As the most important day in our nation’s future draws ever closer, I can’t help but to wonder how we got here.  How is it we are just a few days away from electing the most qualified, inspiring, intelligent candidate to be the most powerful man on the planet and that man just so happens to be black?  Yes, we all know there could be no Barack Obama without the sacrifices and courage of Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Medger Evers, Malcolm X, the list goes on and on.  But the truth is, the person who deserves the most credit, is Michelle Obama. 

Watching Michelle Obama navigate the treacherous and cutthroat waters of American politics, I am convinced that she is the most courageous and heroic of us all.

What has she done that warrants such adoration?  She has simply loved her man in a way that I long to be capable of one day. You see, Michelle loves Barack enough to share him with the rest of the world.  A world in which, for every person who is open to the idea of respecting and accepting somebody different, someone outside of our comfort zone, there’s another person closed off and put off to the very same ideal.  Closed off and put off to the point where in one cowardly moment they might be driven to commit an unspeakable act.  An act that has taken a Lincoln, two Kennedys, and an all important King.  I want to love a man enough to be willing to possibly lose him to a larger cause. 

I want to love a man enough to stand up in front of millions of people as she did at the Democratic Convention, baring her soul, not just telling her story of growing up black in America, but selling it to all the haters who believe that to love your country is to never ask more of it than it is willing to give, even if your ancestors paid in blood, sweat, flesh, and pounds and pounds of cotton for the right for you to do so.  Those haters who’ve decided that to love your country is to never criticize it as, apparently, Michelle once did by saying that for the first time in her adult life, she was really, really proud to be American.  I knew instantly what she meant when she said it, so much so that I wanted her to curse all those narrow-minded fools who wrongly put their racist spin on it.  But she loved her husband enough not to, because while it may make her feel better, it wouldn’t help him.  I want to love a man enough to put his needs before mine and trust that if the situation were reversed he’d do the same, without ever asking him to prove it.

I want to love a man enough to support his dreams, even the impossible ones.  You know the ones that take you from the outhouse to the White House in the blink of an eye.  It is with great shame I must admit, that if Barack had been my husband, and had he come to me twenty some odd months ago asking me to join him on this journey, I would’ve answered with a loud and resounding “Negro please.”  I would’ve shut him down before the world got a chance to see just how high he could fly.  If I had been married to Barack, there would be no change we can believe in, just an old grumpy white dude and his Caribou Barbie sidekick peddling the same-o, same-o. 

And so I vow from this day forward to channel my inner Michelle Obama as I continue to navigate through the dating world.  You see, I am a happily single woman living in L.A. (yes we do exist) and while I’m not really feeling the marriage thing, I do believe in the committed love thing.  I want my Barack Obama. 

With that in mind, I have decided to love a little harder, support a little better, believe in a little more.  Though if some joker steps to me talking about he wants to be a rapper and he’s forty with a lisp, and can’t sing, or dance, or rhyme and he wants me to take out a second mortgage on my house to pay for his demo, a giant and resounding “Negro please” will be rolling off my lips.  Love does have its limits.  Lucky for us, Michelle doesn’t know that yet.