In my next memo I am posting an article which highlights a significant issue that must be resolved. Is the direction of the world going in the direction of globalists or nationalists? Where do you stand?
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8 Year Vacation? (See 1 below.)
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Planned hatred? The author is black. (See 2 below.)
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Obama is going to give us a "Last Hurrah." The problem is few care and/or will be listening. America has had its fill of the Obama's.
All his change has resulted in hopelessness.
The man is graceless. Is his wife a volcano waiting to explode? (See 3, 3a and 3b below.)
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Up-Chuck Schumer is engaged, along with other Democrats, in asserting Republicans are going to end Obamacare before they institute its replacement. Even some Republicans are attacking their brethren for the same reason.
I, for one, do not understand why Republicans cannot constitute a new healthcare bill which incorporates some of the rational parts of Obamacare and simultaneously pass the former while revoking the latter.
Recently, I received a card from my Congressional Representative asking me which was the first initiative Congress should take up and I was to choose among maybe 10. Congress has tons of committees, staffs, meeting rooms. Why can't they do more than one thing at a time? Why must it take them years to do things that ordinary folks can do in weeks if not less.
I know the wheels of Democracy are said to grind slowly and ever so fine but if they would stop writing bills that run into thousands of pages, like Obamacare, that no one reads or even understands and do their job, as if they were working for a private sector company, I suspect everything would move along in a more effective manner.
Just another one of my peeves.
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Dick
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1) Liberals Awake from 8-Year Moral Coma
For eight years, the voices of what passes for morality on the left were utterly silent as the values of generations of Americans were flushed down the drain. Those Americans whose desires, experiences and values differed from the leftist elite were treated as worthless garbage, no longer necessary to the imminent liberal utopia, except as a source of revenue. Christianity was treated like a virus to be extinguished, or revised and controlled to accommodate leftist ideology. Speech that offended the shameless was branded as hateful, and those daring to openly object to the onslaught of vice and immorality were falsely smeared with every vile epithet the liberals could conjure. Rights were relegated to what Democrats were willing to grant their enemies, but we were never going to be entitled to privileges they reserved to themselves.
Our nation has been assaulted for eight long years by those who contributed nothing of substance to its successes, but were eager to pillage its resources to fund and advance their political agenda. Every means possible to offend and marginalize their political opposition was employed, so that decent people were called racists, “phobes,” haters, deniers, liars, morons, bullies, and many unprintable things, all for wishing to have a say in what was being done to them by the left, and for possibly stopping the moral, philosophical and physical violence that have always been tools of leftist overthrow.
Few, if any, leftists/liberals/socialists/Democrats seemed troubled by what was done by them, or on their behalf by those they put into political office, or by those who appointed themselves cultural spokesmen. It was perfectly American, as they saw it, to smear, defame, slander, coerce, intimidate, fine and even jail those who refused allegiance to a movement premised upon anarchy and social collapse. They were winning, after all, so they got to be the team and the referee, and they made up the rules. In their minds, nothing existed of the United States before eight years ago, and this country consisted only of what they turned it into. With their president at the helm, they tried to remake America into a giant version of themselves, soulless and amoral. They tried to make it un-American.
Suddenly, however, with their political triumph derailed, they have emerged from their self-induced moral coma to pretend they have conscience. Now, after eight years of neglect, fraud, manipulation, scandal, deception, cheating and tyranny, they have found their voices. Now we are treated to an endless chorus of newly virtuous voices, uniting in purity to stop the coming disaster of representative government under the sway of someone other than an America-hating, Israel-hating, Constitution-hating, Iran-loving, terrorist-enabling ruler with a pen and a phone, willing to do anything as long as it was destructive to this country and all it has stood for over generations.
We are awash in leftist, progressive, liberal mystics, telling us through tears and in panicked tones exactly what Donald Trump’s presidency will look like and how it will end, before he has held the job for even one second. In hysterics, they speak of the un-American things Trump will do in the future, and how “afraid” the leftists are of someone whose personal history shows no hint of the things they predict. Bruce Springsteen expresses his concerns about competence, and the newly dark dynamic that Trump allegedly brings to politics. Robert Reich produces instructional videos for mindless liberals about how Trump controls the media message, which is a harbinger of tyranny. Where have these people been for eight years?
