Skip to 8 minute mark in this recording of Michelle Obama’s speech at UCLA.  Shortly after that point she says this:

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

Apparently we are all activists now.  There is something amusing about the idea that a political movement that has so far thrived on uninformed people being won over by cheery slogans is going to become a dedicated band of civically-minded, “engaged” and hopeful Stakhanovites.  In a certain context, these remarks could be taken simply as expressions of strong conviction, but that doesn’t seem to be what she’s saying.  She isn’t expressing the extent of Obama’s conviction, but instead is telling the voters that they are going to have to shape up considerably if they are going to be worthy of toiling in the fields of hope.

Michael once wrote about Mike Huckabee’s candidacy representing the introduction of the “life coach” ethos into presidential politics:

Unlike Obama or Bush before him, Huckabee asks us not only to rise above partisanship but to rise above ourselves.

This is a vision of the executive as “Uplifter in Chief,” the role Huckabee seems most anxious to play: “The president of the United States ought to lead Americans to think the best, be the best and act the best. We ought not pander to the lowest common denominator of thought.” It’s a message alternately inspiring in its aspirations and smug in its condescension.

Now it seems clear that Obama is the one who wants to play that role, or at least he allows his wife to cast him in the role.  You have to marvel at the use of so many phrases implying coercion, rather than persuasion: require, demand, never allow.  I’m sorry, but in a still nominally free country the chief magistrate of a republic does not make demands of citizens, but enforces the laws enacted by their representatives.  That is what the President does, or is supposed to do.  He does not, cannot, rightfully require things of any citizen that the citizen does not already owe to his country, namely loyalty and patriotic service.  That is what he is allowed to ask from us, because it is something we are already obliged to render.  It is not he who permits and allows, but, at least in theory, we who permit him to serve us.  He will not be a jefe or archigos to whom we are swearing personal allegiance (despite the confusion of some Bush supporters on this point), but a public servant who executes the laws and obeys the Constitution.