She never wanted to be President. In her first eight years in the White House, she had seen how ugly and vicious politics could be. She could see, as nobody else could, just how stressful the job was for her husband. She saw his hair growing ever grayer, despite his youth, and she knew that the job was taking a terrible toll on him. Politics is a nasty, dirty business, and nothing, not even the many pleas for her to run, could convince her to get back into that sewer.
Except Donald Trump. She watched with consternation the ruination of the country under his Presidency. She saw how he deliberately stoked the anger and hatred that was tearing the country apart. She saw just how much misery he was visiting upon the American people. She saw the country descending into a political maelstrom.
Michele Obama wasn't a politician. She had no political agenda, no set of policy goals that she wanted to achieve. She cared about people, not policies. Political controversies didn't fire her up. But the suffering of millions of Americans was more than she could live with. Her country was falling apart, and as much as she hated the thought of going back into the pit, she knew that she was perhaps the only person who commanded broad enough respect to bring the country back together again.
Despite her disgust with politics, she had all the skills she needed. She knew that it would be foolish to announce any political ambitions. Besides, to be honest, she didn't have any political ambition - she saw the road ahead of her as a brutal moral obligation, not a golden opportunity. She knew that it would be best to wait until the last possible moment, just before the primaries. If the chorus of those pleading for her candidacy was loud enough, then she could run with a clear conscience.
Sure enough, as Democrats piled into the race and the campaign for the Democratic nomination began to look like a circus, the whispers became louder, the voices more strident, the demands more insistent. In December of 2019, she threw her hat into the ring, but she did so with declared reluctance. She was not going to fight for the nomination. She liked and admired all of the other candidates and felt that each one would make a fine President. She was merely putting her name on the list of candidates and would let the voters decide. She showed up in New Hampshire for a few rallies, which were mobbed by thousands of adoring Democrats. In a crowded field, she garnered a solid plurality of votes.
Her message was simple: she wanted to heal America. She refused to attack anybody, not even Mr. Trump. When asked about the findings of the investigations into his criminal behavior, she answered that she trusted the American justice system to resolve the matter properly. She had no political platform, no specific plans for fixing health care, balancing the budget, or attacking global warming. There were plenty of politicians with good ideas for tackling the many problems facing the country, and her contribution as President would be a combination of sweet talking and ass-kicking to hammer out compromises that most people could live with. She was going to take on the big, intractable issues that had divided the country for so long: abortion, guns, taxes, the military, voting rights. She would twist arms, charm, threaten, cajole, bribe, and convince politicians to work out the differences.
Her success in New Hampshire was so impressive that most of the other Democratic candidates dropped out and endorsed her. Only Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris hung on. A few primaries later, Ms. Obama had such a solid lead that Kamala Harris dropped out and endorsed her. Only Mr. Sanders hung on, contesting the nomination right through the last primaries. He reluctantly endorsed her just before the convention in July.
In the months after the conventions, Ms. Obama barnstormed the country, maintaining a brutal pace that taxed even Barack. Her voice went hoarse; she was perpetually exhausted. Her stump speeches were a call to arms - arms joined in comity. She emphasized the beliefs that were common to all Americans: the importance of working together , the value of compromise, the power of cooperation. "Why do we expend our energies fighting each other when we could accomplish so much more by joining those energies together?" she asked.
She was no naif; she warned her audiences that compromise is a medicine that nobody likes but everybody can live with. She warned progressives that the basic right to own guns could not be challenged, but that reasonable restrictions to access could be wrung from conservatives. She demanded that Americans face up to the need for a Constitutional amendment laying out once and for all the rights and restrictions on abortion. Over and over she hammered away at her central theme: a house divided against itself could not stand, and that Americans of all persuasions had no choice but to face each other, shake hands, and work out acceptable compromises. She promised to be a ferocious, tenacious, and unyielding mediator.
Michele Obama was the right person at the right time when America was on the verge of tearing itself apart. She was the spitting anti-image of Donald Trump; where he stoked division, she inspired cooperation. Where Mr. Trump brought out the worst in Americans, Ms. Obama evoked the best in them.