As we hear each of these predictions, some of us are struck by a recurring sense of deja vu. It’s as if we’ve already seen all the chaos and mayhem that they predict will occur, not just once but innumerable times. Indeed, it almost feels like we can trace the beginning of our deja vu back eight years, before a man with no identifiable accomplishments to his name other than being half-black and hip eluded all scrutiny before his election as president; before race relations were destroyed for political profit; before people lost their livelihoods for not bending to government coercion; before people lost their health insurance on the basis of lies; before anti-white racism became fashionable; before the press was merely an extension of the Democratic Party; before our military and security were sacrificed to social justice; before our college students became simpering toddlers without an original thought; before our country sold out to Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood; before science was rendered meaningless in order to advance political goals; before we ignored laundry lists of felonies by Democrats; before it was cool to assassinate police; before our southern border was erased; before those same liberals tacitly invited every terrorist who could walk or say “refugee” to enter our country, plant roots, and plan the inevitable attacks; and before our president and his followers became the laughingstock of the civilized world.
Suddenly, after eight years in which their secret mantra seems to have been “Make America Hate Again,” they protest that the notion of stopping their immoral destruction of our country is itself immoral and hateful. Many of us have noticed that the damage they forecast, the shredding of our national fabric, has been well underway for eight years, and that their unhinged reaction to being stopped from finishing the job is far more morally disgusting than anything Donald Trump could do to make us the United States again.
Morality, like truth, isn’t supposed to be a prop, trotted out when necessary to trick the gullible. Leftists are purveyors of subjective morality, which is a fungible entity, almost always being interchangeable with political expedience. For them, an act becomes “moral” as soon as it advances whatever goal they seek to accomplish. When treated to subjective morality from a member of the political party that has entirely eschewed objective morality, we should reject everything that person says the moment it leaves their lips. Like the limits and prescriptions of the Constitution, they only ever invoke objective morality when they are not in power, and seek to influence those whose emotions have outpaced their intellect.
There is much work to be done, but we needn’t pause to consider lectures on morality from amoral people. Those who are still Americans will rebuild what was wrecked by those who have become something else. While we do so, we would be wise to remember that those who are transitioning from Americans to “something else” are determined to finish the job. If given another chance, they will happily force us to live in their corrupt, coercive Orwellian zoo. They won’t rest until they control everything, and we are compelled to do whatever they want, for whatever reason they say. That is, they won’t rest until we are no longer free people living in the United States, but rather are just a means of funding the overthrow of a country designed to prevent the corruption and tyranny they showed us for eight long, morality-free years.
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2) Left's Mission Accomplished: Blacks Torturing Whites
Upon hearing that four blacks kidnapped and tortured a disabled white man, I wanted to say to the left (Democrats, mainstream media, Hollywood, and Black Lives Matter), “Mission accomplished.” The four pieces of pond-scum forced their white hostage to say “f*** Trump” and “f*** white people”.
Folks, make no mistake about it. While some on the left claim to be upset, this is exactly the hate and violence they hope to generate throughout Trump's entire presidency. A farmer does not plant corn and then act surprised when stalks of corn begin to grow. The left has been planting seeds of racial hate and division ever since white America elected Obama. Why? Because the left needed to be able to scream “racism” whenever anyone opposed Obama (their Trojan Horse) implementing their far-left-radical socialist/progressive agenda.
Leftist billionaire George Soros gave Black Lives Matter $33 million to wreak havoc in our streets; sowing seeds of racial paranoia, fear, and hate. The leftist Ford Foundation pledged $100 million to Black Lives Matter to sow lies about cops and whites. And what did BLM do? BLM declared it “open season” on killing cops and white people.
Leftist Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino planted hate in blacks at an anti-cop rally calling cops murderers of blacks.
Obama irrigated fields of discord planted by the New Black Panther Party when his DOJ allowed the hate group to illegally offer a $10k bounty for George Zimmerman.
Despite evidence confirming that Michael Brown was shot while attacking a police officer, Leftist media relentlessly nurtured the lie that the black youth was shot while surrendering with his hands up, yelling, “Don't shoot.”
