Obama’s words boost Hillary
He had used his talent as an orator to defeat Hillary in 2008 — now that power is harnessed for her
t’s hard to overstate the effect that United States President Barack Obama can have on an audience — and when he took the stage at a packed Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night, he entered not just to music but to the sound of his party’s collective swoon. With Obama on it, the stage had a newfound glamour. This wasn’t just another beige politician. This was America’s first and last love.
In a week marked by rounds of disrespectful booing, the audience was suddenly singing a different tune. And at some points — yes — the singing was literal. When a video montage featured Obama’s famous rendition of Amazing Grace at a black church in Charleston, those assembled went full choir on the song. Others sounded like groupies at a rock concert or a toddler remiss at a beloved parent leaving for work. “Don’t leave us,” cried one. Said another, “I love youuuuuu.” This is the way it’s always been for Obama on the campaign trail. It’s the way that it was when he stunned the world with his powers of oratory back in 2004; the way he beat Hillary Clinton; and the way he was before his DNC speech, when a notably lined and greyer man took the stage.
What hadn’t changed was his ability to feed on a crowd and send their energy flying back at them a thousandfold. “I love you back,” he beamed. But on Wednesday, he sent their love elsewhere as well: To the campaign of Hillary Clinton. And he did it as her longtime observer, opponent and boss, and with all the authority and gravitas of a guy who knows the office.
“Nothing truly prepares you for the demands of the Oval Office,” he said. “Until you’ve sat at that desk, you don’t know what it’s like to manage a global crisis, or send young people to war. But Hillary’s been in the room; she’s been part of those decisions.” Obama’s praise of Hillary’s experience is notable because he was once the opponent who damned her with the feint praise of being “likeable enough”. But that, Obama seemed to insist on Wednesday night, was before he knew better. Calling her “the Hillary I’ve come to admire,” he didn’t mince words. “There has never been a man or a woman more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as President of the United States of America.”
Uniquely qualified
There wasn’t in 2008, and there isn’t today. And another thing he’s come to admire in Hillary: “No matter how daunting the odds; no matter how much people try to knock her down, she never, ever quits.” Obama understands in the way that only a sitting Democratic president could what Hillary could do if given a chance in the White House, and he’s uniquely qualified to speak to how far her tenacity and temperament might go there. Just as Michelle Obama used her singular insight into Hillary’s history — what it’s like to be America’s first lady and how Hillary helped carve out the role as it exists today — her husband used his to help paint a hopeful portrait of her future and America’s future.
In a speech when he might have been consumed by railing against the perils of a Donald Trump presidency, he rose above the fear. Instead of calling Trump out for the bigotry that for him is highly personal, he made light of it, saying in an ad-libbed joke of America’s ancestors, “I don’t know if I have their birth certificates”.
It was the same playful approach Hillary’s vice-presidential pick, Tim Kaine, had used earlier in the night when he made fun of the Republican nominee’s speaking style and it was utterly not the point. The point was rising above fear to carve out a more hopeful future. “Our power comes from those immortal declarations first put to paper right here in Philadelphia all those years ago,” Obama said. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that together, We, the People, can form a more perfect union. That’s who we are.”
The audience was chanting along with him now, clapping and hollering and waving their signs. He was harnessing what’s quite possibly his greatest power of all: His power of oratory. It was the power he used to defeat her, but this time, he was using it to help her win. From the looks of it, it was working. “I’ve told Hillary, and I’ll tell you what’s picked me back up, every single time,” Obama said towards the end of his speech. “It’s been you. The American people. Tonight, I ask you to do for Hillary Clinton what you did for me.”
Lucia Graves is a Guardian US columnist. She was previously a staff correspondent for National Journal magazine and a staff reporter at Huffington Post.