Watching Hillary Clinton's speech at the DNC on television tonight as my fellow MOMocrats Julie, Cynematic and LawyerMama covered the convention live on Twitter from the Pepsi Center, I couldn't help but feel as though something were missing. The words she spoke were eloquent and powerful, but seemed to lack the passion and candor I had witnessed in Hillary earlier today at the Women Count Lunch.
Now that I think more on it, though, I don't think it was really that Hillary Clinton's speech was subpar, as convention speeches go. Certainly, she moved the crowd; on CSPAN's coverage I saw many audience members, including, at one point, Michelle Obama, moved to tears.
It was more that after watching Ted Kennedy and Michelle Obama both deliver what may have been the best speeches of their careers on the same night, my expectations have been raised so high for this convention that I'm pretty sure I'm doomed to mild disappointment for the rest of the week.
Ted Kennedy's surprise appearance at the convention after a video tribute to his lifetime of public service brought the crowd to its feet. Certainly, his strength of determination to come the convention despite his recent cancer diagnosis and a debilitating bout of kidney stones would have been worth a standing ovation on its own.
But the force of his rhetoric and the conviction in his voice captivated to the end. Senator Kennedy didn't just deliver a good speech considering his poor health. Ted Kennedy delivered a speech that would have been considered great under any circumstances.The words were simple; he had shortened an address that had been planned months ago to be much longer. But somehow Kennedy managed to distill all the sound and fury surrounding this year's presidential campaign into a simple, resonant message:
We are told that Barack Obama believes too much in an America of high principle and bold endeavor, but when John Kennedy called of going to the moon, he didn't say, "It's too far to get there. We shouldn't even try."
Our people answered his call and rose to the challenge, and today an American flag still marks the surface of the moon.
Yes, we are all Americans. This is what we do. We reach the moon. We scale the heights. I know it. I've seen it. I've lived it. And we can do it again.
It was a hard act to follow. But, as anyone who has been following news coverage of the convention thus far probably already knows, Michelle Obama pulled it off, giving, in my opinion, one of the most amazing speeches of the campaign season so far.
A confident, self-made woman, Michelle Obama developed a reputation early on in the campaign for blunt talk and a no-nonsense attitude. Her early stump speeches showed passion and intelligence, but not much in the way of slick oratory or inspiring tropes. While Michelle Obama's husband seems at his best speaking in front of thousands, Michelle herself seemed much more suited to speaking one-on-one with voters in smaller groups.
As Hillary Clinton knows all too well, intelligent, powerful women must walk a fine line in our culture when speaking in public; too much sentiment, and a woman will be labeled emotional; too much stone-faced authority, and that same woman will be called shrill or worse, "emasculating." Though not to the same degree as Clinton, Michelle has also been subject to this devastating damned if you do, damned if you don't equation. She was accused early on by some of "underminng" Barack Obama's campaign by teasing him about forgetting to put his socks in the hamper. She has been portrayed as aloof and prideful, or worse, prejudiced, just for being straightforward about some of her own struggles as a woman and a racial minority in a country where both of those identities are considered a disadvantage.
An awareness of the difficulty powerful women face in finding ways to express themselves as competent yet compassionate human beings makes Michelle's widely proclaimed success on Monday night all the more amazing. She showed her trademark candor, but with a level of vulnerability I had never seen her reveal in public before. She managed to appear strong, even commanding but simultaneously humble, and incredibly accessible. If this were an act, it would be Oscar-worthy. But what was most moving about Michelle's speech was that it clearly wasn't an act. There were real tears in her eyes as she proclaimed her love for her country. What I witnessed on Monday night was a woman so incredibly dedicated to her cause that she was willing to risk revealing her truest self in front of an audience of millions.
That's something you don't see every day.
I'm not sure even Barack can top it.
You can watch HD video of all of Monday night's speeches at the DNC's official website, DemConvention.com
Jaelithe also writes at The State of Discontent.
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