President Obama: ‘Michelle will never run for office’

President Obama says both he and first lady Michelle Obama will be “very active” in working with people at the grass-roots level to support progressive causes once he leaves office. But despite her popularity and natural public speaking ability, Michelle isn’t interested in a career in politics. “Michelle will never run for office,” the president told Rolling Stone in an interview conducted the day after the election.

She is as talented a person as I know. You can see the incredible resonance she has with the American people. But I joke that she’s too sensible to want to be in politics.

Barack Obama on his wife Michelle

Obama says that after he hands the keys to the White House to President-elect Donald Trump, he plans to “sleep for a couple weeks” and take Michelle “on a well-deserved vacation.” After that? “I’ll spend time in my first year out of office writing a book, and I’m gonna be organizing my presidential center, which is gonna be focused on precisely this issue of how do we train and empower the next generation of leadership,” Obama said. “How do we rethink our storytelling, the messaging and the use of technology and digital media, so that we can make a persuasive case across the country?” According to Obama, one of the biggest challenges he and his fellow Democrats face is figuring out how to recapture the white working class voters who voted for him — and didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton.

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