Bakst: Hillary Clinton battles for Rhode Island voters
...
Wednesday night, Michelle Obama wowed a rally of maybe 2,000 people at the Community College of Rhode Island in Warwick.
It was not your average event. The guest star was introduced by her brother, Brown University basketball coach Craig Robinson. They grew up in a blue-collar setting on Chicago’s South Side. Noting that she’s now a celebrity on TV, magazines and so on, Robinson said, “I see her as the little girl that I shared a room with for 10 years, up late talking until we got in trouble and then pretended to be asleep.”
He called her “beautiful” and “brilliant,” a fellow alum of Princeton — she went on to Harvard Law — and a “diligent and devoted working mother trying to raise her kids as normal as possible during a presidential campaign.”
He said he was proud to present his sister, “the next first lady of the United States.”
The crowd roared and chanted, “Yes we can!” Former Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee, now a political independent and an Obama supporter, put his fingers to his lips and whistled. Chafee, who lives next to Robinson near the Brown campus, was having a grand time at this Democratic affair, standing near such figures as former Attorney General Jim O’Neil, former Lt. Gov. Charlie Fogarty, state Sen. Maryellen Goodwin, and state Rep. Steve Costantino. Indeed, just before the rally began Chafee presented Michelle Obama with a Rhode Island flag — you know, with the motto “Hope.”
Obama, 44, was so moved by her brother’s introduction that she told the crowd, “I’m going to cry. I love you guys.” But, of course, this very focused lady quickly segued into much the same speech she’d given earlier in the day. She has some excellent lines, one of them a reference to her Harvard Law-grad husband’s choosing to work for community improvement rather than go into corporate law. “When you have the gift of advocacy, you don’t sell it to the highest bidder,” she said.
This couple makes for a riveting pair. During an afternoon interview, I had the opportunity to ask her about their bond.
Coach Robinson once told me that he liked Barack Obama since they first met but assumed it was just a matter of time before his sister would drop him, as she’d “fired” other boyfriends.He said that was because
she was smart and tough, and, “Her role model for guys was my father, and that was a tall order.… He was smart, he was hardworking, he raised two bright kids, great family atmosphere, and he did that on a laborer’s salary.”
I ran that by
Michelle, and I wondered
what she saw in Barack that met the standards her father, the late Fraser Robinson, inspired.She said her dad
engendered “deep and utter trust, and respect.” She recalled, “My father always did what he said. He rarely disappointed us.” Theirs was a “very modest” life. “Our reward for good grades was we got pizza. It was thrilling…. When you know you can count on the consistency of somebody’s character, that gives you just a level of security and freedom that I think gives me the ability to reach and try new things.”
Her father, she suggested, was a security blanket.Similarly, said
this woman who was on track to be a partner is a fancy corporate law firm, then switched to become a City Hall aide, executive director of a nonprofit, a college dean, and then a University of Chicago Hospitals vice president:
“Barack is somebody who is exactly who he says he is, with no pretense, with a deep compassionate heart who I know I always can fall back on in a soft landing. So that’s given me the freedom to leave my corporate job, walk away from a huge salary when I had all these debts, to try out these new careers, because he was always there saying, ‘It’ll be fine, we’ll figure this out, and don’t worry about the money, just do what you care about.’ From everything to staying home or working or what kind of mother I wanted to be, any barriers that I had were in my head, because I always have a husband who’s saying, ‘Do what you think is best.’ ”
http://www.projo.com/news/politics/content/SE_BAKST_COLUMN_24_02-24-08_7293KSC_v18.20d27f7.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
