the people would scoff at any talk of Mr President having no shoes or living the Nigerian Dream because his wife’s act would have demonstrated sufficiently that he does not need their vote for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to declare him winner.
The difference between America and Nigeria is not that one first lady was created better than the other; it is just that one country has powerful institutions while the other has a powerful first lady.
And like Michelle said on Tuesday, being president (may I add first lady?) doesn’t change who you are…it reveals who you are.”
