US First Lady Michelle Obama fired the first shots at the Democratic convention with an impassioned speech backing her husband, President Barack Obama. She faced a similar task as Ann Romney of presenting her husband as a father and family man, above his public persona in the political spotlight.
Closing the first night of the Democratic convention, Mrs Obama spoke of the vision and values that guided him as president. "He reminds me that we are playing a long game here ... and that change is hard, and change is slow and it never happens all at once," she told a nation impatient with slow economic progress and persistently high unemployment of 8.3 percent.
As the night’s most celebrated speaker, Michelle Obama took aim, obliquely, at Romney’s argument that success in the business world translates into skills for guiding the country through a difficult economic time. “When it comes to the health of our families, Barack refused to listen to all those folks who told him to leave health reform for another day, another president,” she said.
Michelle's speech came four years after she vowed - before a stadium full of delegates in Denver, Colorado - that Barack Obama, despite his "funny name", would make an "extraordinary president". Campaign officials said Michelle Obama's focus would be to help augment the campaign's strategy to use the convention as a way to show "what drives (the president) every day."
The first lady lent the personal touch to the party-wide effort to get Obama re-elected at a time when he remains locked in an airtight race against Mitt Romney, who accepted his party’s nomination last week at a convention that slammed the president’s economic record.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll released as the convention got under way in Charlotte, North Carolina, showed Mr Obama with the lowest pre-convention favourability for an incumbent president since the 1980s.
Closing the first night of the Democratic convention, Mrs Obama spoke of the vision and values that guided him as president. "He reminds me that we are playing a long game here ... and that change is hard, and change is slow and it never happens all at once," she told a nation impatient with slow economic progress and persistently high unemployment of 8.3 percent.
As the night’s most celebrated speaker, Michelle Obama took aim, obliquely, at Romney’s argument that success in the business world translates into skills for guiding the country through a difficult economic time. “When it comes to the health of our families, Barack refused to listen to all those folks who told him to leave health reform for another day, another president,” she said.
Michelle's speech came four years after she vowed - before a stadium full of delegates in Denver, Colorado - that Barack Obama, despite his "funny name", would make an "extraordinary president". Campaign officials said Michelle Obama's focus would be to help augment the campaign's strategy to use the convention as a way to show "what drives (the president) every day."
The first lady lent the personal touch to the party-wide effort to get Obama re-elected at a time when he remains locked in an airtight race against Mitt Romney, who accepted his party’s nomination last week at a convention that slammed the president’s economic record.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll released as the convention got under way in Charlotte, North Carolina, showed Mr Obama with the lowest pre-convention favourability for an incumbent president since the 1980s.
