True love story: Barack and Michelle (external link)

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I have so much respect for this couple and for their marriage. Their marriage seems to be a true union of equals, built on mutual respect for one another. I really hope that God would give me a husband like this whom I can truly respect, and who will deeply respect me in return.

Actually, it was of Barack and Michelle Obama I was thinking when I wrote the post “A business minded spouse as a business investment” and when I wrote that an ambitious man should marry someone who could do his job as well as he could, (and the same also goes for ambitious women). This is so that even in your most intimate relationship you have someone who is on your level, who “gets” it, who you can talk to about the nitty gritty of issues, someone who can also invest their efforts towards your goals, and get their hands dirty as need be. I can imagine that when hitting the campaign trail Michelle would have had just as much physical, mental and emotional energy as Barack, to stick up posters or to make speeches – at any rate she would have been right there, right beside him. Furthermore she has given a few speeches in her own right which are widely recognised to be of presidential calibre. If you choose another kind of spouse, as well as the effort to maintain your marriage then you will have to invest lots more time and effort into finding and keeping support from someone who really is on your level; so that is expending two lots of effort into two separate relationships, it is so much more efficient to simply marry someone who is like this!

This does appear to be the case with this couple, doesn’t it, that Mr Obama married someone on his level?! Barack may have held an incredibly high level job but somehow he still managed to find a wife who could feasibly do his job as well as him.  Michelle is not only an incredibly supportive, stylish and eloquent First Lady but she is also eminently capable of being president herself! Look how she has had to issue countless denials that she will “ever run for office” (Google search) for years now – like here and here and here. At one point Barack even had to step in and conclusively veto the idea*. Yet look how people, (including me!) are hoping that she might yet be persuaded! Your country needs you, Michelle and so does the wider world! OK, so in the course of writing this article I have managed to persuade myself that Michelle needs to run for President! But you know what, I would also love to see Barack model what it means to be a supportive husband to a high-profile and powerful wife!

*Actually, it appears he has had to do this at least twice! – in the first denial, I note he said “Michelle will never run for president!”, but in the second denial listed here it seems that he qualified it that she would not run “in 2020″…