Shortly after Barack Obama was elected president, his transition team created the web site Change.gov. Focused in part on appeasing disgruntled Republican voters, the site features a bland array of details on the incoming bureaucracy, a blog with posts like "Common Ground: Obama and McCain meet," and -- in a somewhat hyperbolic reminder of Obama's commitment to being a man of the people -- an online job application for potential Obama appointees.
What I found most riveting, however, were the storybook biographies of our upcoming presidential family. Here, a precious gem from the page for Michelle Obama: "When people ask Michelle Obama to describe herself, she doesn't hesitate. First and foremost, she is Malia and Sasha's mom."
I unflinchingly cast my vote for Barack in last year's primaries, and even shed a bleeding-heart-liberal tear during his victory speech. But to see an Obama-branded pull-quote reduce a powerful woman to a mere caretaker makes me wonder if Hillary Clinton might have been the right choice after all.
Liberal politicians have spent years on the defensive, obsessively watering down and focus-group testing their every word in order to fit within the conservative discourse that dominates America. Obama's victory should have been a call that it's time to stop pandering to the religious right and to start being proud of our progressivism.
We must give up the antiquated narrative that dictates that an accomplished woman with children must consider herself, "first and foremost," a mother. Our next first lady received her undergraduate degree from Princeton and her J.D. from Harvard; she worked for the University of Chicago and founded a successful non-profit. In short, Michelle has lived a remarkable life independent of her children. While her kids may indeed be the most important things in the world to her, she should not have to hinge her very personhood on her ability to care for them in order to be admired in America today.
The problem is that the engineers of the Obama campaign remain convinced -- despite a resounding mandate for liberalism from the public -- that certain Christian, "family values" voters must be reminded that the black man they elected president is still "one of them."Just take a look at Barack's own biography on Change.gov. Naturally, there's no mention of his fatherhood -- after all, why should a man dedicate himself to his kids as much as his wife? Instead, we see that he "worked for Christian churches in Chicago ... and, guided by his Christian faith, stayed active in his community." Praise Jesus, we didn't elect a Black Muslim separatist to office!
It's not only that the need to reaffirm Michelle and Barack's family-friendly Christian nature seems pathetically outdated, but the whole charade just reeks of insincerity. Michelle Obama received her undergraduate degree in sociology and African American studies, writing in her senior thesis that attending Princeton would likely lead to her "further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure." You don't graduate college with that kind of nuanced understanding of oppression and identity politics only to whole-heartedly advertise yourself as the black equivalent of the American WASP.
Furthermore, Barack Obama has stated repeatedly that he opposes same-sex marriage solely on the grounds of his Christian faith. Not only does that kind of argument seem beneath the logic of a constitutional law scholar, it runs counter to the opinion of his own Christian church, which regularly marries same-sex couples.
Thus, I am convinced that Barack and Michelle are more forward thinking than they're willing to admit. Ironically, the magic of the Obama campaign was that it stood up for itself boldly and assertively. Unlike Kerry, Obama refused to let calculated polling weaken his campaign, instead playing the offense in a way that reduced McCain to political irrelevancy. Our president-elect proved to America that progressivism with a backbone is a recipe for success. Why then does he feel the need to back down to the rhetoric of the Right?
Politics is tricky business, and I'm not naive enough to think that a barefaced liberal can win the American populace on his liberalism alone. But smart, persuasive framing does not have to come at the expense of a commitment to authenticity.
The Obamas hold the progressive values needed to turn this country around. It's time they stop cowering behind conservative ideology and start delivering the change they promised.
