Posted 12:59 am Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Michelle Obama Rallies ET's Support Monday
By MEGAN MIDDLETON
Staff Writer
The wife of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama stopped in Tyler on the eve of the Texas primary to not only energize voters to cast a ballot for her husband, but to squelch criticism that he lacks experience and to stress that his campaign is in touch with the struggles of "regular folks."
Staff Writer
The wife of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama stopped in Tyler on the eve of the Texas primary to not only energize voters to cast a ballot for her husband, but to squelch criticism that he lacks experience and to stress that his campaign is in touch with the struggles of "regular folks."
Introduced as the "next first lady of the United States" to a cheering crowd of an estimated 700 to 800, Michelle Obama spoke of the hunger for change she's seen in the country in the last year of the campaign.
"People are desperate for something different," Mrs. Obama said. "People are standing in line to attend political rallies ... People are sitting around their TVs watching political debates. People are sitting around their kitchen tables talking about super delegates and pledged delegates ... There's something different here going on in this country."
She touted the values she and her husband learned from their working-class families.
"We learned in our households - Barack and I - simple values, things like, your word is your bond, truth and honesty matter ... that you treat other people with respect even if we don't know them and even if we don't agree with them all the time," she said to big applause. "One of the things that Barack Obama understands is that you don't cut your enemy into little bitty pieces - because you never know when you're going to have to sit right next to them and work with them. You keep people whole ... so you can get stuff done."
The Student Government Association at the University of Texas at Tyler hosted Mrs. Obama at the Herrington Patriot Center on Monday.
The crowd, which included various races and ages from 17 to 74, chanted "Obama! Obama! Obama!" and "First Lady, Michelle" and waved Obama signs as they waited for her to arrive, shortly after 1:30 p.m.
Mrs. Obama highlighted how, at many key steps throughout the campaign, her husband's candidacy was discounted - from fundraising to building a political organization to winning Iowa and beyond - and how the campaign has exceeded expectations.
Mrs. Obama is introduced before her speech by Molly Beth Malcolm, former State Democratic Party President from 1999-2003 and now Co-Chair of the Obama campaign in East Texas.
Their campaign has constantly chased a moving bar, she said, "but the irony of that is that is exactly what most Americans have been going through for a long time.
"We are living in a time when most Americans are struggling to chase a bar that is moving and shifting on them," she said, adding that when that happens it creates a country that is more easily divided. "Many of us have been cynical about our politics for a long time. We folded our arms in disgust and said nothing will change ... It's understandable when you feel like you can never get ahead - you don't believe that anything greater than yourself can make a change."
She said that at those times it's easy to be led by fear.
"The problem with fear is that it creates a veil of impossibility," she said.
But she wants more for the next generation, she said.
During her speech, fervent supporters could be heard yelling, "That's right!" and "Say it!"
"Regular Folks"
The 44-year-old mother said things have grown more difficult for "regular folks."
The 44-year-old mother said things have grown more difficult for "regular folks."
She said she speaks from her own life experience.
"It doesn't matter how many newspaper covers or magazine covers I'm on - deep down inside I'm a black girl who was raised on the south side of Chicago," she said to applause. "A product of a working-class background."
She said her father was a city worker and her mother stayed home until she and her brother were older. She grew up in a little apartment and went to a neighborhood public school.
"I want people to see and understand that this is what an investment in public education can look like," she said of herself.
Her parents were able to send two children to Princeton, she said. She also went on to graduate from Harvard Law School.
Still, she said, she and her husband, who also attended Harvard Law School, are not miracles.
"The only thing we saw in our households was hard-working sacrifices," she said.
As she has traveled the country, she said she has learned most people are like her parents.
"They just aren't asking for much," she said. "They don't mind the bar being high ... Most folks want the bar to be still."
She touched on issues from taking care of seniors to college debt to health care to No Child Left Behind.
"Every place I go everyone agrees that No Child Left Behind is strangling the life of our education," she said, noting it's the biggest applause line she gets. "Achievement cannot be measured solely by performance on a test."
Mrs. Obama also told the crowd that, like many couples, she and her husband are just a few years out from having paid off their college loans, and the only reason they are not in debt today is because of a couple of best-selling books her husband wrote.
"That is not a financial plan," she said. "We are blessed."
In regard to health care, she said she has met families where everyone in the household is working but no one has health insurance.
"But those who have health insurance find at some point in time that the deductibles and premiums are still so high that when they really get sick, they find they are still out of luck - putting treatments and prescriptions on credit cards," she said. "Once you put that stuff on your credit card, you're sunk."
NEW LEADERSHIP
But hope is there, she said, also discounting criticism that her husband does not have the experience to be president.
But hope is there, she said, also discounting criticism that her husband does not have the experience to be president.
"Everybody has a 10-point plan ...," she said. "Everybody running in this race is experienced ... That's not our problem. The problem is not the knowledge. It's the will."
She said, "Our greatest challenge is us. We have to understand at some fundamental level that if we want to reach the solutions that we pray for, that we've got to change our attitudes, that we have to understand that we have a mutual obligation to one another - that we cannot measure the greatness of society solely on the richest and strongest ... We have to measure it by the least of these."
She said the country needs different leadership.
"We need a little inspiration because there's something broken in our souls," she said. "We need somebody who can tap into that brokenness and help us heal in a way that we have not. Barack understands that in a way that no other candidate does."
And she said her husband is ready to be the country's next leader.
"For me, this contest isn't about experience," she said. "It's about characters and choices."
She highlighted the importance of what her husband did "in the shadows" when no one was watching - "before Barack Obama was Barack Obama."
Her husband, the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, could have made millions if he had chosen other paths, she said.
But instead he chose to become a civil rights attorney at a small firm in Chicago.
"Why?" she asked. "Because to whom much is given, much is expected. Because when you're given the gift of advocacy, you don't sell it to the highest bidder. You work for the least of these..."
Dream, she told the crowd.
Mrs. Obama told a story about a little girl who pushed her way through a crowd at a rally in South Carolina to tell her that if her husband was elected that it would be "historical."
Mrs. Obama told a story about a little girl who pushed her way through a crowd at a rally in South Carolina to tell her that if her husband was elected that it would be "historical."
Mrs. Obama said she asked the little girl what that meant to her, and the little girl said, "'It means that I can imagine anything for myself.'"
"As soon as she said those words she broke down in tears and she cried hard tears," Mrs. Obama said. "It broke my heart ... One of the things that became clear to me is just how much is at stake."
The little girl, she said, feels that "veil of impossibility suffocating her."
"But she knew in her heart that she is so much better than the limited expectations this nation has of her," she said.
"That story touches everyone because at some level, we were all her," she said.
She asked the crowd to close their eyes and imagine a day when the country can inaugurate a man like her husband, a day when he has his hand on the Bible taking the oath of office.
The crowd erupted in cheers.
"On that day ... the possibilities are endless," she said.
"On that day ... the possibilities are endless," she said.
After the rally, supporters said they were inspired by her speech.
"I loved it," 37-year-old Debbie Kennedy said. "This is my first year voting. I've always hated politics. But I'm just so excited again. I feel like there's hope."
