President Obama: HAMILTON 'Speaks To This Vibrancy Of American Democracy'
By: Michael Dale Oct. 26, 2015
It's not every day a new Broadway musical gets a glowing review from the leader of the free world.
In a conversation with Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Marilynne Robinson, published in The New York Review Of Books, President Barack Obama has lavish praise for Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton, not just as an entertainment but as a work that can encourage creativity in teaching history to America's kids.
First Lady Michele Obama attended Hamilton during its initial run at The Public Theatre and recently returned to see it on Broadway. The President brought their daughters Malia and Sasha to see the show in July and he'll be returning November 2nd for a special performance to benefit the Democratic Hope Fund.
"It sounds initially like it would not work at all," he says of the concept of telling the story of the founding fathers using hip-hop. "And it is brilliant, and so much so that I'm pretty sure this is the only thing that Dick Cheney and I have agreed on-during my entire political career-it speaks to this vibrancy of American democracy, but also the fact that it was made by these living, breathing, flawed individuals who were brilliant. We haven't seen a collection of that much smarts and chutzpah and character in any other nation in history, I think."
The President credits the success of the musical with the fact that, "It doesn't feel distant. And it doesn't feel set apart from the arguments that we're having today."
Hamilton is the acclaimed new musical about the scrappy young immigrant Alexander Hamilton, the $10 Founding Father who forever changed America with his revolutionary ideas and actions. During his life cut too short, he served as George Washington's chief aide, was the first Treasury Secretary, a loving husband and father, despised by his fellow Founding Fathers and shot to death byAaron Burr in their legendary duel.
