Obama: Sasha, Malia won’t run for office

While President Obama’s daughters have spent many of their formative years in the White House, their father doesn’t believe they’ll ever run for office.

“I am very doubtful that they will want to run for public office, you know, partly because they’ve been listening to their mother,” Obama said in a radio interview that aired Friday morning on the Tom Joyner Morning Show.

{mosads}But Obama said he wants Malia, 16, and Sasha, 13, to be “engaged and involved” no matter what route they take.

“If they want to do it through business, then I want them to have a business that is providing employment and opportunity for people who might not otherwise get it,” he said.

“If they want to do it through the arts, then I want their art to be informed by the great social issues of the day so they are illuminating that for other people and telling stories that need to be told.”

The first daughters have a long time before they’d even have to consider a future in politics. While some Democrats have courted first lady Michelle Obama for various Senate seats and other positions, the two elder Obamas have shot those rumors down in various interviews.

Obama’s comments come a day before he’ll appear in Selma, Ala., to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the marches to Montgomery, which helped encourage the Voting Rights Act. He said that he wants his daughters to understand how the protests show the power that regular people can have. 

“The great thing about Selma is that it celebrates not just the famous people, it celebrates all those folks that don’t have their name on a plaque or statue,” he said.

“But everyone understands that it wasn’t just Dr. [Martin Luther] King making a great speech, although I think he is an icon for the ages. It wasn’t just [Georgia Democratic Rep.] John Lewis, although I don’t know a more courageous and sweet man than him. It was also just people that went back to their lives when it was done.”