Michelle Obama has relied on Sarah Hurwitz for every speech she has given since her husband won the nomination in 2008, up to her eloquent riposte to Donald Trump at July’s Democratic National Convention, in which she talked about raising her two young daughters in a “house built by slaves” and her repudiation in October of the Trump campaign’s misogyny – speeches that electrified the election.
“What never fails to move and inspire me is her unshakable sense of right and wrong,” speechwriter Hurwitz says of her boss. “She has such a strong moral core and such a clear set of values, and she’s expressed that in pretty much every speech she’s given.”
For eight years, Hurwitz, a Harvard law graduate from Massachusetts, and Michelle Obama have traded drafts and honed a singular voice that broke through the bigotry of 2016. “I start by talking with her, and she’ll lay out the points she wants to make. We work together during the editing process until it’s precisely what she wants to say,” she says.
Hurwitz has written speeches for every 21st-century Democratic presidential nominee. She started her career in 1998 as an intern for then-vice president Al Gore. She worked on John Kerry’s failed 2004 presidential campaign, and then in 2007, Hurwitz started the election cycle as the chief speechwriter for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Hurwitz was behind Clinton’s famous 2008 concession speech, where she thanked her supporters for putting “18m cracks” in the “highest, hardest glass ceiling”.
Days later, she was courted by the Obama administration. Despite a bitter primary, Hurwitz said the Obamas were incredibly welcoming and gracious.
“After I wrote my first speech for him, then-Senator Obama called to welcome me to the campaign. And a week or so after that, I was sitting with Mrs Obama and she was telling me what she wanted to say in her Democratic National Convention speech.”
Several lines from that speech were re-used by Melania Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Hurwitz will not discuss the incident, and Obama has addressed it only once, briefly, on Stephen Colbert’s late-night show. “That was tough,” she said with a sly smile.
As the Obama era draws to a close, Hurwitz is reminded of her late grandmother. “She was a proud Roosevelt Democrat, and as a young woman, she dreamed of going to law school and having a career in politics – but women didn’t really have those kinds of opportunities back then,” she says.
“It never ceases to amaze me that just two generations later, I have walked through the Northwest Gate of the White House every day for the past eight years to get to work.”