The Democrat Party doubled down using their “white-cop-murdered-Brown-lie” as fertilizer to feed their seeds of hate planted in the minds of black Americans. The Democrats despicably invited Brown's mom to speak at their national convention.
As a decent human being, you are probably asking, “Lloyd, why would Democrats sow lies to grow racial hate in black Americans?” Answer: the more the left can get blacks hating and fearing cops and whites, the more blacks will vote for Democrats. The more Democrats in government, the more the left can force its wacko agenda on Americans.
When voters blew the Left's mind by selecting Trump over Hillary, the Left tripled down on their sowing seeds of hate and fear, fertilizing their seeds with foul-smelling lies. Upon Trump winning the WH, the left immediately hired Trump protesters to riot, paying them $1500 per week.
How could the left relentlessly sow seeds of fear and hate 24/7 and not expect a harvest of attacks on innocent whites and assassinations of police? Do not be fooled, folks. The left is ecstatic that they are reaping exactly what they planted; black rage and violence against cops, whites, Trump, his voters, and America.
Will this horrific incident of blacks torturing a disabled white man cause the left to abandon lying, sowing seeds of hate, fear, and violence? Quite the opposite. The left is fast and furiously seeking new ways to broadcast their seeds of destruction to greater audiences. This is the satanic evil we are dealing with folks.
All one needs to know about the left is that implementing their socialist/progressive, anti-God, anti-America, and anti-traditional-values agenda trumps everything. National security, national race relations and American lives are deemed acceptable collateral damage.
Meanwhile, these evil people receive high marks for compassion. The reality is leftists have no regard for individuals, viewing them as mere pawns for furthering their agenda. Leftists stomp the life out of anyone preventing them from shoving their evil agenda down the throats of the masses.
Now is the time to call out the left and defeat them.
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3) Obama's Last Chance
President Barack Obama is wrapping things up at the White House, and he naturally wants to cram-in last minute achievements, leave his mark, and ensure a policy legacy.
All presidents do that, but President Obama is making some terrible errors in focus and time management, because one cannot rectify eight years of over-reach, under-reach or missed chances in a matter of days or hours.
Mr. Obama has a sharp pen, but he has to be careful not to stick himself -- and the country -- in the rear. That last pen-poke may be the most lasting part of his legacy. That is why it is a huge mistake to try to make major changes in the following areas:
- Re-setting relations with Russia, again, but this time to a kind of Cold War footing, rather than the moderate and flexible posture that in truth he, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry pursued futilely for nearly eight years;
- Trying to re-set the foundations of America’s ties with Israel and the entire international community’s approach to Arab-Israeli peace, rejecting the flexible formula of “defensible borders” and “land-for-peace” of UN Resolution 242 of 1967 and moving to an imposed solution of total Israeli withdrawal in 2017;
- Trying to build-in last-minute edicts to protect hastily conceived environmental edicts and sloppy health-care legislation;
- Releasing or re-settling dangerous terrorists from Guantanamo Base to sites inside the continental US;
- Re-settling hundreds of Syrian “refugees” -- most of them young Muslim males, not children, women or Christian victims -- inside the United States without any careful review of their background.
For once, Mr. Obama needs to be honest with himself. These areas just mentioned are not areas of success.
No amount of spinning will change the fact that Obama failed on Russia, failed on cyber-security, failed to impose total withdrawal on Israel. Obama worked hard to placate Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Everyone heard him promise Putin and his puppet Dimitri Medvedev (over an open microphone) that he would be more “flexible” after the 2012 election. This was Barack Obama, not Donald Trump, not Julian Assange.
There are many witnesses to Obama’s flexibility -- buried in the Ukraine and in Syria, where Obama let Putin do what he wanted. Now, in the final hours of his presidency, Obama wants everyone to import refugees, instability and potential terror from Syria.
Obama thought he was the smartest guy in the world when it came to dealing with Muslims and the Middle East. He invited the Muslim Brotherhood, hugged Turkey’s Islamist autocrat Recep Erdogan, befriended Iran’s ayatollahs and the corrupt PLO.
