Joe Biden should pick Michelle Obama as his running mate for the White House
The outbreak of coronavirus and the unexpected surge of support at the latest primaries for Joe Biden seem to have turned the US presidential race on its head. At the beginning of the year the polls suggested that nothing could stop the incumbent being re-elected this November.
But coronavirus seems to have caught Trump on the hop – for once even his hardcore support and the Fox News faithful seem to be less than convinced. The boasts of getting on top of the initial outbreak, beating back the “foreign” virus don’t seem to be getting traction.
Biden, the 77-year-old former vice president, seems to have found new resonance in suburban America – where numbers are quite significantly up on turnout for the primaries. He is also doing better than Hillary Clinton in 2016 in getting members of the black and Hispanic communities to vote.
Much may depend on who he chooses to be his running mate. Last night, debating Bernie Sanders, he said that if he wins the nomination he will choose a woman as his running mate.
Who will he pick?
Suddenly, from left field has come an extraordinary proposal – and it could be the clincher.
I was talking this week to my regular study group – a seminar of well-informed, international ladies. They have contacts across the world, not least in Washington. Intelligence from Washington this week, they told me, is that pressure is growing for Biden to choose Michelle Obama as his vice-presidential running mate.
“It would be a real winner,” one of the group told me.
It had been assumed, according to a Democrat supporter among our seminar, that Biden might draft Kamala Harris as his partner. Curiously, Harris and Obama are only six months apart in age, Michelle becoming 56 this January, while Kamala has her 56th birthday in October.
For many Democrats, Obama might be a dream candidate, but for many, if not most, Republicans, she would be a nightmare – not least for Donald J Trump. Personal animus against anything to do with Obama has driven his approach to migration, foreign policy, and above all public medical care – which could well bring nemesis this election year.
Though she has been around politics for much of her adult life, Michelle Obama, née Robinson, has not been on the inside of politics overmuch. She has served in public office, mostly in her native Chicago, but not sought election.
Her navigation from relative poverty, the shadow of her father’s long battle with multiple sclerosis, and then graduation from Princeton and Harvard, makes for an intriguing story. Forebears on both maternal and paternal sides had been slaves.
Over eight years as First Lady she became an international celebrity, and managed to do so without seeming to put a foot wrong – except in the eyes of her more churlish critics such as Maureen Dow of the New York Times and Michelle Cottle of Politico. Cottle claimed Michelle Obama had done little for the cause of women while at the White House – only for her article to be trashed across the board by fellow journalists. Another critic called Michelle “an angry, black woman.”
Whatever her detractors say, she has managed to achieve a lot by a strange combination of subtlety and almost naïve openness. She felt completely at sea initially at Princeton – astonished at the wealth of some of her fellow students, manifested in their addiction to BMW motors. At Harvard later, it was a very different story: she said she wanted to prove you could be both “brilliant and black.”
She met her husband when she was asked to mentor him on his arrival at the Chicago law firm of Sidley and Austin LLP. At first, she said, it was an attraction of opposites. But she went on to campaign for him first for the senate and then the presidency – giving two convention speeches in 2008, 2012, and also notably in the 2016 race.
When she got to the White House, again it was a question of the military maxim “time spent in reconnaissance is rarely wasted.” She asked her widowed mother, Marian Robinson, to join them to look after the girls, Malia and Sasha. She also consulted her two predecessors about bringing up a family at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. All three: Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama – Trivial Pursuit addicts please note – hold postgraduate degrees.
In 2009, with her feet barely under the table, she was anointed Barbara Walters’ Most Fascinating Person of the Year. And she began campaigning for social causes, in her own way. One of her most successful was “Let’s Move” to encourage healthy eating. Again, it was a first for a First Lady to speak out on the huge rise in problems cause by obesity in America.
In 2014 she joined the campaign to get Boko Haram guerrillas to release school hostages they had seized in northern Nigeria, displaying a handmade placard outside the White House, proclaiming “#BringBackOurGirls.”
She carried her message about education and empowerment for girls on her visits abroad, and never more memorably so than at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School, Islington in 2009 and again in 2018. On the 2009 occasion, she had a notable encounter with the Queen, whom she embraced – much to the embarrassment of the courtiers. But not to Her Maj, it must be noted, who warmly told the Obamas at the end of their tour: “We do hope you’ll both come again soon.”
At the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, she admitted being completely overwhelmed by a surge of emotion. Just under 200 of the 900 students were refugees, and 55 different languages were spoken among them. Looking at her audience, Obama later wrote “I about felt myself falling back into my past.” She threw away her notes as she encouraged the girls to live their dream through education – and later hosted some of the girls at the White House and at seminars in Oxford.
She has a very powerful advantage in that she is not seeking office. And this sense of denial comes despite being a natural campaigner and advocate.
On January 14th 2016 Barack Obama said “there are three things certain in life: death, taxes and Michelle not running for president.” In Nevada earlier this year he repeated that she would not run for president in 2020.
On this, at least, President Barack Obama may have to emulate his wife before the students of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School, Islington, in 2009 – and throw away the script.