For anyone who’s ever wondered/hoped/laid awake at night imagining a world in which Michelle Obama might run for office, we now have an answer, courtesy of this interview with Oprah.

No.

Oprah asks her directly, “Would you ever run for office? Any kind of office?” And the answer is, very bluntly, “No.”

Her reason is hard to argue with. That job—the job of President, but also, presumably, any public political office—is hard. And according to Michelle, people just don’t understand that, not to the actual degree. As she puts it, your life shuts down, your kids’ lives shut down, your grandchildren’s lives shut down. But, by the nature of the job, we don’t hear them complain. So we can’t ever really understand. From the way she talks about it, 16 years of that life, asking a family to go through it all again, would be unthinkable.

Still, it’s understandable to relish the idea of a Michelle Obama presidency. Despite the fact that some people viewed Hillary Clinton’s first eight years of direct White House experience before ever taking elected office herself as a negative (fears of dynasties and all that that never seemed to be such an issue for, say, the Bushes), Michelle gets the appeal.

A lot of people are disappointed by the result of this election and she is seen as “the closest thing” to the administration leaving office, “so you do it.” So yes, we can dream. But are there conversations happening within the Democratic party to get Michelle Obama into office? She shuts that down with perfect Obama chuckling snark:

I’m not having conversations, no. A conversation is a two-way street. I don’t know what they’re talking about, but I’m not talking back.

(via Deadline, image via YouTube)

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