They all became more extreme. The PLO will not even talk to Israel without having preconditions met -- a reversal of 20 years of talks, and there are now more journalists in jail in Turkey than ever before (more jailed journalists than anywhere else in the world).
Obama’s removal of Iran sanctions, his passivity to Iranian provocations, and his attacks on Israel, encouraged the Iranians to persecute Iranian dissidents, to kidnap more Americans, to harass US ships in the Persian Gulf area.
When the real US-Iran deal was revealed -- including paying Iran almost two billion in un-marked bills -- Obama tried to change the story line. It was a fantastic deal, he said. The Israeli Prime Minister was blind, extreme. The ayatollahs were moderate realists.
So, after so many failed lies, so many treacherous talking points, will another Obama speech tour or late diplomatic flurry change the real results of eight years at this hour?
Ultimately, what defeated Obama-Clinton was not any Republican. It was Obama’s own arrogance -- not the audacity of hope but the audacity of hype. It was Obama’s hubris, his chutzpah and the same inattention to details that made him a bad student at Columbia who spent his whole time failing but somehow graduating to the next level.
Obama-Clinton Kerry did not do the homework, and Obama cannot hide his grades this time because the work -- for better or worse -- is either done or not done.
So what can Obama realistically do with his last hours in office -- something that will leave a nice shine on his years?
Let’s revisit January 2009. Barack Obama’s promise -- in words and potential -- was being a young “man of color” bringing “hope and change.” He was meant to be a symbol for a post-racial society, a post-partisan society, but it was Obama’s biggest broken promise.
Obama’s years will be seen as the time partisanship grew and racial tensions rose again.
But there is a last-minute chance to use Obama’s symbolic presidency to do something good and noble.
A few days ago a group of African-American youths in Chicago attacked and tortured a young, mentally crippled white man for several hours. They broadcast their actions.
Chicago is Obama’s home town, and the African-American community there is his turf. That is where he began as a community organizer.
This is Obama’s chance to step up and to condemn anti-White as well as anti-Black actions and rhetoric -- to show that all men are created equal, that all lives matter.
President Obama should find the assaulted young white man, visit him or bring him to the White House in one of his final acts. Then, Mr. Obama, embrace him, please.
America will have a fonder memory of you.
Michael Widlanski is the author of “Battle for Our Minds: Western Elites and the Terror Threat.”
3a) The Real Obama Legacy
by A.J. Caschetta
In his final press conference as president, his year-end Youtube message and in a flurry of Twitter twaddle, Barack Obama has been busy promoting his legacy. Among all the dubious claims he has been making, none is more fraudulent than "almost every country on earth sees America as stronger and more respected today than they did eight years ago." If he really believes that, he's the only one.
Eight years of timidity, retreat and empty talk have in fact made the nation weaker and less respected. Of all Obama's terrible foreign policy decisions, the following ten are the worst:
- Toppling Moammar Qaddafi: Obama portrayed himself as the intellect to George W. Bush's buffoon but repeated what he himself described as a mistake, this time in Libya, where, Hillary Clinton joked, "We came. We saw. He died." Toppling dictators is tricky business.
- Emptying GITMO: As of this writing, only 59 enemy combatants remain at Gitmo. Obama's first attorney general, Eric Holder, wanted Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others tried in Manhattan. When Congress wouldn't go along, Obama opted for Plan B – parole them. He paid countries to take some jihadis and released others to the Saudi jihad detox program. All remain threats.
- Underestimating ISIS: Premature departure from Iraq and no discernible Syria policy aided the rise of ISIS. Refusing to take the group seriously accelerated its growth. Obama called ISIS the JV team, insisted it is not Islamic, and treated fighters like civilians, for instance refusing to bomb ISIS fuel tankers. Perhaps they were union drivers.
- Demoralizing the Military: Beginning with "sequestration," Obama has shrunk, alienated and forced change on the military. Three Secretaries of Defense resigned citing interference from the president. The fourth (Ash Carter, who has no military experience) was willing to entertain his social justice agenda and began using the military to advance Obama's domestic policies: women in combat roles, lifting the transgendered ban, allowing Muslims to wear turbans and hijabs (negating the "uni" half of their "uniforms").
