For years now, former First Lady Michelle Obama has told y’all that she does not fancy politics. Whenever there is a suggestion that she become a candidate, she swats that idea down with the same sort of speed I exhibited the other day when I swatted down a fly I mistook for one a murder hornet I just heard about it. And yet, y’all keep bothering her about going into politics.
Michelle Obama does not want to be president. And considering what a mess America is right now, who could blame Chicago’s finest for opting to dance to Karyn White’s “Superwoman” in political retirement rather than become a literal superwoman to save this broke-ass country. I say we leave Mrs. Obama the hell alone.
And yet, y’all keep bothering her about going into politics.
Now, to his credit, Joe Biden was merely humoring folks when entertaining a recent question about Obama being his running mate, saying he would choose her “in a heartbeat” during an interview with a CBS Pittsburgh affiliate in late April. It’s not that I don’t believe him. Biden should pick a Black woman as his running mate, and who better than the most popular Black woman on the planet? No, Beyoncé doesn’t mind that sentence. She is a merciful God.
But yeah, Biden would push everyone he loved near and dear to put Michelle on the ticket, but he would never ask. In that same interview, he noted, “I don’t think she has any desire to live in the White House again.” Biden doesn’t want that smoke, so he presumably hasn’t bothered Michelle Obama for anything besides the promise to do campaign events one imagines might likely be done on IG Live.
Still, he respects her wishes, so why won’t the “Committee to Draft Michelle Obama for VP?
According to their press release, their work is dedicated to building a “substantial grassroots support for a potential Michelle Obama candidacy and help garner media attention for a vice-presidential nominee who has the power to beat Donald Trump.
In an interview with ABC News, Clyde Lederman, a spokesperson for the committee, said the money the group raises will go toward digital and social media ads. “It’s important for the Obamas to start playing a more active role in Biden’s campaign,” Lederman explained. Their initiative is designed to “create buzz.”
It’s not my money, but I do wonder why even bother wasting it? She does not want to run for office. She will never run for office. Granted, the group says they will inevitably “transfer our resolve to whoever joins the ticket to defeat the most dangerous incumbent in the history of our nation,” but wasting money as this country sinks into a depression on a pipe dream seems so wasteful.
Michelle Obama is indeed fantastic, and in the first few minutes of her Netflix documentary, Becoming, about her book tour behind the bestselling book, I was reminded of how she truly could become president if she wanted to be. But that’s the thing about her: she doesn’t want it because she’s seen what it’s done to her husband, and, her, as First Lady.
Stop writing your op-eds. They may be right hypothetically, but don’t deal in hypothetical when the subject has been abundantly clear that your hypothetical ain’t happening.
I enjoyed the documentary, but my biggest takeaway was that this is a woman who could make more history in politics but is content with the history she’s already made because it’s enough. She wants to give more, but not in that way. Everyone should finally respect Michelle Obama’s wishes about being done with political life.
Leave her be.
Let her wear her boots. Let her continue to give us the fashions she could never give as First Lady. Let her present herself to the world as she sees fit.
She’s earned it.