Michelle Obama vs. Ann Romney: The Battle of the Convention Speeches. Photo credit: Jared Soares/Mallor Baxter for PBS NewsHour
In the battle between the First Lady and the woman seeking to be First Lady, Michelle Obama would appear to have won hands down. Both women made important speeches at their party’s respective National Conventions, but Obama’s performance was far more polished and assured.
She had the best joke, talking of her early days of marriage to Barack Obama: “We were so young, so in love, and so in debt.” And the best one-liner, when commenting on seeing him as President from up close and personal: “I have seen firsthand that being president doesn’t change who you are – it reveals who you are.”
In contrast to Obama’s polished rhetoric, Romney’s pitch was far more colloquial: “You know what? I have heard your voices. They have said to me, I am running in place and we just cannot get ahead.” These colloquialisms were an effort to sound like one of the Convention audience, but, more importantly, also an effort to sound American. The winner in the battle for heart and minds, and therefore, the presidential election, will be the candidate who most accurately articulates what it is to be American in this election year; the one who know how to talk “American”, to connect with the American people on the most profound level.
Thus, both women made reference to the American Dream and how their respective husbands embodied or cherished that Dream. There was much backstory from both about the ordinariness of their youth/backgrounds: tales of tuna fish and pasta, rusty cars and “our dining room table was a fold-down ironing board”. But of course the American Dream moves on, it evolves in the minds of its people. And that was where Obama’s speech was at its most interesting. Her take on the American Dream and how to talk American was to talk about inheritance: “Those are the values Barack and I – and so many of you – are trying to pass on to our own children. That’s who we are.”
In other words, being American post 9/11, post financial crash is trying to pass on the past, to ensure that amid so much change, the core values are passed from one generation to another: “We learned about dignity and decency – that how hard you work matters more than how much you make.”
In an America that is confused about it status in the world what matters is continuity; being American is keeping the dream alive. As she says in perhaps the most telling remark of her speech: “And he (Barack) reminds me that we are playing a long game here.”
Against a backdrop of four difficult and even disappointing years, the best way to position the incumbent president is invoking continuity and long game. But how far from his election promise of the previous campaign, the rhetoric of change, change and more change.
And here’s the rub: Because although both women were trying to furnish their husbands with a winning backstory, the real backstory to this election is the economy, jobs and America’s declining status as economic super power.
That is why Ann Romney focused on the word success: “You know what, it actually amazes me to see his (Mitt’s) history of success being attacked. Are those really the values that made our country great?”
There is a sense that President Obama is tainted by the failure of the American economy, that his presidency coincided with a decline in status. That is not the American Dream – the American Dream is about being a winner. Being a failure is, well, un-American.
To that extent at least Romney’s speech was right on target. Success is the quality that still appeals most of all to an American electorate. “Talking American” is a story around success. And Romney’s team know that. As Ann Romney said in the closing line of her speech: “The man will not fail.”