Obama and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
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- Mistreating allies: After insulting the British by removing the bust of Churchill sent to the US after 9/11, Obama focused on putting "space between us and Israel." His administration adopted the anti-Israel language and outlook of the UN, culminating with the December 23 abstention on the Security Council resolution declaring parts of Israel ("the settlements") illegal. Obama is fond of saying that "The people of Israel must always know America has its back," but when Israel needed his help, Obama put a knife in its back.
- Politicizing Intelligence: Obama declassified much of the Bush administration-era Enhanced Interrogation Techniques program and reopened a closed investigation into the interrogators. His fifth CIA Director, John Brennan, has been more vocal and public than any of his predecessors, even offering advice to the president-elect in a BBC interview. Obama is currently using the intelligence apparatus to pin Hillary Clinton's loss on Russian hackers.
- Bowing to Russia: In 2012 Obama disclosed to then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that after his last election he would have more flexibility regarding Russia. Subsequently, he showed all the flexibility of an Olympic gymnast as Russia shot down a passenger jet (like the "good old days"), invaded some neighbors, and annexed their territory. By ending the space shuttle program, Obama effectively turned the International Space Station into the Russian Space Station.
- Egypt: The April 2009 Cairo speech began Obama's courtship of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2012 he met in the White House with Hani Nour Eldin, a member of Gama'a Islamiyya – the organization whose spiritual leader, Omar Abdel Rahman, was convicted in 1995 of plotting attacks on New York City. He supported Islamist candidate Mohamed Morsi in Egypt's first post-Mubarak election and refuses to acknowledge the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
- Syria: Obama put the country's reputation on a red line he drew over the use of chemical weapons. When that line was crossed, he did nothing, indelibly changing US foreign policy. Not only does everyone now call Obama's bluffs, they ignore him.
- JCPOA: Undoubtedly, Obama's single most damaging, self-inflicted foreign policy wound is the one-sided Iran nuclear deal. Instead of submitting to the Senate as a treaty, he took it to the UN where, like a money laundering scheme, Iran's illegal nuclear program becomes legal in 10 years. Democrats continue to lie about it: Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine boasted that they "stopped the Iran nuclear program without firing a single shot." In reality, they handed Iran a gun and some bullets and asked them not to load and shoot.
Barack Obama spent his presidency trying to "fundamentally transform" the country. Only time will tell how successful he has been. However, when it is finally written, the most significant Obama legacy may just be the Trump presidency. For just as the final grim years of the Bush administration made an Obama presidency possible, so too have the Obama years catalyzed the anti-establishment movement that propelled Trump to victory.
A.J. Caschetta is a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum and a senior lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
3b) Which Michelle Obama Will We Get When She Leaves The White House?
The "White House Mom" Charmed Late-Night Hosts and Hula Hooped With Kids, But She
Wasn't Her Full Self in Public.
By Jodi Kantor
On Jan. 20, Michelle Obama will hand her home over to a man who rose to power in part by spreading lies about her husband and intends to pulverize much of his work. If presidential tradition and her own recent conduct are any guide, she will carry herself through inauguration morning with quiet calm and few hints of what she is really thinking. After Donald J. Trump recites the oath of office, a helicopter — no longer called Marine One, because the president will not be on board — will lift the Obama's into new lives.
Soon after, Michelle Obama will have a choice to make: Should she start — or rather, resume — speaking in public with her fuller voice?
When her husband became the 2008 Democratic nominee for president, Mrs. Obama edited herself. She had to, in the face of unceasing Republican attacks and then the challenge of being the first African-American first lady. Her statements were authentic but limited. She called herself the “mom in chief” and charmed late-night TV hosts in clips that exploded the next day on social media. Sometimes she spoke as much with her body as her voice, hula-hooping and hopscotching with children, turning appearances into marathon hugging sessions. She became a specialist in light jokes, as she demonstrated in September, when she went on a shopping expedition with Ellen DeGeneres to CVS. “Wine in a box! How does this work?” she asked in mock wonder.
She took on issues that were vital but hard to disagree with: She was pro-veteran, anti-childhood obesity. The approach worked brilliantly, protecting and elevating her, putting her as far above reproach as anyone in the mosh pit of American politics can hope to be. The less explicitly political she sounded, the more political influence she wielded, in convention speeches and other key moments.
