Mamamia Team Wednesday 5 September 2012 5:00pm

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Can you imagine Tim Matheison being asked to kick off Julia Gillard’s next election campaign? Can you picture Margie Abbott taking the stage to tumultuous applause to tell everyone why Tony Abbott was the right man to lead the country? Yeah…. Notsomuch.

But in the United States of America that is just how it goes. Being the spouse of a presidential candidate is not just a full time job – it comes with an obsessive fan-following and a level of public scrutiny that only Lady Gaga could sympathise with

Earlier today, First Lady Michelle Obama opened the Democratic National Convention to tell Americans why they should vote her husband, Barack Obama, into a second term of office.

Here’s what she had to say:

Now obviously there are a lot of take away messages from this speech – but for a moment let’s skip over the policy debates, the political issues and the reflections on Obama’s first term – and let’s talk about love.

There is so clearly a whole heap of love going on in the Obama White House.

Between Michelle and Barack. Between the couple and their children. Between the family and their country.

It’s not soppy sickly love and it’s not hand-on-your-heart patriotism either. This is a family who are living their lives 100% in the public eye but yet they’re sticking together. If anything, their closeness seems to have strengthened and not weakened over the past four years.

Here are some of our favourite lines from the self-described “Mum in chief’s” speech today:

On her husband Barack:

“I have seen firsthand that being president doesn’t change who you are — no, it reveals who you are.” SWOON. (She didn’t say the ‘swoon’, we added that in.)

“I didn’t think it was possible, but today, I love my husband even more than I did four years ago. Even more than I did 23 years ago, when we first met.”

On their childhoods:

“Barack and I were both raised by families who didn’t have much in the way of money or material possessions but who had given us something far more valuable — their unconditional love, their unflinching sacrifice, and the chance to go places they had never imagined for themselves.”

Oh Barack and women:

“He believes that women are more than capable of making our own choices about our bodies and our health care. That’s what my husband stands for.”

On keeping her children grounded in the spotlight:

“I have none of those worries, no, from four years ago about whether Barack and I were doing what’s best for our girls. Because today, I know from experience that if I truly want to leave a better world for my daughters, and all our sons and daughters … then we must work like never before, and we must once again … stand together for the man we can trust to keep moving this great country forward, my husband, our president.”

And where was the President of the United States while all of this was happening?

Here. On the couch with his daughters Mahia and Sasha watching their mum on TV. Awesome.

President Barack Obama and his daughters, Malia, left, and Sasha,