Televised for the benefit of the voters and put on display at exorbitant cost, conventions are embarrassing displays put on by both parties. During these lean economic times this profligacy is particularly galling because it highlights the reality that candidates do not understand the peoples’ problems they profess to be able to remedy.
Channel flipping between CNN, Fox and C-Span I listened to pundits say repeatedly that Michelle Obama’s job for the night was to convince the folks of America that she is a regular person. America’s obsession with ordinariness and contempt for elitism push exceptional, ambitious and eccentric people into holes from which they can emerge and gain acceptance only by confessing to this trait called “ordinariness” that supposedly appeals to all Americans.
A fellow who gets a perfect score in the SAT, interviewed by the local paper, will bend over backward to reveal that his SAT score is an anomaly and that he like many other Americans has snot in his nose. An amazing athlete like Michael Phelps will endear himself more to the public by confessing that he cannot wait to return to the Baltimore area and chill out in his townhouse with his English bulldog. Many celebrities will get on talk shows and highlight their weaknesses, downplay their victories or their vast wealth, talk about the tough times they have endured and the downfalls that threaten them so that the American mainstream will embrace them with open arms. Such is the power of “ordinariness.”
For Michelle Obama too, a keynote speaker, the theme was ordinariness on the first day of the Democratic National Convention. Praise was heaped on her by many pundits for a job well done. She was warm, her rough edges softened, they said; she showed America her humble roots and her love of family and country. No, she is not the angry woman that some had concluded she was from previous remarks. She is a true American patriot because she said so with the right inflection.
Michelle Obama is a bossy, direct and self-confident woman. She may be from the south side of Chicago and she may have given up a corporate job to work in a grass roots community organization, but she has the regal bearing of a queen and the sharp tongue of a vitriolic thinker. These are also the qualities that make her intriguing and interesting.
She may have fretted about America in the past, but I have no doubt she loves her country. She is a black woman acutely aware of the inequalities and injustices that pervade America and she has a right to her righteous indignation.
For voters to believe that she is fit to be first lady, I don’t understand why she should be bland, neutral or soft. The world teems with so-called soft-spoken people who are cutthroats. Most people around us are complex and have many innate contradictions. Our politicians are no exceptions.
As voters we should give our politicians the space to be themselves. This is hard because the media does not allow it. It dissects political remarks too closely for meanings unintended. It predicts how voters would react to certain remarks and when suggestible voters react as expected it gloats, “I told you so!” When the image makers react and the politicians are packaged for sale to the public, the media decries the hypocrisy of the image-making process. Only voters can break this vicious cycle. We should not expect politicians to be ordinary. Less constrained, many of them may actually dare to be spontaneous. We would be able to draw more realistic conclusions about their personalities and capabilities and go to the polling booths well armed.
The packaging of our politicians for voter consumption is a threat to our democracy and the packaging of our potential first ladies is an unnecessary outrage.
Since the kernel of a person’s character is revealed during the unguarded moments let Michelle Obama be herself — an obstreperous agitator or a black American princess — whatever comes naturally to her. And let Cindy McCain unleash the fire beneath her ice. This wealthy heiress who overcame drug addiction and a disabling stroke is unconvincing in her Barbie doll role.
Usha Nellore is a writer living in Bel Air. Reach her at [email protected].