This approach carried a price: It did not capture the true depth, originality and directness of Michelle Obama.
In a 2008 interview with The Times, she recalled her years of leading young people through sometimes-painful conversations about race, and made the case for being forthright. “I hate diversity workshops,” she said. “Real change comes from having enough comfort to be really honest and say something very uncomfortable,” she said.
Does Michelle Obama still believe that? In Donald Trump’s America, the hunger among Democrats for her to speak out will be enormous. But she knows better than anyone what that could cost her.
The Michelle Obama whom friends, family and aides know, whom many Chicagoans remember, is an incisive social critic, a lawyer who can drive home an argument, a source of fresh observations and pointed commentary. Long before she arrived at the White House, she had formed her own worldview, based on a life full of dramatic changes and contrasts.
When she attended Princeton, one of her roommates moved out rather than live with a black girl; one of her aunts, as it happened, worked as a maid in town. Her father was a Chicago water worker, part of the vast municipal work force. Later she worked in the mayor’s office, seeing city government from a much different height. Though she attended Harvard Law School and worked at a top firm, the job that seemed most formative involved public-service training for young people of disparate backgrounds: University of Chicago alumni alongside veterans of housing projects and gangs. She was influenced by others, including her brainy dreamer of a husband, but she fused these experiences into her own point of view and a distinctive voice: warm, skeptical, funny, blunt.
She questioned why power was locked up in political dynasties. When she worked at the University of Chicago, she pointed out the institution’s isolation amid the black South Side. A professor, Cathy Cohen, remembers Mrs. Obama telling her, “I grew up not far from here and the university never once reached out to me.” Old colleagues there, and in other jobs, too, say Mrs. Obama’s ability to talk frankly about difficult issues, like performing medical trials on poor black Chicagoans, was one of her strengths.
She had a penchant for defying what others expected her to say or think. In interviews, she shredded the script of the dutiful help meet. “What I notice about men, all men, is that their order is me, my family, God is in there somewhere, but me is first,” she told The Chicago Tribune in 2004 when her husband was running for United States Senate. “And for women, me is fourth, and that’s not healthy.”
A few years later, when her husband announced his presidential run, “60 Minutes” asked if she feared for his safety. “As a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station,” she said.
Sometimes, in those early days on the trail, she sounded like a counselor, even a minister. “If there is anyone who has a broken relationship with another woman,” she said to a mostly female crowd in South Carolina in 2007, the first of six years I spent covering her, “if there was a woman in your life that you have not communicated with because of ego or embarrassment or jealousy or fear of rejection, a sister or a friend or a mother or a child who could or should be a part of your community, I ask you to reach out to that woman today.”
In interviews, longtime aides to the Obamas said that she does not yet know exactly how she wants to sound as a former first lady, that she has been focused on tying up her eight years in the White House as smoothly as possible. Mrs. Obama will be 53 when she leaves the White House, and her goal, friends and aides say, is to look at her life afresh.
Some of those aides make a powerful case that even as Michelle Obama is likely to be spending time writing a memoir and giving speeches, she will be most effective if she sticks to the calibrated tone she has employed for her husband’s two terms. She has always admired Laura Bush’s restrained approach, they say. Mrs. Obama never longed for a particularly public life and does not relish the fray. Leaving the spotlight could be a relief, as it was for Mrs. Bush: “After nearly eight years of hyper vigilance, of watching for the next danger or tragedy that might be coming, I could at last exhale; I could simply be,” she said of leaving the White House in her 2010 memoir.
Besides, the best way for Mrs. Obama to preserve her popularity and authority may be to hold back, to avoid jeopardizing what she has worked to build. Even when she is bathed in public admiration, she is the target of revolting attacks — a prominent Trump supporter recently insinuated she was a male ape — and speaking out more could provoke worse. As first lady, she used hints, invitations, art, sometimes even clothing to convey her viewpoint. If she mostly avoided controversial topics, her mere presence spoke volumes, and was there really any mistaking the fundamentals of what she believed?
On Friday morning, Mrs. Obama’s eyes glossed as she gave her final remarks as first lady. She exhorted young people to educate themselves and “build a country worthy of your boundless promise” — an uplifting message that included a subtle critique.
