Editorial: Cheers for First Lady Obama

Anna Wallis

MICHELLE Obama's last speech as United States First Lady showed the optimist she has always been.

While the role of Flotus is often thankless, Americans owe a great deal of gratitude to the woman who made the title her own.

More engaged than most who have gone before, certainly more energetic, she was also more in touch with the issues that matter. And not just in black lives. Her emphasis on education, young people and health was not just for show.

Much of this work and direction had started years before, and the White House was simply a continuum.

Her sense of humour and sense of self, as well as the dignity she brought to the job, have been priceless.

And she needed that foundation because the detractors tried to derail her term in a non-elected role within months of Barack Obama becoming president. She was labelled an angry woman. And the fist pumps she favoured were somehow subversive. And worse than anything, she bared her shoulders, which almost brought the country to the precipice of ruin.

Through the criticisms, ludicrous as they were, she just got on with her life: bringing up the kids and maintaining a marriage in the presidential home, working out her version of the First Lady role and presumably staying sane.

She was hard-working, intelligent and part of the real world. In Michelle Obama America had one of of the great First Ladies.