But others who know her predict that with time, Mrs. Obama will find a new voice. Both Obama's, two of the few unifying figures in a fractured Democratic Party, will face enormous pressure to help oppose and rebuild. For years, she has mostly bottled up her critiques of Republicans, but they are scorching, say those who have heard the private version. Some Democrats dream of her running for president in 2020, and though Mrs. Obama and those close to her say the idea is out of the question, the general appetite to hear from her may not be as easy for her to dismiss.
The themes of the hour — unfairness, opportunity, whether to have even a shred of faith in the system — are ones she has thought about her entire adult life. Being in the White House has given her eight years’ worth of insights she has barely shared. She may be the most powerful black woman in the country, a position that begs to be used. Michelle Obama cares about representation — for example, insisting on appearing on the cover of Vogue even when some of her advisers questioned the decision. The world has only one observant, original, wildly popular African-American first lady, and for her to hoard her ideas and views would be a waste.
Last summer, after a wave of groping accusations against Mr. Trump, Michelle Obama gave a speech sharper and more vehement than most of her other statements as first lady. “I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women,” she said. “And I have to tell you that I can’t stop thinking about this.”
Some of those aides make a powerful case that even as
Michelle Obama is likely to be spending time writing a memoir and giving speeches, she will be most effective if she sticks to the calibrated tone she has employed for her husband’s two terms. She has always admired Laura Bush’s restrained approach, they say. Mrs. Obama never longed for a particularly public life and does not relish the fray. Leaving the spotlight could be a relief, as it was for Mrs. Bush: “After nearly eight years of hyper vigilance, of watching for the next danger or tragedy that might be coming, I could at last exhale; I could simply be,” she said of leaving the White House in her 2010 memoir.
Besides, the best way for Mrs. Obama to preserve her popularity and authority may be to hold back, to avoid jeopardizing what she has worked to build. Even when she is bathed in public admiration, she is the target of revolting attacks — a prominent Trump supporter recently insinuated she was a male ape — and speaking out more could provoke worse. As first lady, she used hints, invitations, art, sometimes even clothing to convey her viewpoint. If she mostly avoided controversial topics, her mere presence spoke volumes, and was there really any mistaking the fundamentals of what she believed?
On Friday morning, Mrs. Obama’s eyes glossed as she gave her final remarks as first lady. She exhorted young people to educate themselves and “build a country worthy of your boundless promise” — an uplifting message that included a subtle critique.
But others who know her predict that with time, Mrs.Obama will find a new voice. Both Obama's, two of the few unifying figures in a fractured Democratic Party, will face enormous pressure to help oppose and rebuild. For years, she has mostly bottled up her critiques of Republicans, but they are scorching, say those who have heard the private version. Some Democrats dream of her running for president in 2020, and though Mrs. Obama and those close to her say the idea is out of the question, the general appetite to hear from her may not be as easy for her to dismiss.
The themes of the hour — unfairness, opportunity, whether to have even a shred of faith in the system — are ones she has thought about her entire adult life. Being in the White House has given her eight years’ worth of insights she has barely shared. She may be the most powerful black woman in the country, a position that begs to be used. Michelle Obama cares about representation — for example, insisting on appearing on the cover of Vogue even when some of her advisers questioned the decision. The world has only one observant, original, wildly popular African-American first lady, and for her to hoard her ideas and views would be a waste.
Last summer, after a wave of groping accusations against Mr. Trump, Michelle Obama gave a speech sharper and more vehement than most of her other statements as first lady. “I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women,” she said. “And I have to tell you that I can’t stop thinking about this.”.
As she stood on the stage, sharing her forthright opinion with the world, she sounded like someone: the pre-White House Michelle Obama.Aides and friends have often said that while Michelle Obama never embraced politics like her husband, her capacity for outrage is greater. “While I’d love nothing more than to pretend like this isn’t happening,” she said in the speech, “it would be dishonest and disingenuous to me to just move on to the next thing like this was all just a bad dream.”
Jodi Kantor is a reporter at the Times and the author of the newly updated “The Obamas:
The Partnership Behind a Historic Presidency.”
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion),
and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
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